Shout out to Regina!

Yes, that's me!

So my colleague sent me an email with the subject line

"Like to give a shout out to regina"

The email contained a link to an article about how social support at work led to a decrease in all causes of death. Interestingly, social support from supervisors had no impact on the risk factors for death.

I can say many things about my job but one thing I do enjoy is the social support I get at work. It makes sense that if you don't enjoy the people you spend time with for at least 8 hours, 5 days a week, your health will take a hit.

You hear many places talk about culture and it is mentioned again and again in presentations as you decide to apply for a job, during the interview, and then you. finally. get. to. the. workplace.

Now, culture means something. I finally understood what the big to do about culture once I realized it boiled down to fitting in.

You need to choose a workplace where the gap between who you are and who succeeds is very small.

How can a tree grow in the wrong soil? That's the analogy I think best describes a company's culture. The wrong soil can't help a great tree grow.

Here is the study about how social rejection is physically painful

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/15/fashion/is-rejection-painful-actually-it-is-studied.html?ref=fashion

and here is the article about good social support

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42995889/ns/health-health_care/t/chummy-co-workers-may-lengthen-your-life/

How to Stand More

because our bodies aren't built for sitting all day!

Trendy health article themes I've encountered lately include-

"How Sitting will Kill You"

"Fidgeting your way to Fitness"

etc etc etc

I think most of us like to sit when we are tired and we are used to sitting more than we are used to standing but I'm scared of my body's composition changing so much that metabolic syndrome kicks in. The articles about how even exercising an hour a day can't combat straight up sitting are scary too.

What's a person to do short of becoming a forest ranger ?

Most of us don't have standing desks or walking treadmills so it really is a conscious effort to move during the day.

Ideas for Standing more

1. If you commute, try to stand instead of sit. If you have to drive, I realize this isn't an option but if you take the train, avoid the temptation of grabbing a seat since you will be sitting the rest of the day.

2. Take every opportunity to grab water or stand up and grab something from the printer. I turned down a printer at my desk so that I would be forced to walk to the printer. Even if standing up feels like an interruption to your work flow, your health will thank you for it.

3. Allow yourself to fidget. I'm naturally restless and fidgety and if you have a cubicle like I do or you can fidget without distracting others around you, then by all means let yourself fidget!

4. Volunteer to help carry install ink on a printer, deliver files, and chat with people in person instead of on the phone.

5. Take a lunch time walk or 5 minutes in the morning and afternoon to walk around the block . It clears your head and prevents you from sitting.

6. This is a stranger idea, but you can always do squats, jumping jacks, or run in place in an empty conference room, bathroom, or empty spot in the office. You might find it more fun, knowing someone might spot you exercising in an unusual spot!

7. See if there is an ergonomic department or wellness department that will support employees that want to find alternatives to sitting all day. This could mean converting an office into a room with a few yoga mats and some free weights.

I already use ideas 1-5 but I will give 6 and 7 a try later this week!

Let me know what you try!

PS-

Here is a graphic about how sitting kills you!

http://lifehacker.com/5800720/the-sitting-is-killing-you-infographic-illustrates-the-stress-of-prolonged-sitting-importance-of-getting-up

Thinking rooms

Remember how I commented on the high ceilings in the main NYPL library reading room? I also like the high ceilings in my apartment and open spaces in general. I guess I intuitively realized that welcoming spaces do encourage different kinds of mental activity and affect your moods.

This article (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703778104576287121392285518.html)

in the WSJ supports the hypothesis that architecture affects mental activity.

Specifically, older, louder, dimmer buildings caused more stress for white collar workers than newer buildings which are usually more airy and open. Sigh, I work in an old building.

I realized a few months after I started working that blue collar workers often have more physically tiring jobs with aches and pains that show up in pretty obvious ways. White collar workers have work that is less physically taxing but the impact of sitting all day and more subtle stresses add up later on.

It would be great if more companies would realize that investing in a nice working environment will result in a workforce that is happier and more productive. For the most part, companies are inconsistent. I know that the same company can have a huge range of office spaces within the same city and definitely amongst different countries. I think this is just an issue that isn't a priority for most companies but as companies compete harder for talent, working space and quality of life will matter more. Let's hope (for all of us who already think that everything is out to poison us --subtly and not so subtly) that louder, dimly lit, lack of natural lighting spaces are going to be a relic of the past sooner rather than later!

Life Strategy?

So the last few posts were about being engaged in each day and this post is about examining your life as a whole.

The speech by Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen reposted here, titled "How Will you Measure your Life?" encourages you to apply some business principles to your personal life. I know it sounds dehumanizing to consider yourself a company but he isn't talking about how much revenue growth you have year to year in terms of salary, he is talking about how you allocate your resources and your strategy/mission for your life.

I first came across this article when I peeked over at the woman I was sitting next to on the subway to see what she was reading. Harvard Business Review...interesting. Anyway, I did chat with her and I later looked up the article online.

The first time I read "How Will you Measure your Life?" I had two immediate reactions

1. I think this guy "gets" it.

2. How do I find an hour a day to reflect and pray about the purpose for my own life?

What do I mean by he "gets" it? I mean that I think it is uncommon for most people to dedicate time to thinking about the purpose of their lives. It is one of those big questions that either gets neglected in the frenzy of a busy life or one that gets ignored because there are a million easier things to do than think about the purpose of your life. I think that having a life purpose/vision/mission statement helps anchor you when life gets crazy. I think its pretty remarkable he allocated an hour a day during his Rhodes scholar life. I also generally agree with his conclusion

"Donʼt worry about the level of individual prominence you have achieved; worry about

the individuals you have helped become better people. This is my final recommendation: Think about the metric by which your

life will be judged, and make a resolution to live every day so that in the end, your life will be judged a success."

I guess since I'm advocating living consciously every day, I also need to add that it goes hand in hand with living consciously towards a purpose. I haven't followed through on my desire to spend an hour or even half an hour each day dedicated to quiet time and reflection but since I have a blog audience I am issuing a public challenge to myself to allocate a half hour each day towards thinking about how I'm going to measure my life and I'm sure it will turn into more blog posts :)

Let me know if any of you want to try this with me!

No more living for the weekend

So this post is about getting stuck in a rut and then trying to stay out of one.

There was a period early in my career where the novelty of work had worn off and I found myself unhappy and dissatisfied but instead of working towards pinpointing the source of the problems and finding a solution, I found various ways to forget about them. This actually made things worse. I found myself catching up on tv shows and finding new ones in an effort to forget about the current day and avoid thinking about the upcoming workday. I can't remember when I snapped out of the "waiting for the weekend" mode of thinking but I do believe I gradually convinced myself that the problem couldn't be that bad and that a solution was possible.

There are a lot of good themes to focus on in David Foster Wallace's commencement speech (link is here) but I found his ideas about choosing to be present and his acknowledgement of how hard that can be to be

Take his description of visiting the grocery store (14th St Union Sq. Trader Joes anyone?)

The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing comes in. Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don't make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I'm going to be pissed and miserable every time I have to food-shop, because my natural default-setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me, about my hungriness and my fatigue and my desire to just get home, and it's going to seem, for all the world, like everybody else is just in my way, and who are all these people in my way? And look at how repulsive most of them are and how stupid and cow-like and dead-eyed and nonhuman they seem here in the checkout line, or at how annoying and rude it is that people are talking loudly on cell phones in the middle of the line, and look at how deeply unfair this is: I've worked really hard all day and I'm starved and tired and I can't even get home to eat and unwind because of all these stupid g-d-people.

When stuck on a crowded, slow-moving train, or in a long grocery line, you have no control over anything but your own thoughts (if that). How we think and react to the mundane and irritating aspects of our lives can be as important as the "big" moments because most of us will inevitably have more days that are considered mundane than exciting. I don't allow myself to mentally check out anymore (at least not for more than a day) but I think the next excerpt captures what I'm trying to say :

The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default-setting, the "rat race" -- the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing.

I think he is right...and it isn't easy but it is worth it to "stay conscious".