Welcome to Friday Favorites—a weekly curation of reflections, resources, and invitations on leadership and life. Thank you for being here! If this email was forwarded to you, or if you'd like to invite a friend to subscribe, you'll find the sign-up link here, or anywhere on the Zing Collaborative website. Much gratitude.
Good Morning, Happy Friday, and Welcome!
(whether you are joining us for the first time this week, or whether you've been here awhile…)
This week, we'll consider ways to create margin within our work and our lives.
For example. . .
Rather than scheduling meetings back to back so that we end one meeting at the top of the hour and then start our next meeting at the very same moment, can we give ourselves 15 minutes between meetings? Or, even better 30, so that we have time to capture our follow-ups and maybe even take care of a few of them before our next meeting?
When promising a deliverable to a client, can we suggest a due date of 8 am Monday rather than 5 pm Friday, just in case we need the weekend to give it a final review, with fresh eyes?
And, when mapping out our project schedule for the year, could we plan for a couple of days between projects so that we can recap and regroup and mentally transition from one project to another?
Perhaps we create margin by aiming to arrive five or ten minutes early to appointments.
Or by telling ourselves that we need 30 minutes to commute, even if the drive only technically takes 17.
Margins allow us to breathe a bit. To exhale. To pause and to think. To avoid operating as the Tasmanian Devil Leader that you may have read about in Expansive Impact (and that I will admit, I’ve certainly been in the past).
What do you think?
Is there anything you do that supports you in creating margins within your work or your life?
If you’d like, feel free to reply and share. It is always a pleasure to hear from you.
With that, we will move on to this week’s list of favorites below.
Have a wonderful weekend ahead. Thank you for being here, for reading, and for being part of this community.
With Appreciation,
Sarah
PS: If you are looking to develop your team of managers and leaders, there are a couple of new ways for us to work together as of 2022, including a new hybrid (digital + live) experience. If you're curious about possibilities for your team or to explore the structure that might work best for your specific situation, please feel free to drop me a note.
For a different perspective from a lot of what we're seeing currently.
What do you think? And, have you ever worked in this type of culture (or do you, currently)?
"But, we’ll only ever get out what we put in. And in the case of work life, it is kind of a collective decision. Once your neighbor starts signing off Slack at 3:30 consistently, it’s hard not to do the same. If your closest collaborators don’t turn stuff around quickly, why would you? If there’s no one in the room agitating for doing that extra copy pass to punch up that blog post, why not just ship the meh version and use the extra time for a jog or a drink with friends? The path of least resistance is right in front of us, and we are taking it.
I’m all for creating healthy boundaries that keep us satisfied and emotionally healthy—inside and outside of work. And of course I believe you can love something without it having to hurt. But I’ve never truly loved anything that didn’t move me to my core. I can’t help but wonder if all this effort we’re putting into keeping work at arm’s length is actually holding us back from being our best selves."
There were a couple of nuggets within this episode, including something along the lines of: “People think that great relationships are about knowing what the other person is thinking; great relationships are about having strong communication.”
If you're not really a sunscreen person and are looking for something that doesn't look or feel like sunscreen, SuperGoop Unseen is pretty magical and does live up to the hype.
Thank you, Lindsay, for first telling me about this!
If anyone wants to try it and you'd like a $10 coupon, feel free to drop me a note; it looks like it can only be sent directly via email (rather than via a link).
“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order—willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living.”
― Annie Dillard
What is one area in which I could create a bit more margin within my life?
What is one specific way in which I could create more margin within my days?
What could it look like to give myself the gift of 15 or 30 minutes between meetings, so that I'm not late for my next meeting before it even begins?
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