Quick and Dirty Tips

Time to Question Your Old Work Habits
The Fastest Way to Relieve Sciatica Pain at Home
Where Should You and Your Partner Spend the Holidays?
NaNoWriMo Bonus Excerpts: "What About the Baby?"

Posted: 15 Nov 2021 08:45 PM PST

My dad has always been a runner. So, when I graduated from college determined to bump up my own fitness, I took up running. Because in my family, fitness was running.

Two years later, slim and grumpy, I had an epiphany. I HATE running! I had defaulted to running as a means of fitness simply because I'd never stopped to question it. But in 2003 I joined my first gym, and a whole new beautiful world opened up to me. Today, I do everything at the gym…except run. And I'm fitter now than ever. Sorry, Dad.

The point is that sometimes we hold onto assumptions about the way things are or should be. We stick with routines and habits. Not because they're true or good. Just because we've never questioned them. And sometimes those old assumptions can get in the way of our best results.

I see people doing the same thing in the workplace. We do things on autopilot out of habit. But it's time to stop and question some of these defaults.

Today let's talk about the most common habits that have us stuck, and the tactics we can use to break out of them.

1. Saying yes to the meeting

When a meeting request comes in, chances are you check your availability. And if the time is open on your calendar, you accept. Right? I was guilty of this for years.

But what if we asked better questions? Instead of asking "am I available?" what if you tried asking…

Do I believe that whatever is on the agenda for this meeting actually warrants a meeting?
Is there something specific the organizer is looking for me to deliver in this meeting or is it just to keep me in the loop (in which case, a quick email after the meeting would suffice)?
Would attending this meeting help me to deliver on my goals and commitments?
Will this meeting provide me with an opportunity for exposure or connection to someone important?
Is participating in this meeting the best relative use of that hour?

If your answers are anything but yes, then you owe yourself the gift of a pause before you hit "accept."

Being invited to a meeting doesn't—or shouldn't—obligate you to donate an hour of your time to someone else's agenda. An open slot on your calendar doesn't have to equate to an implicit invitation to anyone else to snatch up that time.

Next time you receive a calendar invite, pause and reflect before you hit yes. Your time is a precious resource, and part of your job is to manage its expenditure wisely.

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The Fastest Way to Relieve Sciatica Pain at Home

Posted: 15 Nov 2021 03:10 PM PST

Have you ever experienced pain on one side of your butt or hip that radiates down your leg? Describe this pattern of pain to your primary care clinician and I bet you'll be told that you have sciatica, a relatively common condition that up to 40% of people will suffer from at some point in life.

Your clinician will likely explain that sciatica is caused by irritation, inflammation, pinching, or compression of a nerve in the lower back from a herniated or slipped disc. They may ask you to avoid certain activities, prescribe you meds, and refer you to a physical therapist or a spine specialist.

Like any well-informed patient in the digital age, you do your own homework by Googling "sciatica" and all the top search results, each from highly reputable sources, confirm that the pain you're experiencing is coming from your spine. At this point, most people would feel anxious, worried, or scared because sciatica sounds pretty serious. I know I would be!

But what if I told you that sciatica may not be a result of a herniated disc or even have anything to do with your spine? What if I also told you that 3 simple exercises may quickly and effectively reduce or eliminate sciatica symptoms in a few short weeks?

Understanding sciatica

As a physical therapist, sciatica is one of the most common conditions that I see and I get several new cases every week from clients young and old.

The sciatic nerve is the longest nerve in your body. It begins at the lower part of your spinal cord, travels through your hips and buttocks, runs along the back of each thigh and leg, and terminates in your foot. Sciatica refers to pain that radiates along the path of the sciatic nerve when the nerve is irritated.

Sciatica is commonly attributed to prolonged sitting, heavy lifting, increased stress on the spine from obesity, damage to the nerves from diabetes, and age-related changes to the spine. Up until relatively recently, the spine was considered to be the main source of sciatica caused when a herniated disk or some other structure in the spine presses on the nerve.

However,...

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Where Should You and Your Partner Spend the Holidays?

Posted: 15 Nov 2021 09:12 AM PST

The holiday season is meant to be a time filled with joy, friends, family, and good food. In fact, Thanksgiving in particular is one of the happiest days of the year. All of the social rituals and expressed gratitude on that day are linked to reported increased happiness and reduced feelings of stress for 68% of Americans. In the last year in particular, many of us felt the strain of missing out on holiday experiences due to COVID-19. The social connection during this season is something that many people look forward to.

However, with the holidays comes certain expectations for how people ought to experience each holiday. We feel obligated to see family, to travel long distances, and to celebrate in particular ways. This sense of obligation may lead romantic partners to feel competing ways about how they should be spending each holiday. Do we go to my family or your family? What did we do last year? I don't like the way your family celebrates this holiday. You don't want to be interrogated by my nosy Aunt this year. We want to create our own traditions in our own home for the holiday.

Navigating these competing concerns can be difficult. Whether it's your first holiday as an official couple or the 15th time you've had to decide where to go for Thanksgiving, these decisions may invoke a sense of anxiety or discomfort. This is particularly true for people who have fought about this in prior relationships or in their current relationship during the prior holiday seasons. So, how can we more effectively navigate this?

Navigating milestone conflicts

The holiday season is a set time every year that we can expect to encounter. Research tells us that when an event is associated with recurrent conflict, like fighting with your partner about where you are spending the holidays, it can preemptively produce anxiety or worry in anticipation of that conflict occurring. This worry may spark intrusive, or ruminative, thoughts about the issue and/or your partner. This conflict can feel high stakes and produce overly emotional conversations because they center around meaningful relationships in your life or touchy subjects, like your family, money, or your faith.

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NaNoWriMo Bonus Excerpts: "What About the Baby?"

Posted: 15 Nov 2021 07:00 AM PST

What About the Baby? Some Thoughts on the Art of Fiction gathers the bestselling novelist Alice McDermott's pithiest wisdom about her chosen art, acquired over a lifetime as an acclaimed writer and teacher of writing.

From technical advice ("check that your verbs aren't burdened by unnecessary hads and woulds") to setting the bar ("I expect the fiction I read to carry with it the conviction that it is written with no other incentive than that it must be written"), from the demands of readers ("they'd been given a story with a baby in it, and they damn well wanted that baby accounted for") to the foibles of public life ("I've never subscribed to the notion that a film adaptation is the final imprimatur for a work of fiction, despite how often I've been told by encouraging friends and strangers, 'Maybe they'll make a movie of your novel,' as if I'd been aiming for a screenplay all along but somehow missed the mark and wrote a novel by mistake"), McDermott muses trenchantly and delightfully about the craft of fiction.

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Food And Recipe Fusion

Tuesday, November 16, 2021