by Caroline Leach | Dec 13, 2015 | Change, Learning, Work/Life
With 18 days left in the year, it’s tempting to put off new goals until New Year’s Day.
But now is a great time to get a jump start on what you want to accomplish in the new year.
Whether it’s physical or fiscal fitness, revitalizing your career or community involvement or enjoying time with family or friends, start now.
Why?
Skip the crowds. Being a contrarian and doing things when others aren’t often leads to a more efficient and pleasant experience.
Gyms aren’t busy right now, as they will be the first few weeks of the year. Now is a great time to enjoy a workout when others aren’t.
You can mix up your routine in early January to avoid the crowds. Exercise outside or change the time of your workout so you aren’t waiting for a machine or a spot in class.
Build momentum. Rather than feel like you’re starting from zero on Jan. 1, build three weeks of momentum heading into the new year.
It’s easier to continue along a path you’ve already started. And you can accelerate faster if you’re already moving.
Developing momentum builds commitment and confidence in achieving your goals. My Fitbit green-day challenge is energizing me to add other goals to the mix.
Develop a new habit. Science now says it takes 66 days to form a new habit, rather than 21 days, to establish a new habit.
Even with that longer lead time, if you start now you’ll be more than a quarter of the way to establishing a new habit by the new year.
For forming new habits, Gretchen Rubin‘s Better Than Before is a great place to start.
Combine complimentary goals. If one of your goals is to read more, think about how what you choose to read can drive other goals. For my learning project, much of my reading will be about marketing.
And I can read while I’m walking on the treadmill, bringing another goal together with my green-day challenge to hit a series of fitness metrics every day.
Set goals, not resolutions. The concept of New Year’s resolutions makes me cringe. A resolution sounds negative to me, like something you resolve to do or not do whether you like it or not.
It sounds punitive. And because sheer willpower is required to keep a resolution, they’re also a recipe for failure. Willpower isn’t a sustainable strategy.
Goals on the other hand feel more positive. They are affirmative statements of what you choose to do and what you will do. They can be aspirational and inspirational.
Just as you set performance goals in your professional life each year, now is the ideal time to be thinking about your goals, desires and dreams for the new year.
Just start. You don’t have to be perfect to start working on your new goals. Just begin. The future will come into focus as you do.
Take this blog, for example. I’m in the process of shifting the focus from exploring the future of corporate communications to learning about the process of learning.
The future isn’t completely clear or totally defined just yet (if it ever will be). But I’m blogging in the meantime, as I figure out the path forward.
“Take action now and learn as you go” is the valuable mantra from Just Start: Take Action, Embrace Uncertainty, Create the Future.
What could you start now that would turn into a positive new habit by the time you ring in the new year?
by Caroline Leach | Dec 6, 2015 | Learning, Work/Life
19 days into my green day challenge, what have I learned?
Here are 5 lessons that apply not only to my goal of taking 10,000 steps every day, but also to any goal worth pursuing.
- Plan ahead. Today is Sunday, so I’m planning the week ahead. As I review the calendar, I’m mapping out when and where I’ll exercise. This week I’m traveling, so my exercise gear is the first thing I pack.
I’m also thinking about the many small ways I can rack up steps – take the stairs, walk around at the airport, pace in my office while preparing for a meeting, stroll around the floor and say hello to colleagues.
- Get steps in early in the day. This is similar to “eating a frog” – or doing the most difficult project of the day early on.
Taking 10,000 steps isn’t hard, but as the day wears on and demands stack up, it’s more challenging to work in exercise time.
Since it’s Sunday I decided to treat myself to a morning workout at the beach. I caught up on some reading on the treadmill (in the picture above), and it will be a green day before lunch.
- Do whatever it takes. Some days, despite the best planning, it’s not possible to get the steps and the big projects done in the morning.
Because I’ve committed to this challenge, my decision isn’t about whether or not I’ll take the necessary steps. It’s about how I’ll get them in.
Sometimes that means a late-night walk with my husband in the rain – after I’ve already spent an hour on the treadmill.
- The progress principle fuels other goals. The pass/fail nature of my green-day challenge means I only have to focus on the quantity of my efforts, not the quality.
There’s no value judgement to how well I carried out my green-day tasks. All that matters is the yes/no aspect of whether I took the steps or not.
The only fear of failure involved is if I don’t take action. That action creates momentum and a feeling of accomplishment. It frees up energy and bandwidth to focus on other, more challenging goals.
- Make it fun. On Friday when my husband picked me up from the airport, we headed to a nearby beach city for dinner.
We spent a half hour strolling along The Strand, enjoying the beautiful sunset (pictured below) and catching up with each other.
My Fitbit buzzed with 10,000 steps as we were walking into Love and Salt for dinner. Reaching one goal made the meal all the more enjoyable.
While I was traveling and using the hotel fitness center, I streamed episodes of a favorite show on my iPad. The time flew by.
The best part of my green days?
By New Year’s Day 2016, I’ll have racked up 45 green days.
And instead of setting a goal to start exercising, I’ll be able to pursue a far more interesting goal.
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.
by Caroline Leach | Nov 20, 2015 | Change, Work/Life
This post is based on my inspiration at the November meeting of the Palos Verdes Chapter of National Charity League.
Here are a few things to give thanks for – Fall weather. Football. Fireplaces. Finally!
Our president Francine Mathiesen is a great model of this year’s theme of “Being The Good.” And Thanksgiving is great for doing good.
NCL is full of opportunities – turkey dinners for Boys & Girls Club, meals at LA Food Bank, time with children at Peace4Kids, and more.
And by doing good, you’ll feel good. People who are givers are happier. You already know this, but it’s worth a reminder.
Why? Because of the “happiness curve.” People start life out happy, but then a funny thing happens.
Happiness hits rock bottom in the 40s and early 50s. The global average is 46. So be happy if you’re past that age, because you’re already on the upswing.
One theory is teenagers are a drag on happiness. The Economist asked, “Could the misery of the middle-aged be the consequence of sharing space with angry adolescents?”
In our house, we turned the “angry adolescent” phrase into a joke when one of our teens is in a bad mood. It lightens up heavy moments.
That brings me to a great book. Who’s read Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project?
She took a year to experiment with becoming happier. Each month she had a new focus – boosting energy, remembering love, making time for friends, and so on.
She’s a wife, a mother of two daughters, and a lawyer. When she clerked with Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, she realized she wanted to be a writer.
You might enjoy doing your own happiness project in 2016.
She starts by sharing her “Secrets of Adulthood.” Here are my favorites:
- People don’t notice your mistakes as much as you think
- Most decisions don’t require extensive research
- It’s important to be nice to everyone
- By doing a little bit each day, you can get a lot accomplished
- If you can’t find something, clean up
- You don’t have to be good at everything
- If you’re not failing, you’re not trying hard enough
- People actually prefer that you buy wedding gifts off their registry
- You can’t profoundly change your children’s natures by nagging them or signing them up for classes
- Do good, feel good – because one of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy.
So how did I try doing good? As a start, my family had fun putting together Thanksgiving dinners for the local Boys & Girls Club.
What else brought joy was helping a friend.
She’s self-employed as a manicurist and comes to Los Angeles once a week to work. The hotel where she stays raised its rates, so she asked for my advice about increasing her own.
Instead, I suggested we check out Airbnb. There have to be lots of people in the area with an affordable extra room or guesthouse.
We downloaded the app together, did a search and found some great-looking options.
The smile on her face made my day.
That’s the kind of happiness project Gretchen Rubin advocates.
While she was inspired by other happiness projects – Henry David Thoreau’s move to Walden Pond and Elizabeth Gilbert’s travels in Eat, Pray, Love – she didn’t want to reject her everyday life.
Here’s what she said: “I wanted to change my life without changing my life, by finding more happiness in my own kitchen. I knew I wouldn’t discover happiness in a faraway place or in unusual circumstances.
“It was right here, right now – as in the haunting play The Blue Bird, where two children spend a year searching the world for the Blue Bird of Happiness, only to find the bird waiting for them when they finally return home.”
by Caroline Leach | Nov 7, 2015 | Careers, Change, Leadership, Learning, Marketing & Analytics
“You have to let go of something to make room for something new.”
Author Cynthia Oredugba (pictured, right) shared this and more at a Women of AT&T Southern California fundraiser for scholarships.
Led by chapter president Georgia Zachary (pictured, left), the event was held this weekend at Marmi at The Point in El Segundo, Calif.
How did I find myself there?
For the last year I’ve led the DIRECTV Women’s Leadership Exchange – an employee resource group for professional development, networking, mentoring and community service.
DIRECTV was acquired by AT&T this summer, creating the world’s largest pay TV provider and a video distribution leader across TV, mobile and broadband.
Among other things, our employee resource groups are coming together. This is how I found myself listening to Cynthia Oredugba talk about change.
“You can’t get better by staying the same,” was another truth she shared that struck a chord.
It reminded me of the DIRECTV Leadership Development Program I attended two years ago.
At the end of a life-changing week, I realized I’d only thought I had a big dream for myself in becoming VP of Corporate Communications.
Coming out of the program, I was energized by the idea of pivoting and stretching into a new area – whether that was investor relations, operations, marketing or something else entirely.
But it wasn’t until the transformative coming together of AT&T and DIRECTV that an opportunity would arise.
Three weeks ago, I moved into a marketing role. It centers on the customer experience, consumer research and the vision for the future of the marketing organization.
This speaks to the opportunities that come from change. And from being part of a newly combined company. And among leaders with a commitment to talent mobility as a way for people to grow and contribute.
It also allows me to explore for the first time my full spectrum of the high-scoring artistic, social end enterprising parts of the Strong Interest Inventory. This career assessment tool links personal interests with a variety of career fields.
I’ve long seen Human Resources, Corporate Communications and Marketing along a related spectrum of careers that blend the qualitative and the quantitative, design and data, and people and products.
Having spent many years in Corporate Communications and HR leadership roles, I’m thrilled to have an opportunity in Marketing.
And now the hard work begins. Applying previous knowledge to new situations. Addressing new business challenges. Adapting to new norms.
It’s a good thing I love learning. Because there’s going to be a lot of it in the near future. And we all need to be constant learners, whether or not we’re changing jobs, functions or companies.
Thankfully I work with a lot of great people who are more than willing to answer questions and share insights.
As I dive into the new role, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the many parallels between what I used to do and what I do now.
And that’s been the best learning of all. You don’t have to let go of something you’ve loved as you move into something new.
You just have to let it evolve into a new state. It’s about combining what you’ve done with a commitment to lifelong learning to inform what you do today – and tomorrow.
by Caroline Leach | Oct 30, 2015 | Change, Learning, Work/Life
Being here now.
Easier said than done.
There are always plans to make. Projects to start. People to see. Posts to do.
Except for one thing. If you’re constantly living in the future, it’s all too easy to miss the beauty of today.
Goals can be so compelling. So encompassing. So engaging. So much so that it’s all too easy to get lured into some future state that doesn’t yet exist.
Don’t get me wrong. Visualizing the future is a powerful way to make it happen.
But too much visualization and too little living in the moment can lead to wishing your life away.
It always makes me a bit sad the way people react to Mondays. As if it’s a day to simply be endured. On the way to more enjoyable days of the week.
But you can have as much fun on a Monday . . . as on a Wednesday . . . as on a Saturday. It’s all about your mindset. And embracing every day as potentially the best one of your life.
Sometimes I get so focused on a goal that I neglect to savor the moment. To enjoy the process as it’s unfolding. To make the journey sweeter than the destination.
That’s when my husband reminds me of the sage philosopher, Dr. Seuss. He wisely said, “Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.”
The key is to enjoy each moment as it unfolds. How do you do that? By being here now.
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