by Caroline Leach | Nov 28, 2015 | Change, Learning, Work/Life
It’s crunch time.
College apps for many California schools are due on Nov. 30. If you have a high school senior, as I do, this makes for an interesting Thanksgiving weekend.
Thankfully, the University of California and California State University apps are done. Now it’s on to the other schools with a variety of submission dates.
But all of the heavy lifting is done. The college visits. The standardized tests. Three years of academic high school courses. Extracurriculars. Volunteering. Work experience.
And that was all on my daughter’s part. For my part, it’s been encouraging, advising and a lot of driving. Okay, and a little nagging – no, actually, a lot – along the way.
As part of my learning project, what have I learned through this process?
Where you go to school does not define you. Opportunities are available wherever you are. You just have to look for them.
This applies in life; not just in college. Wherever you are today, there are opportunities. As Thomas Edison said, however, they may be disguised as hard work.
- Put in the work. The real work happens every day. It involves having a vision for your life, setting goals and working toward them every day.
Making consistent progress toward goals is what makes people happy. Read more about how that applies to work in Teresa Amabile‘s The Progress Principle.
- Follow the directions, and push the boundaries. A lot of school and life consists of following directions. That’s especially important in navigating any big bureaucracy.
But it’s also important to learn how you can push the boundaries in an ethical way, to make your own unique contribution.
In college applications, this is where the essays become so important. Rather than simply being a number with a GPA and SAT scores, your teen can show their unique approach to life and learning.
In life, it’s constantly asking how you could do things better. What would delight your family, your colleagues and your customers? What would delight you?
- Don’t be afraid to make a change. Our culture places a huge premium on tenacity and perseverance. I’m one of the biggest adherents. There’s rarely a problem that can’t be solved through intense effort.
Yet there’s also wisdom in knowing when to cut your losses and make a change. I learned this when I ended up at the wrong college for me.
Instead of hunkering down and trying to make it work, I transferred to another school. I ended up in a better place for me. And it made all the difference.
(That’s one of my beloved alma maters, UCLA, pictured above. It feels only slightly ironic to be writing this on the day when my two alma maters are facing off in college football.)
This change principle can apply to anything in life – a career, an exercise program or a volunteer activity.
This blog started out as a way to explore the future of corporate communications. Many changes in my life this year – both personal and professional – have altered my course.
This blog has evolved. It’s still evolving. Just as life is constantly doing the same.
It’s part of finding the way to the future – just as college serves the same exploratory purpose. The next posts are still to be written.
What will they hold?
by Caroline Leach | Nov 27, 2015 | Learning, Work/Life
Game on for a “green day” challenge.
No, not the rock band.
Between now and the end of the year, I challenged myself to make every day what I call a Fitbit “green day.”
It means turning 4 key metrics green on my tracker every day – 10,000 steps, 5 miles, 30 active minutes and 2,000 calories burned.
It’s part of the “daily dozen” actions I take every day, loosely related to my learning project.
Why? Because exercise changes your brain, as Gretchen Reynolds reports in Does Exercise Really Make Us Smarter?
The mind-body connection keeps your brain in shape and ready to learn – not to mention the myriad of other benefits to health and happiness.
What helps me go green every day?
- Plan ahead. When I’m planning my day, I decide in advance when I’ll exercise. If I’m traveling, I pack my exercise gear and hit the fitness center.
- Get steps in early. Being active early in the day builds momentum. It doesn’t necessarily mean a morning workout, although that helps. It means standing instead of sitting. It means pacing instead of standing.
- Take the stairs. As a habit, I take the stairs instead of the elevator if I’m going up or down fewer than 4 floors. This started as a “microresolution” inspired by Caroline Arnold‘s Small Move, Big Change.
- Take a walking break. If my meetings are mostly in my office rather than on another floor or in another building, I walk a lap or two around the floor every few hours. This has the added benefit of being a “managing while wandering around” exercise and connecting with colleagues.
- Get a dog. A walking buddy is always mind with our rescue dog, Kincaid. His enthusiasm pulls me up hills and takes me down paths I might never have discovered on my own.
- Find a buddy. My husband exercises with me and motivates me when I still have a few thousand steps to get to green late in the day. After I spent an hour on the treadmill last week and was still short of 10,000 steps, he went walking with me (in the rain, no less) to get past the finish line for the day.
And if you’re having one of those days where nothing feels like it’s going right, take a walk. Put one foot in front of the other. Rack up steps.
There’s an amazing ability to gain new perspective and solve problems while you’re taking a walk.
So have a green day. And another. And another.
by Caroline Leach | Nov 26, 2015 | Work/Life
Gratitude gets a lot of positive press these days. As well it should.
It’s all too easy to overlook the many things we have to be grateful for. As my daughter often reminds me, we have first-world problems.
Reflecting on today’s Thanksgiving festivities, I’m grateful for being reminded that life is about much more than my list of things to do. It’s about special people, memorable moments and unprecedented freedoms.
What a blessing it was to look around our living room and see three generations of family members laughing together and enjoying each other’s company.
There is so much promise ahead for the youngest family members. Our nephew graduated from college this year. His cousin, a college senior, joined us because his family is in Ohio. My daughter is completing her college applications this weekend.
As much as I’m driven to get everything finished, today I set my list aside for the most part. I enjoyed getting our home ready for visitors. I enjoyed helping my husband cook dinner (thankfully, he’s a great cook). And I enjoyed our dinner conversation.
No awkward questions. No political discussions. No disruptive drama.
Just family, friends and love.
How can we all take a little Thanksgiving with us, every day of the year?
We can do it by remembering what’s important in our lives – wonderful people to love, interesting work to do and a grateful heart to give thanks.
As I embark on my learning project, I’m refining my “daily dozen” of important things I do every day. One of them is to write down 3 things I’m grateful for at the end of each day.
Today I’m most grateful for my family, for our great country and for this blog.
It’s through writing that I stay calm and confident in my ability to solve any problem and surmount any obstacle. It’s through writing that I find new insights and ideas. And it’s through writing that I can express gratitude.
by Caroline Leach | Nov 22, 2015 | Corporate Communications, Learning, Marketing & Analytics, Social Media
What will jumpstart my learning project?
Looking no further than my iPhone, a few apps already have valuable marketing content. During my morning news ritual, I’ll scan a post from these 3 areas.
First, The Wall Street Journal app has a CMO Today section. The articles there now about Hulu, Fox and Snapchat are all relevant to my organization’s technology and entertainment space.
Second, my favorite blogs folder already includes Seth Godin and Chris Brogan.
Linchpin was my introduction to Seth in 2010, and I’ve been a fan ever since. His “don’t snowglobe me, bro” became a rallying cry on my corporate communications team to focus on our audience and our customers.
Social Media 101 and The Impact Equation were my previous introductions to Chris Brogan. They helped guide my early forays into social media.
Third, my Harvard Business Review subscription has a custom news feed. I’m now following the topics of branding, customer service, data, marketing and market research.
This post came with another learning opportunity. I’ve been wanting to try Canva, a graphic design platform. I heard about it on an IABC webinar by Guy Kawasaki on The Art of Social Media.
It was easy to get started with the iPad app. It’s loaded with beautiful images, plus you can use your own photos. It has great templates for social media platforms, presentations, posters and more.
As I write this post, I haven’t yet included any women who are marketing thought leaders. So I’ll go with Ann Handley. She’s head of content at MarketingProfs and the author of Everybody Writes, a quite engaging book I started reading this weekend.
The most delightful learning from this post is how much marketing-related reading I’ve been doing all along. I’m not really starting from scratch, after all.
Like most things in life, we know more than we think we do. We just have to claim it.
by Caroline Leach | Nov 21, 2015 | Careers, Change, Learning, Marketing & Analytics, Work/Life
What activity captivates you? Completely absorbs you? Compels you to do it no matter what?
For me, it’s writing. And reflecting on the first year of this blog, it’s about learning.
And I have a lot of learning to do. Don’t we all?
I started this blog to explore corporate communications – leading the function, the field and the future.
Now I find myself with the amazing opportunity of pivoting into marketing.
Of course, corporate communications and marketing have many parallels.
In communications, the focus is on the benefits of any given topic, initiative or program. Its purpose is to influence beliefs and actions. It’s about leading change and transformation. And it’s about business performance.
Those attributes also apply in marketing. Yet at the same time, I’m learning a new function, a new language and a new culture.
The usual cliches apply. Drinking from multiple firehoses. Feeling like part of Lucy’s famous chocolate scene.
There must be a better way – to identify what to learn, how to learn and how to do it fast.
Beyond that, I’m grappling anew with the big question from college – what do I want to do with the rest of my life?
It’s an eery deja vu feeling, as a parent of two teens. What will they need to know as they become adults?
At the current pace of change, an HBR blog post projected that “you have to recover one-quarter of your college education every 5 years.”
The authors gently suggested devoting 3 hours a week to learning and preparing for the future. While the math worked out to 6 hours a week, 3 seemed more realistic.
As I invest time in learning, I’ll write about it in this blog. It’s my learning project over the next year.
A blog is supposed to have a laser-like focus on a single topic. But as technology makes our lives more transparent and interconnected, I’ll address multiple learning topics.
Each month I’ll focus on an area of marketing and an area about life. That’s my approach to work/life, because they’re one in the same and not two separate spheres. One influences the other, and vice versa.
With thanks to Nina Amir, I did a mind-mapping exercise (pictured) this weekend with sticky notes on a poster board.
On this learning journey I’m also inspired by Gretchen Rubin. Her year-long happiness project was part of my last post, To Feel Good, Do Good.
And although I don’t (yet) have a detailed roadmap or a perfect plan, I’m taking to to heart the wise words in Just Start.
I’m taking a step forward and learning as I go.
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