Bernie Michalik's posterous site

"If you eat a frog first thing in the morning, the rest of your day will be
wonderful." -- Mark Twain

"Let them eat cake." -- Marie Antoinette

Do you find your work day is full of demanding work, with little of it
rewarding? Do you find yourself putting off difficult tasks and not
tackling the work you need to do? Maybe your work is boring and you find
yourself goofing off all day, surfing the Web and trying to look busy? If
any of these apply to you, then you need to rebalance your work diet.

Your work diet is much like your food diet in that a balanced diet is a
good one. If you balance your food diet, it's more nutritious, delicious
and enjoyable. A balanced food diet leaves you feeling better, fitter, and
capable of achieving more. What?s true for your food diet is also true for
your work diet: balance is better.

Just like in your food diet you want a mixture of grains, proteins, fruits
and vegetables, with your work diet you want a mixture of frogs, fibre and
cake if you want to be successful. Frogs are all the things you hate to do
at work but need to do to be successful. Cake is all the all the things you
do at work which are almost solely a pleasure. And fiber is the bulk of
your work: neither terribly pleasant nor unpleasant, but essential in order
to get things done.

You may be one of those few that think that work is or should be just one
piece of cake after another. And maybe it can be for some. For most,
however, work is a series of attending meetings, replying to email,
accepting constructive criticism of your work, futzing with your computer,
and juggling deadlines. Rewarding yes, but hardly a piece (or pieces) of
cake.

If you are going to balance your work diet, it should look like this:

Some frogs, not too many, sooner rather than later. You know what your
frogs are. Chances are even while you are avoiding them, you are thinking
about them, sometimes to the detriment of other things that you are doing.
If you find that your job feels like it is mostly about eating frogs, then
maybe the first frog you want to eat is the one that gets you started
finding a new job. If it?s just the occasional frog you have to eat,  plan
to eat it first thing and get it out of the way. If you do, you won?t have
to think about it anymore, you can get on with the rest of your day or
week, and you can look forward to better things (i.e. cake). Moreover,
often what you thought was going to be awful turns out to be that not that
bad. After all, for some, frogs are a delicacy! The frog you were avoiding
(e.g. presenting to clients) may turn out to be something you really have a
taste for after all.

Fill up on fibre, but not solely on it. Work is work, and the people that
put in the work, get the rewards. But sometimes people find busy work to
avoid dealing with frogs, and that is not a good thing. Eventually those
things you are avoiding are going to impede your ability to do the good
work you are currently doing. Better to get them off your plate now.

Likewise, some people constantly forgo cake, and their work life is Spartan
and without enjoyment or reward, and that?s no good either. Eventually your
work will become a grind, and you will wonder what the point of it all is.
No one should be a martyr for their work and people that forgo any pleasure
in pursuit of their work goals are Puritans for no benefit. To be
successful, you need a lot of fibre. To be successful in the long term, you
need cake.

Cake occasionally, for motivation and special occasions.  You need to
punctuate your work with highlights, celebrations, creative detours, and
the occasional break and cake like activities provide that. Cake provides a
balance to the frogs, and something to look forward to after a day or week
of fibre. Everyone has their own idea of what is the best type of cake,
whether it is exciting side projects, attending innovative conferences, or
having get togethers with co workers that make work interesting. Regardless
of what it is, you should have a dessert tray of activities you can engage
in from time to time that give you a chance to mix up your work diet, and
if you don?t, you need to make it part of your work to find them.

You are good at what you do. If you want to have a long and successful
career, then the key is tackling difficult things when you must, ploughing
through hard work regularly, and rewarding yourself for work well done when
you can. In other words, you want to balance your work diet, and the sooner
you get into the habit of maintaining such a balance, the sooner you will
achieve greater success.

How about you? How would you categorize your work? Too much frogs? Not
enough cake? What can you do to achieve a better balance?