Monthly Archives: June 2018

Impossible! Or is it?

Posted on by
2

It never ceases to amaze me how hard it is to question what we take for granted. I notice this in my everyday life when I feel stuck. When I’ve organized my life or my routines in a certain way, I become so used to them that imagining a different way to go about things is surprisingly hard.

Let me give you an example. About a year ago I started painting more again, after years of really not painting very much. A friend wanted to buy a few paintings, which really inspired me and before I knew it, it had snowballed into a second job. I desperately needed a place to set up a painting studio, and I wanted to do this in my home but there was just no space. Every inch of our house was pretty much taken, not to mention all the rooms with enough natural light. So it seemed like a mission impossible. I did finally set up a table in a corner of a room where I painted for the first few months. However, this space was completely inadequate. It was cramped and the light was pretty bad. Every once in a while I would carry what I was working on outside to check how the colors really looked. Not to mention how unergonomic the space was, my back was not happy!

But I was stumped. There was just no other space to set up my paints.

Well, in this situation what usually happens to me is that it takes a while but eventually I start considering the impossible. I need that one moment when I realize maybe the impossible could be possible after all.

The solution eventually came to me. I have a study at home where I write and my desk is actually a dining room table with a lot of space for piles and piles of books and papers. But my study was absolutely off limits. I mean, my research and writing! That’s my job. It’s how I make a living. There is no room in my study for anything else.

But then one day I thought, or is there?

In a moment of clarity I realized that if I turned my desk 90 degrees there would be room to extend it (it has a built-in extension) and not only would I have space to write on it but to paint too! My study could be a combined study-studio! Not only that, it has plenty of natural light.

It was like an epiphany. What had just been impossible was suddenly the solution and I set about rearranging my stuff right away. I made room in my bookshelf for the piles and now only keep what’s absolutely necessary on the table. And it’s perfect. I no longer have to carry paintings in and out of the house to see what they really look like and my back is also thanking me.

But symbolically the change meant even more. My second job got a place of its own in my study-studio and suddenly it became a very real part of what I do. It’s actually quite mind blowing and opened up even more possibilities in my mind. Who knows where this will lead? Maybe the minor rearranging of furniture will turn out to have a much greater effect than I ever imagined?

The point is, in my mind the impossible became possible. This particular story is about my painting, but it works for just about anything. Think about it: are you stuck with no imaginable way forward? If you think it is impossible you might just need to ask yourself, or is it?

When doing nothing actually does more harm than doing something

Posted on by
1

I went to lunch yesterday with a friend of mine and we had a really good conversation about workplaces we have experienced and how frustrating it can be when people do nothing, thinking it won’t effect the situation, the team, or the work culture.

I’m talking about how no management can be one of the worst kinds of management.

We’ve all experienced bad managers, I’m sure. Managers who don’t seem to know how to talk to people; managers who are controlling and micromanage you out of distrust; or managers who just don’t seem to have the skills needed and are struggling to get by. Some of us have also experienced managers who do nothing – who simply don’t manage. They don’t meddle, they don’t talk to their team members, they don’t inform people of things – they simply don’t seem to care.

I’m sure there are a variety of reasons for why someone would approach their management responsibility in this way. Maybe they do care, they just don’t have the foggiest how to go about it. Or maybe they are so overwhelmed that they just don’t have any energy left over to do anything other than survive. Whether or not there is a viable reason, the fact remains that these people still just seem like they don’t care.

The problem is though, that while they might think doing nothing at least won’t make the situation worse, this isn’t the case. While I appreciate someone who isn’t trying to hurt or trick people on purpose – I’ve also had my share of back-stabbers – they are wrong. Not doing anything may actually cause damage.

One is information. This is such a basic thing. People need to know what’s going on. They need to know what is expected of them. They need to know why they are doing what they are doing and where they can expect their job, their career, and the organization to develop from here. Not sharing information causes people to speculate which leads to gossip. People draw their own conclusions and false information starts to spread. People start feeling insecure and it can quickly become quite destructive. Gossip is one of the single worst things for workplace wellbeing.

But there are also other routine things that there just need to be processes for. For example, how do you welcome a new employee to your workplace? How do you make sure this person has everything he or she needs, and yes this includes information. How do you show new people, but also old employees, that they are important and that you care? Having a boss who seems to genuinely not care about what you do and how, is actually really demotivating. It kind of makes you feel invisible, and definitely not like a valued member of the team.

Managing people is hard. There are some great managers out there, and there are also unfortunately many not so great managers. This is true for both the business and the academic world.

I recently read an article about how academics are much more likely to suffer from mental health issues than employees in any other profession. There are a lot of reasons for this. One is the precarious work. Unless you have tenure, which is really hard to come by, work is very insecure in academia. People work on short contracts, never sure about how or when they are going to get funding again. For many the research is also very closely linked to who they are. They are their research, which means if everything is going well, they feel like they are doing well as a person, but if they get rejected – which really happens a lot in academia – it’s a hit to their very identity.

But then there is also bad management. I have seen a lot of bad management in the academic world. Academics aren’t necessarily interested in managing or being managed, which is probably why they became successful academics in the first place. But we also tend to forget that universities and departments are organizations with employees like any other organization. They need to be managed in a way that works. Granted, academics are probably not the easiest group to manage, but doing nothing really does more harm than good.

Pretty darned great

Posted on by
Reply

I have always loved to read. Books have been a huge part of my life every since I was little. My parents read and my sisters read. They read to themselves and they read to me. And after I learned to read I started reading too just as much as they did. We always had books at home and it was one thing we were allowed to indulge in as much as we wanted. Not at the dinner table, however, but my sisters and I would still constantly try to sneak in books to read on the sly under the table because we just couldn’t put them down. And we always got caught but still never stopped trying the same trick over and over again.

Growing up with books, I always thought that the single most awesome thing must be to write a book. I never really though I would because it seemed like an unattainable dream that was just granted very few special people. Little did I know that one day this would actually happen to me.

Even as I started doing research and planning a book based on that research, I still sort of felt that writing and publishing a book was the ultimate thing. Then one day I started writing a book proposal and it became the first step in quite a long and slow process. The book contract was a long time coming, and then after I finally submitted my manuscript, there was the slow and sometimes tedious and frustrating process of copywriting, cover design, checking indexes… and the process was so slow that that somewhere along the way publishing a book no longer seemed like it was going to be the magical thing I thought it would be.

It actually turned out to be more of a non-event than anything else to tell you the truth. I had been notified of an approximate publishing date of the hardback, but then months in advance noticed by accident that my book was actually already available for pre-order through numerous online bookstores. Since it was an academic book (even though I made sure to write it in a way that made it accessible to anyone, so anyone could enjoy it) the first hardback version was also so expensive that I realized that few people would actually be prepared to spend that much money on a book – even a good book if I may say so myself. I have filled it with stories of women who have opted out and in, and made it a good read, but still. So that was quite disappointing, although I was learning a lot about publishing.

But I had a more affordable paperback version in my contract. I was happy about that since I know I have readers who are interested in the book. But it seemed so far away. And it really was a long wait. So long that I was starting to wonder whether or not I would actually be able to muster the energy to even get excited about it when the time finally came.

Well guess what. Last week I received news that the paperback version is going to be published in August. It is set at an affordable price, which I am absolutely thrilled about, because, as I said, my intention was all along to write a book about opting out and in that was accessible to a wider audience. And you know what? Now that it is finally happening, it sure feels pretty darned great.

So check out my book: Opting Out and In: On Women’s Careers and New Lifestyles by Ingrid Biese

You can already preorder it. Click here for more information.