Author Archives: kate

Jun10

How to Stop Being a Workplace Doormat

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How to Stop Being a Workplace Doormat

Imagine you are sitting at your desk, hard at work on today’s reports and daily tasks, trying to finish your self-imposed work deadlines by the end of the working day. A colleague saunters on to your desk and “cheerfully” asks you to “help” do something that isn’t on your task list or even remotely your priority. In fact, this is something that your colleague has to be doing themselves, but for some reason, they need your expertise, and they need it now.

When you work at an office, there will always be interruptions, it’s just inevitable. Most of the time, we don’t mind being interrupted and gladly welcome a quick break. If it’s just a small favor and an easy one, I’m sure most people won’t mind helping out a colleague. However, if you’re working as an assistant some people will see you as a shared resource and would capitalize on the fact that you have access to any and all resources in the office. Some are even annoyingly in your face, asking you to simply do the work that they should be doing themselves. How do you deal with colleagues who think you are their assistant when you’re just clearly not?

Stop helping them:
You are reinforcing bad (and very lazy) behavior by trying to “help them out.” Clearly one of you is relying heavily on the other to do their job. If they keep asking you for help, remember that NO is a full sentence. Don’t promise to help them, out some other time.

Here are a few helpful and tactful answers you can use for “can you help me with this?”
• Sorry but I am busy with tasks for (executive/client/customer/boss) and I won’t be able to handle your request.
• What are the things you have tried so far?
• I am on a tight deadline and won’t be free to work with you on that anytime soon.
• I can’t help with that right now.
• Can you ask (suggest the name of the expert)? I’m sure they’d be happy to help you.
• Sorry but I’m working on a priority project and need to focus on this for the next few (days/weeks/months).

Set expectations:
Make sure it is clear that you are an Executive Assistant or an assistant to this and that client, and not a general office assistant – which means that you are not there to serve them with work that they are paid to do by themselves. You answer to one person and are there to assist this person strategically. If you spend your time, shuffling between your immediate task and trying to help others finish theirs, you are not maximizing valuable time helping your boss or client become more successful. You are also doing your colleagues a disservice by not letting them learn new skills on their own. Your refusal to do their work is a teaching opportunity, not a selfish move.

Seek a meeting with your executive, boss or client:
Sometimes we are too careful to come across as snarky – and we’re careful about our image at the office. Nobody wants to be portrayed as the bad guy. If you can’t confront your colleagues or have a hard time saying no, you can enlist the help of your executive, boss, or client. Explain that your colleagues or that the team is going to you as a resource person for their individual projects and task and that “helping them out” is taking a lot of your time that would have otherwise been spent working on your priority projects. Check with your boss if they agreed that this is an okay practice. In most cases, your boss would have no idea that this is happening – this will give you more leverage to push back. If a colleague gets pushy, you can refer them back to your boss.

It’s time to set clear boundaries so that you get to do what you love and not live your life pleasing others. What is your go-to pushback line? Share them with us in the comments. Stay humble, hustle hard.

Written by Jaie O. The Help

Jun3

How to be more confident even if you don’t really feel like it

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How to be more confident even if you don’t really feel like it

We all get a bad case of the nerves sometimes. I’d say, probably just before a presentation, an interview, or a public speaking engagement, is when you need a sudden boost of confidence the most. While confidence is a really great personality trait to have, we don’t need this superpower all the time. But it’s great to know that you have it when the situation calls for it. So here are 5 tips to boost your confidence on days when you really need it.

Be your own hype man.
According to Wikipedia “a hype man/hype gall, in hip hop music and rapping, is a backup rapper and/or singer who supports the primary rappers with exclamations and interjections and who attempts to increase the audience’s excitement with call-and-response chants [1]”. That’s how you should talk to yourself. No, seriously. Talk to yourself in your head (or out loud if you want to). Tell yourself that you’ve got this! You’ll do great at this presentation! You’ll nail this report! You’ll give an awesome and empowering speech! You need these validations in order to get yourself into a more confident state of mind. Whatever you do, avoid the negative talk.

Be conscious of your body language
Do a power pose before a presentation or a speech. You know how superheroes have their hands on their hips, their feet apart and their chest out as they proclaim that they’re here to save the day? Do your own power pose. When you walk up to the front, have confident and steady strides. Don’t slouch. Keep your posture proper and your head held up. Get some tips from Amy Cuddy’s Ted Talk on Power Posing. Stand tall and smile.

Imagine your audience
Take a look at your audience and imagine what they’re like. We fear being judged more so than we fear to give a bad presentation. But if you think about it, most of the time your audience reserves any judgment until after you finish your presentation. People are usually friendly and respect others who step out of their comfort zones. They are not the ones holding you back, you are.

Visualize the end
Imagine people clapping after you give your speech. Imagine yourself celebrating for a job well done. Imagine your audience learning something new from the report you just gave. Imagine the most optimum results that you can get and keep that thought in your head. It will give you the confidence to get through the presentation.

Come prepared
This is probably the most important step of them all. 100% of the time, lack of confidence stems from being unprepared. Being armed with skills, knowledge, and expertise to back you up is the best way to feel confident. When you know that you have mastered your speech or your presentation and that you can answer any question thrown your way, you know you’ve got this!

What is your confidence boosting tips? Share them with us in the comments. Stay humble and hustle hard.

Written by Jaie O. The Help

May28

How not to need a vacation after being on vacation

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How not to need a vacation after being on vacation

The long weekend is over and so are the days of lounging on a recliner chair while binge-watching a recently concluded Netflix series. Even though you wish that the food, fun, and festivities would never end, it’s back to work for most of us.

Going back to work shouldn’t be a dreaded thing. Sure, we all wish the long weekend would draw out longer, but the thought of an exploding inbox and looming work deadlines is enough to make you have anxiety attacks over what is supposed to be a holiday break. You’re supposed to be enjoying the long weekend and not counting down the hours till it’s over.

Here, let me help you ease back into the work week coming from the holiday break. I have 3 tips for you.

Schedule a cushion.
You need some time to ease back into your groove thang. If you can take another day off for a 1-day extension of your holiday break, then do that. If you can’t afford to take an extra day off, then wind down a few hours earlier so you can relax and get your work mindset on. Do something relaxing like taking a long bath or baking a treat. These and similar activities will give you a few hours to chill and take your mind off impending work for a while.

Once you get back to work, don’t dive into a major project right away. Give yourself time to get back into a sense of normalcy. Start with small tasks, then work your way up.

Take yourself back with a souvenir
Avoiding a burnout can be as simple as reminiscing. If you have something to remember your vacation by, then you can take a quick mental break by going back to that place. Pictures, souvenirs, or even scents can take you back to your vacation. You may find that essential and diffuser oils come in handy when taking you back to a place. I have one friend who, whenever she’s on vacation, ask the spa where they’re getting a massage what scent is diffusing in the background and asks to buy a small bottle of it.

Take mini breaks
Do not go into full beast mode at work right after you get back from break. If you’re the boss, nobody likes a slave driver. If you’re an employee, you’re going to work yourself to the ground and face a burnout. Like I said earlier, the trick is to ease into it slowly. People don’t expect you to be caught up in one day. Take mini breaks. Ask around for updates on existing projects. Ask about news on pipeline projects. Get as much information and updates as you can before you die head first into work.

What about you? What are your tips for easing back into work from a vacation? We’d love for you to share them with us in the comments. Remember to stay humble and hustle hard.

Written by Jaie O. The Help

May20

How to use lists to train your brain to be more productive

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How to use lists to train your brain to be more productive

Aaah, the joys of checking off all the tasks on your checklist is comparable to the feeling of success. Don’t you feel accomplished after being able to cross things off of a list? It makes you feel like you’ve made it and that you’ve got it together, doesn’t’ it?

All of us use lists to track down work projects and personal projects – especially since most of those involve many moving parts or other people. The most important reason why this work is because it serves as a central “command center” to keep you organized and on task.

Why do lists work?
List works because they break a project down into smaller goals. Smaller goals are inherently short term. If you’re going for S.M.A.R.T. goals, the list already takes care of the specific, measurable, and time-bound part of it. It’s now up to you to take care of the attainable and realistic part in S.M.A.R.T.

How can we use it to train our brain?
Whenever we experience success, even if it is in small doses, our beautiful and amazing brain releases dopamine – a chemical that is both hormone and neurotransmitter often connected to a feeling of pleasure, reward, and motivation. The release of dopamine whenever we complete a task facilitates “self-directed learning”. This is why we strive to keep repeating the same actions that drive us towards success.

Once we are positively motivated, we learn to take the same actions to get the same feeling over and over. Now, back to checking things off of our list. We feel a sense of accomplishment whenever we cross or tick things off of our list, right? That’s because our brain releases dopamine to help us feel good. If the goal is to cross as many things off the list, our brain rewards us every time we do so with the feel-good chemical. This ‘motivates’ us to keep doing what we’re doing to achieve positive results. It now becomes a habit.

Get into the habit of creating lists
You can use your smartphone for this. With apps like Google Keep, Google Tasks, Trello, etc. All of these have checklist functions that you can build on or even share with others. Or if you’re old school, good old trusty pen and paper will do. Just make sure that your list has all the important details of your task. For example, you can write down ‘go to the grocery store’ on your to-do list but a better way would be to write ‘go to the grocery store to get cleaning supplies’ and then proceed to list the cleaning supplies down. Makes more sense, right?

What about you? Do you like having lists written down or do you prefer to use mobile apps to keep your lists? What are the apps that you use? Care to share them with us in the comments? Always remember to stay humble and hustle hard.

Written by Jaie O. The Help

May15

The perils of multitasking and how it reduces your work efficiency

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The perils of multitasking and how it reduces your work efficiency

Did you know that multitasking hurts your brain and sacrifices your effectiveness at work? We are all proud of our ability to multitask. Hell, it even holds a special place in our resumes, since it has been long touted as one of the skills that could get people hired. Don’t get me wrong, it is an awesome skill to have. Especially since we’re living in a world full of constant distractions – an inbox full of emails, pings of text and instant messages, post its, multiple open tabs, and free work lunches. Every and all things are constantly vying for our attention. And how to manage our time attending to all of them is one very big challenge

Sure, you can take care of all of it, all at once, right now. Sure! However…you might feel that you’re doing more – and you are – but you are actually getting fewer things done in the long run. So how do you streamline your workload, become more productive, and manage your time well enough to knock out some of the bigger stuff that you should absolutely be focusing on, all while being more efficient at your job? Well, first you stop multitasking and focus on one task at a time!

Here’s the science:
The brain cannot effectively switch between tasks since it takes the brain four times longer to recognize new things when you’re multitasking or doing tasks all together at the same time. Have you ever tried listening to a training video while encoding data into your company CRM? Well, how did that work out for you? I bet it didn’t. You wouldn’t be able to focus. Multitasking actually costs you time – which is the time you don’t have – that’s why you were trying to do them all at the same time in the first place, right? Studies also show that you have a much lower retention rate when multitasking, which is bound to cause you to make mistakes. And mistakes cost time – time to identify and rectify.

So what should you do?

  1. Take quick breaks from your screen, both at work and at home. This exercise forces you to:
    ○ Stop keeping your work screen in the background when you’re doing deep work like studying, thinking, analyzing, etc.
    ○ Stop using your TV screen as background noise when you’re resting recuperating, or relaxing.
    ○ Social media counts as a screen, so take a break from this as well. Don’t use your break time to check social media – I know it’s hard but if I can do it, so can you. You know how those cat videos and plant photos on Instagram are a huge time sucker.
  2. Avoid answering emails when you’re doing the bulk of your deep focus work – it won’t be the end of the world if an email gets unanswered for 45mins, if it’s urgent they’ll ping you. Which leads me to… keep your messaging apps muted. They are a distraction that you can’t afford while working.
  3. Schedule your day – plan your days around meetings and get your to-do list organized for the day + 2 days after. This will give you the flexibility to move things around and help you identify which tasks you need to focus on and which have to absolutely get done right away.

How about you, what are your tips on how to stop multitasking and focusing on deep work? Share them with us in the comments. Stay humble and hustle hard.

Written by Jaie O. The Help