How long has it been since you asked yourself what you want to be when you grow up?

If you haven’t considered the idea since high school, then you may have settled into a job that is not fulfilling your professional aspirations, or your purpose.

Each of us has particular talents that, when expressed or exercised, make the world a better place. Most likely you enjoy doing these things, and you find that people respond well to you when you do them. Perhaps they’re things you gravitate towards during out-of-hours activities, and that people respect you for.

When you develop these talents as far as you can, you can make your greatest possible contribution to the world, and enjoy personal and professional satisfaction that goes along with this.

https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newCDV_97.htm?utm_source=nl&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=13Sep16#np

Have you ever worked on a project that had a tight-but-achievable deadline, and that needed your unique, expert knowledge for it to be completed successfully? Even though you found it challenging, you may have delivered some of your best work.

Or, think back to a project you worked on where there was little pressure to deliver. The deadline was flexible and the work wasn’t challenging. You may have done an average job, at best.

There’s a subtle relationship between pressure and performance. When your people experience the right amount of pressure, they do their best work. However, if there’s too much or too little pressure, then performance can suffer.

This relationship is explained by the Inverted-U Model, which we’ll look at in this article. This helps you get the best from your people, at the same time that you keep them happy and engaged.

https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/inverted-u.htm?utm_source=nl&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20Sep16#np

Change initiatives fail when senior leaders don’t see that their organizations are social systems. Organizations are defined by bundles of local relationships, social expectations, and unwritten rules that exist between thousands of people. These people create tribes — collections of like-minded people who build patterns around how work gets done. This system is highly resistant to change, as anyone who as ever tried to “impose” change on a system knows.

The secret to changing an organization is to understand the fundamental units that make up the social system — these local tribes — and to invert the change process so that tribes own the change. To influence tribes in organizations, you have to give up control, and recognize that every change always goes through a process of localization as it gets executed.

https://hbr.org/2016/09/overcome-resistance-to-change-by-enlisting-the-right-people?referral=00563&cm_mmc=email-_-newsletter-_-daily_alert-_-alert_date&utm_source=newsletter_daily_alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=alert_date

Just as we move through different stages in our life, so we also move through different stages in our career. And just as demands for our time in our personal life can vary, so can demands at work.

When peaks of demand in one area match troughs in another, life can be good. However, when demands are in synch we can experience dissatisfaction, stress, anxiety, depression and a whole host of other ills. This makes it important to find an appropriate balance between your career and your life.

In 1980, Donald Super introduced a theory that describes career development in terms of Life Stages and Life Roles. Super’s original work on career development began in the 1930s and he wrote his defining book, “The Psychology of Careers,” in 1957. He modified his theories in 1980 to account for the fact that people were no longer continuing on a straight path of career development.

Super called this theory the “Life Career Rainbow.” The Life Career Rainbow represented in this article is adapted from Super’s work to further take account of modern career life patterns.

Here, we look at how you can use the Life Career Rainbow to find the work/life balance that suits you at this stage of your life and career.

https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newCDV_95.htm?utm_source=nl&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20Sep16#np

How much time do you spend at work doing things that don’t contribute to your success? At first, you may say “not much.” But – especially if you haven’t used Activity Logs before – you may be surprised by how much more time you can find.

When you properly understand how you use your time at work, you can minimize or eliminate low value activities. This means that you can do more high value work, while still being able to leave the office at a sensible time.

So, how can you understand this? One useful way is to keep an Activity Log, and that’s what we’re looking at in this article.

https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newHTE_03.htm?utm_source=nl&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20Sep16#np