Goal obsession can derail your career

Good Morning. For the next 5 minutes, your career is the most important thing.

In today’s email:

• Goal obsession can derail your career

• I come in peace to shake your hand

• President Eisenhower helps organize your day

• ‘Music is a safe kind of high’ to reduce our stress

• Get in the zone of high performance

ON YOUR CAREER

Goal obsession can derail your career

Marshall Goldsmith, in his best-selling book What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, listed goal obsession as the twenty-first bad habit. Goal obsession means we lose perspective. We become so focused on winning a sale, completing a project, or getting promoted that we damage our work relationships. Goal obsession at work can also damage our non-work relationships. Most of us want to celebrate achieving our goals with others.  More collaboration, less goal obsession, gets us there.

See Goldsmith’s Twenty-One Bad Habits

COMMUNICATION

The handshake

People have shaken hands as a custom for more than two thousand years. In ancient Greece, an extended, empty hand communicated I come in peace. A shake of the hand would also dislodge a dagger hidden in a sleeve.

The handshake remains a popular custom in business. It’s one of the few occasions when both friends and strangers physically touch each other in the workplace. We produce the hormone oxytocin when we have welcomed skin-to-skin touch. And oxytocin predisposes us to trust.

Tips for a good handshake:

• Stand, don’t sit

• Extend your hand with your thumb up and fingers spread

• Connect web-to-web and have the palms of your hands touch

• Firmly squeeze, but not too hard

• Make eye contact and smile

• Two to three hand pumps upon greeting; three pumps upon departure

PRODUCTIVITY

The Eisenhower Matrix

General Dwight D. Eisenhower led victorious Allied Forces in World War II and later became President of the United States (1953 – 1961). In 1954, Eisenhower quoted an unnamed university professor, ‘I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.’ This evolved to become the Eisenhower Matrix – a popular time management tool.

The value we deliver and receive across our career will depend upon us working on important projects.

1 MINUTE TO LOWER STRESS

Music is a safe kind of high

Jimmy Hendrix – regarded by many as the greatest electric guitarist of all time – said, ‘music is a safe kind of high.’ Few things can soothe us like music. Listening to music can lower your heart rate, reduce cortisol, and activate your parasympathetic nervous system which calms you.

Different genres of music can soothe us, especially if we associate them with positive emotions. Research has found that music with about sixty beats per minute prompts alpha brainwaves. These brainwaves occur when we are relaxed.

A type of music that is soothing to nearly everyone is the sound of nature. Click here for some nature music.

GET SMARTER

Get in-the-zone of high performance

Whenever we perform, we want to be in the zone of high performance. We want to be switched-on, but not too switched on. This applies to us doing a team presentation or Beyonce walking on stage. To us checking code or Steph Curry shooting a basket.

In our jobs, if we are not switched-on enough, we may appear complacent, unmotivated, or that we don’t care enough. Refocus on the value you want to give or receive now. Listening to music is another effective way to feel more energized.

If we are too switched on, we may appear anxious, unpersuasive, and lacking in confidence. Simple biological hacks can return us to the zone of high performance:

• Deep breathing

• Looking at a picture of a loved one

• Walking outside

• Watching a funny video clip

• And listening to music.

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