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Solve anything with Dr. Mark: Career advice for the working class; Be more productive

By Dr. Mark Goulston, Source: Tribune Media Services

Q: More often than not, I get to the end of the day and say to myself, "I didn't get anything done today." Then I promise myself to accomplish something the next day and same thing happens. How do I break the pattern?

A: Hope is not a strategy. What makes you think that if you didn't do it today, you'll do it tomorrow?

Chances are that you did a lot of things, but you didn't do many important things . And that caused you to feel very unproductive. You probably checked your e-mail when you didn't need to, strayed a tad off task when you were on the Internet.

Then you scurried around looking for everything you had to do and felt overwhelmed. This caused you to check your Blackberry and e-mail as an escape. And then it was lunch time. After lunch you said, "It's too late to do a, b and c. I'll do it tomorrow."

Then tomorrow comes and what happens? "Groundhog day."

Try this instead. Say to yourself, "What do I need to schedule and get done tomorrow to accomplish something important that people are relying on me to do that will increase their trust, confidence in and respect for me and disappoint and anger them if I don't?"

The great thing about this is that when you list those things and schedule them the night before you don't have to do them until tomorrow and then if you organize your wallet, purse and put things together that you'll need to take to work, you've set yourself up to not be frantic in the morning and set yourself up for success instead of failure.

This might help you get up more easily, because you won't have to start organizing your day when you're feeling pressured to dress, brush your teeth, get your purse or wallet, car keys, and things you need to bring to work and possibly get gas for the car. When you wake up, you won't have to think about it, just keep your schedule. If it helps, imagine that you're back in junior high school and received you class schedule for the day when you first started going to different classes.

It may be difficult to do this, but it's not impossible. And if you do it for 21 days it will become a habit and will take less energy to keep doing it.

Feeling Uptight? Need a little perspective? Try a Deja View

I have become a combination masochist- "rubber necker" when I read my daily newspaper.

Instead of going front to back, I read the business section first and become either depressed or anxious, then I look at sports to become distracted, then I glance through the auto and other ads to look at things I was once able to buy, then I look at the calendar section to possibly find a movie of interest to escape to and finally I look at the front page. And the front page of the Saturday, December 13, Los Angeles Times gave me reason to pause … and a little perspective.

My mom is 91 and has trouble remembering what happened 10 minutes ago, today and yesterday. Recent memory is the first thing to go when your mind goes down the path that many of us are seeing in our parents. What eventually follows is not being able to remember much of anything from their lives. One memory my mom often brings up and brings up again as though she is telling me each time for the first time is when I, the youngest of three sons, got on an airplane at Logan Airport in Boston to leave for UC Berkeley in September, 1966.

As she tells it the same exact way each time as rote learning locked in a clarity capsule in her brain. "There you were, my baby getting on the plane to fly 3,000 miles away and the last of my children to leave home. I was crying and not far from uncontrollably doing so, when I saw a mother saying farewell to her son who was going to Vietnam, never knowing if he'd return. Then I thought, 'My son's going off to college, her son's going off to war' and I stopped being upset and instead, just a little sad."

Back to my reading the newspaper. So I finished all the sections of last Saturday's paper and on the front page was an above-the-fold picture of three rifles with helmets atop entitled "Honoring the Fallen" where "Valerie Mendoza, the widow of Marine Sgt. Matthew Mendoza of San Antonio, hugs his father, Raul, during a memorial service at the Marine Corps base in Twentynine Paloms, CA for 20 military personnel who died during a recent deployment to Afghanistan."

As with my mom, my upset went away, I stopped being upset, and was instead sad. If one day a month all the newspapers of the world published an edition with no news or ads or sports, calendar or business sections but that were only pictures and stories of the people globally who unnecessarily died just the day before from war, from treatable diseases and from starvation, there would be more than enough to fill every newspaper in the world, and maybe it might be more than enough to help all of us put what's upsetting us into perspective.

I write the "Solve Anything with Dr. Mark" column occurring regularly in the Jobs section of the Sunday Los Angeles Times, and on days like today I am reminded that sometimes the only and least used solution to unendurable upset as is happening daily in the world is first a little perspective and then to just endure it.

Thanks for memories, mom, even though you are losing yours. I love you. Pleasant dreams tonight. You have finished the miles you had to go, before you sleep.

XXX

Mark Goulston, M.D., is a Santa Monica-based business psychiatrist, executive coach and author of "Get Out of Your Own Way at Work." Question him at mgoulston@markgoulston.com. Visit him at: www.markgoulston.com

© 2009, Tribune Media Services