Civil Civil Servant

Unplugged: Thoughts

March 7, 2011 by Ann Wilberton

I enjoyed this experiment. It was suggested that we unplug from sundown on Friday to Sundown on Saturday. I refrained from texting, checking email and internet surfing. I did check my email Saturday night; but, continued the “non surfing” into Sunday afternoon.

I discovered a few things.

On Saturday night when I checked my email there were about 40 emails waiting for me. 2 were of a personal nature, 1 was an online bill notification and the rest were newsletters, store coupons and other marketing notices. It took me about 5 minutes to delete everything I was not interested in, read my personal mail and star the bill to be dealt with later. On Sunday night, I spent about 10 minutes responding to the two emails and setting a date for the bill to be paid automatically. This 10 minutes also included deleting new marketing emails.
Not texting forced my girlfriend to call me!
The most interesting discovery came from the lack of internet surfing. Anya’s 40th birthday is next weekend and I’ve been told not to purchase a gift because we are going on a trip in April. I decided to make her a painting and put it off until this past weekend because I knew I’d have the whole weekend to work on it since she had to go out of town. When I realized how much I actually got done and how I managed to persevere through the spots when I ordinarily would take a break and surf the net or watch tv, I pushed back the no surfing to late Sunday afternoon. It told me volumes about my creative process and how I actually could power through the slow or blocked spots where I felt like I didn’t know what to do next. (color, composition, content, etc)

What is the overall things learned? Email is not my problem. I have done a good job of keeping what comes in to my inbox at least somewhat relevant to me. I maintain, not an inbox zero, but about an inbox 10, meaning there are rarely more than 10 items lingering in my inbox. So, email is not a problem. Texting is not my problem. I only have about 4 people who I text with, Anya being the most prolific but even then it’s not much and if my noise alert is enabled, I don’t keep checking my phone.

Internet surfing is the area where I’d like to steal back some of my time. I’m going to try and go surfing free from Friday eves to Sunday eves and see how that impacts the quality of my life. I did notice that I was pretty damn happy last night as I snapped a picture of the finished painting!

We can’t unplug at work; but, unplugging more at home could improve the quality of our lives and in turn boost our productivity and happiness at work. I’m usually a lot happier heading to work on Mondays if I feel like I didn’t waste my weekend watching TV or on the internet or playing video games. On my last post, I mentioned that I didn’t have any friends in Asbury Park. Sunday, early evening I called my neighbor to chat about a summer garden project we are contemplating and she invited me down to her place to see her kitchen renovation. Ordinarily, I would have said no, thinking that I’d rather relax on my last evening before starting up work; but, I said, yes and had a pleasant couple of hours chatting with my neighbor. I enjoyed her company and was glad I had agreed to go.

One more thought: I had the need to look up a phone number; but, I really didn’t want to turn my laptop on for fear I’d get sucked in; so, I actually used the good old yellow pages. We are shifting more ordinary things, like looking up a phone number, checking the weather, listening to music to our computers. I even use my computer for phone calling. What are the ramifications of this? A few weeks ago, Anya and I were waiting for a subway and she whipped out her cell phone and started playing Tetris. I was slightly annoyed; but, mostly fascinated by this. She is not a techie. She doesn’t own a TV. I don’t think she has ever owned a gaming system. She has an iphone; but, mostly uses it as a phone with the occasional weather lookup, directions, looking for a business using GPS. She texts. She doesn’t Tweet or check in at locations. I don’t even think she checks Facebook on it. Yet, here she was playing a game on it while she was waiting. My parents own smartphones now, Droid X. Are they going to play games while they wait at the Doctor’s office? Is there even a significance to this cultural shift? My mother asked me if I was going to get a Kindle and the reaction in my head was immediate and forceful. I thought: NO MORE GADGETS. All these gadgets require energy and work. You can’t just pick up the book and read it. It has to be downloaded and transferred to your device. You have to make sure your device is charged. There is a management involved. Management that usually involves you connecting to a computer.

I had a friend who received an ipod as a gift and asked me to help her get her music on it. I’m not a fan of iTunes; but, I spent time wrangling with her iTunes and burning CDs and showing her how it worked. She set up to playlists: one for the gym and one for bus riding. She has never changed or added anything and this was about 5 years ago. When I asked her about it, she said: I can’t be bothered. Her iPod battery finally died and she never replaced it, though she admits that she sometimes misses having it at the gym.

Are we going to reach a saturation point? A point where we won’t be able to stand being engaged with an electronic thing for one more task?

I consider myself a techie person; but, I know that I’m happier the less time, outside of work, I spend engaged with technology.

Posted in Happiness | 3 Comments »

National Day of Unplugging

March 2, 2011 by Ann Wilberton

Sundown March 4th, 2011 begins the start of the National Day of Unplugging, sponsored by Reboot. It’s odd that a group supporting the idea of unplugging is promoting their app and connecting to them via social networking; but, once you get past that oddity, you will come to see the idea that they are promoting. Reboot is a Jewish organization though their ideas are universal. They see the National Day of Unplugging as an opportunity for people to reclaim time, slow down their lives and reconnect with friends, family, the community and themselves.

Ultimately they hope that we’ll do this once a week, which is where the app comes in…a way to remind us to turn off. They are not anti-technology; they are just pro disconnecting from technology on a regular basis and reconnecting with loved ones, our community and ourselves.

I am going to take their challenge and refrain from e-mail, internet surfing and watching videos/tv (which I do on my laptop).

Currently my routine, and I actually find this sort of …not embarrassing…but disappointing maybe…is:

Wake up and check email and overnight txts on my Android Phone.
Drink too much coffee while reading email, The New York Times and sometimes Facebook. All on my laptop.
Work.
Back home. Cook while sometimes listening to the radio or watching tv on my laptop.
Watch streaming movies or TV on my laptop.

In 2004, I stopped watching TV. In 2005, while recovering from my accident, I started watching TV shows on DVD. In 2006, I again stopped watching TV. In 2008, I moved to NJ for my current job and probably by mid 2009, I started watching TV on my laptop. By last summer, I was watching TV on my laptop at least 4 times a week. I’m disappointed that I’ve let TV inch back into my daily life.

For the Day of Unplugging, I plan on getting home and cooking, maybe read or make art until bedtime. Saturday, I’ll wake up, drink too much coffee and eat breakfast. It is a rare weekend when my girlfriend and I don’t see each other; but, this weekend is one of those. I had already planned on working around the house and I’m sticking to that plan. I’m guessing it will be hard to go all day Saturday without checking email or reading the news.

What about you? Can you disconnect from your gadgets? How many times, on the weekend, do you check email? Do you text, use Facebook, surf the net? How many times do you watch TV, txt, surf the net instead of engaging with a human being?

I’m going to confess something that is hard to confess. I don’t have any friends in Asbury Park. I moved here over a year ago and I have a couple of acquaintances; but, no real friends. I have plenty of excuses: too tired after work to volunteer, spend many weekends in Brooklyn with Anya, haven’t found my people. I understand that when you move alone to a new place, it is hard to make new friends. But, sitting at home watching Law and Order reruns on my laptop is not helping matters.

Take the challenge with me. I’ll be back in a few days to let you know how it went.

For further reading on this subject, check out one of my favorite Buddhist teachers, Sharon Salzberg.

Posted in Happiness, Health | Leave a Comment »

Zen and the Art of Criticism

January 5, 2011 by Ann Wilberton

by Jon Jordan via Flickr CC

Delivering and receiving criticism with grace is one of life’s biggest challenges. Mastering this challenge has an enormous effect on your overall happiness and quality of life, both at home and at work. And it can help you foster and maintain relationships and sustain healthy communications.

I was recently asked how I handled rejection of my ideas or direct criticism and it got me thinking about the role criticism plays in our lives. I came up with the following list of three elements one needs to master.

Deliver criticism gently and in a way that gives it the highest chance of being heard.
Accept constructive criticism in a way that allows you to learn and grow from it and not just see it as a personal attack.
When criticized in way that is not constructive and could possibly be a personal attack, calmly view the criticism from any angle to see if there is any useful information in it; take what is useful and learn from it; and, most importantly, let the rest go completely.

I wish I could take credit for setting this as a goal and accomplishing it; but, I have to admit, that I was unknowingly trained in the ins and outs of criticism. After 2 years of art school and 2 years of studying for a Masters in creative writing, which were both criticism boot camps, I became more adept at delivering criticism and thoroughly trained to hear criticism and take what I needed from it.

I’m going to leave the first one for another post and tackle the second two because learning how to receive criticism with skill can have a dramatic improvement on your work life. It can help change your experience from negative to positive and help you succeed in a work world where developing emotional intelligence is more and more becoming a pathway to success. It also gives you control over how painful an experience it is.

Accept constructive criticism in a way that allows you to learn and grow from it and not just see it as a personal attack.

I think it might be human nature, when faced with criticism, to immediately begin thinking defensive thoughts and many folks don’t just think them; they verbalize these thoughts thereby starting a cycle that is hard to break and usually results in no one being heard. The first rule of receiving criticism is: Say nothing. Just listen.

When you refrain from responding immediately and focus on hearing what is being said, a funny thing happens. Your initial defensive thoughts that were clouding up your brain begin to dissipate and it becomes easier to hear what is being said. Then the constructive part starts because you can start zeroing in on the parts of the criticism that are helpful.

The second rule of receiving criticism is to back away from the personal. You’ll want to take it personally, after all, someone is expressing disappointment with something you did. Even if it requires a Herculean effort on your part to wrangle your brain past the personal, do it. Nothing will be accomplished if you are taking criticism personally. Ask yourself this: if this was not about my performance, what would I think about this criticism. If this is not a personal attack, what is this person trying to say?

The third rule is to filter out what you need. I’d have to say that most people are not the greatest at delivering criticism. So, when you receive criticism, you frequently have to weed through extraneous details, nervous chatter, and commentary that is just irrelevant. If you imagine a sky filled with stars, there are always a few that twinkle and shine a bit brighter than the others. I think of it like that. Let the useful information shine brighter than the filler.

When criticized in way that is not constructive and could possibly be a personal attack, calmly view the criticism from any angle to see if there is any useful information in it; take what is useful and learn from it; and, most importantly, let the rest go completely.

There are people who are motivated by personal reasons to criticize. They even sometimes take pleasure in it. I think these people are rare. Most people feel uncomfortable delivering criticism and would rather avoid it. It is still your job to listen, pull out any bit of information that is useful and just let the rest go. You need to follow the first rule above and say nothing. When a person is motivated to personally attack you, there is no point in engaging in a discussion with them; but, there is also no point in not learning something from it. It might be that the thing you learn is how to deal with a toxic coworker. Or you might learn how a boss handles stress, failure or pressure from their own boss. You are the master of you. A coworker may push every one of your buttons; but, you get to choose how you react.

A few years ago, a friend made me make a list of the qualities I was looking for in a romantic partner and near the very top of my list was the following: someone who receives criticism maturely and delivers it gently. I think the same could be said about any of the people who pass through my life in a significant way including bosses and coworkers. It is an essential life skill that when mastered will change the quality of your work and personal life quite dramatically.

Posted in communication, Happiness | Leave a Comment »

December 17, 2010 by Ann Wilberton

I broke my wrist again. The doctor looked at the x-ray and said, “Wow. It’s really a mess in there.” This, of course made me laugh because…really it’s inevitable that my right wrist is just going to completely fall apart at some point and his surprise just seemed funny to me. He casted my wrist and forearm and sent me on my way.

It was later, sitting on my couch watching Law and Order reruns on my laptop that I started feeling sorry for myself. I try not to think too much about what the future brings for my dominant hand. I don’t like to think of myself as handicapped even though the accident in some ways, has left me with a nifty bag of tricks (coping skills) I have to use to succeed in my life.

So, sitting there on my couch, feeling sorry for myself, I began to turn my attention to the positive spin. I like to find the one or two positive things that come out of seemingly negative experiences. I started shifting from doom and gloom thoughts about the steady decline of ability and tried to think of ways I could use this time, not being able to use my right hand, in a positive way. Here’s what I came up with:

Since I’m off the hook (with myself) for crafty projects that were on my To Do list, like knitting myself and my girlfriend winter caps, perhaps I could practice my left handed drawings.
To avoid more feeling sorry for myself, I could set up some plans in the evening with neighbors and friends.
I could start working on improving my balance, which is something I’ve been meaning to do.
I could use this 6 weeks as a giant immersion class in problem solving by keeping track of the obstacles and how I overcome them.
I could use this experience to practice asking for help when I need it, which is not something I’m good at in my home life. But now I do need help. I need help getting a 30 pound bag of dog food out of my trunk!
Practice writing left handed which is another thing I had been planning to do in a weird sort of planning for the day when writing normally will become problematic.
Figure out ways to maintain healthy eating patterns and yet reduce all the chopping and dish cleaning I normally do.

I think I like best the idea of using this experience as an intense immersion class in problem solving. There’s nothing better for exercising the part of the brain used for figuring stuff out than to take away the regular path of practice (using my right hand for writing, brushing my teeth, scrubbing a dish while I held it with my left). The neuropsychologist I saw after the accident told me everyone should be occasionally brushing their teeth with the opposite hand. It is a simple, yet, effective way of exercising your brain.

Looking at my list, I realize that most of the items are just using the broken wrist for motivation, especially for things like improving balance. Improving balance has been on my To Do list for about 6 months. Falling on a hike in the Berkshires and breaking my wrist is a great motivator for undertaking that challenge.

This injury is temporary; but, my wrist is problematic. It is falling apart and eventually I’ll go from limited range of motion to NO range of motion. Anything I learn now, about navigating life left handed and/or one handed is probably going to come in useful later.

That’s how I try to turn a negative into a positive. How do you do it?

In the workplace, as in your personal life, focusing on the negative is only going to leave you in a negative place. When something negative happens at work, how do you react? How can you change a negative into a positive? Learning something is usually a good way to go and sometimes leads to even greater success.

I have a friend who, several years ago, was fired from her job. She was definitely freaked out and worried. But, do you know what she did? She started her own business and has found great success. She has won awards for her design work and has ridden out the recession without too much worry. Getting fired, seemingly a negative occurrence, turned out to have the single largest positive impact on her career outside of her schooling.

When negative stuff happens, turn it upside down and all around and I can almost guarantee you’ll find a few shiny spots.

Posted in Health, Leadership | Leave a Comment »

Reality Checking Failure

December 10, 2010 by Ann Wilberton

If you’ve been reading CCS for awhile, you know I’m not big on blame. I’m big on the seeing there is a problem and coming up with solutions part of assessing failure.

I am part of a listserv for my town. Mostly I skulk, keeping up on local news and happenings from a homeowner’s perspective. Recently there was an interesting discussion that was born out of a comment from a regular poster who informed the group that a local, boardwalk coffee/bakery shop had closed up. He made an offhanded comment about commercial rents going up on the boardwalk and mostly talked about the importance of supporting small local business in our fledgling little seaside community.

After reading his post, I quickly had the following thought: Dude, rent had nothing to do with the failure of that business and everything to do with the horrible customer service and pissy attitude of the owner. I decided to reply to his post with a couple of anecdotes of my own experience as a customer at this shop, which sparked a fascinating discussion and saw a flood of very civil posts about customer service and just how much people were willing to take in order to keep small business flourishing and when it became just not worth it.

This bakery by far had some of the best baked goods in NJ and probably one of the most divine macaroons I have ever eaten. His coffee was mediocre; but, there is no great coffee in Asbury Park; so, that was not surprising. But, this man, who owned the shop and worked behind the counter was just unpleasant, abrupt and on occasion, rude. The last time I had been in there was early this summer when I had a guest visiting from Oregon and she said, “ooh a bakery.” So, we went in. There were two people ahead of us in line and one of them asked for iced coffee which he began to retrieve from a refrigerator. As he held the door open he turned and said: Does anyone else want an iced coffee while i’m over here? He asked this question as if he was totally being put out. When the shop fell silent, he said: I guess that’s what they mean when they call me the coffee nazi; but, it just makes sense if i’m over here anyway. My friend looked at me and I shrugged. We got our treats, which were delivered brusquely with no thank you and walked out. My friend said, That was weird. I replied: I know. He’s always like that. I almost never go in there.

Further down the boardwalk is a seasonal business called the Sandwitch. The owner is funny, warm and kind and this is all delivered while under pressure because her business is thriving and there were always lines and 2 or 3 more workers crammed into her little hut making sandwiches and smoothies and coffee drinks. I probably went there almost a dozen times until she closed for the season in October.

I want to support small business in my community. I’d rather give my $$ to a person taking a risk on my town, contributing to it’s renaissance and what we in Asbury Park call, Buying In. But, you gotta give me something. Even a robotic thank you would have helped me support this guy.

And now I’m back to the concept of blame. Apparently this owner believes that his business didn’t survive the economy, or at least that was what he said on the listserv. But, that is just not true. Here in Asbury Park we broke beach attendance records by something like 40% and my neighbor said she hadn’t seen the boardwalk as packed as it was on July 4th since the 6os, before AP’s decline. And to top it off, his product was excellent. New Jersey has a small but loyal foodie base that will get in their cars and travel for good food and their word on chowhound.com alone has probably saved more than one small business that didn’t get enough traffic the old fashioned way. This is a case where blame really does lie at the feet of the proprietor and if he can’t see where he went wrong I suggest he not try any more entrepreneurial pursuits.

It is important when there is failure to swallow pride and really SEE the failure. Maybe it was just a bad idea. Maybe the key people were just not in roles they can succeed in. (The owner of the bakeshop put himself in the number one customer service role: counterman; but, he couldn’t meet the challenge. He should have hired someone with better skills.) Maybe you assumed too much about your customers. Failure is the time when tough questions should be asked; but, it is also when the slate gets cleaned in a way that really innovative ideas can come out of the rubble.

If you roll out a new service in your library and it doesn’t get used or fails to meet projections, do you chalk it up as something the public just didn’t want or do you really assess the failure to find out exactly where you missed the target? Just maybe, you learned something in that failure that will help you better serve your community. Don’t assume, just because it’s a great service that they will come. In my library, we are talking about ways to promote the Playaway collection (self contained audio books) because we just aren’t getting the circulation statistics we want. We could just shut it down and reduce or eliminate the budget for them; but, maybe the failure is in our marketing or education of the public. Clearly we need to try a few things before giving up. Shine the light on your process before blaming the public. Bakery man might feel better about his failure if he blames the public: they just didn’t come regularly enough to sustain this business; but, he might have learned more if he listened to his customers and read the online reviews of his business, which were almost all praising his product and slamming his service.

Get feedback from staff, from your customers, from anyone with an opinion and open your mind to it. It’s okay to fail; but, get something out of it or it truly is just failure.

Posted in customer service | 1 Comment »

Fakin’ It

November 17, 2010 by Ann Wilberton

photo: mmlolek via flickr cc

I recently had an awesome experience.

At our library, we are starting up a wellness team to think up and plan health and wellness programs for staff. Our township does not provide any health and wellness activities so we thought it would be a good idea to start some in-house.

At our Annual Staff Day, I got to introduce the idea of having a wellness team, some of the initial ideas we had, conduct a survey to see what staff actually want and I taught a class on 2 different meditation techniques. It was a lot of fun and I enjoyed sharing some of the things I’ve learned over the years about meditation. The theme of the day was “Civility” and I took that idea and applied it to my meditation class by choosing to teach them Loving kindness Meditation. I was a bit nervous at first because I understand that people sometimes don’t like activities which they perceive as touchy–feely. I asked them to open their hearts to the technique and give it a try and I asked them to give me the space to talk about love and kindness openly.

The class went well and there was a lively discussion. One of the things that kept coming up for people is that it is hard to do loving kindness meditation for someone who is their “less than favorable” person. One person asked me point blank how I do it for someone who has angered or hurt me. That it is impossible to be sincere. What do I do?

Fake it. That was my answer and I think it was a pretty good one. Repetition breeds habit. I also said that I sometimes need to try it on, to think about WHAT it would really feel like to have these wishes and love and compassion for this person. I think faking it is also part of that process. But what about the insincerity of it? If the intention is sincere, the motivation behind the practice is sincere, then I think faking it is just practice. Practice that eventually leads to meaning and sincere feelings. Even if you are thinking of the worst, violently abusive person, you can wish them health and happiness. Why? Why would you? Because if their suffering is lessened what would their impact on the world be?

Plus, I think faking it, practicing it, leads to a softening of your heart and that benefits you and lessens your suffering.

I think this technique is particularly useful in the workplace. If you do loving kindness meditation for a toxic coworker and your heart softens towards them, you are helping to heal the workplace and that is always good. I guarantee that there are NO negative side effects to loving kindness meditation!

Yesterday, one of my coworkers called me on the phone to tell me that she was thinking about the empty boat story and that it was hard but she was going to help me carry the torch. This is win/win all the way around. She will have less suffering. She will provide better customer service. She will spread joy to other people. I feel inspired by her.

Posted in compassion, Happiness, Health, kindness | Leave a Comment »

Cultivating Compassion Takes Practice not Magic

November 2, 2010 by Ann Wilberton

I think there is a belief that a person is either “nice” or not. There is a belief that people don’t change.

This is not true. People do and can change. If you want to be a nicer, kinder, calmer person there are things you can do to cultivate that. Years ago, I met a man who told me that I was one thought away from changing my life and in some ways he was right. Maybe the thought is: it doesn’t have to be this way. Or maybe the thought is: I really hate when I get angry and say things I end up regretting.

Compassion requires the ability to let go of preconceived ideas and perceptions. It requires you to open your heart and to see another person’s suffering. You can cultivate compassion through a sustained effort, a practice of focus on other and a practice of seeing other as you.

Ode Magazine in 2007 published an article on cultivating compassion that included the following exercise:

Practising compassion

Compassion can be practised anywhere: at airports, on beaches or in shops, whenever we are together with other people. Try this five-step exercise around friends and strangers. Do it discreetly and try to do all the steps with the same person.

With your attention geared to the other person, tell yourself:

Step 1: “Just like me, this person is seeking happiness in his/her life.”

Step 2: “Just like me, this person is trying to avoid suffering in his/her life.”

Step 3: “Just like me, this person has known sadness, loneliness and despair.”

Step 4: “Just like me, this person is seeking to fill his/her needs.”

Step 5: “Just like me, this person is learning about life.”

I really love the simplicity of this exercise. I think it an excellent practice to begin cultivating compassion. You can use it with strangers and you can use it with coworkers who are toxic and with family members who are annoying. In my previous post, I called for some compassion for the two college students who bullied Tyler Clementi. Let’s try using Mr. Ravi in our exercise:

Just like me, Dharun Ravi is seeking happiness in his life.

Just like me, Dharun Ravi is trying to avoid suffering in his life.

Just like me, Dharun Ravi has known sadness, loneliness and despair.

Just like me, Dharun Ravi is seeking to fill his needs.

Just like me, Dharun Ravi is learning about life.

I think the last one particularly resonates with me in this case. I think that he is learning very hard lessons about life right now.

There is no magic in developing compassion. There are no secrets, no special skills, no barriers outside your control. All that you need to develop compassion is within you. Start your practice today. The pay off is enormous, as described in this well known quote of the Dalai Lama:

“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”

Posted in compassion, Happiness | 3 Comments »

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