Are you spending 20% of your time doing what you love?
Reflect: What did you discover about what you love to do and how much time you get to spend during your workweek doing what you love?

• Maybe you discovered something new that you love.
• Maybe you discovered that there was very little that you loved doing during your workweek.
• Maybe you discovered a nice balance between what you love and the other responsibilities of your job.
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Your goal is to be spending at least 20% of your workweek doing work you love.
If you’re not sure what you love doing, you’re not alone. Most of us are not asked to focus on what we love to do. We are busy getting a job done, being productive, achieving success, fitting into a role.  If those things aren’t aligned with what we love to do, the price we pay in terms of stress, lack of satisfaction, contribution, and true engagement can be high indeed.
 
What to do now?
If you are spending at least 20% of your work time doing what you love, congratulations! You’re in good shape.  Keep doing what you are doing.

If you are spending less than 20% of your work time doing the things you love, you probably already know that you’re not really satisfied with what you are doing. Good chance you are feeling stressed, or maybe overwhelmed and you know you are not using your best talents to contribute in a satisfying way.

Take this week and see if there are things you can be doing that you love. When we get in touch with what we love to do, there are often creative ways that 20% of our work can include those things. 

Take a look at the work Marcus Buckingham is doing. You may find ideas to help spark what you can do to have more of what you love doing embedded in your work. 

As you become more attuned to what you do love to do, consider having a conversation with your direct manager and brainstorm how you might revise your job to include more of that work.
Learn About The Love + Work Book

​Keep STOPPING to breathe slowly in and out through your nose whenever overwhelm or twinges of anxiety start to show up. Try to catch those feelings right away before they take hold. When you feel relaxed again, resume your work. This breathing habit is one of the most valuable tools you have when leading change and feeling centered in a world that likes to spin us around with things we can’t control. Breathing is always within your control.

If this Monday Moment resonated with you, please feel free to share it with a friend or colleague, and remember, if you ever feel stuck, I’m here to help. Reach out to me on LinkedIn or email me. 
 
Have a great week!
Warm regards,

Rita Webster, Ph.D.
The Executive Coach for Women Leaders
Connect With Me On LinkedIn
612-598-6614 | http://www.wiseleader.net/

Quick Reflection: How did last week go for you?

Were you able to practice the things that contribute to your success and that you want to become habits for yourself? Did you remember to look at your reminders to stay on track?

Be sure to keep those reminders in place. It takes conscious effort to build new habits that serve us well.
 
What do you love to do? Today’s Monday Moment is all about love.
 
You may be thinking “What’s love got to do with it? This is work!”
According to new research that Marcus Buckingham, the researcher behind Strengths Finder, has compiled, love has everything to do with work.
 
Marcus was troubled by the consistent decrease in engagement scores worldwide. And of course, as only Marcus Buckingham could, he set out to find out why.
 
What he discovered is that when workers spend 20% of their work time doing the things they love, engagement and satisfaction goes up. 20% seems to be the magic number. Less than 20%, scores go down and more than 20% doesn’t have much of an additional impact.
 
He is clear that love and strengths don’t necessarily correlate. We can be good at something but not like doing it. This is all about what you LOVE to do.

Learn more about Marcus Buckingham’s Love + Workbook and upcoming webinars. 

Have a good week. Remember if overwhelm or anxiety gets a grip, STOP and breathe deeply and slowly until the calm feelings return. Those are the feelings that will support you in making your best contribution. Then resume your work.
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Warm regards,

Rita Webster, Ph.D.
The Executive Coach for Women Leaders
Connect With Me On LinkedIn
612-598-6614 | http://www.wiseleader.net/

The Monday Moment
Designed to get you in touch with and be deliberate about your energy of being.

​How did last week go for you? Did you remember to take 90 seconds to breathe deeply throughout the day; especially when anxiety or overwhelm set in?

I made a commitment seven years ago that I would no longer work from a state of ramped-up energy (what I fondly call the buzz) and the feeling of pressure to get everything done. 
 
I was determined to work from a relaxed, calm state. At first, I was taking 90 seconds to breathe more than 10 times a day. (It only amounted to 15 minutes out of my entire day!) And guess what? Over the course of 6 weeks, the calm state became my norm. I rarely feel anxious anymore, nor overwhelmed. I would argue that I get more done now with a higher rate of satisfaction and quality than I ever did when I worked under pressure.
 
I hope you noticed some nice changes within yourself.
 
Today we’re focusing on Celebrating.
 
When we take time to celebrate, we move our energy to a higher level of positivity. We also help our brain remember the things we are celebrating in a way that makes those things easier to access long term.
 
When I say celebrate, I’m talking about taking a few minutes to reflect and specifically identify those things that went well and your role in that success. It’s easy to check things off our to-do list, but to take full advantage of what we’ve done well, we need to stop and think about what we did.
 
Maybe a difficult meeting went well last week. When you reflect, you realize you took the time to prepare, you set an intention before going into the meeting and you were fully present. That’s worth remembering, making note of, and integrating into how you work.

​I’ll be doing this exercise along with you. I’m already smiling about the things that went well in my last week. I’ll smile even more when I see what you are doing as well.
 
These are the subtle ways that great leaders manage their energy and build their awareness. As the world continues to change faster than ever, these are the habits that will serve you well regardless of what is going on around you.

Warm regards,

Rita Webster, Ph.D.
The Executive Coach for Women Leaders
Connect With Me On LinkedIn
612-598-6614 | http://www.wiseleader.net/

Welcome to The Monday Moment! During these next 10 weeks, I’m hosting a grand experiment to notice what happens when you take a Monday moment to be deliberate about how you want to be throughout your week. My hope is that you will gain guidance, have less stress, more meaningful successes. 

There’s probably plenty of doing in the week ahead of you that you have on your to-do list and on your calendar.

But what about your Being?

After all, we are human beings. Somehow our work-life often doesn’t account enough for that.

Yes, the work to be done is important, but I would argue that what matters, even more, is your being—the type of energy you carry throughout the week.

When you learn to work in a relaxed way at least three positive things happen:

    Time seems to slow down.
    The parts of your brain that help with problem-solving and creativity become more active.
    Your stress level goes down.

With practice over the next 10 weeks, you can cultivate the ability and the habit to work in a relaxed state.

​Let me know how it goes for you. I’ll be practicing right along with you. This is a skill that can be used at any moment anywhere and it works miracles that you will soon start to notice. 

Rita Webster, Ph.D.
The Executive Coach for Women Leaders
612-598-6614
http://www.wiseleader.net/