When I was in business school, we joked that cleaning the bathroom never sounds as good as when you have an exam to study for. Usually cleaning the bathroom sounds tedious and dirty, but compared to feeling confused or overwhelmed by difficult material, scrubbing the toilet feels like safe harbor.
If your workplace doesn’t have a culture of truly letting people leave their cares behind when they take vacation — or if it’s frowned upon to even take vacation — maybe you can tell your boss that you need some task-negative time in order to tap into your best problem-solving insights?
It seems the socially correct answer to the question “How are you?” is no longer “Good,” but “Busy.” Maybe it’s all the technology that keeps us plugged in 24/7, or the never-ending flow of information from social media, websites and blogs, or the added work load on employees left at downsized companies. Whatever the cause, I frequently have conversations with…
