Drafting Email You’ll Never Send-Probably

It’s not uncommon to get frustrated about something at work and send out an email blasting whatever person or group has caused you the frustration. It rarely ends well. It’s usually not very effective in generating the change, and it doesn’t do much to build your reputation as someone that can moderate their emotions under […]

Back From Vacation

As you may surmise from my previous post I’m back from vacation. I was as unplugged as I’ve been in a couple years, I think I answered one email and looked at my inbox maybe twice. My home inbox is still backlogged, at work I returned to 200 or so new messages, about half of […]

Steady State vs Tempo

It’s helpful at work to understand things at work change from time to time and to consider the impact on you and the people you work with as the changes occur. While it may seem obvious, it’s easy to get fooled into thinking that the current state of things is the new normal, or to not […]

Stress Thoughts-Part 7

I’m going to finish up my thoughts on stress by talking about the philosophy I’ve evolved, some of the tricks I use, and places where I sometimes stumble. I don’t expect to ever be stress free entirely (and probably wouldn’t want to be), but I know that the better I am at managing stress the […]

Stress Thoughts-Part 6

I just finished up a nine month project. It was a long road with lots of challenges, set backs, and obstacles – I suppose it was a typical project. As I look back I can see a few different kinds of stresses during that time, all interesting, all maybe less interesting in hindsight, but this […]

Stress Thoughts-Part 5

Stress affects everyone, but it’s easy to forget that. Once you get sensitized to it, it’s amazing to pick up on the behavioral changes that happen to co-workers under certain kinds of stress. We may consider their issue to be stressful, but we don’t get to decide. Don’t dismiss their reaction or trivialize it, it’s […]

Stress Thoughts-Part 4

Recently I suffered through a frustrating and contentious meeting, and that was stressful. I needed a walk, a few minutes to sort out why I was stressed, but instead I had to step right into another meeting. It was a follow up meeting to build out an implementation plan for a plan the team had […]