Eat a Live Frog First Thing in the Morning, or How to Manage End of Semester Stress

It’s the time of the semester when everyone in higher education feels additional stress, but especially graduate students who are also full-time employees, and often parents and partners.  Everything is due, seemingly on the same day, and if any procrastination has crept into your semester, it’s starting to come back to haunt you.  Since stress management is such an important leadership skill, here are some high impact tips to use now and in the future.

 

 

Change your perspective. Mark Twain said, “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.  Unless you enjoy frog sushi, you may not want to take Mr. Twain literally, but he clearly understood the role of perspective. Most people think of stress as being an inevitable reaction to the number of stressors in your life.  That’s not totally true.  Your stress level is largely dependent on you mindset, your perceptions and beliefs about your circumstances, so, for example, if you believe you must always be perfect, you will be constantly stressed because you will almost never hit that mark.  The good news is that you can change that by changing those perceptions.  One tool is reframing, so practice noticing your stress-inducing thoughts and changing them in a positive direction.

 

Exercise.  I know, I know.  You don’t have time to breathe, let alone break a sweat.  The fact is, exercise is such a powerful stress reliever that it should be one of your top priorities on a regular basis.  It should be scheduled in like any other appointment.  So make time to get some exercise and you will feel better and most likely be more productive.

 

Take breaks, preferably to laugh. In addition to exercise, laughter is one of the best stress relievers around.  Also, we know from research that working for too long without breaks reduces our productivity.  So take a few minutes to find something funny and see if you are not refreshed and more productive.  Humor is highly individual, but you can try these sites for a few chuckles:

http://www.funnyordie.com/

http://icanhas.cheezburger.com/

 

Prioritize.  Oprah once said, “You can have it all, just not all at once.”  Given your likely overloaded schedule, you must make choices.  That’s what prioritizing is about.  Take a moment to think about the values and goals that are most important to you, and make sure to limit yourself to three or four. Write them down, post them where you can see them, and use them as a decision filter.  Spend your time on those things that are most important to you and put the other things that don’t directly serve those goals in a “later” file.  So, if you have two papers and a presentation due this week, a full-time job, and other family duties, focus on the things you must do to maintain your health, well-being, and progress…and let go of the others.  You can make homemade cookies for the bake sale next time. 

Take a few moments to manage your stress and you will reap the return on your investment immediately.  

Lessons in Social Media from Best Buy’s Brian Dunn

Best Buy’s CEO Brian Dunn is well known as an effective social media user and I recently read a piece he wrote called “Best Buy’s CEO on Learning to Love Social Media.” He mainly outlines his social media evolution and the point of the article is not to give advice, but a close reading reveals some helpful tips:

                                                                                                                                                                                                

If you think social media is a fad or only social, think again.  Dunn tells several stories of how he was able to connect with customers and employees to really get a sense of what they needed or wanted.  He also was able to address an issue or two quickly because of his presence on Facebook and Twitter.  Social media is here.  Get used to it.

Make it meaningful.  Dunn says that he was initially frustrated with the mundane things he read on Twitter, and who hasn’t read one too many “I’m in line at Starbucks” tweets?  So think about what you’re posting and make it meaningful to people. A few mundane posts are OK here and there, but think about what value you’re adding before posting.

Accept that there are risks….because everything has risks.  A Best Buy employee posted several videos where he made fun of the customers he was supposed to serve and on another occasion Dunn’s Twitter account was hacked.  Everything worth doing in life has risks.  Manage your risk well – create passwords that make hacking difficult, for example – and understand that the benefits of well-used social media outweigh the risks. 

Help people make good decisions. One of the ways you can manage risk is to provide guidelines and training for your team members who use social media so that they don’t use it in a way – either personally or professionally – that creates problems.  Best Buy’s summary is “Be smart. Be respectful. Be human.” and Dunn adds that he doesn’t post anything that he wouldn’t want to see published in a newspaper. (This is excellent advice for email use, as well).

Stay in touch with the grassroots.  The further you go up the managerial chain, the more disconnected you become from the front lines of your operation, whether that is students, customers, or constituencies.  Social media can provide an invaluable tool for people at the grassroots level to contact you directly with issues, compliments, suggestions, and many other things you should know about.  Put another way, insulation is good for buildings but not for leaders, and smartly-used social media helps you combat it.

Ask the right questions about social media use.  Dunn says he’s frequently asked how he’s going to monetize his social media activity.  While that may not be an issue in non-profits, it is still a question that could be asked: How is your investment of time in this benefiting the organization?  Dunn says this is the wrong question.  He says the question really should be: “How am I going to deepen my relationship with customers and employees and deepen the conversation that goes on where they are?”.