RescueTime is a great tool to help you get a handle on how you spend your time. If you are interested, sign up for the free acount through my referral link and I’ll earn two weeks of free RescueTime. Sign up for a paid account, and you’ll help me extend my account by 30 days. This is also a great way for you to get to use this tool, since referrals earn you free time. I’m sure that many of you will be interested after watching my tutorial video.
Also, if you are entrepreneurial at heart but struggle with marketing yourself, learning how to run business, or you just want to be immersed in social media and have the opportunity to learn first-hand from some great business minds, check out Third Tribe. They have an affiliate program, too, so if you sign up through my link, I will earn a commission.I have found the advice I get there to be worth several times the membership cost, and I can safely say that if I have to trim back on expenses, this will be among the last to go. The community there is awesome, and it goes way beyond the founders (Brian Clark, Darren Rowse, Chris Brogan and Sonia Simone).
I hope you found this tour of RescueTime interesting and that you’ll give it a spin. It’s really been helping me, and I think it could help you, too. My best wishes to you as you find ways to rescue time and find more life in your work/life balance.
Today’s episode of the Higher Ed Life and Careers Show will center on the ever-elusive idea of maintaining work/life balance. It’s a rough topic for many in higher ed, especially in Student Affairs, where work doesn’t just follow you home. Work is home. And home is work.
So where do you fit in a “life” when the lines are blurred?
I’ll be discussing this with my friend and periodic co-host Bryan Koval, who has been juggling a new job at Carnegie Mellon University, a doctoral program with a distance education component, and for now, living away from his partner, Jessica, who still works at Penn State. We’ll talk about our personal experiences, share tips and ideas, and take calls.
Please tune in today at 11 am. EDT and call in with your questions, thoughts and ideas!
Click on the logo below to go to the episode page.
There are some important periods of the academic year to pay attention to when you work in higher ed. Everyone acknowledges that the busiest times…welcome week, exam week, and closing for the summer… can eat up your time and energy. But it’s equally important to pay attention to the times which are slower-moving, because they sometimes represent “the calm before the storm”
When I worked in Residence Life, I always had a mid-semester slog starting around October. People were settling into routines, events were happening here and there, and my calendar would feel pretty set, with regular committee meetings, 1-on-1 meetings with supervisees, and loads and loads of busy work. It was always around this time, too, when we’d start to see roommate and neighbor conflicts pick up, alcohol poisonings increase, and psychological issues rear their ugly head.
This period between early October and Thanksgiving always felt to me like wading through molasses. When this feeling hits you (and it will, sometime between now and Thanksgiving, I guarantee it!), you may do one of two things…bury yourself in work so that you feel busy and productive, or avoid work like the plague, put off unpleasant tasks as long as you can, and just hope to ride it out until break. Neither of these methods should be mistaken for work/life balance.
Times like these call on you to stop ad pay attention to how you are balancing your priorities. If you don’t, it can be like a slow, smoldering burn, ready to flash into a fireball at any moment, and leave you ashen, grey, or even burnt to a cinder.
So do yourself a favor: Pay attention to how you are spending your time, and find some time for yourself. If you don’t insist on work/life balance, you won’t have any!
What do you do to make it through your mid-semester slog? Share your ideas, questions and thoughts in the comments below.
Sean Cook, Certified Life Purpose & Career Coach
Sean Cook is a certified Life Purpose and Career Coach based in Athens, GA. Before completing his certification from the Life Purpose Institute, he earned his M.Ed. in Counseling and Guidance Services from Clemson University, and spent over 15 years various student affairs roles in higher education. He specializes in working with college students, recent graduates, and higher ed professionals, and acts as publisher for HigherEdCareerCoach.Com and HigherEdLifeCoach.Com. You can listen to his periodic podcast, the Higher Ed Life and Careers Show, at 11 a.m. Eastern on Fridays on BlogTalkRadio.com. Look for his upcoming contribution to SelfGrowth.Com’s new book “101 Great Ways to Enhance Your Career” later this Fall.
Things have been really busy lately and so today we did not have a podcast. I will try to return next week and start getting on a more regular schedule again. I am looking for guests, but have a few tentative topics lined up. Here are a few quick updates on some things worth checking out in the meantime. Thanks for visiting!
I found a great new web service called paper.li that lets you enter your Twitter username or a hashtag or a Twitter list and it automagically makes an online “newspaper” out of the links shared on those streams. I set one up for my @hiedcareercoach account, and for the hashtags #sachat and #saplacement. Check them out.
I never announced that I did choose LeaderShape for recognition for the August Who-DO award. I am going to finally get my act together in the next week to post a “who-do” award page and to actually send out the awards to the recipients so far. I plan to announce the September Who-Do next week. There won’t be a poll this time, because I have already chosen who to recognize. Polls will continue in the near future.
I am planning another hybrid coaching program to begin soon, and go through the placement season. I’m collecting information on people who might be interested through a new list. If you are interested in learning more, sign up here.
Look for more information about webinars on resumes, networking and job interviewing soon.
This week, the Student Affairs Twitter Chat (#sachat) passed a milestone. Now one year into its existence, it has changed how many student affairs professionals engage in conversations and professional development. I’ve been a member of the community surrounding this chat and the Student Affairs Collaborative Blog during this formative year, so I’d like to share my thoughts on how being involved in this community changed my life.
What communities are you engaged in online?
Are you using social media to engage other professionals and to network? Is it making you a better professional?
Work with Sean. I help higher ed professionals take control of their careers with tailored services including resume and CV development, LinkedIn profile optimization and networking strategy, interview coaching, and one-on-one career guidance.
