When Did You Last Reboot?

When something goes wrong with a technological tool, whether it’s your computer, WiFi, or phone - what is the first thing that anyone will ask you? 

Have you restarted? 

Did you check for updates?

Shut down, unplug, wait ten seconds, and then reboot. 

I would say that this works, 9/10 times. 

When was the last time you re-started? When is the last time that you checked in with yourself and identified what updates were necessary in your own life?

When, then, did you last shut down, unplug, wait ten seconds, and re-start? 

If you’re anything like most people - it has probably been a while. For most, life has been incredibly challenging for a long time. We have lost loved ones. We have lost jobs, incomes, time with friends, hugs from family, and at times, we have lost our faith in others, our faith in humanity. 

Yet, those of us who are lucky enough to do so, wake up every day and keep going, keep moving, and lately it feels like - keep suffering. Most of us have not stopped in a very long time. We have not taken our vacations, because there is nowhere to go. We have not missed a day of work, because we feel lucky to have a job and fearful of losing it. We have not created space to grieve, both the collective and personal losses that have occurred. 

And I’m worried about all of us. 

As someone who thinks a lot about well-being, manages people, and serves as a coach and a mindfulness practitioner, even I have put well-being on the backburner for some time - and if I have, then I know I’m not alone. 

*Before I go on, it’s important to state this: the ideas I’m about to share are not available to everyone. There is an inherent privilege that comes with being able to stop, take a break, and create boundaries. And if you are able to do it, you must. And then, you must then get back to work, and take care of others, lessening the weight that others must carry.* 

So, what can we do? 

We can shut down. If I learned anything from my maternity leave in the fall of 2019, it was this - work will be there when you get back. If I learned anything from 2020, it was this - your toddler will be OK if you need to let them watch screen time so you can take a break. And, if I’ve learned anything from 2021 so far it is this - saying no is hard, but it’s the most necessary act of self-care that we can do.

We can unplug. When did doom-scrolling become a term? Have you done it? I know I have, and it never makes me feel better. It doesn’t inspire me to do more, to be better, or to help others more effectively. It exhausts and drains me. And that’s not good for anyone, myself or those around me that I so desperately want to support. So unplug. Whether it’s for an hour, or better yet, a weekend. Turn off the news. Stop scrolling Instagram. Read a novel. Create something. Get back to baking sourdough bread. Let your mind rest, and heal, so that tomorrow you can show up better. 

Wait 10 seconds. In my coaching, I often encourage clients to take a pause before reacting. Breathe. Think. Wait. When is the last time you have taken a mindful breath? That email can wait. That task will be waiting for you tomorrow. You don’t need to have a difficult conversation right now if you’re not capable. Pause, so you can make sure you know what’s most important. Pause, so you can respond as your best self. Pause, because you deserve it. 

We can reboot. What do you need to let go of? What do you need to say yes to? What needs to change in order to make your life work for you? In those moments of pause, imagine what is possible. Consider who you need to be. And then slowly come back. I read somewhere recently that if something isn’t a HECK YES! Then it needs to be a no. And as a wise colleague mentioned recently: 

No is a sentence. 

No is an answer. 

No is a prayer. 

Take care of yourself, loved ones. We need you.

How To Work From Home

I fall into a unique category of working people. I am both a long distance commuter and a remote worker. I live in Connecticut and work in New York City. On the days I am physically in the office (typically three per week), I commute two hours each way. On the days I am in CT, I work out of my home office. I understand what it takes to be successful in both an office and at home. As much of the world is quickly becoming more remote, I want to offer a few practices that have helped me work effectively outside of the office.

Call It Remote Work

When I lived in NYC and worked just four subway stops from my apartment, I would occasionally work from home, and this usually happened on Fridays, which tend to be slower. While I would always prioritize getting my work done, I would also throw in a load (or four) of laundry, take short breaks to organize my apartment, and create my grocery list while sitting on a conference call (kidding!). The point is: working from home on occasion is helpful to get things done around the house, while keeping up with your work. However, a shift must occur when working remotely - you are effectively trying to create as similar of a work environment to your regular office as possible.

Create Boundaries

When you are working remotely, setting boundaries is incredibly important. Decide what time you are going to start and end each day. These will most often just be your normal business hours, but they might not be, especially if you are caring for others while many schools and businesses are closed. Reflect your working hours on your shared calendar, so your team knows when to expect a response. When the clock strikes 9am - you are at work. Take a few deep breaths, set an intention to be fully present to your work, and leave all other things behind. Similarly, when it’s 5pm and you’re finished - be finished. It can be difficult to “turn off” when you are working at your house, so it’s important to think through how you can transition back to your non-work time. Power down your computer, turn off work notifications on your phone, and take a few deep breaths, re-setting your intention for the rest of your day.

Maximize Your Space

I am very lucky to have a home office, which allows me to shut a door and leave the rest of the house behind. I also know what it’s like to try to work out of a tiny NYC apartment. No matter your set-up, it is important to create as much of a dedicated space as possible. This might be at your kitchen table, on a TV tray in your living room, or on some corner of the floor. Do your best to find a space that is not your couch or your bed. Trust me: when you are unwinding with Netflix and a glass of pinot in the evening, you’ll be glad you’re not in the same spot you were when you had a lively debate about the upcoming sales cycle. Do your best to be intentional with what you’ve got.

Nurture Community From Afar

For many of us, being around people is important, so working remotely can become isolating. Be intentional about creating moments for human interactions - even if through video. Use this as an opportunity to get better at creating inclusive and interactive meetings. Self-organize virtual gatherings with your colleagues that mimic moments around the water cooler. Make it a point to connect with your colleagues to see how they are doing. During team meetings, ask a fun question - how are you going to repurpose your commute? What is your favorite emoji? What personal goals are you excited to make space for? Whatever it looks like - be intentional about nurturing your relationships with others, even if they look a little different for a while. And most importantly, don’t wait for someone else to get things started. Just connect!

Additional Tips

• Get dressed. Most of us probably won’t need to totally dress up, but strike a balance between pajama bottoms and a pantsuit. You’ll usually find me in leggings, a nice top, and definitely bare feet.

• Put your computer on a flat surface for Video Calls. Do your colleagues a favor and don’t use your hands or lap for conference calls - it looks shaky and is hard to pay attention.

• Use time blocking to map out your day - both inside and outside of work hours. Instead of solely working off a to-do list, block out time-bound task time.

• Remember tone - we all know that a lot can get loss in emails, texts, and writing in general. If you are not going to have in-person face-time with your colleagues, be extra mindful of your words, give people the benefit of the doubt, and don’t be afraid to talk through things that leave you questioning or worried.

• Look away from the screen. In the office, we often take breaks from staring at the screen, even if just to walk to a conference room. Make sure to take screen breaks: read a work-related book, schedule a phone call, or sit and meditate for a few moments.

How To Follow-Up After A Conference

This article was originally published on LinkedIn.

Going to conferences is a necessity for many young professionals who are seeking career advancement, looking to build their network, or hoping to get inspired and gain new insights about their industry. At the same time, conferences can feel overwhelming (there are too many people!), frustrating (this content is so boring!), and many leave feeling unsure about how to bring what they’ve learned back to work (my boss expects a report-out, so I better get on that!). In order to maximize the conference experience, it is important to have a clear process for what happens when you get back to the office. By scheduling two hours after you return, you can significantly maximize the time you have spent and ensure that what you’ve gained will have a meaningful impact on your career. What follows is exactly what those two hours should look like.

Journaling (30 minutes): Within a few days after you return form a conference, it is important to capture your learnings—not just from your notes, but from what you actually remember from the conference. So take out your notebook and pen, set a timer, and get to writing. Don’t worry about whether you capture everything or whether it makes sense. This process is about capturing your feelings, thoughts, and high-level reflections from the conference as a whole. Writing (not on a computer) is a greatly undervalued process, and is important in really thinking about what you learned at the conference.

Social Media Interactions (20 minutes): During the conference, you probably followed along with the conference hashtag throughout every session, and then completely forgot about it later on. Go back and read through conference tweets and engage with attendees. Perhaps you’ll find someone interesting to follow or reach out to, or you’ll gain interesting insights from other sessions that you hadn’t noticed live. Follow interesting speakers and tweet out your thanks for their great sessions—they’ll appreciate it!

Personal Follow-Up (40 minutes): As you consider how best to follow-up with those you met at a conference, start with creating a few options for each person you met:

• A personalized LinkedIn request: If you met someone that you found interesting and would like to stay connected with, consider sending them a LinkedIn request. However, you must remember to write a note along with that request. Chances are, they are receiving requests from many people, and might not remember who you are (and if you can’t think of anything to say because you can’t really remember the interaction—don’t add them).

• A meaningful email: If you really connected with someone and could see yourself continuing the conversation in the near future, send them an email. Share at least 1-2 resources that you think they might like (articles, video links, website), and a plan for when you’d like to connect—whether you’d like to connect again immediately (if so, share some potential dates/times), or letting them know that you’ll reach out to schedule a call or coffee in a month (put it in your calendar so you don’t forget!).

• Toss the business card: The honest truth is that we all meet a lot of people at conferences that we won’t ever connect with again. That is normal, and it’s okay to toss that person’s business card without any additional follow-up. Chances are if you do reach out, nothing would ever come of it, so don’t waste your time or theirs, and just toss the card.

What’s learned here, leaves here (30 minutes): Once you’ve done the first three steps, it’s going to become incredibly easy to share your conference experience with your boss, your peers, your direct reports, and anyone else you’d like to. Now it’s time to grab your computer and start typing. Be sure to share the following:

• High-Level Takeaways: What did you learn overall? What sessions sparked new thinking or confirmed ideas that your organization has been wrestling with?

• Meaningful Connections: Who did you connect with and how are you following up?

• Future: Is this a conference that your organization should continue to have a presence at in the future? If so or if not, why? Who should attend this conference in the future?

And with that, you’ve done an amazing job of following up after the conference!

A Three Step Process To Better Listening

Lately—okay, constantly—I think about what effective leadership looks like. There are so many theories, so many formulas, and so many definitions of exceptional—or even just good—leadership. Yet, leadership looks different for everyone. As a coach, I work with people who have titles that make it clear they are in leadership positions. I also work with people who don’t think of themselves as leaders, but in many ways, they are. And I also work with people who have no interest at all in becoming leaders—some due to misconceptions about what it really means to be a leader, and some because they just don’t want to. And that is absolutely fine.

That being said, there are three practices that I think everyone can do, which will make them exude qualities that every good leader should have. The word practice in this framework is important—these aren’t things that we get right on the first time, second time, or even after a lifetime. But, they are practices we can work towards embodying, and they are oh so simple. Listening. Reflection. Action. Let’s dig in a little deeper.

Listening: I have written a lot about listening. It is a true skillset, one that requires both a genuine desire to do well at it, an immense amount of patience, and a hefty dose of humility. To become a great listener, you need to want to be a great listener. It means re-framing your mindset to think that something someone else has to say is important, and valuable, and to really, really, believe that. It requires patience—many of us know what it’s like to listen to someone go on, and on, and on. But creating space for that speaker to share what is on their mind and what they believe, is a tremendous gift. And finally, humility. We must believe that someone else is just as important as us. Whether or not they know more than us, what they say is just as important as what we say. And that, is a tough pill for many of us to swallow. What listening allows us to do is to hear a perspective of someone else—whether we are leading a team at work, understanding what our partner needs from us, or anything else—listening brings us directly into the next practice.

Reflection: We can listen all day long, but we need to create space for ourselves to step back and think about what we have heard. To start—if we are not sure what we have heard, we need to go back, ask for clarification, and then come back to this step of the process. To start, think about what the person said, as well as what they didn’t say. What were they asking for? Many people just want to be heard. In which case, telling them: I hear you can be a tremendous gift. Many want action, which we’ll get to next. Some are looking for help, so stepping back to think about—what can I do to help this person? would be the focus of your reflection. Take the time to reflect on any important conversation, so you can move into the next practice.

Action: If you have listened to your team, reflected on what they have said, and clarified anything you need to, it is time to act. Now, as a listener, leader, whatever you are—your action might very well be coming back to the team and saying: I absolutely heard you (and reflect back some of the things you heard, so they know this is true), I’ve thought about it, and I’m going to move forward in a different direction. That is okay! At the end of the day, most people feel good about any process as long as they are heard and their opinions have been validated. If it is your partner, and you learn through listening and reflection that you need to do something differently to be better to them, you better start to act. No matter what, after you listen and reflect, take the time to go back to the speaker, and share what you have learned and what you are going to do next—whether it is doing nothing at all, or taking a big, bold step into a new direction.

Preparing for Parental Leave

As I write this, I have just one day left before I begin my first maternity leave. I am full of mixed emotions, which has been true on multiple levels over the course of the past nine (plus!) months. As I have prepared for this time away, I have reflected immensely, learned a lot, and most importantly, gotten myself to the place of letting go. So for anyone else preparing for parental leave of any kind, I’m sharing some of my key reflections. To note: I am not going to address some of the more major issues with parental leave in the U.S.—particularly the lack of universal access to it, which is a massive problem. Instead, I am going to write for the lucky few who are able to take leave and focus on how best to prepare for it.

Making Your Plan

Every company is different, so the easy part is to follow any processes that have already been set up—think things like getting all of your paperwork squared away and following any guidelines they have. In terms of making a coverage plan that you (and others!) feel comfortable with, consider the following, all of which were extremely helpful for me:

• Think Ahead: I started creating my plan almost four months ahead of time. Using a Google Excel Spreadsheet, I mapped out a timeline, starting 14 weeks before my due date. For each week, I added in key organizational happenings, 2-3 priorities per each week, and notes. Did I fill out every single week fully? No, way! But it was a great starting point for mapping out the important milestones I would be working to meet along the way.

• Coverage: For most of us, our job goes far beyond our job description. It’s usually easy to maintain that mindset day in and day out, but when you’re preparing for leave, it’s a whole other ballgame. I sat down and tried to map out everything that I do on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. I then began to assign interim owners of each. It is important to both make sure they know they’ll be covering for you, and to also have as much information in advance as possible—so make the time to have advance conversations and loop folks into email chains as early as possible.

• Plan For The Unexpected: I never thought that I would have the opportunity to wrap things up nicely a few days before my due date. I’ve known countless colleagues and friends who have had their babies early, so I knew it was a possibility—and planned for it. I drafted an out of office, wrote explicit directions for who would do what when I went into labor (checking for meetings that would need to be cancelled, letting the team know, etc.), and created the 14 week roadmap. I haven’t needed to set this things in motion, but was so glad they were ready to go if needed. For the last week, every day has been a ‘bonus’, and has allowed me to work on long-term projects and answer last minute questions before I do officially sign off and rest until the baby comes.

Letting Things Go

As prepared as I feel, I know I have forgotten many things—I’m sure many are minor and a few are major—but I am going to need to trust that everything will be fine (because, it will be!). As a fellow colleague told me early on, this is a moment in time—just a blip on the map, for both you, and the organization. Enjoy it, and let go. A few ways I worked to let things go are as follows.

• A Brief Apology: I felt the need to apologize in advance, for all of the things I know that I have forgotten. My colleagues were incredible and told me to not apologize, but I did, because honestly, it just made me feel better. So don’t feel like you need to apologize—but make sure to do what you need to do to feel okay, and released from your work, for however long your leave is.

• Transitioning Back: For some time, I felt very nervous about my transition back into the organization (maybe I’ll write about this once I actually do transition back in!). I quickly realized that I needed to let that fear go, and have been able to do so fairly successfully. I have done the following to minimize my nervousness: 1) Acknowledging that things will look different when I get back—and that’s okay, 2) Acknowledging that I will be different when I get back—and that’s okay, 3) Completely blocking out three days after I return for email and catching up—and knowing I might need to add even more than that.

• They’ll Be Okay: For many of us (myself included!) it is easy to get into a mindset of ‘only I know this or can do this’. Well, it’s just not true. Basically anything I do at work can be done by someone else (I still cringe when I think that—it’s nice to feel irreplaceable!), and I’m now at a place, where I know that people will probably do an even better job than me at a lot of things. I’ll trust in my colleagues while I’m gone, and I’ll trust in myself when I get back—and the work will keep on moving.