Career Self Care

Anita Brick: Hi, this is Anita Brick, and welcome to CareerCast at Chicago Booth. To help you advance in your career. Today we're delighted to be speaking with Minda Zetlin. She is the author of Career Self-Care. I think this is a first of its kind, which we are going to talk about. And she writes the popular column “Laid-Back Leader” for Inc.com. Her articles and workshops offer research-backed advice to help ambitious people get the most out of their career and their lives. She is the author or coauthor of several books, most recently The Geek Gap. A former president of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, she lives in Snohomish, Washington. Just as a sneak peek, if you go to Mindazetlin.com, you're going to find a whole host of really wonderful things.

Minda, thank you very much for making the time. So maybe we can get a definition, because from the questions it seemed like maybe people had different definitions. But I'd love to get your definition of career self-care.

Minda Zetlin: Career is your pursuit of whatever success looks like to you, and it doesn't necessarily mean that you're pursuing what success would look like to someone else or to, you know, say, your parents.

But self-care, I think a lot of people think of it as scented candles and bubble baths and massages and weekend retreats. You know, I love all that stuff.

Anita Brick: Me too.

Minda Zetlin: To me, self-care is a lot broader. My shorthand for it is anything that will make you happy, healthy, and at ease. When we're happy, healthy, and at ease, we do our jobs better. And I've seen over and over again, including on myself, that when people start paying attention to what makes them happy, healthy, and at ease, they do their jobs better and their careers go better. That could include relaxing, spending time outside in nature, being with friends. Community is extremely important for our health in many, many ways. Nutritious food and giving yourself enough time to make sure that that happens. A certain amount of introspection. I read about journaling too. All those things contribute to self-care, and all those things can make you happy, healthy, and at ease.

And interestingly, a new one for me. I just recently finished Sanjay Gupta's book Keep Sharp. A lot of the things that I think of as self-care are also things that we need for our brain health. And so one more reason to take this stuff seriously.

Anita Brick: I agree. Yeah, I think one of the things that gets in the way–an alum asked this question, I think my family was like this, there were a lot of should’s. She said, “I grew up in a family where there were a lot of should’s. How do you advise seasoned professionals to move from should to prefer?”

And the word prefer is something you use in the book. So how do you move from well, I should do that versus I prefer to do this?

Minda Zetlin: I grew up with a lot of should’s myself. I don't think that's necessarily been bad for me. I think there's a lot in terms of self-discipline and things that I've learned that I might not have learned.

It's a tough question for all of us, and I'm not sure I've necessarily always found the answer. Two things help. One is to stop and in the moment, just ask yourself a simple question, what do you want right now? For me at least, it's not something I do often enough because it's always, what do I have to get done right now? Where should I be right now? What should I be preparing for right now?  But if I stop and just think like in this moment, what do I want? Sometimes that kind of gets me where I need to go to start thinking about this stuff.

The other thing, and I think this is the fundamental point of the whole book, really, is it's really important to take a step back and take that 20,000ft view of both our lives and our careers, and it's so hard to do when we're in it.

One of the reasons I think it's so important to have one completely work-free day every week–pulling in something that wasn't directly in your question. But I think when we look at the bigger picture, we often see what we want. The research shows that we’ll be better at our work and at our lives and as human beings if we're happier. As Robert Louis Stevenson said, we actually have a duty to make ourselves happy.

Anita Brick: I would agree with that. Certainly if we're happier, we're also better to be around. You made a comment about one day a week?

Minda Zetlin: I actually just did a speech in Toronto with a bunch of aspiring entrepreneurs, and I posed the question, you know how many people work one or both days? This past weekend, a lot of hands went up. I think that there should be one day a week that we do no work at all. If there are people in your program who are working full time jobs and going to book as MBA students, that might be really challenging for them. I think a lot of us do end up working weekends. Taking the occasional day off during the workweek is a good idea too. But what I really mean is that there should be one day out of every seven where we don't do any work at all, because that gives us a chance for our minds to kind of relax and to take in that bigger picture that will really help us figure out what we prefer as opposed to what we should.

Anita Brick: That's a really good point.

But along with this and not having all the answers, so another alum said, “Hi Minda, I am a bit of a control freak. How do you advise people to be okay with having a goal that is directionally accurate without having all the specifics worked out?” I think that's hard for people.

Minda Zetlin: Let me just take a step back, because this directionally accurate thing might be less clear to people who aren't familiar with the book.

I say in the book that we should all have goals, but those goals are directionally accurate, meaning we know what direction we want to go in, but not necessarily exactly where we want to get. Whatever we think we're heading towards, we're actually always just being directionally accurate because this is a rapidly changing world. And if you had asked me in my 20s what I wanted my career to be, I wouldn't have thought about making my living publishing columns online because that wasn't a thing then. What you think you're going to reach by the time you reach there may be completely different.

Whether you would start with that premise or not.

Anita Brick: Excellent point. You know, there's another seasoned Boothie, and he said, “In your book you talk about goal ambivalence. I love the whole concept of goal ambivalence. And I think that I might be suffering from it. I have a great job, like the people, good work and well paying. That said, I have this itch to launch a startup, and I think this might be leading me to splitting my focus and that this could damage both my dream of the startup of being a founder and my current role. Help!”

Minda Zetlin: I really wish I could talk to the person because there's so many specifics that I would love to tease out about this. So let me back up and talk about goal ambivalence for a bit. So this is something that the psychological profession has observed. Sometimes as people get close to their goals, they become indecisive about whether this goal is what they really want.

It doesn't necessarily mean that the goal isn't what they really want, but reaching a goal, especially a big goal, means change. And change is always frightening. And I remember having goal ambivalence when I finally got to where I was decidedly on track to be president of the American Society of Journalists and Authors. And I thought, you know, the closer I get to this, the less I want to do it. I went through and did it, and I'm so glad that I did.

Goal ambivalence is one thing. I'm coming to question whether you're doing what you really want to do, and whether something else would be more fulfilling. The only way to do this is with a lot of soul searching and introspection and journaling. Talking things out with people that you care about or whose opinions you trust.

You need to do a lot of that sort of internal research to figure out whether it is really just goal ambivalence, in the sense that I'm reaching my goals and I'm not sure I want to, or whether you're reaching your goals and truly your goal is something else. With starting a business, yeah, I hear you about split focus. A lot of people start little side hustles just to see whether there's a market for whatever it is they want to do, whether they would enjoy it, you know, whether logistically it's possible. I'm in favor of those kinds of experiments, if you can manage it. In general, in relation to this and in relation to everything. In general, whenever we can do small experiments that will take us one small step in the direction we want to go, we will get information that should help us figure out what the next steps should be.

If there's a way to do that, I would encourage you to give it a try. Definitely do some thinking about it. Do some research finding out more about what the career path is in your job, if you don't already know. Talking to people a couple of steps up the ladder where you are headed to see if you would like to be doing what they're doing is one form of research too, as well as trying a little side hustle, as well as really thinking about what the opportunities are for you and what you want to do. And good luck. You can figure this out. You really can.

Anita Brick: It is very interesting because all these questions are about actions. There are a couple of questions about can I really be myself? How do I show up in a way that is authentic and when?

So the first one is from an MBA student. I think this very much aligns with career self-care. I am all for showing up at work as I am – once I have the offer.

Minda Zetlin: I love that question.

Anita Brick: How do you advise someone to show up as they are before they have an offer or even an interview from things like resume, LinkedIn, other social media? This is a very tricky one, so I'm going to turn it over to you and see what you have to say.

Minda Zetlin: Totally is tricky. There's a certain amount of playing the game that goes into the process of getting the job. There's a certain amount of playing the game that you're expected to do. I wouldn't fully encourage someone to truly show up as themselves at a job interview, just because that's not the world that we live in, especially these days.

You also are learning about the company as much as they're learning about you, right? The prospective employer will expect you to want to learn about them. And I actually think that at that stage, that's a lot more important question than do I show up as myself? You show up in the way that gets you the job. Truthfully, you also do a lot of research to answer the question, “will I be happy?” Particularly, “will I be happy as whoever I am in this environment?” I think your task is to find that out. Find the answer to that question, because once you get the offer, then you can make a decision about whether you're going to be happy there. Then once you have the job, yes, showing up as yourself–true that showing up as yourself may be easier in kind of a mid-career position than a starting out position.

Again, it's a direction, right? You go in the direction of being yourself, and you find how far you can go down that road and be comfortable and have the people around you comfortable. And if the answer is you can't, then that's not the right place for you. So that's why it's good to try and find that out before you start working there.

Anita Brick: Okay, so that's all well and good. I don't think it's quite that simple, because with social media there is a whole trail from the last however many years you've been in different platforms.

Minda Zetlin: That's true. And I think it's an individual decision. Unfortunately sanitizing your social media might be part of playing the game to get the job. For me, I choose not to put things on social media that would embarrass me in any context. That's just how I deal with it.

Anita Brick: Yeah, and I would say that a lot of MBAs and people in business these days, even if they started in social media much earlier in their life, take a very similar stance. It's interesting. So some things change and some things don't.

So here's another situation. Being in an environment that is pretty oppressive and how do you care for yourself in that environment? Another MBA student said, “I'm in an environment where leadership is short on telling us what you're doing well, and long on pointing out what is not exactly what they want or expect. This is really chipping away at my confidence and courage to speak up. Now I'm not ready to leave. What advice might you have to fortify my self-worth when it's not happening for my boss or others on the team and ultimately create value from this situation?

Minda Zetlin: That was such an interesting question. Without knowing more details, I can only guess that the situation that they're in is that it's cultural. In some workplace cultures and in some human cultures, praising people for their accomplishments is just not the norm. From the question, I'm going to assume that that's the case, and not that the place that they're in truly doesn't appreciate them. If the place that they're in truly doesn't appreciate them, then that's a big problem and you need to address it either by figuring out what it is that you're not doing that they would appreciate more, or by being in a different place.

If you're in a place that's chipping away at your self-confidence and making you miserable, sadly I need to pose the question, why aren't you ready to leave? Is it because there's something that you really find wonderful about the job? Is it because, you know, if you did this, another couple of years, you'll be able to move on to a different position that would be more satisfying, and you just have to put in the time? Is it because you really are attached to this particular organization or is it that you don't feel confident about going and looking for something else? The answer to that question, you know, would inform whether it really is a good idea to stay where you are.

Okay, so having said all that, two things. One is you need to find some empirical way to evaluate yourself against the goals that you have. If you're not getting the kind of positive reinforcement that you should be getting from the people you're working for, you know, see how you're doing against the goals that you have in terms of, you know, whatever the parameters of your job are. Are you succeeding in starting new initiatives, running successful marketing campaigns, whatever it is. Figure out some objective measure of your own performance and then pat yourself on the back when you meet those measures. And the other thing, if there is someone in your organization who you feel comfortable with and trust who might be sort of in the position of being a mentor, you know, again, you can only do that with someone who's benevolence you really trust. And if there isn't someone like that, then don't do it. But if there is someone that you feel comfortable with and you trust, see if they can give you any insight as to how you might get more of that positive reinforcement that you're looking for.

Ultimately, staying in a place over the longterm that makes you unhappy isn't really good for any of us. I do encourage you to either find a way to be happy at this job, or find a way to go someplace else.

Anita Brick: I agree. An MBA student said, “Hi Minda, thank you for doing this interview and writing the book. You recommend to stop comparing yourself to others. How is that possible?”

Minda Zetlin: I don't know, it's like it's part of the human condition! You know something, it doesn't necessarily mean it's easy to stop doing it. You know, the problem for me is that when I compare myself to others–and yes, I still do–you compare yourself to the person with the highest accomplishment in every possible venue. Now, I have a friend who routinely does 15-mile hikes and I should be doing a 15-mile hike. I have friends who go out and do a lot of highly paid public speaking. Well, I should be doing that. Every time you compare yourself to someone, you compare yourself to the most successful person in that direction, and then you start to feel bad about yourself. Whatever you're doing, they'll always be people who are doing it better. You're going to measure yourself against them.

Maybe it's hard to stop comparing yourself to people, but maybe it's a tiny bit easier to keep in mind that it’s sort of meaningless, because there's always going to be people doing it better, and there's always going to be people doing worse, and you're going to be somewhere on that spectrum. The comparison gets kind of meaningless if you start thinking about that.

There's times when comparing yourself to someone can be beneficial. I was lengthily working on a manuscript, and somebody in my writing group wrote an entire manuscript from start to finish in six months, and I thought, “Well, shoot, if he can do it in six months, I can get this done.” So sometimes comparing yourself to someone and thinking somebody did this difficult thing, therefore I think I can too can help you.

Anita Brick: That's good to go along with that. Someone said they know they should go outside of their comfort zone. They know they should stretch, but they feel a bit immobilized to do that out of fear. And sometimes the fear gets replaced with confusion, which is really fear. What's something you can do to break being immobilized if you know you want to step and create a bigger goal, a bigger outcome, but you're a little scared? What’s something someone can do to expand their comfort zone?

Minda Zetlin: Yeah, I'm glad you said all that about fear, because you saved me the trouble of saying it. Procrastination is a long word for fear, as far as I'm concerned. What if it was a small child? Treat yourself like that small child. And I would say for me, the answer is make it a smaller and smaller and smaller step until it gets so small that it's not scary.

Here's an example from my life that I've been using to illustrate this for decades. I knew that I should have a will. I'm not really a superstitious person, but there was something about writing a will that brought up all my fear of mortality and all my superstitiousness about it. Well, if I do this, then I'm going to die. And so I really had a hard time for decades. Finally I said to myself, okay, this is what you're going to do. You're going to open the legal zone website. That's it. That's your job. All I had to do is open a website. And for a few days there, that's all I did. I opened the website. You know, I mean, the people who wrote the legal zone website understand that it's scary. So they made it very easy. It starts out with one simple question, okay, I answered that question. Now I have a will because I finally took it down from, you know, oh my God, this huge scary thing to I'm just going to open a website.

If you're struggling with fear and your comfort zone, I would say look for the smallest, littlest, tiniest first step you can take. So tiny that it can't be scary. I mean, how can you be scared of opening a website? Find something that small and that unthreatening as a place to start.

Anita Brick: I love that because even though it was really super small, you did expand your comfort zone. And then you did a little more and a little more. I love that. I'm a big believer in that. As you do that, then you expand your capacity and maybe even courage a little bit.

Minda Zetlin: Yes. Well, I mean, people say, I don't know if there's like scientific research behind this. People who are experts say that the more you stretch your comfort zone, the bigger it gets. The more you stay within your comfort zone, the smaller it gets. I do think they're not static. I do think they shrink and expand. And you don't want yours to shrink.

Anita Brick: No. No, no. I've also found – I don’t know if you see this as being true – if there is something that I'm not super comfortable doing alone, sometimes I feel much more comfortable if I have a buddy.

And whether that’s studying for an exam or just doing something I haven't done before, I find that if I have a friend or someone who also wants to do it, we encourage each other and we move forward faster. Do you find that to be true?

Minda Zetlin: I think it often is true. But partly because I grew up as an only child, I don't do that as much as probably would be good for me.

You know, what you just described is actually hard-wired into humans as part of our evolution. It's always less frightening to do something if you're not alone. I absolutely encourage you and anyone listening to look for ways to do something with someone as you can to make it less scary, because that will make it less scary.

Anita Brick: Good point, and in effect, opening up the website. Even though you were alone, you had the website to help you.

Minda Zetlin: Yeah.

Anita Brick: Yeah. It's good. Do you have time for a couple more questions?

Minda Zetlin: Sure.

Anita Brick: Okay, good. One of the things I found interesting in your book, and so did this alum, was the idea of having dreamy parts to your job. And this alum said, “Hi Minda. You speak about the parts of your role that are your day job and the dreamy parts.” I'm assuming day job or like more mundane things. “How can I grow the dreamy parts and reduce the things maybe I don't like quite as much?”

Minda Zetlin: The first thing is to decide that that's what you want to do, and look for opportunities to do that. The first step, which it sounds like this person has perhaps already taken, the first step for everyone else is to figure out how your job breaks down in terms of day job and dream job.

It was actually a Gartner analyst who said that to me, and he said, you know, even CEOs have parts of their job that they really don't like. And I thought, that's true. If you haven't considered this framework before, it might be worth just taking a piece of paper and writing or screen and writing a list of what you love about your job and what you hate about your job. And then once you do that, once you have that list, it's probably going to become more self-evident what you could do to do more of the former and less of the latter. If there's a particular type of project you like, you could lobby to get more of those projects. If there's a part of your job that you really dislike, you know, getting someone else to do that part might be hard, but maybe you could see about delegating, maybe you could see about automating. Maybe you could figure out if some of these things are vestigial and not truly necessary for your job. If it's something truly mundane, get together with a few friends and do it over lunch or something. I mean, there's all kinds of ways to make a day job part of your job less onerous. You just have to put some thought into how to do that.

Anita Brick: It's a good point. I remember this was several years ago. Now we actually as a department thought strategically what needed to be done and how to make it more effective. At that time, we were doing the project management aspect of it, the creative development aspect of it, and the delivery aspect of programs. It was quite brilliant. As we're sitting there, someone said, why don't we separate this? So sometimes it's even looking at the team and seeing if it's shuffled in the right way, where it could be something you're not that crazy about, one of your colleagues would jump at the chance to do.

Minda Zetlin: It depends. And I hate to say this, I think I'm particularly speaking to female listeners here just because it tends to happen to us to make sure that you're not taking on the low-prestige jobs just because someone has to do it, or you feel like you don't mind it, and that that's going to play into what kind of advancement you have.

But yeah, within that framework. Absolutely. Look for the things you enjoy doing and, you know, do more of them.

Anita Brick: You know, I'm very curious because there are tons of things in the book that you wrote. It was a really very practical but uplifting read for me. But if we're going to get super practical, if you were going to tell the MBA students, alumni, friends of Booth, friends of CareerCast, if you were going to give them three things to do, beginning right now, to make sure that career self-care was deeply embedded into how they live their lives, and ultimately to thrive professionally, what would those three things be?

Minda Zetlin: Wow. Okay, going back to what I said before, a lot of it has to do with having kind of a bigger strategic view. For everyone, but particularly for students, if you're not doing this already, do a lot of, you know what I would call research. Both on yourself, introspection research journal, think about what you want. And in the book there's an exercise about goal setting, which begins with actually trying to come up with a vision of where you would be in five years if everything went according to plan and, you know, everything broke your way. Because I think if you start out with these very clear ideas about where you want to go, that can really help you.

At the same time, especially if you're heading into a career or a new career, as much information as you can gather by dealing with trade, professional industry groups, other people in your organization or an organization you hope to join, other people outside your organization who may be your peers. The more you can gather information from everyone around you, the better off you're going to be at figuring out where you really want to go.

So that's one that might actually be two. Maybe I'll call that two. One is doing the research within your own soul about what you're looking for. And second, do the research out in the world of what is possible and how to get there.

And the last thing is do prioritize your own well-being and happiness, because not only will it make you happier, but it will make you better at your job. You're more likely to be successful. And in particular, most people, I think, who are in an MBA program either are or are aspiring to be leaders. And if you're going to be somebody’s boss, I think it's particularly important to be happy yourself, because it's very difficult to lead people effectively from a place of misery, unhappiness, and dissatisfaction with your job. I mean, people wind up doing it and they make the best of it sometimes, but it's much better when you're happy and you love what you're doing to be the kind of leader that the people that you're leading really require. Make yourself happy. Really is worth the effort.

Anita Brick: So when you think about that and you think about three things, practical, tactical things that you do or that you see other people do, what are those that you do on a day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month basis?

Minda Zetlin: One thing that I do, if not every day, then certainly many times a week, is sit down and write in my journal. And there is a lot about what I call power journaling, which is a hugely helpful tool for me to stay on track to my goals. So I use my journal both to write down what I'm thinking and my moods, but also to write about what my goals are for the future to envision a year from now or five years from now. Where exactly do I want to be. Doing a lot of that kind of soul searching right now. For a long time, the whole thing was get the book out, get the book successfully launched. And I'm working on the successful launch, but then what direction do I want to go in once that initial launch period is over? That's a question that I need to think about.

This is the M-word and people don't like but I actually think meditation is super useful. But you know, meditation doesn't have to be sitting in a corner saying “ohm.” A meditation teacher told me a long time ago that five minutes of meditation every day is a lot better than a lengthy meditation once in a while. So I’m up to nine, I try to do nine minutes of meditation, again, not every single day, because not every day allows for it. As often as I can. It's super simple meditation with like one mantra or even open intention meditation, which is just paying attention and letting thoughts flit through your mind. It has proven brain benefits, for one thing, but it also really helps me get centered and figure out what I want, what's really bothering me, and what I need to work on and change.

So those are two things, and I do set myself goals. So another thing that is helpful in all kinds of ways that I really do is to take frequent breaks. You know, I talked about taking one day off a week. I think that's super important for brain health and for your career. I also use something called the Pomodoro technique when I'm working on something that need to work 25 minutes and take a break for five.

Anita Brick: I do that too.

Minda Zetlin: It's not just work for 25 minutes, take a break for five. If you do that four times and you have to take a longer break, which I think is really important. It also gives you a chance to sort of keep track of how long it takes you to do a specific task. How many of these 25 minute work periods it does. I'm trying really hard not to use the word pomodoro, but those work periods are called Pomodoro technique. How many pomodoro does it take to finish a task?

It turns out that taking frequent breaks has enormous brain benefits. Benefits for your learning and for your creativity. So particularly for the people who are listening to this or engaged in the huge learning exercise of getting an MBA, frequent breaks will help you learn better.

Last thing that I think is important for everyone, and I really try to do this for myself, is to get plenty of sleep. The word is getting out about how sleep is important, however important you think sleep is, it's even more important than that. And for your lifetime, brain health. There's one single thing that if you're not doing it, you should fix right now, it is make sure to have at least seven and ideally eight hours of sleep every night.

Anita Brick: Sounds good. Gotta build that in and turn off those devices early and get rid of that blue light and go from there.

It's a different way of looking at things, Minda. So thank you for opening up our eyes to that self-care. Although bubble baths and and long walks in the woods and all of those things are important. And I think they could be worked into career self-care, it is broader than that. So thank you for bringing light to that and doing it in a very honest, upbeat way so that it's not more to do. It is making choices to have better outcomes for our careers and really for our lives.

Minda Zetlin: Well, thank you and yes, thank you so much. And absolutely, I mean, the last thing I would want is for someone to feel more pressured to do stuff after reading the book. The complete opposite of the desired effect.

Anita Brick: No, I don't think it would be that way at all. Thank you very, very much for making time for us.

Minda Zetlin: Well thank you. Thanks for having me.

Anita Brick: And as I mentioned, got a lot of wonderful resources at Minda’s site, which is Mindazetlin.com. And thank you all for listening. This is Anita Brick with CareerCast at Chicago Booth. Keep advancing.