Keep Your Momentum

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academic year, balance, Business Communications, calendar, Dog Days of Summer, fiscal year, habits, momentum, plan, planning, prioritize, quality of life, success, successes

It’s August. We’ve just completed the Dog Days of Summer and daylight hours are already decreasing. We’re still a good five weeks away from officially beginning fall, but some people are already counting down to Christmas while others are dreading the drop of the thermometer.

This is also a transition time of year. Families are either wrapping up vacations or trying to get in last-minute getaways with the kids. I still live by the academic calendar. My year moves from September to June and then I usually throw in July and August as afterthoughts. In most business worlds, the most common delineation of the year is the company’s fiscal year calendar (or the holiday break/shutdown). For most, however, the year is just a continual, ongoing trek toward the completion of the next project or presentation.

So, as daylight decreases and the projects continue to pile up, how do you keep your momentum?

It’s about balance. Balance is important to ensure you follow through on commitments both at work and at home to achieve your goals. Sometimes you need to set limits so your personal life doesn’t suffer when you’re working overtime to finish a project. Other times, you will need to prioritize your day to manage your tasks so you and your co-workers can go home at a reasonable hour.

It’s about taking time the time to plan and prioritize to achieve a balance. Not every day will require the same amount of preparation. However, if you can prioritize parts of your life, you can build successes on a habit. Then, it helps keep momentum going so you don’t have to work yourself to death. Then you can enjoy the Dog Days of Summer (or at least have the time to look up what it means).

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I AM THE UPHOLDER

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blog, blogging, communication, deadlines, Expectations, Gretchen Rubin, habits, happiness project, nails on a chalkboard, non-fiction, Obliger, purpose, Questioner, Rebel, tendencies, Upholder

It may only be June, but I have already begun prep work on the course I will teach this fall. One of the nonfiction writing assignments is to compose a blog post. Oftentimes the students will discuss a situation or event that relates to the Topic they choose for the semester. One requirement of the assignment is that they reflect on their experience in a way that readers might learn from it.

In my research to find strong examples of good bloggers, I came across a link to the Happiness Project, which took me to Gretchen Rubin’s site. Ms. Rubin, a thought-provoking and influential writer on building habits and happiness, is a New Times Best Selling Author. Her blog consists of personal stories collected from her work in contemporary science and ancient wisdom.

One of the posts on her site focuses on how to make good habits and break bad ones. As part of her research (and book), she offers the opportunity to take a quiz to find out if you fit into one of four (habit) tendencies:

1. Upholder
2. Obliger
3. Questioner
4. Rebel

Once you’ve taken the short quiz, your habit tendency – or combination of – is revealed.

What’s the purpose? I look at it as continued learning. It’s also about remembering who we are and why we do things. We’re all hardwired differently, operating on individual planes. Sometimes that means we don’t mix or mesh easily with others, but by understanding the tendencies and differences it may lead us to interact in an easier way.

So, I am an Upholder. I like clear expectations, to meet deadlines and enjoy habits. But I think I should be a mixture with the Questioner, because anyone who knows me knows I ask a ton of questions, am looking for the best way to accomplish a project, and find the “but that’s the way we always did it” response as irritating as nails on a chalkboard. (Does this prove my point in that I just resisted the outer expectations like a true Questioner?)

So, which are you?

@gretchenrubin