Beer and Peanuts

There really isn't such a thing as managing time. No matter what there are still 24 hours in a day. What we can do is manage ourselves and how we use that time. Here is a  short podcast on how time management is really self management.

Time Management is really Self Management

 

People talk about time management all of the time. There are seminars, classes, online tools and smart phone apps for time management. People have developed activity logs, electronic to-do lists, action p...

Are you considering retiring? Of course you are. Do you still have a mortgage on your house? Most likely.

Let us help you think through this specific situation. Take a listen!

How would you like to live a longer, happier life? In this podcast John talks about having Purpose, Meaning and Social Contact and how it can help you live longer!

In his TED talk, “How to Live to be 100+,” Dan Buettner shares the Okinawan concept of Ikigai. Ikigai roughly means, “the reason for which you wake up in the morning.” If you have read much of our writing about beer and peanuts, you will recognize how closely this matches my definition of purpose: “something to get out of bed for and a way to organize your time.” Buettner suggests that Okinawans have extended life expectancy in part because most of them know their ikigai. They know why they’re here and they have a reason to keep on living.

Buettner shows pictures of centenarians: a 102 year old karate master whose ikigai was carrying forth the martial art. A hundred-year-old fisherman’s ikigai was catching fish for his family to eat three times per week. A 102 year old woman whose ikigai was caring for her great-great-great granddaughter. Buettner reports that when he, “asked her what it felt like to hold a great-great-great granddaughter. . .she put her head back and she said, ‘It feels like leaping into heaven.’”

Purpose doesn’t have to be something that will make headlines. It doesn’t have to be ending racism or curing a disease. Having a purpose or knowing your ikigai doesn’t have to change the world. But it will change your world. “I can’t stand my job” is a reason to leave a job, but not a reason to withdraw from the world. When purpose and profession align, life is good. But purpose doesn’t have to be tied to your work. In fact, I think purpose should be bigger than a job. The reason we live, the reason we get up everyday should be powerful enough to pull us into the future. And that pull should last a lifetime.

This isn’t a commencement speech platitude about following your passion. Some people may never feel a passion the way it is sometimes described. Passion is a feeling and feelings change. But purpose is like a direction. regardless of how we feel, north is still north. East is east regardless of where you are. Or what job you have. Or if you have a job at all.

Your ikigai, your reason to get out of bed might be your family. It might be caring for a garden. It might be a political cause or a religious group. It doesn’t really matter to me. What’s important, is that it matters to you.

You can watch Buettner’s talk or read the transcript at: http://www.ted.com/search?q=dan+buettner

 

Here is our Podcast on how to determine your Ikigai!

Check out what the heck Beer and Peanuts is up to!

Check Out What John was up to Easter Weekend!

"I can't wait to work on my golf game." This is a fairly common answer to my question, "What would you like to do when you stop working full time?" I understand that work is consuming. In fact, I usually have this conversation with people in their 50's or early 60's. At this point in life many people are at the peak of their career, and peak earnings. These peak earnings provide opportunity for aggressive savings into employer sponsored retirement plans as well as paying off mortgages and kids' student loans and weddings.

Peak Earnings = Peak Stress

At the same time, peak earnings come with peak responsibilities and often, peak stress. You make more money because you solve more problems and take on more headaches. At the beginning of a career, most of the stress comes from learning the job, gaining skills, negotiating the relationships at a workplace. New entrants to the workforce and recent college graduates are primarily managing themselves and most of their stress comes from their own challenges and growth opportunities. These challenges are mostly overcome through individual development, training, learning, coaching and mentoring. Over time, we gain knowledge, skills and abilities and overall competence at our jobs. This often leads to promotion. Promotion is great; it gives us a bigger platform, more influence over our work environment and a bigger paycheck.

Over time, though, I have observed that people get all the pleasure promoted right out of them. The higher we go in an organization the stress shifts away from the personal challenges associated with learning new skills.  Managers, directors, and other leaders have plenty of stress, and most of it comes from things they have much less control over. It comes from having responsibility for the work output of tens or hundreds of people. It comes from the board of directors or executives who must answer to investors. It comes from the business environment, the general economy, changes in the industry, new competitors, and compressing margins. Most of the stress on workers late in their career is external and there is little we can do personally to affect or deflect the onslaught of outside pressures.

Responsibility and Control

In his excellent book, Drive, Daniel Pink identifies factors that align with satisfaction in the workplace. People who have more control over the following elements have happier work lives: Task, time and team. Task refers to what you are actually working on. In other words, what are you doing from day to day or hour to hour. One of the most pernicious foes we face in this regard is the ability to share calendars and allow other people to add meetings to our calendars. When Pink refers to time he means having control over when we do the tasks that make up our responsibilities. Once again, shared calendars are real enemies to control over our time. Team means the people  we work with. To a certain extent we have some control over our team as we progress in a career, if we have hiring authority. However, almost no one gets to choose her boss, and we often inherit team members we wouldn't have chosen (or wouldn't if we knew then what we know now!).

All of these stressors often combine with the biological reality of aging as well as pent up demand for leisure activities which have played second fiddle to work. For many people, by their late 50's, the idea of managing a golf handicap instead of a school, business unit, or other organization structure sounds very appealing. And it often is a welcome relief. Retiring from a highly demanding job and focusing on yourself, your challenges, and things within your control can be very refreshing. It can be a great reward, hard earned and well deserved.

For a while.

The escape and the Cycle

But after some time, it might not be everything you need. (I am using golf as a proxy for any leisure activity that you might choose to escape to after a long slog in the workplace. It could be scrapbooking,