“Ohhh it’s Monday already? I want to go back to sleep…”
The Monday blues – the feeling of not wanting to go to work after a weekend.
It’s a normal feeling for everyone, but when every morning is a suffer to get up to work, and the 20-minutes drive to work seems so heavy, and the 9 (or what, 14?) hours at work is dreadful, and then even after coming home from work you can’t function after feeling exhausted physically and emotionally – it’s a job burnout.
A job burnout is an overloaded (or sometimes under loaded) feeling at work, which causes fatigue, first physically, and ultimately emotionally. Left untreated, it can cause exhaustion and the sense of overwhelming, loss in productivity, create a toll in relationships, and finally demolish mental health.
A job burnout does not happen overnight. It is a gradual process, with the causes accumulating the stress, until one day one feels overwhelmed and that none of their efforts seem worthy.
It is important to detect the signs of burnout and take actions to steer away from it. In this post, I will share the signs and stages of burnout. See if you have any.
Remember those days back in school where we had storytelling competitions?
You had to stand in front of everyone on the stage, and tell that “Hare and Tortoise” story with those props – a rabbit stuffed doll and a tortoise figure.
Oh how we hated the sickening butterflies fluttering in our stomach. No one said there was going to be so many people in the audience. How we practiced and rehearsed until Mommy too remembers the whole story.
Little did we know that that story telling competition is one of the most crucial skills we need to learn to be a grown up. Here are three reasons why.
If there is one thing all success stories have in common, it is passion.
When you love what you are doing, you would go through all odds, in order to pursue it. It’s what drives you.
Everyone has heard that Thomas Edison failed at making a thousand light bulbs before succeeding to make one. We have heard failure stories behind every successful man, but it is the strength they have to come back and stand up and face the challenges, that brought them to where they are now.
Why do you need passion to succeed?
In every area, be it in life, or even career, we need 3 things to make it work.
knowledge, hardwork, and simple chance
In order to find that knowledge you need, you must want to learn it.
In order to do the tasks you need, you must want to do it.
And when chances come against our way, you must want to overcome it to stand up again.
There are also a lot of books around that I would highly recommend reading to charge up your passion.
This is a simple book that spells 3 things in order to be fully charged in life:
Meaning – this is finding out the deeper purpose in your life, a stronger reason than cash, to work, and what do you intend to do for the society and the world
Interactions – this is about keeping good relationships
Energy – this is about staying healthy
Rath talks about Meaning, in his book. This is basically passion. One must find out what he wants to do, in order to give his most effort and love, to achieve success.
This is a simple management book that is more than the title suggests. In his book, Peshawaria proposed 3 expectations of workers, which is simply put as RED – role, environment, and development.
In Role, Peshawaria suggests that every leader must understand each staff’s role, get to know what drives his passion, and give him the road to achieve it. If a person’s passion aligns with his job, he will most likely have the vigor to work hard to success.
In Japan, there is something called the ikigai. It is a concept of living a long and happy life, by creating a balance between what you love to do, and what you are good at. Ikigai is finding the optimum point with what you love (your passion), what the world needs (your mission), what you are good at (your vocation), and what you can get paid for (your profession).
All these concepts talk about finding what you love to do (passion) in order to succeed, but how do you find out your passion?
First, you need to sit down and spend some time alone to learn more about yourself. Believe me, it will save you a lifetime of unnecessary dissatisfaction in life, so do take a minute to do this.
Take a pen and paper and think deep. Answer below questions about yourself.
INTEREST – what do you want to do?
NEEDS – what do the society, the world need?
STRENGTHS – what are you good at?
When you answer these questions, you will know what you want to do in life. And you will know how you can contribute to the world, and I know you will agree if I say making other people happy, can be a huge self-satisfaction. About your strength, once you’ve found what you’re good at, invest to make it stronger. It is useless to learn things you were never good at (high likely because you never liked doing it), but investing to become a master in what you’re already good at, to learn more about something you already love doing, can be highly motivational.
I recommend everyone, especially young jobseekers, to sit down and do this self-exploration, before seeking jobs. You will know more about yourself, and find more suitable jobs for yourself. For the experienced, reflect on your past works, and see if you’re going the right direction.
Find a higher calling than cash, make work a purpose, not a place.
If you want to talk to someone about finding your deeper purpose in life, you can contact the author by whatsapp.
And not just own it, but to communicate it well enough to bring those ideas to life.
Persuading others of your notions can be tough.
A lot of people have ideas, but find difficulty to explain, and convincing others. Finally, what may be bright proposals, get ignored, and eventually dismissed. This is a waste of potential, and can dull motivation.
Let’s take a look at an old persuasion secret from the famous philosopher, Aristotle.
Aristotle said there are 3 tested and proven modes to persuade an idea.
Ethos
This means credibility, trust.
In many occasions, people tend to trust something they already know the value of. Typical examples are the power of brand.
Just by the name of BMW, one can imagine the sheer driving pleasure. BMW is a brand well known for the ultimate driving experience. For a business person, driving a BMW may lend an impression of others that their business is good, which indicates investing with them, or purchasing something from them, may be secure. This is an example of persuasion with ethos.
To use ethos at work, we often see names of experts being quoted to strengthen the case. Here, people’s trust to the expert’s judgement is used to convince that our ideas are strong.
Or, the person himself, has a certain charisma, authority, or credibility that people look up to. Perhaps because of his past experience, or knowledge, or skills, or even integrity. With this advantage, whatever he says seem intelligent, and the audience is convinced easily. This is an example of ethos of oneself.
The next time you have a proposal to share, think how you can relate with something, or someone people trust. Or better, build your own credibility by strengthening your value, and one day, you’ll find anything you say is easily persuasive.
Logos
This is the persuasion mode using logic.
It means, to convince people, using facts, numbers, data.
Take below for an example.
You should take your medicine daily to avoid stroke.
compared with
If you skip your medicines, there is 80% likelihood that you will get a stroke and from there, 60% chances of losing your mobility.
This example shows how numbers can strengthen your argument and make your reasoning more persuasive.
At work, we use numbers you validate proposals, especially when it comes to money. No one wants to lose money, so the next time you have a proposal, convert the impact of your ideas into cash – you’ll have higher chances of getting people’s attention.
Pathos
The last but surely not least mode of persuasion is, emotion.
Most of the time, playing people’s emotions can give them a strong reason to care, and is the stronger mode of persuasion.
Children are natural at persuading with emotions. They cry and make you feel guilty for not buying them that toy the other kids have. They smile ever-so-sweetly when they want that ice cream they love.
At work, sometimes, when ethos and logos don’t seem to work, it is advisable to take out that pathos secret weapon. Hit that person at their most endearing spot, their concerns. If the Production department would not allow downtime for Engineering to perform a certain recipe change, point out the risk of not doing it, towards major machine breakdown and emphasize that it is their own decision and risk to bear by not approving the activity.
Yes, it sounds like blackmail, but it works.
Emotion can be many – happiness, sadness, anger, surprise, pity, respect.
Find a way to use maneuver these emotions of the audience in order to make your mark.
A word of caution – too frequent use of ethos may indicate that you are unprofessional, and have no other strengths, so only use it when necessary.
Commercials are easy practice to distinguish which of the three modes are being used to convince the audience. Some times you may even see all three modes in one advertisement. Watch how persuasion is being carried out in advertisements and practice it in real life. You’ll see how much more persuasive you can be.
This video is a well known example of all three modes being applied. Look for when is ethos, logos and pathos come in, and prepare to be mesmerized. Enjoy!
There are many reasons employees quit their jobs, but none more than due to disappointment with The Boss. If an employee is not satisfied with the pay, or the job scope, there’s higher chances that he would find a way to solve it or get by, than if he is not in good terms with The Boss – he’ll find a way to move out, even if the pay is good, or the job scope satisfies him.
Unless you’re the company’s founder, or the management, you’re bound to be working for someone – The Boss. Understanding him is crucial for both parties to cooperate in order to achieve a common goal, if not to at least make your 9 hours spent at work less painstaking. To accomplish this, one must find a way to click with his Boss, to find that certain chemistry.
There are tons of resources for making a great resume.
Yet, in my viewing of hundreds of job applications, it’s shocking to still find resumes that are plain WRONG! It’s really disappointing to find such applications because with the abundant online tips that you can retrieve so easily, making the WRONG CVs just confirms the fact you are lazy and do not take effort to make it right.
I apologize for the hiatus, been caught up with some change in career environment. Let me share some basic mistakes candidates make in their CVs.
The value of chit chat, casual conversations with people surrounding us is sometimes belittled by some people, especially in this era of social media, and heads always over handphones.
People tend to avoid small talk, claiming it is meaningless, sometimes tresspasing others’ privacy.
After years of interviewing engineers and technicians, I’ve come to see some patterns in candidates’ resumes, and their interviewing skills. And after hiring, I can see the how the candidates work, so I guess, I’ll be talking about the whole cycle.
As a manager, I deal with many issues with many departments throughout the day. I also need to follow up with what my staff are supposed to do, make sure everything is on schedule, and to help if any help is needed.
I’ve seen many ways employees update their bosses. Some explain things straight to the point, not wasting precious time, while some tend to take more time to explain something, adding the spices and in the worst, finally not making any decisions at all.
The radios play tunes from Cranberries in memories of her strong, determined voice. Coming from Ireland, her songs bear messages of humanity, rebelling against sociopolitical issues.
Listening to the alternative rock on radio last night brought back memories. In those days, music is an art of good melodies (from ballads to punk), combined with lyrics that brought emotional messages (from love to anger to humanity). Call it preference, but today’s music seems like repetition of mere sounds, with trashy lyrics that made no sense.
Afzan Mentor 