For some reason, I really take to the phrase “on the struggle bus.”
It’s flip but we all get that nagging feeling sometimes. We just can’t find our flow. Whatever it is we are trying to do, it’s not going well. It’s hard and we are frustrated. The struggle is real.
Dr. Brene Brown developed a values exercise for her book Dare to Lead that she explained in a recent episode of her podcast Unlocking Us. I remember doing this exercise (sort of) while listening to her audiobook several years ago. But I sat down this week to do the exercise for real.
I’ve been doing quite a bit of personal development over the past two years as part of my recovery from burnout.
One of my development activities was to read the Strengths Based Leadership book by Don Clifton that my colleague Dr. Tony Middlebrooks gave me and take the associated test from Gallup. The test returns your ranks on 43 themes across 4 domains.
Every year I am asked to give a talk to the graduating seniors in our undergraduate policy program about starting their first job in Washington, DC. My first job was as a legal assistant at a busy law firm downtown and then I worked nearly full-time for the Council on Environmental Quality at the White House, while going to school full-time for my master’s degree. I do not pretend to have any deep insights but rather focus here on some practical tips for getting settled in a first job. In no particular order:
To be successful, you need to put graduate school first, always and every day. It is not worth your time or money if you cannot give it your full attention. The following items offer practical suggestions on how to organize yourself and your time for success.
First, I recommend that you acquire a hard copy planner to do semester, monthly, weekly, and daily planning. Yes really! I also keep an electronic version in case I do not have my planner physically handy. Being able to cross tasks off both a physical copy and an electronic copy is a mental nudge to recognize even the smallest successes!