Self-Improvement - Page 2
A collection of posts on Self Improvement
Impostor syndrome is a psychological phenomenon in which people are unable to see their own accomplishments, dismissing them as luck, timing, or as a result of deceiving others into thinking they are more intelligent and competent than they believe themselves to be. Impostor syndrome is much more common that you’d think—o ver 70% of people have experienced it at one time or other in their lives . It is known that lots of entrepreneurial and high-achieving women have it, but I’ve also found th
Before you say context-switching is the worst, hear me out — being a manager , I’ll often have several calls back to back and need to shift emotional context quickly. I sometimes carry the mindset and energy of one meeting through to the next and it leaves me less emotionally attuned. I was getting tired from the effort of context-switching and sometimes would be visibly drained or stressed. This is a catching disease: second-hand stress [
Goal-setting has always been one of my favorite activities. I love the feeling of accomplishing something within a set timeframe and getting to cross it off a big list of other goals. I love seeing the progress and celebrating the achievement — in fact, I love it so much that you’ll find me routinely setting and revising goals throughout the year, both at work and for my personal life. We recently made the shift away from OKRs as a company-wide goal-setting framework, and we started experimenti
I never planned on being an entrepreneur. That label always sounded far too lofty for me. Entrepreneurs were guys in suits working everyone in the room. Entrepreneurs only got three hours of sleep a night because the rest of the time they were hustling. Entrepreneurs would look at someone like me and realize right away that I didn’t belong. But that picture – my picture – has changed. Women now make up 40 percent of new entrepreneurs in the United States. And startups these days don’t have to
We used to have no managers at Buffer. Now we have tons. And we all have a lot of catching up to do. For most of the leaders at Buffer, we are new to people management . We have a strong culture of nurturing people into more advanced roles and promoting from within. This is fabulous for the opportunities we can afford our teammates; however, it does lead to a steep learning
At heart, I’m a running purist. No headphones. No waistband for water bottles. No activity monitor or GPS tracker. Just my trusty Asics Trainers and a $10 Casio watch for pace. Seven hundred miles. At seven minutes per mile, that equates to roughly 4,900 minutes, 81.6 hours, or 3.4 days. That’s a lot of time to think. One of the secrets to running is the ability to lose yourself in positive thought; Brainstorming, reflecting, strategizing, and conjuring up crazy ideas while endorphins are go
I worked myself into a lovely pickle at the end of 2016. I gave my manager feedback that I’d love to have a session on career planning and goals for my role in the company. I love these sorts of chats! Well, I used to. I’ve been so knee-deep in survival mode during my son’s first year of life, wrangling a puppy, and finding out that I was pregnant with number 2 when my son was 9 months old that I suddenly realized, while preparing for this chat, that I had no short- or long-term goals. “Well
I recently celebrated a whole year at Buffer and, looking back, what a crazy year it was. One thing that continually surprises me is the open and transparent culture . Giving feedback and experimenting with the process is all part of the journey. Over my time at Buffer, I’ve had the fortunate experience of working on a few “ startups within a startup [https://buffer.com/resources/from-startup-to-scaleup-what-were-changing-as-we-make-the-transition
Sleep is one of my favorite things. I adore it. I’ve never been one for alarms though. Potentially because they mark the end of my sleeping. I started working remotely a fews years ago, and intermittently went between working from home and working at an office. Having a more flexible schedule meant I didn’t need to wake up at a certain time unless there was a meeting. Because of this, I’ve experimented with eliminating my morning alarm from my life. Here is how I went about it and how you can
Here at Buffer, we love to read. A lot. In fact, we gifted 1,366 Kindle books to our team members and their family members this year alone! This is 27% more than our 2015 total of 1074 and 108% more than our 2014 total of 656 ! One of our most avid readers, Amy , is in four book clubs currently, and she cites this Kindle perk as enabling her to do so and also set n
A while back, an awesome group of women in tech in Hamburg, Germany reached out to Buffer. They explained that they wanted to support women in being more confident about the money they make and negotiating, and asked if we would we be interested in talking about our journey with transparent salaries. And that’s how I, with a track record of literally never negotiating and a mostly hilarious salary history that looks like this: 1st job, NYC: Conde Nast editorial asst: $26K 7 yrs @Tennessean/G
We all want to be more productive and fulfilled in our day-to-day. Even the words that we use to describe productive people and actions are filled with aspiration: ship, create, code, get things done, make things happen. A quick search of Google for the phrase “increasing productivity” returns nearly half a million results. There are countless books, blog posts, tips, and tools designed to help us maximize our ability to get things done. There’s also a real danger of becoming unbalanced. I’
Public speaking is a scary or uncomfortable idea for many people. Some people feel they don’t have anything valuable to share. Others feel it’s a lot of effort, don’t see the benefit in speaking publicly or are too anxious to do so. These are definitely all points that previously put me off speaking in public. If I rewind to just a few years ago, there’s no way I would have ever dreamed to speak in front of an audience. But as we’ve mentioned on the blog before in our exploration of stage frig
Many of the best experiences in life are totally unplanned. I remember one of my last days in high school when the entire grade 12 class (all boys) hopped over the fence of the neighboring girls’ boarding school in the middle of the night and went streaking. I made a wrong turn and — with nothing but running shoes on — stumbled upon a legion of young girls staring out of their dorm windows. Totally unplanned, 100 percent memorable. *Yes, I’m well aware that this story is a little odd for a po
This week in #bufferchat, we all talked about working smarter and not harder! We discussed what “work smarter, not harder” means to us, how we manage our energy and be productive, our favourite ways of taking breaks and making time for ourselves and much more. Catch our weekly Twitter chat , #bufferchat, at TWO times every Wednesday for valuable industry insights and networking with nearly 400 other smart marke
Productivity on its own can be a tough challenge for anyone, even if you work from the same space every day. And what if you’re jumping workspaces every week? Every day? Every couple hours? Digital nomads and remote workers have a very unique productivity puzzle to figure out. I’ve been fortunate enough to be working remotely full-time for nearly 6 months now, and my desk has sometimes changed every couple days — or even every couple hours! As I’ve gone from place to place, I’ve been jotting d
A few weeks ago, one of my students posted this in my Facebook mastermind group (emphasis mine): Let me start by saying that I applaud this woman for having the courage to step up, share her story, and ask for help so she can overcome this and move forward again. It’s actually pretty damn hard to admit when you’re not in a good place professionally and to then ask for help. I wrote an initial response with my thoughts (below) but I wound up thinking more and more about this topic and it got m
This week in #bufferchat, our discussion topic was “developing habits” and we explored the first steps to forming new habits, how to maintain them, inspiring resources to help us, and everything in between! Catch our weekly Twitter chat , #bufferchat, at TWO times every Wednesday for valuable industry insights and networking with nearly 400 other smart marketers and community managers. Same topic, same place, ju
Check out our new podcast! Hey there, podcast fans! We recently launched a new podcast of our very own, Buffer CultureLab! We’d love for you to check it out and share any thoughts, feedback or ideas with us! You can listen on iTunes here or Google Play here. :) OK, now back to the post! We’ve talked a lot about podcasts at Buffer. We’ve shared some top marketing podcasts. We’ve talked about podcasting tools. We’ve even provided a blueprint for starting your own podcast. But one thing we have
“Everyone sits in the prison of his own ideas; he must burst it open.” — Albert Einstein Einstein was right about a lot of things, but in my mind this sentiment is one of his finest discoveries (OK, the general theory of relativity is pretty good, too). Creating—building something from nothing and sharing it with the world—requires a lot of bravery. In the end, it can feel a bit like breaking yourself free. I’ve chronicled both my own idea prison [https://buffer.com/resources/6-ways-brain-stops-m
A few years ago, my girlfriend proposed an interesting thought: How well do I really know my friends and family? My initial thought was that of course I knew these people. We all get along and things are great. I’m friendly, they’re friendly. What more is there? However, it wasn’t as simple as I thought. This simple question started a reflection over the past few years on how I really interact in my relationships. Was I really curious and deeply invested in the people who I call my family and
You’ll notice that I made the title of this post sound quite impressive (at least I hope I did!). But the great thing about this story is that anyone can have such an impressive outcome, and it’s not at all as daunting as it might sound. In fact, all these outcomes came from doing small things every day over a long period. I’m a big fan of working smarter, not harder and finding small ways to make my work more
Who isn’t busy these days? Everyone always seems in a constant rush to their next appointment, even toddlers. And of course, on our way to those meetings we need to stay up-to-date on our email , share with the rest of the world through Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, while we also try to catch up on… oh, a new email just came in. So much to do, so little time.The 40-hour workweek is expanding, but our energy isn’t In the USA, working harder is t
I am quite possibly the world’s biggest fan of being comfortable. The word, to me, conjures up an image of a big comfy couch, a roaring fireplace, and maybe a sleepy puppy to curl up with. What could be better? So it has been a challenging, repeated lesson for me to learn that feeling uncomfortable is pretty much the only way to experience real personal growth. I didn’t want to believe this for much of my life, and I often still rail against it no