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Most Thursday mornings you’ll find me in a co-working session with members of the Productive Flourishing Academy.
Part of the routine in our coworking sessions is to start off with a word pulled from a deck of motivational cards. My friend, the group leader, pulls the card, and the idea is to use the word that emerges to create alignment or a point of focus throughout your day.
When my turn came, she pulled the word “Relaxation”.
Ummm… no.
“I have a mountain of tasks ahead of me and I don’t have time to relax today,” was my instant reaction.
Luckily, I have my own set of this particular card deck, so before diving into the task I had planned (which ended up turning into this piece of writing) I decided to pull a new card. Take that, universe!
So what card did I pull?
“Risk.”
Well-played, universe. Well-played.
What am I supposed to do with these mixed messages? These two words — that are now at the forefront of my mind — seem to be at odds with one another.
As I moved into the work I had planned to do during this co-working session (namely a speech I had to give the following week for Toastmasters, a public speaking and leadership club I’m a part of in NYC), I couldn’t get these two words out of my head.
These ideas, risk and relaxation, don’t seem to fit together. More than that, they seem to be on opposite sides of the spectrum.
When I heard the word relaxation, what came to mind was an extreme state of rest, inaction, becoming sloth-like.
To enter a relaxed state is something too often we feel we need to earn. I’m allowed to just relax? Without doing anything or accomplishing anything first?
So when my friend pulled that card for me, I rebelled. Because I have a too-long list of things that need to get done (yep, violating the 5 Projects Rule) before I can even think about allowing myself to relax. Calm will have to wait.
I recognize this mentality runs counter to a lot of what has been written about here at PF, including pieces I myself have written. It just goes to show, we’re all in a constant state of learning and unlearning.
Still, relaxation is a self-care practice — and a necessity — we can all get behind. But risk? Risk seems to imply anything but rest and relaxation, and seems, well, downright dangerous.
Risk implies action, making a change, getting uncomfortable, and putting yourself in a position to fail (the horror!).
It’s inevitably scary to take a step in a new direction. Our minds and bodies perceive this newness as danger and set off all sorts of alarms to try to get us to do anything but this risky behavior — fight, flight, or freeze.
Taking action, no matter how big or small, is inherently risky.
But what happens if I put these two words together? What if relaxation didn’t need to mean a full and complete stop to any activity, but instead it could mean an easing in?
And what if risk didn’t require actual danger but simply meant trying something new? What if it was just about easing into the discomfort of putting myself in a slightly different position than yesterday?
And as I was thinking all these thinks, and most definitely not writing my Toastmasters speech, it dawned on me that the exact combination of these themes — getting more comfortable (relaxation) with being uncomfortable (risk) — is one that continues to show up in my life.
A recent example: I’ve been starting to get back into writing. More specifically, I’m starting to share my writing more frequently. Risk.
I’m leaning more and more into my instinct, and how it relates to both writing and sharing; this article is an example. Relaxation.
Ease can be about letting go. Letting go of expectations, of perfectionism, of the outcome. And that is inherently risky. Where are you holding on too tight? What small action can you take today to move yourself closer to where you want to be?
The post Relaxing Into Risk appeared first on Productive Flourishing.
Summertime can present an interesting tension for many of us.
On the one hand, we spend more time enjoying the world and the people we love, away from screens. On the other hand, those screens are how we often capture the gazillion ideas running through our heads.
For what it’s worth, many clients and readers have told me that part of their anxiety about going without a device for a few days (or longer) is they don’t know where they’re going to capture ideas and to-dos. Even when I remind them about notecards and little notebooks, they feel overwhelmed at the prospect of getting all of those ideas and to-dos from analog into whatever digital tool they use to capture and track them.
In a post for another day, I’ll tackle what’s really going on with this “capture everything” anxiety, but, for today, I’m going to focus on toolsets rather than mindsets.
What you’ve probably experienced is that the problem with loose tasks and ideas isn’t how much time they’re going to take to do, but that a) they don’t have a default home and b) they keep nagging you to remember them. By “default home,” I don’t mean the 82 sticky notes all over the place. Those sometimes cause more swirl because you have to remember which ideas are on what stickies and where those stickies are.
Being away from your default home (and toolsets) is what makes the summertime especially spacy and ball-droppy for so many people. Per the usual, whenever you have a major change in context, you probably need to update your habits and tools to compensate.
Here are some tools that will help you find a home for those loose tasks and ideas:
When in doubt, go with the simpler option.
Printing out the Action Item Catcher so that you have a default home for those loose ideas and tasks may be more inefficient than 2 and 3 above, but it’s far more effective at making time and space than opening your phone, in most cases. Opening our devices is far more likely to lead to being sucked into work when you’re out or accidentally falling into social media scrolling when you just meant to drop off a task or deliverable.
Whichever tools or methods you choose, focus on the capture aspect and save the sifting and sorting of those ideas for when you’re really back at work. The purpose here is to ease that “capture everything” anxiety in the moment, and get back to enjoying your time away.
The post How to Tame Those Gazillion Ideas appeared first on Productive Flourishing.
Our culture glorifies youth. Even the word “old” is one we would prefer to avoid. Negative messages about age come at us our entire lives.
Throughout my life, I have heard people say: “So-and-so can’t do that, they’re too old.” Or there’s the notion that as a woman, you shouldn’t say your age. But the stigma around age is such nonsense, because getting older is a natural part of life. It happens to every person on the planet! Getting older should not be something to be feared.
At 43, I love my age.
Almost all of us know that ageism is out there. It’s a type of discrimination that touches almost every person at some point in their life or career.
Discrimination is unfortunately a subject I know far too much about — not only when it comes to age, but also because of my gender and race.
I live as a black woman in America. My race and gender are two things in this country that are constantly under examination. Every time I walk in a door, who I am and my capabilities are perceived differently once people see my face.
Having been through that my entire life, not only my adult life, but also as a child, I used to get so exhausted by the burden of caring what others thought. But what I learned from it was that being too tired to care anymore can be a powerful thing.
It’s good when you don’t want to put up with it anymore — that same old thing the world is giving you. Then it’s time to change the world.
My experiences inspired me to not care what people thought of me, and that remains the case now, with my age. I no longer allow myself to be limited by other people’s perceptions of me. Instead I focus on my inner strength, and the part of me that says, “I have to do this.”
Age Is Just a Number
Many people encounter ageism at some point in their career. And it’s not only reserved for women, or older people.
In a survey by Glassdoor, 30 percent of workers report experiencing ageism at some point in their careers, and most of the people who report it are actually younger (between ages 18 and 34).
Ageism is also insidious because it’s difficult to identify. Age means something different for everyone. Being a particular age doesn’t reveal a static truth about your person, your experiences, or your skills. As a black woman over forty, I reject people treating me worse or differently for my race or my gender, but I also reject discrimination based on my age — in the workplace or anywhere else.
When I had the life-changing opportunity to go to Africa last year for the first time, I witnessed firsthand that age there is associated with wisdom, as it is in many other places around the world. If you’re over the age of sixty, you are revered as a walking source of information, wisdom, knowledge, and life lessons.
You’re a living lesson for your children and grandchildren. We ought to respect that older individuals are sources of wisdom since they’ve been here longer. There is value in the time they’ve put in on this earth.
Younger people also have a different type of insight to share. Diversity of age, like every type of diversity, enriches our lives and the organizations we work in.
Embracing and Valuing Aging
Ten years ago, I likely wouldn’t have told you my age. Now, on the contrary, I am proud that I’m 43 and thriving. Age is not a curse; it’s a blessing. That I’ve been able to live for 43 years in this body with this face, these hands, or these teeth is a gift.
I’m grateful for the fact that I’ve lived this long, and come this far in the world — and I don’t take it as a given.
Your age is part of the magic about what and when you came into being on this earth. Your particular place and role on this planet, including how long you’ve been here, is all a part of what makes you special.
That’s how I always chose to confront racial discrimination when I encountered it. Instead of letting myself take on shame, or other people’s feelings about how I look, I chose to view my skin color as part of what makes me special.
I see my age as a sign of wisdom, which is built on a set of important experiences and years of building skills. I was not created to be anyone but me.
Coming Into My Own Power
The invisible ageism that we know is so widespread in society was still stuck in my head when, at age 29, I decided I wanted to become a fitness model.
At that point, I never told anyone how old I was. I knew in theory no one ought to be denied opportunities based on age. But the negative culture surrounding age has had an impact on me, as it has for so many of us.
In the modeling world, fifteen is considered the ideal age to start out.
At some point, I had to decide that my will was stronger than just a number. Part of it was I wanted to change the fitness modeling world so girls like me would be given more of a chance. I didn’t worry about how it was going to happen.
What motivated me was remembering how as a teenager, when I looked at fitness magazines in the checkout aisle, there were never faces that looked like mine. I remember thinking, why shouldn’t there be women who look like me? And after that: Why can’t it be me who proves that a woman who looks like me can be featured in a spread in a magazine?
Back then, I didn’t have an agent. I didn’t know anybody in the fitness industry. There was no blueprint.
Oxygen is one of the most influential fitness magazines for women of any skin color. I decided to contact the magazine directly with my portfolio. I created a mega-sized poster, superimposed with my own face and body, wrapped it in cellophane, and shipped it to the editor-in-chief of the magazine.
She called me the next day and told me everybody on staff couldn’t stop talking about it. Her exact words were, “You did what you were supposed to do, which was to get our attention.” In the next breath she asked if I could meet her in New York City for lunch; she wanted to see my abs in real life!
After our meeting, she said she didn’t need to see anything else. She was going to feature me. Flash forward a couple of months later; I was flown to Canada for a shoot. I was featured in Oxygen four more times within two years. Then I was featured in Shape magazine as one of the top three trainers in the United States (out of 300,000 trainers). Fitness RX for Women came next, and my portfolio just kept growing.
Why did all of this happen? It was simple. I saw the problem. I didn’t see girls like me and wanted to see a different reality.
What you create, at any age, doesn’t have to reach millions of people.
If there’s something within you that you have to pursue, it’s never too late to do so.
Maintaining Your Power and Tending Your Flame at Any Age
Modeling in my late 20s and early 30s led to other opportunities including, in my late thirties, headlining a major event at ESSENCE Festival — the kinds of achievements I hadn’t even dreamed about when I was younger. I also had my first child at 38.
Everything that’s happened to Nicole Chaplin has always happened later. It’s just always been that way.
And I like to think, what if all this is just the beginning?
People often ask about the choices I make to be as active as I am (and not just “at my age,” either). If I had to distill the mindset that allowed me to embrace my power, regardless of age, it would come down to the following:
Being devoted to a healthy lifestyle at any age often means making different choices.
As just one example, my friends know they cannot invite me anywhere if the event starts late, because I’ll definitely be going home before midnight. I value my early mornings; doing otherwise would throw off my whole week.
I live a holistic life, and I’ve been that person my entire life: always active, roller-skating, cheerleading, track and field. I was also a dancer, and a choreographer at the University of Miami. Fitness for me hasn’t been about wanting to be strong for its own sake. It’s about stamina. It’s as basic as this: I like to do a lot of things, and to keep doing all the things I like, I need energy.
As a result of the way that I live, my energy stays high (and sometimes it’s even hard to turn it down). My aim is always to have stamina and endurance, and to be heart healthy. God forbid I trip on the stairs — am I able to catch myself?
It’s the simple stuff. I want and need to be able to keep up with my five year old, Dominic Zion. My own mother used to work very hard, so that on Saturday mornings, she would lie in bed exhausted. I knew I didn’t want to feel like that with my children, and wanted the energy to play with my child.
Now DZ is playing soccer, and I am able to keep up. When he wakes up on a Saturday morning, I’m already up and ready for him. I want to enjoy life to the fullest — going to East Africa, swimming with turtles.
For a lot of folks, if something doesn’t happen by the time you’re like 25, they say, “Oh well, that wasn’t my path.”
What if instead we ask: What if we’re far from done?
The post Owning Your Power at Any Age appeared first on Productive Flourishing.
I’m equal parts excited and trepidatious to announce that I’ve started a new publication on Substack called Better Team Habits. As I mentioned in my first post there, the intent is to create a more focused and fresh space for content and conversations about teamwork, leadership, strategy execution, and organizational dynamics.
I’ve long resisted separating team topics and conversations from individual topics and conversations. Since the early days of Productive Flourishing, it’s been a both/and conversation in my mind. Since most people work in teams and many of our readers start as or inevitably end up in leadership and management positions, it’s made the most sense (to me) to keep it as one global conversation.
A few different forces came into play that prompted me to think harder and make the different and harder choice to split the spaces:
I often say “When in doubt, choose the simpler option.”
The far simpler option compared to all that repositioning, shoehorning, rebuilding, and segmenting was to let Productive Flourishing be what it’s become — a site that helps creative types thrive in their individual work and lives by focusing on foundations — and to build another space focused on thriving with and in your team.
In another post, I’ll talk about why I chose Substack over some of the other options, but as soon as I made the decision that this was the next step, I felt a relief I hadn’t felt since 2015. I don’t have to hold back in either space. I can go full-in to my body of work in the team, leadership, and org space on Better Team Habits and I can go full-in to my body of work in personal foundations here.
Better Team Habits is new and doesn’t yet have much content. Between the book, content from here that I’ll revise, and what’s coming up from my fieldwork every day, I have a lot I’m looking forward to sharing. If you like watching things evolve and don’t want to feel like you’re catching up, you can join the journey now.
And, as far as what’s going to change here on PF, expect more resources that will help knowledge workers, creators, and entrepreneurs do their best work. PF has always served the creative class and we’re going to get better at doing that.
It’s too early to tell how it’s all going to work out and whether I’ll wish I had done this a long time ago or if I’ll wish I’d never done it. But I’m most engaged when I’m actually exploring and figuring it out rather than wondering, hedging, and holding back. So it’s time to experiment. And I’ll be sharing what I’m learning along the way here and on Better Team Habits.
The post Launching Better Team Habits on Substack appeared first on Productive Flourishing.
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Learning earlier this year that I had Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) changed a lot for me. I finally realized that I was not a “bad worker” or didn’t have a “work ethic”. My work ethic just doesn’t look like a traditional one.
You’re probably aware that increasingly it’s not just adolescents who get ADHD diagnoses — more and older people are receiving a diagnosis of ADHD, or what’s known as adult ADHD. The fact it’s growing in prevalence means it’s also thankfully becoming less stigmatized. It also means a lot of people in the wider working population are looking to find ways to cope.
Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) (the term ADHD is more widely used now) covers a wide range of experiences and symptoms. The NIH defines Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) clinically as “an ongoing pattern of inattention and/or hyperactivity-impulsivity that interferes with functioning or development.”
The list of basic symptoms of attention deficit disorders includes everything from trouble focusing and doing one task at a time, to staying organized — but also covers restlessness, mood swings, sleep disorders, problems with executive function, fidgeting, tapping or general impulsive behavior (interrupting people or difficulty delaying gratification). Taken together, any of these symptoms can make life either a little bit, or a lot, harder.
My ADD symptoms may not necessarily be the same as what someone else deals with, but the skills I’ve developed to cope may likely be helpful for attention deficit people, but could also be useful for almost anyone in the workplace. Let me give you an idea of how this might work on a daily basis.
Many people just sit down and get their work done, and it’s really as simple as that. After several hours at a desk, they have likely accomplished what they originally hoped to do – or some large portion of it – and can put their tasks away.
It’s not that the average person is 100% productive on a daily basis — far from it — but when they’re working on a project, the work proceeds in a fairly straightforward way. And it happens without constant worry, interruptions, detours or distractions. Some people do live within time constraints and what’s expected of them, and go about their day knowing it will go roughly the way they expect. Compared to a person who has ADHD, that’s a radically different life. It’s the difference between being able to focus on one item at a time, listen to your body, or move from one thing to the next with ease.
But for those of us in the workforce who struggle with ADHD, it doesn’t go like that too often.
To give you an idea, on any given morning I might sit down at my desk to work remotely, as I usually do — I’ll get up to pee one time at 10 am, realize there is a separate chore that needs to be done, and also that I need to wash my face or brush my teeth.
Some ADHD people struggle more with the tendency to daydream, but in my case, it’s often about fixating on the various things that need to get done. Usually the face washing or teeth brushing feels like it has to happen before the chore, so the chore may or may not ever get done. That in itself isn’t so bad, but the issue is with what happens to the original work I sat down to get started with prior to the bathroom break.
Reading this, you might think this level of distraction is tied to working a remote or work from home (WFH) job. But I’d argue, on the contrary, WFH or working remotely hasn’t caused any more substantial challenges for me as an ADHD person than a regular workplace was, for reasons I’ll get into here.
When I worked with an in-person team, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, I frequently felt overwhelmed. I took on a lot of projects, but rarely finished the ones assigned to me that had no set due date. I would make new to-do lists every day, but it was always easy to distract me if you just passed by the front desk, where I sat.
I loved the aspect of co-located working that involved getting to know my team and our clients in person. But in general it turns out I am much more organized when working from home, because there’s actually less to distract me.
Some basic examples: There’s less to do in terms of orchestrating my morning, or less distraction in terms of seeing coworkers in the physical office space. Our remote team at PF also has multiple modes of communication and context building — which include due dates, the history of the project, and what members of the team need to be included or updated. Having these forms of accountability built in ends up being incredibly helpful.
Working from home isn’t without challenges. It can be a little too easy to get caught up when my phone buzzes, or when it feels pressing to respond immediately to a notification. (We have a great post incidentally on why notifications truly are not your friend, and how blocking them can do wonders to protect your attention.)
Other days in my remote office, I might have 50,000+ thoughts about one project at work, and end up two hours deep into researching or planning – only to realize too late that the work I’m doing may not be helping me get that project done.
If that sounds stressful, believe me, it can be. The good news for anyone who struggles with their attention, or who has a ADHD diagnosis, is that it is possible to manage constant thought-jumping with the help of a few tools and tips.
Currently my biggest source of support is a therapist who helps me with mindfulness techniques to center myself. I’ve also found other methods to help me stay on task and finish my work, like coworking with a buddy. There are plenty of ideas out there that can help when you have that urge to do anything other than what’s in front of you. (And I know it’s not for lack of trying. I see you, ADD and ADHD friends!)
If you have trouble sitting still, getting started, or focusing on something for more than 10 minutes, here below I’m going to offer you some tips and tricks to help. I’ve picked up on a lot of these tips along the way to help me find my focus and do the work in a sustainable way.
Techniques like these can be part of an ADHD treatment plan, and help with building self-esteem, and confidence in your ability to get work done, as well as controlling environmental factors. It also helps ensure you don’t, for instance, get sucked into hours of focusing on a single project, and forget to take care of yourself or the other five projects on deck.
If I don’t have a roadmap for how things are going to go for the day, or for this particular project, I’ll end up getting distracted or demotivated and will choose to do something else. That’s why the roadmap is useful – to keep you from ending up in that tailspin. Creating plans might not be your strong suit, but if you ask yourself “what is the next smallest step I can take to push this forward?” you’ll find that it’s not too hard to set up a great project roadmap.
Tools like Momentum can also be a huge help with managing your lifestyle, work and symptoms — since it offers the building blocks for you to start planning.
I’ve talked about it before. The Pomodoro Technique which popularized using timers for productivity may not be for everyone, but timers as a tool can help a lot with getting started and sticking with tricky projects. Timers are great not just for doing work, but also for managing your breaks from work or schoolwork, so you don’t get too far off track.
I often put on a 10 or 15-minute timer and kick back on the couch with my guitar, or I pull out a book and give myself some time away from the screen. These mini power breaks boost my energy and help me get my creativity flowing again –- which incidentally is also great for getting back into the work.
You might want to consider the possibility of creating a list or menu of things you really like doing to recover on your breaks, so you don’t get stuck in limbo. Setting up reminders for when breaks in your day are coming up can help with this piece, too. You can use your calendar tool or alarms and reminders on your phone or another device.
This list of recovery pastimes and pleasures can include almost anything: meditating or catching up on reading, going for a walk. It could be yoga or video games, or watching a Netflix series you’ve been meaning to binge on. The point is it’s a way to preserve your free time for doing things that you actually enjoy, so it doesn’t get eaten up by other items. (This is a good tip whether or not you technically have an attention deficit disorder.)
One of my favorite ways to control my space and energy is with music. I switch between different genres, but often find myself feeling most content with ambient music and sounds — especially to keep on in the background while I work. By the time afternoon rolls around, in contrast, I tend to need more focus, so I put on some house-electronic music to keep the energy high. Sometimes I use ocean sounds, or “brown noise” when the movement of the music gets too distracting for me.
Here are some of my favorite sounds to put on in the background:
With ADD, your brain constantly craves dopamine, which can cause lack of focus and a constant search for distractions when the project we’re working on doesn’t spark that dopamine. Helping create novelty in your day can actually help boost dopamine, and distract you less!
I got these tips from a few different TikTok creators, and they’ve been super useful:
These are just a few of the ways you can work with your body and attention when you start to lose focus, rather than against it.
There are no clear causes of ADHD, but there are plenty of non-stimulant, behavioral therapy techniques out there that can help you cope. In fact, these techniques can also be super helpful for people who struggle with attention, even without an ADHD diagnosis. ADHD medications can be helpful for many folks too, but it’s only one line of defense when coming up with ways to live and focus better.
Learning about these techniques hopefully shows you how many opportunities exist for you to create space for yourself, and the specific way your brain works within your workday! The simple tricks I listed above take less than five minutes and generally leave you feeling pumped up and ready to continue working.
And, though I work from home and have the luxury to be able to get up, and take regular breaks, it isn’t impossible to do any of these things at your place of work. It might even be fun to get others involved! Consider doing something like a morning stretch circle or an afternoon walk with a teammate.
If you give yourself space to be yourself, you might find that your work comes easier to you. Try sharing these ideas with your friends and family members to see if they find the ideas helpful too – and let me know if any of the tricks worked for you!
The post Strategies For Thriving In A Remote Workplace With ADD & ADHD appeared first on Productive Flourishing.
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