The TNCo Blog

I turned 50 in 2020, and it will certainly not be a year I forget- I think its humbled us all. I went for a Covid test this morning, due to the second spike happening in SA- I’m almost sure it will come back negative, but it may not? Watching the stats in the USA and Europe every day is humbling- the US is having the equivalent deaths of 9/11 every day!

A few weeks before Covid officially hit SA, I facilitated one of my last in-person Mindfulness workshops, to an exco team of mainly men over the age of 45. None of them were sleeping well, one of them had just experienced what he thought was a heart attack, which in fact turned out to be a panic attack. He was mortified and surprised by this diagnosis- I wasn’t, as he was one of many I’d seen in 2019/2020.

Our bodies were sending us red flashing lights of warning on our dashboards!

My favourite meme of 2020 was the one where the world has sent us humans to the naughty corner to reflect on our bad behavior. If we go...

Do you switch off your camera during MS Teams or Zoom meetings? If so, you run the risk of becoming a “no-name brand” post Covid. In the presentations I’ve been doing since March, the lack of visibility is one of the biggest career management mistakes I’m observing.

Most people associate supermarket  “no-name brands” with a cheaper price. They have no emotional attachment to the brand. If you transfer the retail “no-name brand” purchasing behaviour to you as a personal brand, the same perceptions exist. You would not want your personal brand (Pty) Ltd to be associated with cheap prices and no emotional engagement. People who are no-name brands don’t get promoted or receive the increases or bonuses they deserve.

I worked at Wits Business School many years ago and I took over a job that no-one had worked in for over a year. I decided I was going to churn out as much work as possible to deal with the backlog, and I didn’t...

There are now two worlds that we will identify in our lifetime- BC (Before Corona) and AD- (After the Disease) and I’ve heard talk of calendars almost going back to 1 from April 2020. This may not happen physically, but make no mistake the world as we knew it is over, and we face a new dawn.
 
One of the opportunities of this lockdown time is to consciously re-evaluate our life, Mindfully. The reason why the present is called a gift is that it’s the only moment we have. There are only two unimportant days in your life- one is yesterday and the other is tomorrow. We can’t make any impact in those moments- yet it’s so interesting how much time we spend feeling guilt or regret about past, or constantly worrying about the future, as the present moment is the only moment where we can make an impact.
 
If we don’t pay attention or are constantly on our phones, then we miss that moment. In my presentation, I tell a story about a professor at UCT, who in...

As we go into what will hopefully be the last week of lockdown- how are you feeling?
I feel like its been a roller coaster ride of change- I have some days where I’m astounded at how productive I’ve been. And others, where I can’t concentrate and feel like I go around in circles. I’ve surrendered to that and realised that’s OK, in the middle of what will probably be the biggest shifts and change we see in our lifetimes. There is no one size fits all, in adapting to life during COVID 19.
 
Last week I wrote that Mindfulness- being fully present has been particularly useful for me during this time. This week I’d like to share 4 techniques to practically become more mindful, in the middle of huge change and uncertainty.
 

1. Stop Multi-tasking

No-one can multi-task- not men or women as is often thought, as our brains are a single processing unit. We are designed to do one thing at a time- if we do more than one thing at a time then we just do 2...

I've been presenting my "Mindfulness in Troubled Times" presentation remotely many times recently during lockdown. I've been distressed at the number of emails I've been receiving after the presentation, from people who say they've never worked harder. They start meetings on Zoom/Skype/Teams at 8am and have their last meetings at 5pm. They barely move from their chairs for a break, and are more exhausted than they were when they worked on location. They feel that if this carries on they are heading for burnout. 

If you're feeling like this resonates - please read on for more insights and solutions. 

Firstly Zoom/Skype/Teams fatigue is a real thing. Your brain on Zoom is entirely different than your brain in real life according to Kari Henley who is the Founder of Community Without Borders. In our normal day, we have lots of physical state changes that keep us alert. We have to get up and fully dressed, drive somewhere, park, socialise and then settle down to a...