Lift weights with your brain

For the next 5 minutes, let’s elevate your career.

In today’s email:

• ‘What’s your best career tip?’ + cash

• Write to clarify your thoughts

• Lift weights with your brain

• Distract for less stress and more success

• George Washington as career coach

ON YOUR CAREER

‘What’s your best career tip?’ + cash

‘What’s your best career tip?’ is a useful question to ask colleagues and mentors. You might get a great tip. You might also gain further insight to what informs and inspires them.

Carolyn Hewson is the best manager I’ve had. Her advice was simple and powerful to a graduate trainee, ‘Ask if you don’t understand something.’ She meant it. With our investment banking clients she would ask them questions until everybody was clear on what the problem was to solve. She was confident and humble. This approach served her as she progressed to the boards of BHP, Westpac, and the RBA.

My best career tip for junior colleagues is, ‘before every significant meeting identify the value you want to give and want to receive.’ Many people attend more than 20,000 meetings in their career. We make them count if we focus on giving and receiving value.

My best career tip for senior colleagues is, ‘people crave great leadership. Be ambitious in the value you can create as a leader.’

We’d love to know ‘What’s your best career tip?’ Please share it here. We’ll publish 3 tips we like the most in next week’s newsletter. We’ll give a US$50 Amazon voucher to each of these 3 tipsters. Let us know what name and location you want us to use if we select your tip.

COMMUNICATION

Write to clarify your thoughts

This is the 152nd section I’ve written for CareerCoacha. Thank you for reading! One of the joys of writing is that it gives me the opportunity to clarify my thoughts. Ideas become more manageable to communicate. Writing and wrangling a variety of career topics makes it easier to coach and train teams.

Sometimes I abandon a newsletter topic. Writing tested my thinking and it wasn’t worth your time to read.

I write a lot of notes in meetings and coaching sessions. I then use a highlighter pen to note key points and number them in order of action. Writing also means I’m silent - which makes it easier to listen to colleagues and clients.

PRODUCTIVITY

Lift weights with your brain

Our brain health and ability to concentrate improves by regular physical activity. Our ability to concentrate also improves by regular mental activity. Here are 3 ways to improve your ‘concentration muscle’:

1. Begin with short periods of focused work. Increase the duration and frequency of these each workday.

2. Use interval techniques like the Pomodoro method - alternate periods of intense focus (e.g. 25 minutes) with short breaks.

3. Meditation works for many people. We can use an app, focus on breathing, or even attend to rustling leaves in a tree.

Neuroplasticity is our friend. At any age a brain can adapt and reorganize itself. We prompt this by new experiences, learning, and concentrating on useful tasks. Concentration is a muscle that we can work.

1 MINUTE TO LESS STRESS

Distract for less stress and more success

David McCullough, who is quoted above, wrote the brilliant history book 1776. It focuses on George Washington in the American War of Independence. When I read it, I reflected on the enormous stress that confronted Washington as his armies had significant setbacks on the battlefield. And, that Washington was able to distract himself from the stress.

Between battles he encouraged his men to exercise and play sport. Washington often spent hours throwing a ball with his aides. He also liked to play games that resemble modern handball, cricket, and field hockey. Washington also liked to review plans for his home renovation.

Sometimes we need to distract ourselves from the difficult thing. To lower stress and recharge. Which helps us to be more successful in the long-run.

GET SMARTER

George Washington

George Washington (1732 - 1799) was the first President of the United States and left a legacy as the Father of his Country. In addition to successful military and political careers, Washington was a successful farmer and businessperson. Washington ran five farms where he experimented with new methods to improve productivity while protecting the landscape. He cultivated hemp for industrial use, conducted commercial fishing, and built a whiskey distillery. Washington was also a successful agricultural and urban land speculator. Some of Washington’s wisdom: