We all know what happens when we don’t get enough sleep. We become moody. Our attentions gets shorter and we can’t  concentrate. Our reaction time is greatly reduced. Our memory becomes bad. And those are just some effects.

The effects of sleeplessness are different for everyone. And while most working adults are sleep deprived, it is doubly hard for employees doing shift work to get the quality sleep that everyone hopes to achieve.

First of all, shift workers do not fall under the traditional nine to five work day category. It can be extra challenging to find rest and relaxation when everyone else is up and about and you are just turning in for the day.

Another  main challenge of shift work is that it forces you to sleep against the clock.  We all have a unique internal body clock that produces what we all know as circadian rhythms. These rhythms occur in 24 hour cycles and act like “messages” that regulate various body functions. Your circadian rhythm dictates when it is time for you to wake up and when it is time to go to sleep. The problem is… this clock is “set” by exposure to sunlight. It is set to peak at maximum sleepiness mode from around midnight to 6 am. Shift workers must fight their natural body clocks to remain alert and awake at night.

I’ve written about tips to get some good night’s sleep before. These are general tips for the perpetually sleep deprived. However, here are some tips for those very special shift workers who need to stay up when everyone else is winding down.

A better rotation:

Talk to your coworkers or supervisor to get a regular shift rotation. Shift that rotate often and at random will take a toll on your body and mental health. It is harder to adjust when shifts change in random intervals. Negotiate for a more systematic shift rotation.

Nappy time:

Take naps whenever you can. Naps help you be more alert on the job. You may want to use your lunch hour to take a nap when you’ve had an especially hard time sleeping during the day. About 15 to 20 minutes should be enough to make you fully alert again.

Food is the best:

Ah, the benefits of eating well are endless. Try to eat 3 evenly spaced meals in a day. They help create time cues to help your body clock adjust to shift work. Start off the day with a good meal and avoid eating heavily within three hours of your bedtime. Eat healthy meals and avoid stuffing yourself. Digesting a large meal interferes with sleep and affects the quality of sleep you get.

Family onboard:

Get your family onboard. Explain to them that you are going to need rest in order to do your job well. Let them know that you need their help in achieving restful sleep and as much as possible to keep noise to a manageable level when you’re sleeping. If you have small children, make sure they are cared for when you are sleeping and make sure they understand that you are not to be disturbed when getting rest.

With these tips, I hope you get some good night’s sleep. Have I missed anything? Let me know in the comments. As always, remember to: Stay Humble, Hustle Hard. Good luck!

Written by Jaie O.- The Help

The term “partners” takes on new meaning when married couples venture out of the family home and work closely together in business or as office workers. There are immeasurable benefits to working closely with a spouse and there are just as many drawbacks. As married couples know all too well, relationships take a lot of work, understanding, and compromise. These requirements are the same for running  a successful business partnership or a working relationship.

Here are some tips to ensure that the partnership runs smoothly for those lucky enough to work with their spouse:

Play to your strengths:

In a marriage, there is usually a good idea of who takes care of what. One spouse is probably great at taking care of the finances, while the other does an awesome job at taking care of organizing and logistics. This may not be the case for partners who work together as there might be a lot of head butting and differences in opinions. So, delegate responsibilities to play to your strengths just like you do at home.

Leave work at work:

Spouses should agree to leave work at work and reserve family time as a strictly no business talk time. Both spouses should strive to secure quality time for the family. Only food and family at the dinner table, leave the quarterly projections at work.

Leave home at home:

Spouses fight and that’s the reality. But spouses should strive to leave familial issues and other intimate issues at home just as they strive to leave work issues at work. The key is to have open communications and agree to both have boundaries over what you can discuss at work and what needs to be left at home. Public displays of affection, heated arguments or personal conversations can embarrass or alienate coworkers. Even worse, they can disrupt the smooth flow of business.

Barriers:

No, these are not emotional barriers or communication barriers. These are physical barriers. Yes, physical barriers are important. Spouses should have separate offices or at least a separate space all to themselves. Even couples in the strongest of marriages will need a break from being with each other 24/7. Separate spaces help spouses work on their own thing without one looking over the other’s shoulder. They should let each other work without interfering and trust that the job will be done to the best of each other’s abilities.

Fair treatment:

Be each other’s toughest critic, yet each other’s biggest fan. It is never easy to take criticism from a loved one because spouses are expected to have each other’s back. But coddling will not do the business any good. The key is to give constructive criticism and positive feedback, just like a boss or a coworker would give. Endeavour to be collaborative.

Got any tips to share for married couples who work together? Share them in the comments. As always, remember to: Stay Humble, Hustle Hard. Good luck!

Written by Jaie O.- The Help

Congratulations on a new baby! I bet your baby is the cutest baby ever. I’m sure you would never want to leave him or her. I’m sure you wish you could just stay home to take  care of your baby and watch him/her grow up. You wouldn’t want to miss his first steps or her first words. No parent would.

But alas, there’s baby food to buy and bills to pay. You want to stay home longer but you really can’t afford not to go back to work. Remind yourself that this is for yourself and for your family. Your career is important but your family will always be top priority. So, when your maternity leave is almost up, you would have to start weaning yourself off being a full time mom and start getting ready to get yourself back into the workforce.

Transitioning back to work:

Before you return to work, there are some arrangements you need to make. Childcare is the most important one. Set this up before you go back to work so that you can be sure that your child has time to settle into childcare arrangements. You have to set this up before returning to work full time. This is way, you get to see how your child is being cared for before you leave your baby in someone else’s care and you get to allow for adjustments and make alternative arrangements.

Don’t rely on just one child care arrangement. Always have a backup plan. One day, an emergency might come up and your babysitter or nanny couldn’t make it to work, or the childcare facility could be closed due to unforeseeable circumstances. You must have a backup plan in place so that you’re not left scrambling at the last minute.

At work:

Talk to your boss, supervisor, or manager about work flexibility. Make sure you communicate to your boss that you still intend to remain an active contributor to the success of the company but also communicate to your boss that you are now just as committed to keeping your work and family life balanced. Your boss has to know that you are serious about making your new situation work.

No one wants to stay at work longer than what is required. Avoid pulling overtime or late nights at work by managing our time well. Do your work on time and do it well. Manage your schedule so that you bite  the bullet first. Meaning, tackle the harder tasks first. That way, the rest of the day is easier to manage.

Do not be afraid to ask for help. You will find that many people are happy to help when you ask for it. When times get tough and you feel overwhelmed, your spouse, your family, your friends, will be there to help. Explain your predicament and always try to repay them for the huge favor. Although you will find that  most of the time, no repayment is required.

Carve out ME time whenever you can. Remember that you can’t be good at BOTH your jobs if you’re depleted, overwhelmed, and exhausted. Rest when you can, and fit in as much time for yourself as you can. Unplug from your computer and enjoy a long bath, take the baby to granny’s and do some zumba, or get a babysitter and go on a date with your spouse.

I’m a hundred percent sure you have baby photos in your phone, right now. I’m sure you miss your kid so much. How about printing them out and arranging a couple of frames on display on your workstation. That way, you can bring a piece of home to work and you get to remember what all this is all about everyday.

What other tips do you have for moms transitioning back from maternity leave? Share your tips in the comments. As always, remember to: Stay Humble, Hustle Hard. Good luck!

Written by Jaie O.- The Help

No matter how intent we are at trying to deliver a project on time all the time, there will always be causes for delay that are due to forces that are beyond our control. The possibility of delay can stem from various reasons, some of them are terrible lack of foresight, some are due to bad time management, some are blessings in disguise, and some are just dumb luck.

No one has managed the perfect project. You know, that one project where everything falls neatly into place at every single milestone. The one where not a single deadline was missed along the way. One where every task was completed and every report was handed in on time. Have you  ever had a project that went by so smoothly that you felt it was too perfectly surreal? Yup, I didn’t think so.

That is every project manager’s dream – to be able to deliver EVERYTHING on time. But the reality is, there are projects that are so big, there are just too many tasks and too many dependencies to manage all at the same time. With a massive juggling act going on, some balls are bound to fall from the air. Keeping them all up to be delivered just in time is an almost impossible task.

When we plan our tasks or our projects, we don’t usually plan for them to go off the rails. We plan to stay on track all the time, to reach those small milestones, to accomplish those goals, to deliver those reports, to hit the critical deadlines. But then you discover that you have underestimated some task and have overestimated your capabilities.

So now you find yourself missing the deadline and being unable to deliver the project on time. How do you get out of this mess? The simple answer is that you turn the project in late. Let’s face it, you missed the deadline and unless you push it back and work overtime, you’d have to turn the deliverables in late.

If you absolutely have to turn in a project late, apologize to the client profusely and try to reassure the client that this will not happen again. You have to acknowledge that you missed the deadline and the resulting delay as soon as possible. Act as quickly as you can to mitigate the consequences. Accept responsibility, avoid blame, and always be ready to respond. Offer reasons for the delay but NOT excuses. Be honest, fair, and tactful. Saying that you had challenges in obtaining the data is very different from saying that a team member did not send in the report on time.

You have to sound like you had the whole thing under control at all times, even if that isn’t true. Offer alternatives and suggestions on how you  could’ve handled the delay better (e.g. better time management, more resources  etc.). Communicate with your client. Hurdles like these are unavoidable and keeping communications open and honest will make your business relationships stronger.

Ok, so that’s that, water under the bridge. Let’s not worry about the delayed project anymore. Let’s move on and try to do better the next time. The key is to strive to actually deliver on time from this point forward.

Here are some tips on how you can achieve the perfect project – you know, the one where we actually deliver everything on time.

Give Yourself Realistic Deadlines: Remember what they always say in business? Don’t overpromise and under deliver. Understand this: deadlines bring clarity to a project. They are goals and benchmarks for business. Deadlines are not some arbitrary dates on a calendar. Stop yourself from agreeing with unreasonable client deadlines. No one else knows the project and the gravity of the tasks involved as well  as  you do. So, if you know it’s going to take a while to deliver a knockout project – ask for time!

Gather Your Resources: In this case, you must gather the right resources. Also, be extra prepared and take a look at alternatives as well. Don’t spend a lot of time nitpicking and dwelling on alternatives though. You have to have a concrete plan and a lot of faith in your original plan. How exactly does this work? So let’s say your plan is to deliver 10 articles in the next three days. Create a  schedule and plan to carve out time to write 3-4 articles per day. Gather your resources and get right to work instead of relying on a backup plan like rehashing your old articles or completely missing the deadline.

Murphy’s Law: Murphy’s Law states that: anything that can go wrong will go wrong. And in most cases, it is most likely to go wrong at the most inopportune time possible. So be ready for Murphy’s Law and expect the unexpected. Pad your schedule for delays. You can never predict what will  cause the delay, but you can be ready when delays happen. So allow for some breathing room when planning your project or task and schedule wisely. Be sure to identify all dependencies, needed resources, benchmarks, goals, and needed key information. Incorporate them into a workable schedule.

With these tips, I hope you never miss another project deadline. Do you have tips to share? Let me know in the comments. As always, remember to: Stay Humble, Hustle Hard. Good luck!

Written by Jaie O.- The Help

As the cliche goes: the only thing constant in life is change. We go through it all the time. It is how we grow.  For example, we are not the same person we were yesterday. Nor are we the same person we were an hour ago, a minute ago. We know we must embrace change as part of growth.

In our career, we all go through change like babies go through diapers – sometimes messy and always needed. A lot of changes happen in the course of one’s career: job changes, workload changes, career shifts, role changes, management changes etc. Let’s talk about a change in management – specifically those that we did NOT sign up for.

We spend almost ⅓ of our lives at work and changes at work are among those that have an overly huge impact in our lives. Most of them big changes that in the long run benefit us for the better, while some of  them are changes that are so small, we won’t be able to notice their impact. Some make us really think about the next few chapters in our life. Changes that are so major that they shake, rattle, and affect all aspects of your life. Changes that you do not agree with. For example, what do you do when your new boss is someone you know you can not work with?

First off, you have to look introspectively and be really honest with yourself. Is this a major hurdle to your career? Would it be something that you can work with, something you can manage? What are the reasons why you think this change would not work? Be really specific here. It could be that you do NOT trust this new leader, or you do not think he or she is competent enough. Next, rate your reasons. Is trust an absolute deal breaker or can you work with and around the issues? File your reasons under negotiable and non-negotiable.

If you find that you are willing to give the new leadership a shot (hopefully, not quitting your job trumps your issues with change management) then have a plan in place to help yourself counter the demotivation and gain workplace momentum.

Give change a chance and work more closely with your new boss. Try to understand the way they work and give them insights into the way you work. If you find that they clash, be pragmatic about it. Clashing work styles are not a bad thing – on the contrary, both you and your boss get to see a different perspective, another way of doing things. Take the lessons and leave the conflict.

Make sure that they are on board with your work goals. Tell them early on what you want to achieve and what they can expect from you. In return, let them know what you expect from their leadership, for they too have a responsibility in your career growth. Much like you want to support your boss and your company’s goals, he or she too should be able to support your career goals.

Nothing in any HR manual in the world prohibits you from managing your boss as much as they manage you. So learn how to manage your boss. There is only ONE person who is ultimately responsible for your career – that person is YOU. Until next time: Stay Humble, Hustle Hard. Good luck!

Written by Jaie O. – The Help