Skills - The Institute of You

How To Create A Mind Map (+ Examples)

Marion Tilly — Sat, 05 Jan 2019 11:59:39 +0000

The Institute of You
How To Create A Mind Map (+ Examples)

Writing is one of the best methods to learn something, whether it is taking notes or gathering information about one topic in one single place. Writing is always an amazing method for self-coaching and self-reflection. It gives you space to think more about it, go back to it, edit it, and it also gives a physical aspect to your mental processes.

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I want to introduce you to a tool that will change the way you write down ideas and that has many different applications: mind mapping.

What is a mind map and what does it look like?

Credit: mindmeister.com

A mind map is a graphic representation of your thinking. It is usually composed of three mains elements:

A central image (or a word) that captures the main subject
Branches are then added to this image and represent the main themes that flow from this image
Subsidiary themes are added to each branch to further develop their meaning

Mind maps are a combination of words, images and drawing, colors, emphasis and spacing to create a two-dimensional system that visually represents the subject. Here is an example of a mind map explaining the rules of mind mapping:

Credit: The Mind Map Book

You can see here that the author started with the image of a Swiss knife, representing what they think of mind mapping. They added different branches, all of them about the important rules of mind mapping. They are labeled with words and small images. Each branch has a different color and starts with a thicker size, showing the importance of the item in the hierarchy of the mind map.

Mind maps will give you clarity and help you organise thoughts, take a decision, self-reflect, study and learn, set up goals or even keep a diary/agenda. You’ll find below some examples of application.

Examples of mind maps

Credit: Jane Genovese

Credit: mindmapart.com

Credit: Lars Soderberg, The Mind Map Book

Credit: The Mind Map Book

Credit: Jayne Cormie

More tips to get the most of your mind map

Do your mind map in landscape format to be able to put in as much as you want and have a clear vision.
Use colourful pens, highlighters, pencils.
Start in the middle with the initial idea, and go by instinct after that – trust the process and your brain to come up with the most relevant words or images.
Draw if you feel like it, or use stickers!
Don’t be afraid of “copying” other mind maps and get inspired by what others did, especially for the first one. It will be easier to do if you see what it looks like for other people.
Find a space and an environment where you can focus on it without being interrupted. It can be a quiet room or a busy café, whatever works for you.
There is no right or wrong answer. Just be creative!
Complete the mind map in several instances. I personally find it useful to take a break, do other things to change my mind, and go back to it. Review your work after a few hours, a few days, even a few weeks.
Make it impactful and useful for YOU.

Now go on and start yours! Think about a topic you want to explore, or see below for some inspiration:

What do I want to change and how?
Who am I?
What are my 2019 resolutions?
What x means to me? (where x can be fitness, health, relationships, work, etc.)
What are my goals?
How to be more/less x?
What do I want to start/stop/continue doing?

Sources & other resources

Buzan, T., & Buzan, B. (2007). The Mind Map Book. London: BBC Active.
The Ultimate Mind Mapping Software. https://www.imindq.com/
Mind Maps, GoConqr – https://www.goconqr.com/en/mind-maps/

How To Create A Mind Map (+ Examples)
The Institute of You

A Simple And Effective Way To Improve Decision Making

Marion Tilly — Tue, 12 Jun 2018 14:22:41 +0000

The Institute of You
A Simple And Effective Way To Improve Decision Making

Have you ever been in a meeting where no one would agree on a decision? Have you ever struggled to understand why a colleague or someone in your life was always thinking about specific situations in the same patterns, very different than yours? This happened to me more than a few times, and even with the whole empathy in the world, these are moments where one simply wonders: “why is he/she making it more difficult?”

The truth is that everyone has experienced these situations. I remember group conversations where no consensus was found and we wasted one hour of our time talking without a purpose. There are also moments, to this day, where I am not sure I have seen all the ways I can explore a problem to solve it. This lack of knowledge makes me less confident about the choice to make, and as I result I choose not to take a decision. Today, I want to share with you a very useful tool to not only help you improve collaboration in meetings and projects, but also support you in making decisions with strength after having thought about a situation from different perspective. This tool is called the 6 Thinking Hats and it was developed by Edward de Bono, a psychologist who has taught in Oxford, Cambridge and Harvard, among other universities.

The 6 Thinking Hats

The background

This method facilitates collaboration and decision making by having everyone in the group think about the problem in the same way at the same time, and by changing this way of thinking several times to explore all the ways a problem can be approached. This is called parallel thinking as the thoughts of people do not get into conflict and friction with others’ point of view.

How do you do that? By visualising different hats that everyone will wear and that will conduct which way to think about the situation. Someone will own the agenda of the meeting (and will wear the blue hat) (metaphorically, of course) and will clearly establish which hat is being worn and for how long.

At the individual level, it reminds us to see a situation with other perspectives than the one we usually prefer to use.

The hats specifics

Each hat has a different focus:

White Hat: you focus on the available data. You look at the information that you have, analyze past trends, and see what you can learn from it. You look for gaps in your knowledge, and try to either fill them or take account of them. What are the facts?
Red Hat: you look at problems using your intuition, gut reaction, and emotion. You think how others could react emotionally and try to understand the responses of people who do not fully know your reasoning.
Black Hat: you look at a decision’s potentially negative outcomes. It’s the cautious and conservative approach. You try to see why it might not work to highlight the weak points in a plan. It allows you to eliminate them, alter them, or prepare contingency plans to counter them.
Yellow Hat: you think positively and seek the bright side. It is the optimistic viewpoint that helps you to see all the benefits of the decision and the value in it, and keeps you going when everything looks gloomy and difficult.
Green Hat: you develop creative solutions to a problem. It is a freewheeling way of thinking, in which there is little criticism of ideas.
Blue Hat: you look at the big picture and explore what the goal is, what’s the purpose. It’s the hat worn by people who manage the meeting to ensure the guidelines of the thinking hats are met.

De Bono’s website proposes the infographic below to summarise the approach each hat has on a same topic or situation:

How to apply it

1. Whether you are using this method in a group or for yourself, I would recommend to first prepare six pieces of paper with the different hats and their focus. You will be able to fold them, and pick them randomly. In a group setting, measure the time you have available for each hat. It will be easier if you use them for your own as you can decide for yourself.

2. Before starting, decide the goal for the discussion or exploration. What is the aim, the purpose? What do you want to achieve? Write it down.

3. For each hat, write down on a piece of paper or a whiteboard what your thought process is. At the end of the session, you will have six different processes which covered various perspectives of the situation.

4. Now go back to the goal you wrote down. Based on all the information you wrote down for each perspective and all the elements you collected, what appears to be the best decision to make? How do you know it’s the best decision? This will help you circle back the conversation to its original purpose.

Sources:

A Simple And Effective Way To Improve Decision Making
The Institute of You

How To Be Better At Receiving Negative Feedback

Marion Tilly — Mon, 02 Apr 2018 12:22:24 +0000

The Institute of You
How To Be Better At Receiving Negative Feedback

Learning how to receive negative feedback is one of the best things you could do for your personal and professional development. Praise and recognition are amazing, but the true gift that a colleague can give you is telling you where you can improve, and what you can do about it.

Unfortunately, not all negative feedback is constructive or focusing on the solution. But even when you receive comments that you don’t think are helpful, seek the truth behind them. They might not be true to you, but they are true to someone else.

Before receiving any feedback

1 | Change your mindset

There are two kinds of people in this world: people with a fixed mindset, and people with a growth mindset.

People with a fixed mindset give up when it becomes hard, or at the first failure. They tend to see the world in black or white (success versus failure, for instance). They don’t see growth opportunities as they are content with who they are.

People with a growth mindset see challenges as opportunities to learn and develop themselves. They acknowledge that they don’t know what they don’t know, so they try new things to discover more. They are resilient, and they actively listen to feedback to improve themselves.

Changing your fixed mindset to a growth mindset is the first thing you need to do before being able to receive any kind of negative feedback.

2 | Be proactive and work on your areas of development

Nobody is perfect. Perfection can be boring. Having areas of development is a gift, because it gives you direction, it gives you a goal, a purpose, something you can aim at. Assess where your strengths are, and what is holding you back. Be real. By being proactive, you will not be surprised by the feedback you hear, and will be more open to it.

During the conversation

3 | Have empathy

Understand what it takes for the person in front of you to give you that feedback. If it is harsh or not constructive, it might be because the person is not at ease but feels like it’s important to share it with you. They might have the best intention, but might not know how to talk to you about it. Put yourself in their shoes, and think about a time where you gave feedback to someone else, or wish you had but didn’t. How did you feel? Maybe stressed and nervous. There is no reason why the person now giving you the feedback feels any different.

4 | See the big picture

Where does this feedback fit in your performance? How does it impact your relationships at work? How will this area of development limit your professional growth or your career goals? It’s not just about the present, it’s also about your future opportunities.

5 | Be mindful of your breathing and how you feel

During the conversation, do a quick check-in to control your breath and see where you store your emotions. Not only will it help you develop your self-awareness, but it will also give you more control in your response.

6 | Listen to the words they use

We’ve seen above that sometimes negative feedback can be delivered in an nonconstructive way. Instead of focusing on the tone of the feedback, or what you think was said, remember the words they used. The actual words. Use some of the active listening techniques I previously shared on the blog.

7 | Don’t find excuses and don’t argue

Don’t fall in the trap of finding excuses, or playing the victim card. Avoid phrases like “it’s not my fault” or “it’s because of (insert name of someone else)”. The person giving you the feedback very likely doesn’t want to debate it with you. It’s not a battle to win, because it’s not a battle at all. Instead, ask questions.

8 | Ask questions

Whether the feedback is constructive or not, ask as many questions as possible. If you’re not satisfied with the way it is being delivered to you, find a way to make it worthy. What do you need to know about what’s being said to you? Ask the person in front of you how they would improve it, ask for their advice. Make it meaningful if it’s not.

9 | Thank the person, even if you don’t agree

Imagine a difficult conversation where you controlled your emotions, you understood the big picture, you put yourself in their shoes, you asked questions, and where you owned your mistake or weakness. That is being great at receiving negative feedback. Thank the person for what they just did to you (they have helped you improve), even if you still don’t agree with what was said. Remember, they shared their reality and their perception with you, and it means something.

Your work is not fully done though, and now that the conversation is over, there are a few more things you could do.

After receiving negative feedback

10 | Take notes of what was said to you

Immediately list the feedback that was given to you, and what you learned from it. When you write things down, you externalise your thoughts and help your mind process the information in a different way.

11 | Ask more information if needed

If questions come to you after the conversation, don’t be afraid of reaching out to the person for more information.

12 | Share the feedback with people you trust to get their opinion

Talk to people whose opinion you value to get their opinion on what was said to you. It’s important that you don’t go see people who will say what makes you happy, but people who care so much for you that they will tell you the truth. You can ask them questions too on how they would tackle the situation and improve it.

13 | Create an action plan

This is one of the most important steps you can take, and definitely the one that will take the most time. Creating an action plan and revising it with time is crucial. Negative feedback will not be useful if you don’t take any action to improve it. The action plan can be elaborate or simple, as long as it’s clear, specific, and measurable (think SMART). It could be a table where you write down:

What to improve
How you will improve it
Why it matters to improve it
When you commit to complete the action
Who can support you to succeed
Who you are accountable to

14 | Followup with the person

When you have a chance, followup with the person to show how seriously you have taken your conversation and even what you want to achieve or what you have already done. This will likely mean a lot to them that they had an impact, even small, on you.

How To Be Better At Receiving Negative Feedback
The Institute of You

How To Coach Yourself Effectively In 9 Steps

Marion Tilly — Thu, 08 Feb 2018 19:29:55 +0000

The Institute of You
How To Coach Yourself Effectively In 9 Steps

Coaching acknowledges that everyone has the capability to achieve what they set their mind to is what drew me to coaching in the first place. Everyone has a potential, some of us have just enabled it more than others.

Another thing coaching taught me is that sustainable change only happens within. You might be told to do something and be successful at it for a while, but if you do not want to do it, chances are you won’t stick to it. You, and only you, decide what to do and not to do with yourself. Once you are aware of that, you will naturally shift your focus from trying to change others to better managing yourself. And a great way to do that is through self-coaching.

First, the foundation

To successfully coach yourself, there are a few things you first need to agree to.

Work on your self-awareness

There is absolutely no point in working on yourself alone if you are not aware of your reality. And by “reality”, I do not mean what you think you are or aren’t. It’s not about your perception of reality, but reality itself. Check the post on Emotional Intelligence to work on that.

Try to truthfully answer the questions below in the next 10 minutes:

What are your thoughts and beliefs? Why do you think what you think?
What are your values and how do you display them every day, regardless of how you feel?
What drives you?
Who are you?
What’s your purpose?
What do you feel, where do you feel it, and why?
What are your strengths? What drains your energy?
What can’t you do?
What’s going on inside of you?

If you can’t answer them quickly enough, there is absolutely no issue. It just means you might need to work a little more on your self-awareness. This series of articles might be a good starting point.

Be alone in a quiet space

It’s important that you set yourself for success by not being interrupted. You will start being in your thoughts and flow quite quickly. Distractions will break that cycle. Pick a quiet and comfortable place where you are alone. Leave your phone in another room. Tell people not to bother you. You need that moment with and for yourself.

Take (a lot of) notes

Take one of these pretty notebooks you bought one day but never used. Or take a few sheets of paper. Use a pen that is pleasant to write with. Have colored pens, highlighters, and post-its around so you can use all of them to organise your thoughts in writing if needed. The reason why writing is crucial is that your thoughts need to come out of your head. With a coach, you say things out loud to another person, which makes you accountable. When you are coaching yourself, let’s face it, it’s very unlikely that you will talk to yourself out loud. Having it in writing makes up for that lack of accountability. Whatever you thought of is there, in front of your eyes.

The step-by-step guide to self-coaching

Define your goal(s)

Answer this question: What’s your goal today?
Now answer: Anything else? – If you have several goals, it’s okay, write them too.
Then pick the one that is the most important to you today.
Sart probing yourself: Why is that goal important? What does it mean to you?

Work on your success criterias

Like in a real coaching session, once you’ve narrowed down your goal, list your success criterias for this self-coaching by answering these questions:

How will you know this self-coaching is successful?
How will you know you’ve achieved the goal?
What does success look like?

What you want here is to spend some time to write a specific goal (think SMART) that you’re going to reach at the end of the session. Once your goal is defined, kick-off the exploration with this question: What needs to happen?

Ask yourself the right questions

It’s about what questions you ask, and what they draw from you.

The form

This will be the hardest part and will require a bit of preparation beforehand. Leave this page open to guide you through the process but also find good questions, like:

Is there anything else about X?
Is there a relationship between X and Y?
What happens next?
What happens just before X?
Where could X come from?

Check these other questions and pick the ones you want. Go with your instinct.

The substance

Good questions will be the ones that draw thoughts from you, make connections within, increase self-awareness, make you deal with your emotions, empower you, and bring you closer to your goals. Nothing less, nothing more. Do not worry so much about how you phrase these questions, the most important is what you actually answer.

Repeat until it feels enough

Ask, answer, write, draw, ask, answer, write, draw, ask, answer, write, draw. You got it. Repeat until you’ve explored everything you could, and even more. You will know when it’s time to stop, that is when you have answered how to get to your goal based on your success criterias.

List the followup actions and summarise your learnings

When you feel like you’ve arrived to the end of the session and you have a clear idea on how to get where you want, take a moment to list all the action items you need to followup with in chronological order, starting by the one you need to do first. Add a deadline while you’re at it. Then go back to your notes to read them again. Is there anything you could add to your list of actions? What strikes you the most? What did you learn from this exercise? Take a moment to reflect on what you just did. You can be proud.

Share it with others. Or not. Do what you want.

One last optional step is to share the process of self-coaching or talk to your closest friends about what you are now so close to achieve. It will be another way to make yourself accountable. However, like in a coaching session, what is said (or written) is confidential, so you can keep it to yourself if you feel like it. There are no rules here. I would just advise you to keep the notes in a safe place where you can find them if needed. You decide the rest.

How To Coach Yourself Effectively In 9 Steps
The Institute of You

The Only Tips You’ll Need To Develop Your Active Listening Skills

Marion Tilly — Sat, 06 Jan 2018 07:24:12 +0000

The Institute of You
The Only Tips You’ll Need To Develop Your Active Listening Skills

Active listening is one of these skills that make communicating and connecting with others a lot easier.

When people want (or are told) to improve their communication style, they very often focus on being more diplomatic, more concise, less direct – everything related to how they express themselves (the outbound). How they listen (the inbound) is rarely under their radar. Yet you don’t communicate effectively, build strong relationships, and resolve conflict by talking your way out of it; you do it by listening attentively. Active listening is about listening for what the person actually says, rather than what you think they said. How do you do that? Follow the guide.

Before we dive into the topic, 3 obvious but essential tips

Be open-minded

Active listening goes hand in hand with open-mindedness. The former doesn’t happen without the latter. Before you work on your communication skills, you need to make sure you can listen in a genuine way. Are you judging people’s ideas and beliefs, or are you a “whatever floats your boat” kind of person? Do you accept that people have different opinions, or do you feel the need to convince them yours are the best? Active listening is not debating, so check your intentions first.

Don’t interrupt

I mean, this one really is obvious. But it’s not just about letting people finish what they want to say before you say something, it’s also not interrupting the silence the person uses to think and process information. We interrupt people every day unknowingly. Be mindful of that and think twice next time you want to finish someone else’s sentences.

Don’t make it about you

This is a big no-no. You can relate to what people say, but if your only answer is to talk about your own experience without being asked, you’re not doing active listening. Active listening is about the others, not about you. So instead of starting the sentence by “I”, ask questions.

Now the main tips

Make eye contact

It always starts with the body. You won’t be able to pay attention to what the person in front of you is saying if you do not look at them in the eye. It will make them at ease to talk to you, and it will make you “physically” focused on them. Once you have this external connection, the internal connection will happen and you will pay attention more quickly.

Look for key words and use them to ask questions

Once you are physically present, you can start the active listening part. In the conversation, the person in front of you will use key words that are crucial for you to notice and remember. This is where you don’t reply with a “me, myself and I” answer, but you either rephrase with their own words or ask a question.

What words does the person keep using?
Are these words different than the ones you would use?
What do they mean to the person in front of you?

Keep your assumptions to yourself but listen for presuppositions

Remember that active listening is not about you, so whatever you feel or think has no place in the conversation unless you are asked to share them. Avoid “I know what you mean” – do you? What makes you say that? Did you ask what it meant to them? If not, don’t say that.

Assuming you understand what the person is saying without asking about it, and/or sharing it without being invited to do so, is something I would recommend you to be very aware of and to keep to yourself.

Instead, listen for presuppositions the person is making, the things they tacitly assume or take for granted. Here are 4 of the main presuppositions people frequently do:

Modal operators of necessity (should, must, have to) and possibility (can, could, will, would)
- Example: “I should work out more”
- What you can do: ask questions around why the person feels like they should do something

Meaning: when A = B (to mean)
- Example: “she is going to take a vacation, which means I am going to have more work”
- What you can do: explore with the other person what other meanings it could have
Ordinal: numeric order or list (firstly, secondly, etc.)
- Example: “firstly I take the bus, secondly I walk to the office”
- What you can do: speak in list like the person in front of you
Cause – Effect: because, in order to, as a result, if… then
- Example: “he got a promotion because he is a friend of the manager”
- What you can do: ask questions around how they know that and explore other possibilities

If you listen for the key words they use, identify these common presuppositions, and listen for repetition, you will have plenty of things to ask the person about.

Practice mindfully everyday

If you’ve read my other articles, you should know that I very often finish with this tip. Practice makes perfect. You can start by listening to key words and presuppositions of people talking on the radio or TV. In conversations, you might find yourself checking in more on your active listening skills than on the other person at first. It’s okay! It will come more and more naturally as you get familiar with it. You’ll see people coming to you more, opening up to you. They will feel listened to, not just heard, which everyone craves for but very few can actually do.

Bonus question: how many presuppositions did I do in the last paragraph?

The Only Tips You’ll Need To Develop Your Active Listening Skills
The Institute of You

Ask More Questions

Marion Tilly — Fri, 22 Dec 2017 07:08:16 +0000

The Institute of You
Ask More Questions

You do not have to be a trained coach to start asking powerful questions. In fact, if you want to have an impact on your friends, family, and colleagues, it’s best to stop talking and start asking the right questions.

Knowing who takes decisions and who communicates

You first need to understand at any given time who is talking within yourself, and who is talking within others. And by “within”, I mean:

The head: our logical side, the should-shouldn’ts
The heart: our passion and feelings
The guts: our intuition and what past experiences tell us

If these three were always aligned, there wouldn’t be much need for coaching to exist. The reality is, at times they disagree. And when they do, a lovely internal conflict arises. The head knows, the heart feels, and the guts thinks but is unsure. Now imagine a “head” person talking to a “heart” person. This is not just internal conflict anymore, but proper misunderstanding.

Before you ask a question, think about its purpose, then ask your question

By quickly checking in with yourself on what it is that you’re trying to do, you will know where the question should come from.

Do you want an information? Ask with the head.
Do you feel like the person wants to talk about how they are doing? Ask with the heart.
If something is telling you there’s more behind what is being said, ask with the guts.

It is particularly useful for people who feel stuck and don’t know what to do with their life, when they find excuses, when they keep repeating unhealthy behaviours. If you ask a question with the head, you will get an answer from the head. For reflective people who spend a lot of time up there, they’ll just share what they already know. So instead of telling them what to do (that never works), help them explore from a different perspective.

Here’s a list you can start with

What is important for you?
What’s the purpose?
What does it mean to you?
What are you the most proud of?
How do you feel about (XYZ)?
What did you learn from (XYZ)?
What could you do differently next time?
What do you want to do about it?
What are you going to do first?
What do you want to achieve?
How do you want to get there?
What resources do you need? What else?
Who can support you?
What are your options?
What is under your control? What is out of your control?
What do you want to change?
What would you try now if you knew you could not fail?
What’s the worst that can happen, and how will you handle that?
What’s the first step you need to take to reach your goal?
What do you need in order to succeed?
What is stopping you from doing (XYZ)?
What does success look like?

Wait, which ones are from the head, the heart, and the gut?

That’s where my job stops and yours starts: you’ll see in the moment. It depends on many factors like how you are feeling, who is involved in the conversation, the context, the topic, etc. My only advice here is to connect wirh your body as the conversation goes: are you feeling something in your chest or in your stomach? It will be a good indicator of where the next question should come.

The more you practice, the easier it will get. Remember that it’s a skill to learn, not an innate ability. Good luck and happy questioning.

Ask More Questions
The Institute of You

11 Tips To Be More Productive At Work

Marion Tilly — Thu, 30 Nov 2017 22:41:26 +0000

The Institute of You
11 Tips To Be More Productive At Work

Have you ever felt like 8 hours were not enough to finish all the tasks you were assigned to or wanted to complete in a day? Some periods of the year are just hectic. Have you felt like this for months on end though? In that case, the issue could be how you organise your time, prioritise, and how much you think you can actually take on. So what can you do to be more in control again? Here are 11 tips I hope you will find useful.

1. Delegate more

Okay first, do you have to do all the things you’re doing right now? Can you ask for help? Can others take care of some of the tasks you’re supposed to do? They might be happy to take on more responsibilities, you will empower them, and you will be able to progress on other things. Don’t be a control freak. Trust your colleagues.

2. Avoid paper, use Evernote or Google Keep for monthly to-do lists

If you’re a paper person, try to give a chance to Evernote or Google Keep. You will be able to access your notes from anywhere if needed, including from home (see tip #6), without having to carry a notebook. What do you do when you forget it? Start a new notebook or write on post-its? You’ll end up with a drawer full of half-empty notepads and old stickies all over the place (like the old me). I tried Evernote a few times in the past but never managed to keep it updated. I created one note per topic which meant I had to update many every week. Over a year ago, I changed the way I was using it. I started doing monthly lists gathering all the things I wanted to do before the end of the month. I only had to go to one note per month. Every month, pending tasks are moved to the new list if I don’t finish them. What system would work for you?

3. Block full days in advance in your calendar

A few months ago, I created a calendar invite from 9 to 5 every Friday to appear “busy”. I had found that Fridays were the busiest days for me and I wanted to be at my desk to be able to wrap up the week. It took a few weeks before I completely got rid of meetings and it was worth the wait. In the morning, I remove the invite and make myself available for any last minute interview or meeting. All the other planned meetings happen from Monday to Thursday. That way, I am sure I will have at least one day free of meetings where I will be able to sit at my desk. Occasionally I also look at the upcoming weeks in my calendar and block one or two Tuesdays per quarter, which are always free of recurring meetings for me. Before I go on vacation, I always block the first half day I am back to catch up on emails. Find what days of the week you could do it and try it for a couple of weeks to see how it works out for you.

4. Decline meetings or reduce them to 30 or 45 minutes

Review each meeting you are invited to and decide if your attendance is strictly necessary. If you think you can skip it, feel free to discuss it with the people on the invite or with your manager – they will tell you why your attendance is required or will be okay with you not going. Another easy trick is to reduce the time of your meetings to 30 to 45 minutes maximum. Shorter meetings help the group go to the point, avoid circling around, and decide action items a lot quicker. Imagine a busy day of 8 meetings of an hour each: reducing each meeting to 45 minutes will make you save 2 hours in the day. 2 hours!

5. Send an email instead of meeting face-to-face

If you can list your questions in a few bullet points, spare everyone: send an email instead of an invite.

6. If you keep being interrupted at your desk, book a meeting room or work from home

Book a room for as long as you need to finish the tasks you can’t go through because of noise or interruptions. Let your team and manager know where you are if you are needed on the floor.

7. Organise your inbox and filter emails

If you feel overwhelmed by the volume of inbound emails and you don’t feel in control of your inbox, it’s time you reorganise it. A few productivity tips here:

Create automatic filters to mark unimportant emails as read
Create automatic labels with color to help you see important emails
Some emails can skip the inbox and be archived, so you can come back to them when you have time

If you have Gmail, you can check this article on how you can set up these filters and also manage multiple inboxes.

8. Clean your folders and files regularly

Whether your folders and files are on your laptop or on a cloud, you should reorganise them regularly. Make room by deleting old files you won’t need anymore and create sub-folders to larger folders so you can find what you want easily.

9. Use the address bar of your browser as a search bar

One of the best productivity tips I ever received was turning my Chrome address bar into a general search bar for many different websites. Here’s how you can set it up:

Go to Settings and click on “Manage search engines”
You will see that the search functions of websites you visit regularly are already added
Change the keyword section with the word you will use to call the search. For instance on the screenshot below, change “booking.com” to “booking” and “youtube.com” to “youtube”. Click the button “Done”.

Open a new tab and in the address bar, type booking with a space. You will see the search function appear: Type the search you want to run on Booking.com and click “Enter”. Chrome will bring you to the search result. Tada! You can do this with Google and basically any search URL, even internal ones at work.

10. Close your email & chat app/software/tab

So this one is a bit ballsy but for having done it in the past, it is incredibly effective. If you get sidetracked by incoming chats or emails, simply… turn it off for a bit. Whether it’s an app, software, or browser tab, just close it until you get things done. Obviously don’t do that for the whole day, but even an hour off emails and chat can do wonders.

11. Last but not least: say “no”

I’m finishing with the obvious, but really you shouldn’t say “yes” to anything coming your way. Learn to gently say “no” when you genuinely don’t have time to help others with their issue/project/task. Someone else is the company can. Saying “yes” and not delivering behind is worse than pushing back on people, so be honest with yourself and others. They will understand.

11 Tips To Be More Productive At Work
The Institute of You

Don’t Be Afraid Of Feedback

Marion Tilly — Thu, 16 Nov 2017 07:06:01 +0000

The Institute of You
Don’t Be Afraid Of Feedback

Giving feedback isn’t an easy task. Many things can go wrong: the way it is delivered, the things that are said, the timing, the location. The topic might be delicate and embarrassing to discuss, and the person in front of you might not take it very well. You also feel more at ease talking to someone who you know won’t overreact, so the issue is not just about how to give feedback, but also how to receive it. Let’s do ourselves a favour and get better at both.

When feedback is positive

You’d think delivering good feedback would be simple, but in reality, it’s not. How many of us would like more recognition from our manager, our peers, our friends? My guess is: a lot. Now, how many of us give that recognition to our manager, our peers, our friends? I say, very few. So what is it that we want more but don’t give as much? There are a couple of reasons for it:

Some people are not mindful or present in the moment to say thank you and really mean it
Some people would want to say something, but they don’t know how
Some people are too embarrassed
Some people never learned to give recognition because they barely received any
Some people take it for granted
Some people will postpone the conversation
Some people think that the other person wouldn’t want it

As you can see, the relationship people have with recognition is almost unique to each individual. Take all these potential reasons and apply them on the receiving end of recognition, and you get another interesting mix of people ranging from uncomfortable with attention to self-conscious for being in the spotlight.

A study published in the Harvard Business Review showed that there is a big gap between how employees and managers see recognition:

“The raters who thought a person was effective in giving feedback were most influenced by the leader’s comfort and willingness to give positive reinforcement. Whether the manager gave negative feedback did not make a big difference — unless the leader avoided giving positive feedback. When we looked only at the managers’ self-assessments, however, we saw a different story. There was a strong correlation between people who believe they give “honest, straightforward” feedback and those who give negative feedback, regardless of whether they also give positive feedback.”

Some managers think that an employee who receives too much positive feedback has a higher risk of slowing down and stop being a top performer. They make the mistake of focusing on the negative – the areas of improvement – which in return give them the image of always focusing on what is not right, which is highly demotivating for employees.

How to better at giving positive feedback:

Notice little and big things people do well, for themselves or for others
Congratulate them and give them praise without anyone listening
Encourage your peers to share ideas in meetings and actively listen
Say thank you like you mean it
Repeat

How to better at receiving positive feedback:

Don’t push back on the recognition for the sake of showing humility
Accept that you deserve it
Understand what it takes for some people to create that connection with you (particularly introverts who are congratulating you)
Think about what made you get that recognition: what did you do, what did you learn that you could do again?
Repeat

When feedback is negative

If you think positive feedback is somehow difficult, things get tougher with negative feedback, both on the giving and receiving end. Having difficult conversations is crucial to your own development, the growth of the other person, the individual and group performance, and for your company as a whole. It is also very important in your personal life, with your partner, family, and friends. Avoiding these discussions increases frustration and anger as people will keep doing things they don’t know they shouldn’t be doing.

Creating the best environment possible to have open and honest conversations on things that are not okay comes down to a few things.

How to better at giving negative feedback:

Understand what the best way is for the other person to receive it: anonymous survey, face-to-face, in writing?
Prepare! What are you going to say? How are you going to say it? Pick the right place and moment to do so.
Before saying anything, reflect on the reasons why you are giving this feedback: are your intentions good? If so, communicate that to the person. If not, I would recommend not giving that feedback at all.
Focus on the solution rather than the problem: if you only talk about the issue, the conversation is going to be very negative and the other person will feel the need to justify themselves.
Avoid the “sandwich approach”, as in giving a negative feedback between two positive feedback. It is too obvious and what you will say will lose its meaning.
State facts to remain as objective as possible.
Allow the other person time to think about it.

How to better at receiving negative feedback:

Anticipate any unexpected feedback by proactively asking people specific questions: “what can I improve?”, “what could I do differently?”
Assume positive intent: you are not being attacked.
Have empathy: imagine what it must have been like for the other person to have this conversation.
Avoid defending yourself – the perception you have of yourself is different than people have.
If the feedback was poorly delivered, set this aside to focus on the content and ask yourself: what can I do about it?
Thank the person
Include the feedback in your personal development document for reference.
Follow up with them once you have decided an action plan: they will be happy to see you take it so seriously.

Don’t Be Afraid Of Feedback
The Institute of You

How I Stay At Inbox Zero

Marion Tilly — Sun, 01 Oct 2017 06:51:39 +0000

The Institute of You
How I Stay At Inbox Zero

Getting to Inbox Zero and staying there is not a myth. However, before reaching Inbox Zero, you have to reflect on your approach to emails, time management and organisation as whole, to understand the extent of the efforts you will have to make. You have probably seen the image below. How could I start an article on clearing unread emails without sharing it?

credit

Full disclosure. I have an obsessive-compulsive disorder with unread emails. If I see any inbox with over 10 unread emails, I start feeling palpitations in my chest and shortness of breath. I am not even kidding. To not take over my colleague’s laptop and mark everything as read to calm down, I either propose my help to organise their emails in case they “need” (they obviously do, I’m just being polite) or I avoid eye contact with their screen. I want to share what I do to stay at Inbox Zero. Even if you are not overwhelmed by the hundreds of unread emails currently waiting for you, I would really advise you to have a look at the tips below to at least take some of them and aim at less unread emails. I am using Gmail for personal and professional emails but I am sure that it is also applicable to other email providers.

Start fresh

If you gave up on your inbox and unread emails have won the battle a long time ago, you can still do something about it. Be bold, tick the “all emails” box and “mark as read”. How to not feel guilty about it:

If the emails have been pending for over two weeks, it’s too late to reply anyway.
If it was urgent, you would have heard about it by now.
You will be able to go back to these emails later, once you set up your new inbox.

Click “mark as read” now and let’s continue to step 2. If you’d prefer not to, leave them as they are and you will be able to clear them folder by folder later.

“Settings” will be your new friend

You will spend a lot of time there. Go through all the tabs and all the features to customise your inbox the way you want: pick a background color or a theme, choose if emails should be displayed in a extended list or in a short list, etc. Get the layout you prefer and that works best for you. Also, for Gmail users, I would advise to keep the “Primary” tab and untick all the others.

Identify important vs. not important

Now, think about what emails are important and which ones aren’t. Are your Manager’s emails important to read? Yes. Are newsletter as important? Probably not. Compare the types of email you receive and who sends it.

Only keep the folders you are currently using

If you created folders for clients two years ago whom you are not talking to anymore, you can delete these. The emails in these folders will go to your archives and won’t be deleted. Create a directory of folders but keep it simple. Do it by department or by sender, and regroup them under larger folders. If it helps, you can put a tree graph of the structure on paper.

Set automatic filters to get emails out of the way

Now that your folders are in place, you can start filtering inbound emails to be automatically added to these folders. Here are some examples of filters you can set up for all emails:

sent to a specific email address (e.g. if clients contact your team via a shared email address),
sent from a specific email address,
with a specific subject,
that contain a specific word,
that contain an attachment or
a combination of all of the above.

Here’s what it looks like in Gmail when you click on the little arrow on the right of the search bar:

“Skip the inbox” option will save you

Once you added the filters and clicked on “Create filter with this search”, you are brought to this part where you decide what to do with the emails you selected. “Skip the inbox” is the first option. Tick this if you want incoming emails to arrive automatically in the folder you picked instead of your inbox. It should a type of emails you can choose to read whenever you have time, like newsletters, product updates, etc. Select “Apply the label” and select the appropriate folder you created earlier. Click “Also apply filter to [x] matching conversations” so that all existing emails will be moved from the inbox to the folder. If you do not tick this option, only new emails will.

Don’t be afraid of “mark as read” – it’s the best

Another option not to miss is “Mark as read”. It will make you save tons of time. Do your receive email alerts from internal teams or systems that you don’t really care about? Were you signed up to a newsletter you never read but can’t unsubscribe to? Were you added to an email group for your information, just to be looped in, but where you don’t have any input? Marking these emails as read will allow you not to see any updates but will let you go back to them if you need to see what’s happening.

Use the star function wisely to create your to-do list in one click

One of the most advanced Gmail settings is the “multiple inboxes”, which splits the traditional inbox according to the stars you’ve assigned to emails. The default setting gathers all starred emails into one group. This multiple inbox system allows you to split by star. Pick a purpose for each star and start labeling emails accordingly. For instance I only use the following 3 stars in Gmail:

Yellow start: “Needs Response”
Orange arrow: “To do”
Blue information: “Weekly reading”

Every time I read an email, I select either three stars depending on what I have to do. That way I know the content of the email and when I go back to it, I will already know what action to take. When I look at my inbox, I immediately see emails I should respond to (my priority), emails I should somehow action (my second priority) and weekly reading (when I have time). In Gmail you can drag and drop the stars you want to keep. I recommend not having more than 3 or 4 to be able to keep up with this system. If you are interested in how to set up multiple inboxes, check this Hubspot blog post.

Do frequent housekeeping

Once you cleared your inbox of old unread emails, sorted your folders, added labels and found a star system that works, you can claim victory. Keep in mind that this is a work in progress and that you will have to update your inbox system every once in a while. If your job changes, the type of emails you will receive will be different as well and will require a new email organisation.

How I Stay At Inbox Zero
The Institute of You

7 Online Learning Platforms You Should Check

Marion Tilly — Fri, 22 Sep 2017 08:09:05 +0000

The Institute of You
7 Online Learning Platforms You Should Check

If you read the article about my 2017 challenge, you saw that I attended an massing open online course last February. For those of you who never heard about “MOOC”, this post is for you. For those of you who know what it is but never looked for it, this post is also for you (I thought of everyone).

Massive open online courses are an amazing product of the Internet and the resource you need when you want to learn new things.

What is a MOOC?

A MOOC is an online course open to all and available on distance learning platforms. They are composed of videos as well as lecture transcripts, exercises, reading materials and sometimes forums where students can exchange among themselves.

It’s much more than a video of a professor talking for an hour. It’s the online version of a university lecture. They provide the same content to online students without requiring them to sit in an amphitheater. Some are just a few videos short spread on a few weeks while others propose full programs to go into the topic in depth. In some cases, the students can get a certificate or validate credits for a degree. Most of the platforms collaborate with prestigious universities who have put some of their content online.

The 5 best MOOC websites

1. Coursera

Two professors from Stanford University founded Coursera in 2016. Since then the website has built partnerships with University of Pennsylvania, Duke University and UC Davis, to name a few. They also partner with organisations like Google Cloud or National Geographic Society. They provide classes on various topics on business and sciences. Users can attend one course at a time or follow a “specialization” where multiple courses are gathered to extensively cover one topic.

Cost: the classes are free but a paid option exists for additional features.

2. Future Learn

Future Learn is the leading MOOC platform in the UK and was created by the Open University, which was already offering distance learning. They partner with many universities in Europe and Australia, as well as foundations and organisations like Cancer Research UK and UNESCO. The website proposes courses, programs and full postgraduate degrees. Topics vary from business to environment and nature.

Cost: courses are free but there is a paid option to upgrade to get the assessment and university credits.

3. EdX

edX is a non-profit organisation created in 2012 by MIT and Harvard. It counts among their partners Berkley, Caltech, University of Toronto as well as numerous European and Asian universities. The site proposes series of Master’s-level courses called “MicroMasters” which are credit-eligible and may be able to accelerate a Master’s Degree. The subjects are the ones you would expect in a university, ranging from biology to law.

Cost: classes are free but you can buy a certificate for $49 (optional). MicroMasters are free to try, getting the credits will cost up to $600.

4. Udacity

Udacity‘s catalog focuses on software engineering, data science and web development. It also proposes “Nano Degrees” and has developed a partnership with Georgia Institute of Technology whose online classes are part of their Master’s degree. Udacity also partners with tech companies like Google, Amazon and Facebook on videos about virtual reality or machine learning.

Cost: courses are free, however nano degrees cost between $200 per month to $800 per term (3 months).

5. Codecademy

Codecademy is another platform to learn how to code HTML, CSS, Python, PHP and Javascript. You can also learn how to build a website, how to deploy it or communicate with SQL databases.

Cost: free. There is an upgrade for $20 per month to get additional features

2 other great platforms that are not MOOC per se

6. Lynda.com

Lynda.com doesn’t partner with universities to create its content. However many consider it as one of the first websites to start hosting video tutorials and training over 20 years ago. The sites offers a wide ranger of video formats on various topics like business, photography, blogging, marketing, Excel, etc.

Cost: first ten days are free, then there is a monthly fee of €15 to have unlimited access to all videos.

7. Udemy

Like Lynda.com, Udemy is not a MOOC as it partners with experts rather than universities. Topics are as wide as Lynda.com and cover from business to personal development, music and languages.

Cost: some courses are free but the best ones are not. Price varies between €20 and €200.

7 Online Learning Platforms You Should Check
The Institute of You