Being good at your job might not be enough to guarantee a successful career. Sounds pretty counterintuitive, right? The landscape of the workplace is changing. Gone are the days where putting your head down and working long hours will guarantee you a spot up the corporate ladder. Bringing in new clients and closing a number of big deals may mean that you're good at your job; however, doing your job well does not always translate to a leadership position. The good news? Whethe

We live in a world where a true work/life balance is really difficult to achieve. Many of us don’t have the luxury of totally disconnecting when we are away from the office. Learning to maximize life when you’re outside of work will help you to unplug when you’re able, be present in the moment, and make yourself a priority without forgoing other responsibilities. Over the next few blogs, we will be highlighting strategies that you can incorporate day-to-day to help you move

We live in a culture where we aren’t necessarily reinforced for hard work and dedication, but we equate success with taking our work to an extreme. We may find that we are praised and rewarded for the ability to take on immense amounts of stress and long hours, as well as forgoing our social life for work. However, burnout is real. Working around the clock and constantly feeling stressed isn’t sustainable. Below are five tips to help you give up the idea of "working hard," an

The Difference Between “Needing” and “Wanting” As we discussed in previous blogs ("Why to Stop Needing and Start Wanting"), there is a big difference between needing and wanting. What do we need in life? The real necessities for survival are oxygen, water, and food- everything else are things that we want, but they aren’t true needs. So, do you need to be perfect? You might want to always submit high quality and correct work; however, perfection isn’t necessary for your survi

As part of our month long conversation about time management, I want to take some time to discuss a type of procrastination that stems from a desire to produce perfect work. Did you know that a need for perfection can actually hurt your work quality? I know that this sounds counterintuitive. Typically, we think of behaviors that promote perfection as helping to ensure high quality work; however, demanding that your work be perfect (e.g., “My work MUST be perfect,” “I NEED my

Last week, we talked about how you can change your mindset about work to improve productivity and decrease procrastination. This week’s blog is all about specific strategies that you can use to proactively prevent time drains, as well as skills to use when you catch yourself procrastinating. Proactive Strategies Scheduling You know that time tracking we talked about in our blog, “Diagnosing Time Drains?” Well, we’re not done with it yet! Now, instead of tracking what you DID

Last week, we discussed how to diagnose time drains as a strategy to evaluate your time management skills. Now that you have a clearer picture of your work habits day-to-day, you can directly target those behaviors that may be derailing your productivity and work progress. How You're Thinking About Work If you find that your day is marked by procrastination and/or you’re engaging in time drains, the way that you are thinking about your to-do list may be to blame. According to

With summer coming to an end (sigh), we approach the Fall with a reinvigorated sense of productivity….right? Not for all of us. For some, the transition from warm days and long weekends, to short days and heavy jackets, can be rough. To help you with this transition, we’re going to take the next month to explore the topic of time management. Not only are we discussing how can you effectively manage your time during the week, but also the time drains that could be getting in y

Last week, we discussed how to think differently about a job that you hate. Today, we’re going to discuss what you can DO when you’re feeling stuck at a job that you hate. 1) Leave Work At The Door After spending a day somewhere you don’t want to be, it can be very tempting to come home and vent. Sometimes venting can help you to feel better by getting things off your chest, but other times venting can actually make you feel worse. Venting can be a form of “rumination”- rumin

Last week we discussed the Unreliable and the Competitive coworker. This week, we’re focusing on the Disrespectful and the Dark Cloud coworker. 3. The Disrespectful Coworker: As you move up the ranks in your company, it can be very exciting to take on more responsibility and a bigger role, including managing your own team. However, this responsibility can also come with a ton of new challenges. What happens when a member of the team doesn’t respect your new title? This may lo

“How do you deal with a difficult or challenging coworker?” is a tough question. While there are definitely behaviors that are considered faux pas in the workplace (e.g., yelling, gossiping, acting disrespectfully…the list goes on), we all have different boundaries and limits that we set with our coworkers. Someone’s actions or behaviors that you perceive as annoying, rude, and frustrating might not bother your work BFF at all. Why is that?! More importantly, how can YOU take

Last week, we discussed the importance of goal setting in helping to determine when it is time to make a personal or professional change. Today, we will be delving deeper into concrete strategies to approach goal setting. Specifically, we’ll discuss the importance of defining and measuring goals when moving from coping to thriving with challenges in the workplace. What does goal setting entail? Define Your Goals- Stating that you want to “succeed at work” isn’t enough- what d

If you’ve been following along with our weekly blogs, you may have noticed an overarching theme. Many of our blogs focus on the fact that when negative situations occur, you will most likely feel negatively BUT there is a difference between helpful negative emotions (e.g., worry, concern, and sadness) and unhelpful negative emotions (e.g., anger, depression, anxiety). In these blogs, we emphasize the importance of learning to think differently about negative and challenging s

Meetings for the Day- 3 Calls Scheduled- 4 Unread E-mails- 25 Unanswered Voicemails- 5 Items on To-Do List- 10 Phones Ringing- 2 Calls Scheduled- 4 Just a typical Monday morning for Juliet. However, if you ask her, you’d learn that she actually loves the fast pace of her office and the fact that there is never a dull moment. Juliet is the picture of perfection when it comes to time management, organization, and prioritizing- really, she has never missed a deadline or left an

We all make mistakes at work, but why do we tend to make these mistakes seem so much bigger than they actually are? It all comes down to our mindset. Adam works at a start-up tech company, and he really loves his position. Adam’s boss Rachel is constantly communicating and checking-in with her team’s progress on projects, but she really gives her employees independence and ownership of their work. There is just one rule: if anyone makes a mistake, especially on anything that

Jamie was recently promoted to Director at the financial services company that she has been working at for the past three years. While Jamie’s coworkers were excited to hear about her promotion, Jamie is now going to be managing many of the people that she had been working alongside for the past few years. As part of her new role, Jamie is required to provide her team members with performance feedback every quarter. These meetings are scheduled to occur in the next month, and

Jake is an account executive at an advertising agency, and he really enjoys his job; however, there is just one problem: Jake’s boss Mike has the tendency to act very critical at times. More specifically, Mike has a low threshold for mistakes, any type of mistakes big or small. On Friday, Jake sent Mike a pitch deck to approve for Tuesday’s meeting. The entire team had already reviewed the pitch, but it seems that Jake and his team missed a spelling error on one of the slides

Yesterday while I was at the deli waiting to pick-up lunch, I heard two men discussing their workday. It sounded like it had been a pretty rough week, and one of the men was exclaiming, “I CAN’T STAND ERIC! HE HAS NO IDEA WHAT HE IS DOING, AND I LITERALLY CAN’T STAND LISTENING TO HIM IN MEETINGS ANYMORE. HE NEVER SAYS ANYTHING USEFUL!!” I immediately started laughing to myself because I thought, "You say you LITERALLY CAN’T STAND listening to Eric, but you are LITERALLY STAND

Over the past two weeks, we learned about why Alison and Max negatively reacted to losing a client. In today’s blog, we’re going to check-in with Dave. As a reminder, after losing the client, Dave thought to himself, “I’m a complete failure for not being able to sign this client.” He then felt so ashamed about his performance that he went home early to binge watch Game of Thrones. If you’re curious, I’m told that he finally caught up on the series! (Yay!...I guess??). In REBT

Happy Wednesday! For all of you following along with the story of Alison, Max, and Dave- today we’re focusing on Max. Last time we saw Max, he was busy thinking (Awfulizing) that, “It would be awful if I don’t get promoted because we lost this client!” As a result, he was feeling extremely anxious and spent the rest of the day updating his resume and searching LinkedIn for new jobs. As we learned last week, Awfulizing is a type of unhelpful Irrational Belief. We can recognize