This weekend, my 10-year-old requested we go to Great Wolf Lodge for one night as part of our spring break adventures. It will likely be quite fun and zero percent relaxing (IYKYK). I plan to spend some time sitting away from the water slides and jotting postcards to voters for a crucial election in Wisconsin.
Before I pack goggles and swimsuits and watch my Auburn Tigers hopefully advance tomorrow in March Madness, let's get to your Friday Five.
Stop Using Grill Brushes: I follow this great pediatrician on social media, and I appreciated this video, which inspired me to stop using wire grill brushes for safety reasons. Here's an article on the topic if you're not a social media person. There are many alternatives to wire grill brushes (like this), so let's ditch those dangerous wire versions and keep ourselves and our people safe.
Mark Your Calendar: In our recent Joyfully Managed Worklife session, one of the participants (hi Mica!) reminded us about how helpful it is to mark the day after you come back from vacation, conference, or team retreat off on your calendar for "catch-up" so that you have time to get re-oriented, reprioritized, and get caught up on your inbox before diving right back into meetings and the normal day-to-day. Take a minute now and do this for any upcoming "out-of-office" time coming later this year. Here's a more complete list of things you might want to mark on your calendar.
Need to Delegate or Collaborate Better? Try Playbooks: If you want to delegate better on your team or capture the team's processes so that the knowledge isn't lost and best practices are done every time, try my approach of creating playbooks. I made this free toolkit (that includes a short video training and templates) to make it easy for you.
If you run online meetings: I loved this tip from a Joyfully Managed Worklife alum, Ashley. She runs many meetings in her job as Chief of Staff and often starts playing a fun song about 30 seconds before the meeting begins. Once the song ends a few minutes later, the meeting begins. It starts the vibe off on the right foot and gets past the inevitable period of getting a critical mass of attendees into the (virtual) room before getting started. Try it in your next Zoom or Teams meeting! Here are some songs I often use before, during, and after meetings that I think are a good fit for this kind of use.
This weekend only - my Spring Fun Toolkit under $6: Sometimes, seasons can pass by so quickly that we realize we didn't get a chance to do things that would have really made that season special for us. In my family, we make a seasonal fun list that serves us well to help us intentionally make space for those memories (for us, spring fun these last few years includes things like cherry picking, a picnic, and walks with ice cream cones in hand). I created this Spring Fun Toolkit that guides you through a step-by-step process to create a seasonal fun list (complete with bonuses, tons of examples, printables, and a short video training) that will get you to a great spring fun plan in under an hour. To celebrate yesterday's spring season kickoff in the northern hemisphere, the Toolkit is 40% off until this Sunday using code SPRINGBLOOM, making it under $6. Enjoy!
P.S. I'm deciding next week whether there will be a spring cohort of Joyfully Managed Worklife (a program for leaders who want to be effective and organized at work without burning out). If you might be interested in joining, let me know which date and time would be best for you here.
