Surge Protectors and being Overloaded (1-12-22)

Last week was about finding our word/phrase to be our NorthStar. This week is about surge protectors and protecting ourselves from being overloaded.

I’m assuming you have a surge protector or two at home. Surge protectors are often used to protect certain appliances from becoming fried from a power surge. Mine is connected to my tv and computer. At the most basic level, the surge protector works by either blocking the surge or by reducing the voltage to a point where it doesn’t damage the device it is protecting.

You might be wondering what this has to do with anything. I don’t know about you, but 2021 was another wild year and there was a lot of hardcore sprinting that last month with personal travel, holiday stress, work travel, putting in a lot of hours to finish up projects, and handling life stuff. I had the last two weeks of December off, and I struggled to recharge for the first week. I realized I was fried. I had ran so hard for so long that I was having issues recovering. I wish that I would have had a personal surge protector throughout the year to keep me from getting overloaded.

With all that in mind, I’m looking at 2022 and the chaos will continue (see what I did there 😉). I’ve been back for 1.5 weeks. I already have too many emails, too many meetings, and more than enough important work to do. Sound familiar? Life is going to continue to be busy and who knows what will happen with Omicron. I’m beginning to see that if I’m not careful, I’m going to jump back into the madness and get overwhelmed again by another power surge. Does anyone else feel this way? I know if I don’t pause right now and set up what I need to avoid being overloaded, I’m just going to get burnt out again. I need to take the time to install a personal surge protector.

Challenge 1: How can you build your own personal surge protector to keep you from getting fried?

Challenge 2: If you’re a leader with official power and authority, what are you SPECIFICALLY doing to create an environment where people won’t be overloaded?

Bonus thoughts: Here are some things I’m doing to build my personal surge protector.

Invested the time (2-3 hours) to organize my work. This included sifting through my long to-do list to identify priorities and confirm them with my boss. Also thought through what needs to be delivered, when, and what quality is required. Then, I created project plans. If things are turned into clear tasks, I can invest energy in knocking out the tasks vs. being overwhelmed with trying to sort everything out. (#organizethepantry)
Invested the time in setting up my personal and professional work calendars to ensure my time is spent on the right things.
I booked my vacation time and planned out my race schedule for the years, so I have things to look forward to.
Started talking to my wife about the boundaries we should consider putting into place for our time and activities to make things a bit easier for our family.

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Centrifugal Force, Merry-Go-Rounds, and Slowing Life Down (3-27-19)

Last week was about Newton’s laws of motion and moving people. This week we will stick with motion and reflect on centrifugal force, merry-go-rounds, and slowing life down.

I’m assuming that at one-point in all of our lives we have ridden on a merry-go-round or some kind of ride that spins you around in circles. Before the ride begins, we are stationary. As the ride starts to spin slowly, we initially don’t move too much from the center of the ride. However, as the ride picks up more speed, a force acts on us pushing us away from the center of the merry-go-round/ride and to the edges of the ride. The force that acts on us is centrifugal force. The bottom line is that the faster the thing is spinning the more the force works to push you to the outside, away from the center. If you want to get to the center, you need to find a way to slow things down.

You might be wondering where this is going. In many ways we spend our lives on an invisible merry-go-round balancing work, life, and everything that comes our way. Much like a merry-go-round, we have a center, where we are balanced, focused, and plugged into the things that matter most. The tricky thing is that unlike a merry-go-round, life never stops spinning (while we are living). This means that we always have some force pushing us away from our center. As life spins faster, we get further away from our center and lose focus.

What we often fail to realize is that we have the power to speed life up or slow life down. Have you ever been around a person who took something small and turned it into a huge deal spinning everything out of control? Have you ever been that person? I have. This is an example of taking something and speeding it up, further pushing us away from our center and making life difficult. On the opposite end, there are times when life has been going really fast and I’ve been able to say, “Does all of this actually matter? Is all of this really important?” (The answer is that 95% of things aren’t important.) Pausing to breathe and ask those questions has a powerful impact on slowing life down enough to where you can get closer to your center.

The challenge: On the merry-go-round of life, will you take the time to slow things down to get back to center?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Running and Homeostasis (6-28-17)

This week I’d like to kick off a series inspired by the miraculous wonder that is the human body. Over the next few blog entries I’ll use my basic understanding of the way our bodies work to draw some parallels to life. We’ll start this series by thinking about homeostasis and running. Please don’t report my writings with medical. They already know I’m not on their level 😉

I run. Actually, I more or less trample across moderate distances. My goal whenever I run is to survive the first 30 minutes. If I can make it that long then I can usually get in a good 60 minutes without too much additional difficulty. I believe the reason this happens is because the body is always trying to find a state of homeostasis, a balance or rhythm if you will. When I run I introduce activities that disrupt the balance I had sitting on the couch. This makes my body work really hard until it can get back into the rhythm of doing things.

Let me give you a play by play if my body could talk whenever I go out on a run. First, I get ready and I do a walking warm-up. My body is all like, “Wait a minute. We were comfortable where we were. We had everything figured out. Now he’s on the move. This isn’t too bad though.” After a short warm-up walk I begin jogging and my body starts by saying, “Oh, this is funny. He’s running. He’s not serious about this, is he? I mean, the dude runs like a baby hippo. He can’t run for too long, right?” After about 5 minutes my body is screaming at me, “What are you doing? Are you an idiot? Running sucks! We were just fine hanging out before. This takes effort. This is ugly.” Eventually my body decides that it’s actually going to run for a while, so then it starts barking orders like it’s a sinking ship under attack by pirates, “Release the adrenaline. Raise the heart rate. Get his legs more energy now!” My body continues that cycle for the first 30 minutes and then all of a sudden my body says, “Hey, now we got the rhythm. You’re good. Just keep going. You got this!”

You’re probably wondering how this connects to work. At work I think we are always trying to maintain some kind of homeostasis, some kind of rhythm. The problem is that this rhythm gets disrupted all the time. I don’t know about you, but whenever I start work on anything new it’s ugly. Maybe it’s a new role. Maybe it’s a new project. Maybe it’s a draft of a blog. Whatever it is, it’s slow moving. It’s clunky. I feel uncoordinated and like I don’t know what I’m doing. This is kind of like my first 30 minutes of running. Before I started the project I was in a form of homeostasis and that got all messed up when I started stretching myself in new directions. After a while, I begin to get into the flow of things and then things start to fall into place and become easier. Sure it still requires effort, but by that time I’m at least in some kind of a rhythm. Do you ever feel like this? The main reason I bring this up is because if you’re in the beginning clunky phase it’s easy to get frustrated and think it will never get better. It’s easy to want to stop, because you feel this ugly work isn’t going to go anywhere. This is when we all need to take a deep breath and remember that in this phase we are in the first 30 minutes of our run, and if we can just gut it out for a little bit longer things will finally start to go smoother.

The challenge: Can you gut it out for those “first 30 minutes”? Here’s to us being okay with being a little clunky until we hit our stride 😉

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Yoga, Success, and Balance (3-25-15)

This week is also about self-reflection, but is more focused on maintaining success. This week’s blog is inspired by a colleague, her love of yoga, and some conversations we have had.

The reason I said maintaining success in the above paragraph is that anyone can achieve success once in a while. The key is to maintain a level of success. One thing that gets in the way of this is that people often talk about success like it is a final destination. We talk about success and reaching the next level. We talk about it like one day we will finish climbing a mountain or achieve something and shout to the stars, “I have arrived!” Then, since we are in the land of success we will stroll in a lush valley and life will remain like this forever. The problem is that it doesn’t work like that. We don’t maintain success by just arriving.

Actually, maintaining success is like doing yoga. Have you ever done yoga? I’m not going to lie. When I first started seeing people do that stuff, I thought, “How hard can doing stretches be? Look at those people just standing still in tree pose or whatever. That’s can’t be hard.” And then I tried it and now I consider surviving the workout a major accomplishment. I soon discovered that when you do a yoga pose you are not standing still. You are not stagnant. Instead, your body is constantly recalibrating in both large and small ways. I understand that being good at yoga requires a combination of strength, flexibility, and control. The result of exercising strength, flexibility, and control is balance. Balance is not a stagnant state of being. Balance is a state of constant movement and change. Likewise, maintaining success is not a stagnant state of being. Maintaining success is about consistently making adjustments.

Take a look in the mirror. Are you consistently making those adjustments?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry