Monday Motivation Hack: Keep Moving Forward

Some people spring out of bed on Monday feeling fresh, relaxed, and eager to get back to work. But I’m not convinced those with boundless energy and enthusiasm are of this world. I woke this morning, dragged myself out of bed, showered in a half-dead daze, and made a beeline for my French press to brew some Sumatra roast. For most of us, getting back into the work week can be rough.

As annoying as it is to most of us, Monday has its purpose. It’s a great day to focus on self-improvement. If you take just fifteen minutes out of your morning to focus on a few ideas to put into action this week, you’ll feel less existential dread and more motivation as you start your day. Here’s how to spend those fifteen minutes.

Keep moving forward by ruminating less and noticing more.

We tend to get trapped inside our own heads a lot, ruminating endlessly about things that have happened or might happen. Unfortunately, that can mean getting in our own way, which leads us to feel stuck. Sure, there’s some value in reflecting on your performance and learning from it, or planning for the future. But self-reflection is only meaningful when it leads to positive outcomes. Reflection yields forward momentum when you stop ruminating and start noticing.

Rumination might have you thinking things like Last week was awful. I didn’t get enough sleep most nights, and even coffee wasn’t working for me. I made mistake after mistake!

Can you see any value in beating yourself up like that? I sure can’t. Try noticing what happened last week rather than rolling the events around in your head in a way that churns up negativity.

Here’s what it looks like when you notice rather than ruminate.

When I’m not mindful about getting to bed at a reasonable time, I’m tired the next day. Caffeine gives me a boost, but leads to an energy crash later. I’m more productive when I get enough sleep.

Aha! Now we’re getting somewhere. Instead of beating yourself up for last week’s lackluster job performance, you’ve identified a trend. You’ve noticed that your tendency to stay up too late causes you to rely on caffeine, which leads to a crash, which finds you making more mistakes. That’s something you can remedy by developing better sleep habits.

How to Break the Rumination Habit

We all ruminate. It’s a hard habit to break! Fortunately, being aware of your mind’s tendency to be your own worst enemy is the first step toward breaking the cycle.

One of the wisest people I’ve known frequently helped me keep my own rumination habit in check. Any time she caught me beating myself up, she’d ask, “Is this useful thinking?” It would snap me out of my funk and help me recognize that no, laying on a bunch of criticism targeted at myself wasn’t particularly helpful. In fact, it was detrimental.

Noticing, rather than ruminating, leads us to evaluate those tendencies that might be hurting our performance (or even our psyches) in a way that leads to self-discovery, not self-flagellation. If you find yourself ruminating, try these tricks to break the cycle.

• Learn to spot rumination. It’s important to know the enemy! If you’re lost in your own mind, beating yourself up over something in the past or worrying about the future, you’re ruminating.
• Ask yourself “Is this useful thinking?” If you catch yourself ruminating, take a deep breath and consider whether your thoughts are actually helpful. Odds are, they’re only making you feel bad about yourself.
• Practice mindfulness. Make a habit of being in the moment. Mindfulness is a powerful tool for creating peace and positivity. We talked about it a few weeks ago in our Monday Motivation segment on avoiding negativity.

When your tendency to focus on mistakes keeps you stuck, breaking the cycle of rumination can help you move forward. Treat yourself as you would a friend or family member—with kindness and understanding. Noticing the habits you’ve developed that aren’t working for you, rather than beating yourself up for the problems they cause, enables you to make a change for the better.

How to Write Ordinal Numbers Correctly

Is this your first lesson on ordinal numbers? Maybe the second? Or, perhaps it’s the third?

To put it simply, ordinal numbers are used to put things in order. This can be anything from an address to the position a runner finishes in a race.

She lives on 26th Street. He finished in third place.

Ordinal numbers indicate position or order in relation to other numbers.

Cardinal numbers, on the other hand, express a quantity of something.

He had three hot dogs. Her father had five dogs.

Ordinal numbers always have a suffix tacked onto the end; cardinal numbers do not.

• first (1st)
• second (2nd)
• third (3rd)
• fourth (4th)
• fifth (5th)
• sixth (6th)
• seventh (7th)
• eighth (8th)
• ninth (9th)
• tenth (10th)
• eleventh (11th)
• twelfth (12th)
• thirteenth (13th)
• twentieth (20th)
• twenty-first (21st)
• twenty-second (22nd)
• twenty-third (23rd)
• twenty-fourth (24th)
• thirtieth (30th)

Here are a few guidelines for determining which suffix to add to a number. 1. When a number ends with 1, the suffix at the end is -st. 2. When a number ends with 2, the suffix at the end is -nd. 3. When a number ends with 3, the suffix at the end is -rd. 4. When a number that ends with 0,4,5,6,7,8 or 9 uses the suffix -th (Including 10th, 100th, etc) 5. An exception to the rules above is when a numeral ends with 11, 12, or 13, which all use the -th suffix.

These rules and the list above should make it simple to determine which suffix you need to turn a cardinal number into an ordinal one.

Have fun forming your first few sentences with ordinal numbers.

As Well As Comma

The phrase as well as creates one of those situations where you may have to make a judgment call about comma usage. As a general rule, you don’t need a comma before as well as.

As Well As

As well as means “in addition to.”

Please proofread for spelling mistakes as well as grammatical errors.

The sentence above means that you should proofread for both spelling and grammatical errors.

You can also use as well as to make a simple comparison.

I don’t sing as well as Adele does.

This sentence means that Adele sings better than I do.

Comma Before As Well As

Most of the time, you don’t need a comma before as well as. Using a comma turns the thing you’re talking about with as well as into an aside–information that’s less important than the rest of the sentence. That’s where the judgement call comes in. You have to decide whether the things you’re connecting with as well as are equally important or not.

Timmy, as well as Tommy, is a stickler about punctuation.

.

In this sentence, as well as Tommy is an aside–something that could go in parentheses. Writing the sentence this way de-emphasizes Tommy and puts the focus on Timmy. Notice that you need one comma before the phrase and one comma after it.

Also notice that this sentence needs the verb is, not are, even though you mentioned both Timmy and Tommy. That’s because as well as is not the same as and. It can’t create a compound subject.

If the part about Tommy is important, the best thing to do is get rid of the commas and change as well as to and.

Timmy and Tommy are sticklers about punctuation.

When you’re making a simple comparison, you should never include the comma.

I don’t sing, as well as Adele does.

How to Write a Good Pitch

So you have an idea for a story that’s burning a hole in your brain, and you need to find it a home—ideally somewhere that will embrace and enhance your style, share your work with a broad readership, and pay you decently.

In other words, you hope to surmount one of the greatest hurdles that separates the writing world’s dreamers from its doers. No pressure, though.

If writing is your calling, there’s tough work ahead, but it’s doable. We’re here to help color in the details of how. This is what new(-ish) writers should know about pitching.

Where do I want to go?

You dream of someday writing for renowned newspapers and prestigious magazines. Pitch them. So long as you’re polite, the worst they can tell you is “not right now.” What’s to lose?

But as you reach for the stars, know that such dreams only rarely come true overnight. In the meantime, most writers hone their craft in more attainable venues. An ambitious young journalist who wants to cover a bustling statehouse for a daily newspaper, for instance, might not walk into that job straight out of college. Instead, she might get her start reporting on school-board or city-council races for the town’s scrappy alt-weekly.

Early in his career, John McPhee, the industrious pioneer of literary journalism, longed to find a place at The New Yorker. He eventually became an institution there, but the octogenarian tells The Paris Review he first spent a decade writing elsewhere:

The thing about writers is that, with very few exceptions, they grow slowly—very slowly. A John Updike comes along, he’s an anomaly. That’s no model, that’s a phenomenon. I sent stuff to The New Yorker when I was in college and then for ten years thereafter before they accepted something. I used to paper my wall with their rejection slips. And they were not making a mistake. Writers develop slowly. That’s what I want to say to you: don’t look at my career through the wrong end of a telescope.

Don’t be dissuaded from dreaming big, but don’t quit if you have to start small.

Who do I talk to?

Different publications have different pipelines and processes for bringing in outside writers. Some only rarely bother, while others do it all the time.

To land a pitch, start by researching the outlets you hope to write for. See if you can find a copy of their submission guidelines online, and study them carefully. What’s their style? What’s distinct about their approach? Don’t propose a sprawling feature to an outlet that traffics mainly in tight news articles.

It’s vastly easier to place a story when the editor you’re pitching knows you. Cultivate these relationships. Email writers and editors whose work you admire and introduce yourself. Such correspondences needn’t be epic in scale—these people are busy—but they can afford you an inside track on who handles pitches, what their budget is like, and what they’re hungry for.

Hal Humphreys, a principal at Pursuit magazine, private investigator, and erstwhile storyteller on national shows like Marketplace, recommends against a scattershot template-email approach. Instead, he advises, think like a spy.

The craft of building a network of clients and colleagues isn’t about casting a wide net. It’s about seeding real relationships. It requires time and calculation. It can even seem a bit creepy at times.

Be gentle, Humphreys says, and this approach, used in good faith, can spark not just useful professional connections but also earnest friendships.

What do I show them?

Landing a writing gig often centers less on your resume than on clips—recent samples of your published work. Your clips show editors what you’re capable of delivering. A journalist whose work has been picked up nationally can get more traction than a scruffy newcomer, but everyone has to start somewhere.

For students, this might mean building up a portfolio at the student newspaper or college radio station. For the rest of us out in adult-land, obliged as we are to put rent on the table, you may have to launch your work as a side-hustle. This is what Jesse Thorn means in his Make Your Thing manifesto when he says “start now.”

Stephanie Foo used to spend eight hours or more each day listening to podcasts while working as a graphic designer. “I got so obsessed that I was like, ‘I don’t know why I’m doing this with my life. I should be doing radio,’” she told Tape.

With dreams of being on This American Life, she made the leap outside her day job by starting her own show—a podcast that took her to weird events like a medieval battle reenactment and a porn convention. In time, that gave her something to share with Thorn, who knew a rising star in the industry, who connected her with an editor who would hear her pitches.

My first day there, I brought a notebook with 20 pitches in it. . . . I rattled them all off super fast, and he was just kind of stunned and was like ‘um, one of them seemed good.’

That was enough to get the ball rolling. Some years on, Foo is a producer at This American Life.

But what do I say?

A wise editor once said “brevity is the better part of valor.” Don’t force editors to scroll and skim to figure out what you’ll be writing about. And remember to focus by pitching stories, not topics.

Also, do your homework. You have to know what the outlet you’re contacting has written about your subject already, and articulate a fresh angle. Find a way to advance the story. Editors regard failure to do so as a common error, as Meg Guroff told The Open Notebook:

Another (common mistake) is presenting a story as something you’re dying to write, rather than as something our reader would be dying to read. Successful pitchers don’t lead with their own desires or credentials. Instead, they focus on what’s amazing about a story and how the story would fit into what the publication is trying to do.

It’s best to pitch editors after you’ve researched enough to be sure you can deliver on your premise, but before you’ve ferreted out every last detail, let alone written the thing. This matters because editors will often help fine-tune your idea early in the process.

Note that editors hate having to click through to an attachment just to read your idea. Put it in the body of the email. Use plain text for readability. And do email, by the way; editors vastly prefer written pitches over cold calls.

You can want to send a query to one place at a time, so be deliberate about pacing your efforts, and ask editors what works best for their timeframe.

Finally, be persistent, but not too persistent. While it’s a good idea to gently nudge editors you haven’t heard back from after a week or so, you don’t want anyone to feel barraged. Try and keep a fresh idea in your pocket, so if one pitch doesn’t stick, you’re not at a dead end.

The world is full of stories, after all, as well as places to tell them. Get yours out there.

OMG, LOL!: 5 Communication Faux Pas You’re Making at Work

Is it okay to text in the office bathroom? Should you use emoticons in your cover letter? In this age of enhanced communication, it’s hard to avoid the occasional faux pas. Consider these five unfortunate souls whose poor communication etiquette undermined their professional authority.

Tia the Texter

Tia is a twenty-something working in a firm of baby boomers. She waltzes through life with her smartphone glued to her hand. At least, that’s how some of her superiors see it.

About 50 percent of Terri’s co-workers roll their eyes when she hunches over her phone, thumbs flying a mile a minute. Tia’s texting euphemisms occasionally cross over to her work emails. She’s been known to throw out an LOL, OMG, and �� from time to time.

Plenty of baby boomers text now, but not all of them do. To those elders still separated by the digital divide, Tia looks like a positive flake.

Larry, the Low Self Esteem Guy

Larry feels uncomfortable when a potential employer asks, “Why are you the best candidate for this position?”

“I wouldn’t say I’m the best,” he stumbles. “I’m a nice guy, but my conscience won’t allow me to say I’m the best. If you want the best, you should hire someone from Harvard. I went to community college, and I didn’t even get straight A’s.”

Sam Shelley, a bi-polar survivor and author of the book I Don’t Dwell recently wrote a blog post for LinkedIn about interviewing while suffering from low self-esteem. Shelley says, you must behave “as if . . . you are the best person for the job” at a job interview, even if you don’t believe it.

Natalie, the Negative Emailer

Natalie’s boss recently loaded her down with an overwhelming amount of work.

As deadlines approach, Natalie panics. Instead of asking her boss for help, she complains to her co-workers about how unfairly he treats her. Some of these complaints find their way into email threads. Before Natalie knows it, her laundry list of grievances inadvertently lands in the boss’s inbox.

Emailing your frustrations to co-workers might bring temporary relief, but you should save the venting for your online journal, the one you protect with an encrypted password. It’s the one your boss will never see.

Gina, the Generic Resume Writer

Gina’s resume perfectly fits the generic template she found on the Internet. She’s sent the document to hundreds of potential employers, but her phone never rings.

Nick Corcodilos, a veteran headhunter in Silicon Valley, knows why. “Resumes are a weak, passive way of getting in the door,” he says. Instead of sending out resumes that look just like everyone else’s, Gina should craft a document that illustrates how she could improve life for a potential employer.

Corcodilos is talking about a pain letter, a type of cover letter in which potential hires explain how they could solve company problems. To write a persuasive pain letter, job seekers should place themselves in the shoes of the employer. Gina’s not a bad worker. She just needs a platform through which she can sell herself.

Connie, the Comma Criminal

Connie is a comma criminal. She admits that she doesn’t understand comma rules. She also admits that, in her mind, comma rules just aren’t that important.

Connie’s supervisor begs to differ. Run-on sentences make him cringe. If he gets another “Hey George good morning are we meeting in the board room at eight,” he’ll either go crazy or shell out the tuition for Connie’s enrollment in Remedial English 101.

Technology blurs the lines between our personal and professional lives. As we have seen, well-meaning people make embarrassing, funny, and horrendous communication mistakes all the time. Have you ever worked with a Tia, Larry, Natalie, Gina, or Connie?

Why You Don’t Get Anything Done After 2pm

Yaaawn. You were having a productive day.

This morning you were launching emails with the rapid succession of a fireworks display and smashing deadlines like an elite Whac-a-Mole champion who can see the future. It’s one of those magical days where you managed to titrate your coffee dosage perfectly—you were awake enough to contribute plenty during your team’s morning meeting, but not caffeinated to the point of jitters or psychosis.

Then the two o’clock slump swooped in like a dementor, sucking every hope of productivity from your mind. Now, sitting at your desk, you’re like a desultory teenager in shop class during the last two weeks of school: you’re not working on anything so much as just drilling holes. Would my coworkers notice, you wonder, if I were to slink down to my car, recline the passenger seat, and doze off for twenty minutes?

And anyway, why am I like this every afternoon?

We’re here to help unspool this mystery, and explore a few remedies for your afternoon power outage.

What’s that you’re eating?

Did you skip lunch? Wait, back up—did you skip breakfast? Being hungry at work is a recipe for diminished productivity, general crabbiness, and the faint sense that you should’ve gone to grad school. It’s wise to map out contingencies to avert such crises: pack a lunch (or breakfast) and keep emergency snacks in your work bag or desk drawer.

Alas, simply remembering that you have to eat is not where the struggle ends, but where it begins.

Here’s a quick biology lesson: as energy from food you digest makes its way to your bloodstream, your pancreas releases the hormone insulin, which cues your cells to absorb that energy. This can occur gradually, as in the case of slow-burning fibrous whole grains, or it can happen abruptly, in the form of a sudden spike from an influx of refined sugar.

When the amount of sugar in your blood spikes, what follows is a surge of insulin, and subsequently the metabolic crater of sluggishness and regret in which you now find yourself.

One solution is to avoid crash-prone foods—choosing a handful of nuts or some carrots instead of sugary sweets, for instance.

Another fix might be to forego the giant lunch that always leaves you longing for naptime and instead munch little by little throughout the day. Also, if you feel desperate for a coffee break but don’t want to keep buzzing past bedtime, consider an alternative like green tea, which has less caffeine.

And don’t forget to drink water, either. A little bit of dehydration can go a long way toward jamming up your afternoon efforts, so sip often.

Get moving

As much as your boss might like to pretend otherwise, you’re not an android; you’re a complex and dynamic organism sculpted by millions of years of evolution to live by moving frequently. Sitting for hours on end in perfect obeisance to the glow of your screen is a prescription for soporific indifference.

If you can, go outside—bright light cues wakefulness. Getting some sun during the day can also help you rest better at night. Taking a brisk walk around the block gives your mind a chance to reset, so when you return to your keyboard you may not only feel less inclined to put your face on it, but also unlock a fresh angle to attack whatever you’re working on.

via GIPHY

Even if going for a dedicated stroll isn’t realistic, you should make time to stand up and shake out. For your body, sitting still goes hand in exhausted hand with sleepytime. Take a moment to work on your downward dog, or ask that coworker who’s weirdly into CrossFit if you can borrow one of the resistance bands you know he keeps in his desk, and stretch out your weary shoulders.

Workers in cavernous office complexes are sometimes known to deploy a two-for-one strategy, serving the dual imperatives to hydrate and to get up and walk around a bit more, simply by taking a few extra steps to a water fountain in a different part of the building.

Pump up the jams

Listening to exciting music can also help keep you off the post-lunch nod. The kind of jams that get your feet moving on the dancefloor might take some weight off your eyelids.

If power metal is more your speed though, you might want to take a cue from journalist Jason Leopold and be mindful of your workmates. A tiff over the volume of Leopold’s music at the office once escalated to colorful language and near fisticuffs, costing him a job. Yes, really.

Ultimately, your mid-afternoon slump likely stems from an amalgam of factors. To change it, you’re going to have to tweak a variety of habits: what you eat and when, how often you stand up to get your blood flowing and refill your water bottle—maybe even your playlist.

Such changes may not come easily or happen overnight, but it’s all right to take some time figuring it out. In the end, we believe your work is worth staying awake for.

Monday Motivation Hack: Take a Break

Ah, motivation. Sometimes you can feel it coursing through your veins, and sometimes it seems as fleeting as snow in the spring. When you feel completely out of motivation, burned out, or exhausted, what do you do?

So far in our Monday Motivation Hack series, we’ve covered things that help you when you’re highly motivated, like to-do lists, morning routines, and mindfulness. But what about those days when getting out of bed seems like a struggle?

These are the days when it’s time to switch gears and do something radical—give yourself a break.

So today, I’m not going to write thousands of words on how to keep motivated. Instead, I’m giving you the space to take a breath, drink some water, and take that break.

If you want to read something while you take a break, consider one of these. If you just want to walk around the block or watch pandas on YouTube, that’s fine, too. You deserve it.

1 How to Take a Break Without Breaking Focus

2 7 Ways to Motivate Yourself When You’re Exhausted

3 How to Stop Procrastinating and Take Control of Your Life