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How to reduce stress in the long run

Very often we get trapped between urgent tasks and looming dead lines, without being able to concentrate duly on one task only. And with so much stress, creativity and motivation are the first to die. However, there is a simple trick how you can get out of this daily rat race, by remembering Parkinson’s Law, which says

“Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”

This means that the task you planned 1 hour for will take you 1 hour. And if you have a day for it, you will only finish it by the end of the day. In order to solve this situation, there is a very simple trick:

Each morning, before opening your email, dedicate one hour of the day to solve one important, but not-urgent task.

If it makes you nervous not to check your inbox at first, do so, but make sure that you switch back to your not-urgent task after scanning through the emails. Don’t do anything urgent before solving this first task of the day. Why does this reduce your stress level?

• Those other urgent tasks can be resolved just as well in 7 hours than in 8 hours. So you are basically gaining one hour in highly qualitative work.
• The very important, but not urgent task you have solved won’t be able to stress you out on another day when it would become urgent. Because it is done already.
• If you do one important thing every day, there will be less stressful moments left, because you are reducing those potential deadlines.
• The rest of the day is much more relaxes, if you got something crucial done already. Don’t underestimate the psychological effect of work done with peace and high quality results.

I personally leave a post-it note on my computer before leaving work, stating one or two important tasks to be solved the next day. The first thing in the morning is dedicated to those tasks, and only one hour later I actually open my email. This helps me to actually starting to work right away instead of having to decide in the morning which non-urgent task will be done today. Because with decisions it is the same principle: they can be taken within 5 min if you are about to leave work, but they will need 50 min of careful pondering if you just arrived.

Monthly goals April

How come that the time flies by quicker and quicker? Perhaps because I am becoming busier and busier, and because I have cut TV from my daily routine to accomplish more things.

So here goes the March recap, which included a gorgeous Wedding anniversary in Rome.

• Keep the desk tidy and to do lists up to date. Yes, and even more. I threw away at least 10 tons (I am not that good at weights, you see) of old paper; i donated lots of books to friends and the local library and now I have sooo muuuch space in my study. Which makes my thoughts flow like water (so tired today I am becoming a poet).
• 3 posts a week, 1 English, 2 Spanish. The Spanish ones need to be clearly for implementation in work life. Seems like I did it. I’ll keep the routine, because more seems to be impossible for now.
• Research on a suitable ecological food options in Barcelona (those that bring fresh ecological fruits and vegetables to your home every other week) and start to make weekly plans for dinner. This should take lots of stress out of the daily “so what is it for dinner today?”. Done!!! I am getting 5 kg of fresh fruits and vegetables to the office every day and I am LOVING it. Furthermore our local food guy went out of business so now I am cooking ecological food for my entire team at work, which in exchange finances my Cello lessons. Good for moral and the Cello.
• Do regular exercises for my Catalan language course instead of stressing out the night before the next class. Epic fail. As I missed two lessons due to traveling, I really have to start going this weekend. Next saturday I have an oral examination and I am so NOT ready for it yet.
• Cultivate a positive attitude especially when faced with difficult situations at work (especially difficult people at work). Check. Reading “The Prince” by Macchiavelli again helped to see the world with a little bit less sarcasm.

So, next station: April coming. April is one of my favorite months, a mix between can’t-wait-for-summer-to-start, happiness-about-the-first- warm-sunrays, and longer days because of the summer schedule. So just like the trees around Barcelona I am bursting with energy. Never had so little problems getting up at 5:30 together with the husband.

• Finish the translation of “The Art of Being Minimalist” from Everett Bogue at  Far Beyond The Stars into Spanish, including the adaptation of links and numbers for the Spanish reality. A good friend is doing the copy editor part so hopefully we can launch the version in the next two to three weeks.
• Start working on my first own book on how to organize your studies efficiently to still be able to enjoy life, even after Bologna (Note for the not-European readers: the Bologna process restructured higher education in most European countries by making courses shorter but with the same content: which means more hours in class, more projects to accomplish, and less encouragement to just explore your own interests.) I already have the outline so this month I want to write at least 2 chapters per week.
• Go through all kitchen cupboards and donate everything that I haven’t used since I stored it away last year when we moved in.
• Get the dog to his hairdresser for summer cut.
• Take the annual “handsome couple” picture for our wedding album (we have 53 pages for the next 50 years to put in a photo of the two of us every year). We are already 2 weeks late, so we can’t leave it for much longer.
• And then there is the personal quest I have with the husband: one month without spending money on anything which is not absolutely necessary (so this excludes food and meeting for tapas with friends. Because without the latter we would renounce our social live).

Rereading it I feel I am getting a little bit too ambitious… but that’s spring time kicking in!

————-

How it works:
Post a list of your career/life related goals for the current month, along with your checked off goals from the previous month if you’d like, on your own blog.

Visit the Goal Meet-Up post at Brazen Careerist and leave a link to your post in the comments (*If you don’t have your own blog, feel free to share your list of goals in the comments section of the post to join in!)

Then, check out everyone else’s lists as they leave comments – click their links, visit their blogs, say hello, meet, greet and support each other because that’s what it’s all about!

Going minimalist

I am not particularly religious even though I have been raised by highly religious parents. However, this year I am doing my own version of “7 weeks without xxx” which many Christians do between carnival and Easter Sunday. Basically you pick one thing you think you can’t live without and stop it during this time to use the time for other things. In religious context praying or meditating. In my world for more efficient and effective activities.

We started late on this, but we are in full speed and will not stop with Easter but add the missing weeks after Easter. So, the challenge is the following:

• Stop watching TV just for the sake of it. Allowed is selected series which have been decide upon the night before. But no zapping just to be on the sofa. Instead, my writing activity has increased (at least for Spain… and not only on the blog).
• No money spent apart from food and the house-related bills. Eating out only with friends for social reasons, but not for laziness of cooking No cinema, no “oh-I-like-this-I-might-need-it-purchases. And guess what! I took out my sewing machine to put together a nice wallet for my ebook reader. Instead of buying it. We have no special plans for the money saved (well, putting it into the mortgage), but we want to see the difference at the end of the month.
• Go through all our things (all cupboards, all book shelves) to ruthlessly give away/sell/donate/throw out things we have not used in more than a year. I started with the wardrobe, got in a frenzy, and now my book shelves are half empty. It feels breathable Many parts of the house are still missing, but we will do it bit by bit during the next weekends to actually remember what we have. After all: what does it help me to have cool kitchen gadgets if I never use them because they are so difficult to be cleaned. Or because they are at the far end of the highest cupboard so I forget about them?

So I am on a minimalist journey. Let’s see where it takes me. Or us. Husband is in it with his usual “I told you to thin out out your books waaaay back when we first moved in together” (truth be told: he carried them from one flat to the next).

Things I am still in doubt: what to do with my 25 (twenty-five! really!) diaries I wrote between age 16 and 18? Which are incredibly boring. Donate to an “analyzing diaries” study group? But they are half in German and half in Spanish. Nobody will understand the mix

Oh, my inspiration was Everett’s book at farbeyondthestars.com. I will certainly not go as extreme as he has, but he has been a total inspiration to start the declutter journey. Which by the way marries very well with my perfectionism when it comes to efficiency. But that will be another post.

PS: Any hints on what to do with old diaries depicting your first “real boyfriend” and the daily diet in Quito/Ecuador are appreciated.

Improving the efficiencies of meetings

All companies have meetings. From self-employed entrepreneurs to multinational companies, no one can work without more or less frequent meetings: project planning, meetings with suppliers, client meetings, weekly updates of work teams, etc.. And very rarely this practice is questioned. If ever, alternatives are sought in the following cases:

1. Participants live too far away to invite everyone in person. In this case video-conferences are usually the alternative of choice. Only if the time difference completely prevents the virtual meeting, alternatives come into play.
2. The availability of meeting rooms does not match the number of meetings planned. This situations usually does not result into less meetings, but rather into meetings at alternative places (such as the cafeteria, the company kitchen, or even the corridor). Again alternatives are seldom used.

But are meetings that not doing them should always be the last resort? How can meetings be improved to ensure the highest effectiveness and use of resources both for the company and the individual worker?

The cost of meetings

Meetings are not for free. Every meeting, even those taking place within the company with only company employees from the same location present, involves a cost which is rarely quantified. These costs include, but are not limited to:

• Meeting location: in the case of SMEs or companies located within a business cebter, it is easy to know this number, as the meeting room is most probably rented. Either as part of the general company floor, or from the business center provider itself. However, even if the company has its own facilities, these represent direct costs (per square meter) as well as opportunity costs, since these square meters are not available for other offices or uses. Add light and heating system even for idle times and you have the total cost of availability.
• Time use: a meeting involving 5 people for one hour has in fact not used 1 hour, but 5. Calculating the hourly wages of each employee and adding up these hourly wages for the one hour, you get the total cost of time availability.
• Opportunity costs: In addition to being an hour at the meeting, the participants have not been able to work on their own projects. Therefore, we should also add the costs for not advancing on the daily work for each employee. If this results in overtime for the workers, it is easy to calculate. Otherwise it might be possible to calculate the delay in other tasks.

The above shows very clearly that a meeting to “let’s talk about it” entails more costs than usually thought about. Of course, meetings also are bonding opportunities, but in many cases they are poorly organized and thus result in a waste of time for employees and a loss of resources for the company. If your company has seen complaints about the lack of meeting rooms while the ratio of meeting room per number of employees is above 1/50, then you might want to consider the following ideas.

Guidelines to make the most of meetings

The above does not mean that all meetings are useless. De facto, they can be an excellent tool to advance projects and increase the motivation of those involved. But for the meetings to have a positive effect instead of resulting in a decreased productivity, it is necessary to re-evaluate how this time is used. Important note: These strategies cannot be imposed from one day to another. The company will have to invest into a clear meeting policy and communicate/explain the changes and the reasons behind it to its employees.

• Purpose of the meeting. It is not enough to name the meeting (weekly department meeting). It is just as important to define exactly the reason of the meeting as well as the expectations from participants. Is it a purely informational meeting? (Can it be replaced by a detailed email?) Are there different proposals to be discussed? (Be sure to send around the proposals before the meeting.) Does the meeting serve to define some kind of strategy? Are there responsibilities to be assigned for a new project? Each participant has to be informed before the meeting about what is expected from her/him.
• Participants. An increased number of participants usually extends the meeting. Refrain from inviting people just for their name, as usually everybody needs time to express themselves in the meeting. It is therefore important to first decide who needs to be present and who can be informed about the outcome per email afterwards.  Additionally there might be people that can give input beforehand without having to be present at the meeting.
• Agenda and schedule. The agenda should always include the start time and, more importantly, the closing time of the meeting. A restricted timetable ensures that everybody keeps focussed on the issue at hand. In addition, the agenda must include all the topics which will be discussed. The meeting organizer will monitor that the meeting is not diverted to other fields.
• Preliminary information. Before the meeting all relevant information needs to be sent to the participants. It is imperative that everyone reads the documentation, regardless of company hierarchy. If somebody is not able to read everything s/he should not hold up the meeting, but rather request a sum-up per email afterwards. In any case, there should be a written summary distributed.
• Summary of the meeting. The written summary of the meeting will be sent to all participants and all stakeholders who were not invited because their presence was not absolutely necessary. The summary should include the next steps / responsibilities that were decided at the meeting.
• If the meeting can be replaced by written information, the meeting should not take place. (Exception: important decisions that need to be delivered personally.) For the latter is important that the company implements a culture of actually reading emails (where needed a workshop for email management for all employees might be needed. This will save lots of time in the future).

In turning meetings into concise and efficient decision forums, it will take less time and resources to manage them. And a more efficient company automatically uses less natural resources, both in energy or office material.

Put it into perspective

Sometimes, a little more perspective helps to do the right thing. A little more knowledge about how things are interconnected. They should teach it in school, to see the big picture.

For example:

People in my neighborhood are upset about the amount of dog excrements on the sidewalk. They have dogs themselves and do not pick up the leftovers. Instead they complain that the governments should clean the streets more regularly.

The government has now increased the cleaning schedule to twice a week, which remedies a little bit the problem.

Taxes will soon be increased in order to pay for the increased cleaning costs due to the new schedule.

People around the neighborhood are already complaining about the new tax plan. Even though they formerly requested an increased schedule themselves. And they do agree that the people doing the job should be paid.

Why did nobody ever think about picking up and throwing away their dog excrements themselves? Nor expects the same from other dog owners. Perhaps because it is easier to complain to an anonymous government than to call the attention of the lady next door.

Still, if we expect the government to keep the street clean without any civilized behavior from our side… we will have to increase the cleaning schedule at least to 4x a week. Which will be even more expensive.

So I’ll just take some extra newspaper with me when walking Pacco to lend it to other dog owners who “forgot” to take something with them. Who knows, perhaps the example makes the differences.

And then please, I’d like to include the interdependencies of costs into the schedule of the civic education classes.

A city without cars

Yesterday Barcelona became paralyzed by a formidable snow storm. At three in the afternoon the city was covered with a beautiful white powder. At 17h the buses and short distance trains were suspended and the highways around Barcelona were closed. By 18h in the afternoon, when I left work, the streets in the upper part of the city, where I live, where not transitable any more. 5-7 cm of snow in combination with steep and very tiny streets resulted into trapped cars about everywhere which effectively broke down all car, motorcycle and bus activities.
It was heaven!
I met my neighbor with her dog at the doorstep when taking my own dog out. We left the dogs run freely through the snow without having to worry about cars passing by. Entire families where on the street to do snow men and to chat with neighbors about the climate change. Children were playing on the street with (or despite of) the snow. The old women living across the street who warns me every time I get out of the house to keep my dog on a very short leash because her friend’s dog was run over by ca car… she finally relaxed and just observed what was going on, but without her usual hectic concern for dogs’ lives.

Which made me realize how much the daily car traffic in front of my door actually limits my life quality. At this time we have a metro about 7 walking minutes away. A new metro station will open in July practically on my door step. Metros in Barcelona run every 2-3 min (at night 5-7 min) and cover at least the entire city area, going well beyond the city borders.
So my Utopian wish is the following: Let’s ban all cars from the city. Increase the bus schedules of those buses running on a less than 10 min interval to make sure that public transport is always readily available. Install some extra “get-me-to-the-metro” lines for those places where the metro station is more than 5 min walk away. Offer free and guarded parking spaces at the ends of the metro line, so those people who need to go outside the city for work purposes can leave their cars safely there while commuting with public transport in and out of the city. Make sure that all metro stations are adapted for people with reduced mobility. And then, let’s just run on the streets. The only vehicles allowed would be: buses, municipal services such as garbage retrieval trucks, and the usual emergency services.
The advantages are very clean cut and almost immediate:

• more space for an urban culture of meeting, talking, walking, playing on the streets;
• a higher air quality in the city;
• increased security for bikers and pedestrians (and their pets);
• less toll on the streets, resulting into financial advantage of not having to mend them quite as often
• more space to have beautiful apartments, or to store stuff, as you would not need the parking spaces within the houses any more;
• and I am sure you can come up with many more advantages.

Of course, this means that the individual person would have to re-frame the daily whereabouts. But it is possible and much more sustainable then our current car-dependent life style.

PS: Extra kuddos to the car industry if you re-use your plants to build wind-energy equipment instead of producing more cars we don’t need

Monthly goals March

February was truly a short month. But a very successful one as well. And if I had not been knocked out by a bad flue during this weekend I would have been able to accomplish it all… (or not). So let’s do a recap and then go down to business

• Do steady exercise with the cello. Both technique and fun. I am getting good at this. And since I managed to actually replace the last of my cello chords, now it actually sounds good. And this makes it to be much more pleasure than ever before to play and go on playing. My current project is “All I ask of you” from Phantom of the Opera. And it feels sooooo great.
• Find a way to keep the desk tidy. Kind of. Half done. I succeeded at work, but need to get into more of a routine at home. I get it clean for a week and then the it is back to the old self. So it stays on the list.
• Migrate my Spanish wordpress blog to my own webiste and keep working on sustainability business ideas. Done. The new valedeoro is alive and kicking, though I am one post behind of schedule thanks to that awful flue.
• Figure out how to include Spanish into my twitter presence. Two twitters? Tweeting in two languages? This has been on hold. To many other things going on that I hardly came around twittering at all.
• 3 blog posts a week, either on the Spanish or the English blog, but at least one in each. I am building up a routine here. Feels good.
• Take my birthday as an excuse to do an ABBA Singstar night at my place. And if those couples don’t want to attend (birthday is on Valentine’s day) focus on the single friends and do it nonetheless. Yay! This was a huge success. I did it together with a very good friend. The Brazilian husband made real caipirinhas and caipirowskas and ordered lots of yummi Brazilian food. All in all we were 12 people, which was enough to have huge fun with ABBA and not too many so that we could enjoy quality time together.

So March will be a mix of routine and new things. Wedding anniversary is coming up and we will be off for rome for our yearly honeymoon, but in between, this is the plan:

• Keep the desk tidy and to do lists up to date.
• 3 posts a week, 1 English, 2 Spanish. The Spanish ones need to be clearly for implementation in work life.
• Research on a suitable ecological food options in Barcelona (those that bring fresh ecological fruits and vegetables to your home every other week) and start to make weekly plans for dinner. This should take lots of stress out of the daily “so what is it for dinner today?”.
• Do regular exercises for my Catalan language course instead of stressing out the night before the next class.
• Cultivate a positive attitude especially when faced with difficult situations at work (especially difficult people at work).

————-

How it works:
Post a list of your career/life related goals for the current month, along with your checked off goals from the previous month if you’d like, on your own blog.

Visit the Goal Meet-Up post at Brazen Careerist and leave a link to your post in the comments (*If you don’t have your own blog, feel free to share your list of goals in the comments section of the post to join in!)

Then, check out everyone else’s lists as they leave comments – click their links, visit their blogs, say hello, meet, greet and support each other because that’s what it’s all about!

How to decide

Doubts about what to do next?

Unfortunately I do not remember where I found this graph, so any hint about the source is welcome.

But I do love its simplicity.
And no, I do not apply this to all decisions in my life.

How much education is too much?

I am absolutely addicted to absorbing new knowledge. I love studying. I love learning about new ideas from other to include them into my own musings (with or without footnotes. I already have a M.Sc. in European Studies and just finished a Master in Quality Management. Which means I am currently not studying (officially) at all! Which naturally resulted into looking into new courses. This time something in the wake of Corporate Sustainability to round up my interest in innovation, quality and green ideas.

However, do I really need to take another course in order to develop this interest? The advantages for me are the following:

• A time table to stick to: the good thing about learning programs is that there is a strict time table and fixed dates when you have to finish one or another content. That way I am sure to not dwell on too many details, but get the big picture.
• A schedule for the chapters: I will be sure to receive a certain amount of information within a set schedule, covering the area of interest and giving information about sources wherever possible.
• Meeting people with similar interests: this is only true for semi-presencial programs, as I found out in my online enrollment for the Master in Quality Management that it is difficult to meet up with people if you don’t have a fixed schedule to meet anyway.
• An official recognition of my efforts. As the studies would end with a recognized title, it would be easy to proof my knowledge to prospective employers.

However, there are also some downsides to starting yet another Master program:

• University title collector. Having three titles on the same level does look a little weird. Should I go for the next level and start on a phd? My professors certainly would love to see that, but I am not sure if I want to commit myself for 3-5 years to one single topic. Plus, would a phd title do me any good in the industry?
• Financial considerations. In Spain the post-graduate education is not for free, so I would have to pay a substantial sum. I might want to venture into self-hosted learning to avoid the payments.
• Quality concerns. Once subscribed to a program, I cannot change again, even if I am not too convinced about the learning material. Call me indecisive, but I have a hard time to figure out which school is the absolutely best one around.

Or perhaps I should invest in getting my Catalan straight once for all? After all, if I pretend to stay in Catalonia I should at least get the language to a fluent level…