Um…what’s relaxation?
Once again, my blogging challenge with adorkable grrl sets the wheels in motion so that Flackette continues to blog, even despite her busy schedule (I know, I know, no excuses!).
This week, the topic is relaxation. I know from reading books on time management and performance that relaxation is extremely important, both to mental health and work performance. In fact, in one my favorite books of that sort, The Now Habit by Neil Fiore, it was said that in contrast to procrastinators, good performers work less hours, take more vacations, and are less stressed than those who work ungodly hours and skip vacation time to keep working. How’s that for incentive to take regular doses of relaxation!
In another sense of the word relaxation, I think that it is important that every PR person have a relaxed outlook when it comes to their job. By relaxed I don’t mean lax, shoddy, or unstructured, but rather I am referring to one’s general attitude about life and PR. The best PR people I’ve ever met are cool-headed, always kind, slow to anger, and hard to fluster. If you are a high strung person, PR is probably not be for you. The best of the best have a way of rolling with the punches and being flexible in almost any situation, in other words: relaxed.
In the personal sense of the word, there are many things I find to be extremely relaxing:
- Spending time with my dearest friends
- Lazing around, watching TV, and napping
- Pedicures, manicures, and any other form of pampering
- A hot cup of herbal tea
- Watching a beautiful sunset
Since this is a holiday weekend for some of us (myself included) I plan on doing at least a few of the above to recoup and relax from what has been a crazy week.
Happy Friday to all!
Cheers,
Flackette
P.S. Can I just say I am having way too much fun with Blogger’s new tagging widget?
Multitasking is my hero
As a result of my blogging challenge with adorkable grrl, I have been given the ultimate motivation to keep up the blogging momentum: competition. I can’t promise that this will be a great post, as I cranked it out last night while somewhat sleep-deprived, but it’s nice to have that fire under the arse to make sure I keep it up (thanks, adorkable grrl!).
Multitasking has become a requisite function of the business world. In job interview prep, it’s a must-have. Unless you can demonstrate your ability to multitask effectively, you may as well be chopped liver to the average employer.
It is humorous to note that despite the high demand for multitasking as a barometer of success, debate abounds on whether or not multitasking is more or less effective than focusing in full force on a single task. Whatever the case, multitasking is a necessary evil for successful business practice, and essential to every PR professional.
There are a number of variables (particularly in agency life) that demand sophisticated multitasking skills in the PR world:
- The number of clients you represent (which can range from one if you are in-house to two to five in an agency)
- Depending on the diversity of your client base, the number of industries you must monitor and keep abreast of on a consistent basis
- The innumerable amount of journalists, bloggers, events, speaking and awards contacts you must maintain consistent relationships with on behalf of your clients
- The necessary reporting tasks that justify your existence to clients, which can range from basic bread and butter coverage reports to metrics such as share of voice to AVE reports
- The need to craft written materials at the drop of a hat that pack a punch, hit all of your clients’ key messages satisfactorily, and are entirely devoid of any grammatical, typographical, and spelling errors
With all that, is it any wonder that PR has been termed one of the most stressful jobs in the US? Here’s some helpful tips that I know have helped me multitask to work smarter, not harder:
- Instant message or use the phone rather than e-mail. The less superfluous junk you can keep out of your inbox, the better! Plus, it is so much easier to quickly explain something in realtime than it is to reply to an e-mail. This definitely helps.
- Try not to touch anything more than once before filing it away. Whether it’s a new client document or notes from your last meeting, it helps to just find a place to file it away immediately so you can a) easily find it again and b) avoid the paper trap. This works great for e-mail too, since an overcrowded inbox makes it very time consuming to locate information quickly.
- Don’t be afraid to use technology to help you keep track of everything that you brain can’t. While all of us would love to believe that our brains have perfect little mental boxes that help us intuitively remember everything we have on our plate, this is delusional thinking at best. Outlook is a wonderful tool for multitasking and time management. I use the task function religiously, which is a great way to keep tabs on both urgent and long-term tasks I need to direct my attention to.
- Spend 15 minutes at the start of your day planning out your tasks and arranging your priorities so you can easily move from one item to the next. This helps gives me direction for the day and once you have a task order set up, it is easy to move from one task to the next fairly seamlessly.
- Most importantly: Be flexible! Don’t get flustered when you are interrupted by other small items that are bound to get wedged into the course of your already perfectly planned out work day. Just take a deep breath, try to stay focused, and above all, don’t panic!
One of the most difficult parts of the PR industry is that a person’s task list is divided up into so many small parts. Switching from pitching various clients to different journalists, focusing on short-term and long-term goals for PR campaigns, and fielding any of the other small requests that filter in through the day is difficult to do seamlessly. The ability to do so is one of the many qualities that mark a truly great PR professional.
If anyone else has some great tips on multitasking, please speak up! I’d love to hear them. I haven’t looked at adorkable grrl’s post yet, but I’m sure she has some great advice to share as well.
Flackette emerges from the dark void of non-blogging
Has it really been over five months since I last blogged? I can only hang my head in shame at my unexplained departure from the blogosphere. I do have a good reason for my absence though, honest!
In big news that I should have blogged about three months ago when it was breaking, I switched jobs in November of last year to work for social media paragon SHIFT Communications in the consumer lifestyle division. My high level of respect for Todd Defren of PR Squared and SHIFT’s social media prowess were both instrumental in my decision to join the agency.
Earlier this week was my three-month anniversary at SHIFT, which seems an appropriate milestone for diving back into blogging, don’t you think? I’ve lost touch with much of the PR blogosphere (I don’t even dare look at my Google reader which is no doubt burgeoning with four-plus months of backed-up RSS feeds), but I’m looking forward to getting back into the swing of things.
Pre-SHIFT, I worked at a smaller agency where I learned a great deal and had the pleasure of working with people I respect and admire. However, I must admit that one of the main reasons I started blogging while there (a year ago last month, in fact) was because I was thirsty for something more mentally stimulating (entry level work, as many of you know, is often largely administrative and rarely strategic). Blogging helped me grow immensely and shaped me into a better PR professional. In many ways I was able to supplement my work experience by being part of PR’s blogging community and gleaning knowledge from some of the best in the biz (Shel, Todd, Kami, and so many others).
Once I started at SHIFT and moved onward and upward in my career track, it honestly became difficult to find the mental energy to blog. When you combine high-volume consumer clients with a 2 hour per day total commute, plus the fact that I often work late depending on what’s going on at the time, blogging quickly gets shoved to the wayside. (Not that I’m complaining because I absolutely adore, love, and relish working at SHIFT!).
Moving forward career-wise has sucked from me of the majority of my brain power lately, making it difficult to scrape together any smidgen of energy for blogging. Until now. I feel as though my brain is finally catching up to the high-altitude bar of excellence that SHIFT sets for me every day, which means I am starting to feel the energy to blog returning to me, ever so slowly, but returning nonetheless. I can’t tell you enough how much my fingers have itched to get on my computer and write for the darling little blog that catapulted me to where I am today.
And with that, I finish my first blog post in what seems like a decade’s absence. Life is grand. Tomorrow is Friday. As of last night, “Lost” has finally returned to Prime Time. And it feels so right to be blogging again. Let’s hope I can keep up the pace.
Yours Truly,
Flackette
P.S. Stay tuned for tomorrow’s reveal of my blogging challenge with friend and fellow colleage, adorkable grrl.
