Min Work Max Life

Work sucks, drop the dread, read the blog

Tuesday mornings, you'll gain useful knowledge and an actionable tip to minimize the negative effects of work so you can maximize your life, all in less than 5 minutes

Join today

No Spam

Self-Presentation cognitive readiness social intelligence Mar 20, 2024

Bernie and Emily were fighting again.

They each wanted to solve the current problem in a different way. Their way. Bernie threw out phrases like: “This is the way we’ve always done it.” And, Emily would replay: “In my last company, they did it better.”

Drew felt the...

Continue Reading...
Empathy cognitive readiness emotional intelligence Mar 06, 2024

When Mario got to his desk he slammed his bag on the chair and bashed the spacebar to wake up his computer.

His boss, Dale, came over to see what was up. Mario explained the car accident, how the jerk sped up to cut him off, and how much yelling there was when they traded insurance info.

Dale...

Continue Reading...
Mental Flexibility cognitive intelligence cognitive readiness Feb 21, 2024

This team goes through a lot of shoes.

They had to. The amount of shuffling they do, moping around the office, head down, shoulders hunched, they have to be wearing holes in the soles of every pair of shoes they wear to work.

The energy in the office wasn’t why I was asked to help. I was...

Continue Reading...
Multitasking attentional focus cognitive readiness Feb 07, 2024

It’s the start of your day.

So, you check on your emails. You’ve cleaned up quite a few with responses, deletes, and folder moves.

Next you jump back on the presentation that needs to be done by the end of the day. You’ve typed a few more slides, found a couple of good pictures,...

Continue Reading...
Relationship Management cognitive readiness social intelligence Jan 24, 2024

“The sales department sucks.”

That was the first sentence out of Paige’s mouth. Paige was tasked with improving the relationship between her engineering department and the company’s sales department. There was a bit of tension there.

This task trickled its way down from...

Continue Reading...
Self-Regulation cognitive readiness emotional intelligence Jan 10, 2024

“This is ridiculous!” Yelled the man at the end of the meeting table.

His outburst silenced the room. His colleague suggested we take a fifteen minute break. As we walked out, my colleague smirked.

About two hours earlier, on the drive to the client’s office, my colleague was...

Continue Reading...
Automaticity cognitive intelligence cognitive readiness Dec 13, 2023

The steering wheel was dripping wet.

Today was too much. Emily had to let it all out. Luckily she made it to her car, but she wasn’t able to drive away just yet. Hopefully, no one sees her.

Emily is the leader of a large department, and the one aspect of her job that she hates the most is...

Continue Reading...
Metacognition attentional focus cognitive readiness Nov 29, 2023

Charlie had his typical Monday morning, two reoccurring meetings back-to-back.

The first was his department’s update meeting. Plenty of words, lots of talking, and a big spreadsheet lighting the room from the projector. After that, on to the second meeting for one of his ongoing projects....

Continue Reading...
Active Listening cognitive readiness social intelligence Nov 15, 2023

You could hear the eyes roll from everyone in the room.

Keith just entered the meeting. Everyone knew what that meant.

The meeting progressed, the project lead did a great job of moving it along, keeping everyone on task, and documenting the ideas. People felt good about the action items and...

Continue Reading...
Self-Awareness cognitive readiness emotional intelligence Oct 18, 2023

What is it about famous stories like Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, or The Lion King? What makes them stand the test of time? How can people of all generations watch these stories and all enjoy them?

Because these are stories of self awareness.

How many people feel as though they're just...

Continue Reading...
Transfer of Training cognitive intelligence cognitive readiness Oct 04, 2023

You’ve got to be kidding me!

We just crossed over the 5 minute mark of his story, and this is all I was thinking.

Another department manager asked me for some help. He was having some trouble with two employees, who weren’t getting along, and he desperately needed me to hear out his...

Continue Reading...
Situational Awareness attentional focus cognitive readiness Sep 20, 2023

“The office feels empty”, Rachel thought to herself. “Oh well, maybe a lot of folks are just out.”

In fact the whole week felt empty with fewer interruptions than normal. That’s not too bad, she got a lot done and was feeling good going into the weekend.

As the day...

Continue Reading...
1 2 3