Taking time off is seen as lazy and many people don't use their allotted paid vacation time. Can we stop pretending the world revolves around us? Let's stop making excuses and use all of our paid time off. Don’t wait till you retire to take a vacation! Here's my article to executives urging them to leave their assistants alone during off ours and vacations. [...]
Something doesn’t feel right, but you’re too busy to figure out what it is. You’re stressed and exhausted, but everyone else is too, so you suck it up and push through. “Just keep grinding, no one cares how healthy I am. They just want me to produce,” you convince yourself. Those closest to you may spot it first, but they don’t always have the [...]
Did you spend time on your favorite hobby over the weekend? Do you even have a hobby? I pretty much gave up on having hobbies for 6+ years. I was too focused on my role at my last company that I didn't prioritize taking time to enjoy life, so unfortunately, I burned out. There's no reason for you to make the same mistake I [...]
As I prepared for my family vacation this summer, I thought about how Americans are terrible at taking vacations. If you didn't know, check this out. In fact, I recently heard someone say, "I get 4 weeks of paid time off each year, but I only use 3 or 4 days." Sound crazy? Well, I used to operate this way. Source: Over [...]
Why am I here? How am I going to get through this? Shouldn’t I be doing something else with my time? Will I ever eat again? These are the questions I ask myself when I’m sitting in a meeting I don’t need to be in. As the meeting progresses, the inner dialogue continues… How did this happen? Did I think about my priorities when [...]
It’s been a long, crazy, up and down year. You're running on fumes, but you tell yourself to “Finish strong” because you have too much work to do. Instead of looking forward to some time off, you’re dreaming about how much you could get done with a few days of uninterrupted time. You make all sorts of excuses about how far behind you are, [...]
In today’s fast-paced, busy-is-productive society, we’re bombarded with texts, emails, deadlines, blog comments, meeting requests, employee conflicts, budget reviews, social media pings, and (fill in the blank). Is your blood pressure rising yet? You likely spend the majority of your day reacting to what’s seemingly urgent, which leaves you little, if any time or energy to work on what’s actually important. How much [...]
It’s a shame this blog needs to be written, but you know it does. Bosses regularly make their assistants work at all hours of the night, on weekends, and while they’re on vacation. Off the clock texts and requests are leaving assistants annoyed, over-worked, and burned out. Source: Unsplash How do I know? I spent 8+ years as an executive assistant [...]
Burnout often happens when we least expect it. It almost happened to me (I wrote about it here). We know something isn’t right, but we can’t quite discern what, so we push through. Those around us know we're not healthy, but don’t have the courage to speak up. Then one day we wake up and realize we've burned out — or are dangerously close to it. Source: Paige B. [...]
Last September a friend asked me if I was ok. I thought about it for a minute and replied, “Not really.” I said I was exhausted and on the way to burnout. He said he wondered why I had been such an insensitive jerk of late (It sounds mean, but he was right). I told him I didn’t have anything left in my tank and that [...]