The Push for Female and Minority Talent in Global Mobility is gaining momentum as international organizations have Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) objectives according to a report by KPMG, 2018.  Still, many companies need to catch up due to failure to understand how Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion goals impact Global Mobility.

Another KPMG survey highlighted that most Global Mobility Programs do not have specific Diversity and Inclusion objectives as part of their strategy. 70% of the companies with diversity and inclusion practices in place stated that this was due to a strong business case for diversity across all business areas and while I understand that we might not need to develop a DEI strategy for Global Mobility, we should still include Global Mobility in our DEI Metrics.

Globally, the proportion of female employees engaged in international assignments is merely 14%. While this percentage may differ across industries and regions, the overall picture is clear: even in well-developed markets, achieving gender parity is far from satisfactory (Mercer, 2019).

Companies have smaller talent pools as the communication of overseas opportunities often needs to be clarified. The outcome of the survey by KPMG (2018) brings hope in this aspect, as nearly half of the companies surveyed indicated that the review of their Global Mobility processes would result in broadening communication to employees about opportunities. 

Female and minority talent miss opportunities because they are not transparent. They are not only unaware of the possibilities, often they do not have access to the informal networks where participants are nominated for such opportunities. Even worse, white men tend to nominate other white men for international career opportunities within the military tradition and other old boys’ clubs. Most assignments are still nomination based. You get the gist. 

How We Define All of You

I would also like to define what I mean by “Female and Minority Talent.”  I’m using this term as an inclusive summary of the following groups:

• Women of all skin colors,
• BIPOC: The acronym BIPOC refers to black, indigenous, and other people of color and aims to emphasize the historical oppression of black and indigenous people.
• LGBTQ+: LGBTQ+ stands for Lesbian, Gay, Transgender, Queer, and other sexual identities and genders.
• Religious and cultural minorities in your home and host countries,
• People with disabilities 
• People with a broad range on the mental health spectrum.

You will often see unconscious bias against female talent because the Sponsoring Manager assumes that a woman has a house to keep and children to raise. Sometimes the prejudice is just as simple as “women don’t do this kind of job or can’t work in this country.” A strong stereotype is that women with children don’t want to work abroad. Or there is the assumption that a married gay couple would have a hard time in certain locations because of the lack of legal acceptance of their marriage. Sometimes gay men are not even out of the closet within their

companies. Although society has gotten a lot more open in the last 20 years we need to remember that there are many reasons why an employee might not want to disclose everything about themselves to their employer.

There is enough evidence that companies having gender, ethnic, and cultural diversity are more likely than ever to outperform their less diverse peers.  Still, we hardly see any progress in this space within Global Mobility, so I wish all of us to push for more female and minority talent within our population and our own communities.

Here are our six tactics to give female and minority talent a seat at the Global Mobility table.

Six Tactics to Create Space at the Table

1 – Identify Strong Candidates with Data: Again, this boils down to eliminating all prejudices, stereotypes, and biases. Whether male or female, it is essential to create a system of identifying those qualified for international work and projects. Performance and potential data are vital points to consider for an ideal selection. For a few assignments, you will need proficiency with the host country’s native language(s). Most talents succeed in international projects in English.

2 – Select Candidates Based on Intercultural Competence: Every candidate that meets the requirement for being sent on an assignment should go through an intercultural sensitivity test.  Not only can women be willing to receive a project, but they are just as capable of accomplishing great things and succeeding as their male colleagues.  On another note, the potentially stressful or dangerous context in the host location might deter some employees, but before assuming, have a conversation with your potential assignee. You must base selection on data and facts rather than sentiments. Work with a professional to assess their intercultural competence.* 

3 – Provide Inclusive Guidelines to Recruiters: This sounds simple but profound. We have witnessed a surge of different “expatriates,” such as International Hires, Cross-Border Commuters, Virtual Assignees, Global Nomads, International Business Travelers, and Commuters. To be inclusive, we need to support these people and their needs as well as the classical expatriate. As mentioned in this interview, many international moves are now local-to-local transfers and international hires. 

4 – Enhance Intercultural Intelligence Across all Levels: Now is the time to promote intercultural intelligence within your workforce. Offer “Unconscious Bias” training to your senior managers and ensure your senior managers lead a diverse workforce. Expose them to other cultural styles.

5 – Offer an open Job Platform: Most companies work like Twitter. You have fans, followers, and people who closely watch you. You can make your global job market transparent. All talents want a fair chance at success, and you must find ways to motivate them to apply. Part-timers often need more recognition and sponsors. You also need to minimize the profiles so they match real professionals. As I mentioned in “The Global Career Workbook,” most job profiles I’m reading have been written for Superman and Wonderwoman.

6 – Target Your Job Ads to Female and Minority Talent: You might want to rewrite all your job postings to be more inclusive and reduce the white male-dominated language. When you post a job profile on LinkedIn, you can pay for as much or as little exposure as you want and target it to a specific audience. Indeed, if you manage your campaign effectively by targeting Female and Minority Talent, you show your support and help your brand. Mention that you wish to hire women and minorities explicitly. 

If you belong to Female and Minority Talent in Global Mobility or if you are a Global Mobility Manager and need more support for a breakthrough in your career, you can always contact me for a first conversation here. 

We thought we should pull together the main reasons, according to our experience that hinder Expat Spouse employment in the host country. This is a non-scientific analysis based on opinions and experience. There are a number of studies (Permits Foundation, 2012; Silberbauer, 2015) dedicated to the topic though.

Global Mobility providers and academics often research how family impacts “expatriate failure”. In my view, this is not enough. We should investigate how we can bring down the barriers to Expat Spouse employment. Why is it so difficult for Expat Spouses to find work in the host country? Here is a short analysis of the issues.

1- Work Permit Restrictions

Finding a job is not as straightforward for many of my clients as it is in their home countries. Even if most top host locations allow Expat Spouses to work on the partner’s dependent work permit, other countries present significant restrictions to Expat Spouse employment. In fact, while some of them do not issue work permits to any Expat Spouses at all, others may present subtleties linked to marital status or they might not recognize same sex-marriages.

2- Host Language Skills

Even though the expat might work for a global company, most jobs in the host country will require host language skills. Unless you move from the UK to the USA, you often will not have the language skills required to work in the host country. It’s important that you don’t underestimate this aspect and that you start learning the local language as soon as possible, ideally before relocating. The good news is that almost two-thirds of employers already provide this as the main form of assistance (Permits Foundation, 2012). If there is a business need, companies generally pay for a 60-hour course also for the Expat spouse. However, 60 hours is not a lot and for working in another language a basic course will not be sufficient. There are specific job search engines that filter for English-speaking roles. If you are looking to find employment in the Swiss job market, you can look up www.englishforum.ch.

3- Recognition of University Degrees in Regulated Fields and Non-Regulated Fields

While within the EU we can assume that university degrees will be recognized due to the common job market, a Brazilian doctor cannot work in a hospital in Switzerland. We call this a “regulated profession”. In the best-case scenario, you will need to go through a considerable amount of bureaucracy to get your degree converted, and this may cost you a good amount of money. In the worst-case scenario, however, if you want to keep practicing your profession, you will have to get complementary certificates in the host country. Even in non-regulated fields and jobs it seems very hard to translate degrees and determine equivalency. Very often you need to explain what your degree and experience mean in “lay terms.”

4 – Professional Networks

Another issue is the lack of a professional network, which gives access to the untapped and informal labor market in the host country. Often you can only join professional associations when you are in a corporate role or when you have graduated in the country. Building your professional network in your host country will require time and trust. You will have to start from scratch and dedicate a considerable amount of time to this activity if you want to see good results. You will also need to understand that matters of trust and relationships are culturally different, so it’s important that you act in a culturally appropriate manner when attempting to expand your professional network.

5 – Global Mobility Policy

Only very forward-thinking global mobility and global recruiting policies address the need for support for “trailing” dual career partners. While ten years ago dual-career issues on international assignments were solved by sticking to classical Western nuclear “family” models, we now want to adhere to the needs of dual careers, patchwork families, Eastern “family” models, same-sex partners, and unmarried de-facto relationships. Visionary Global Mobility policies address various support models ranging from providing a lump sum to spousal career coaching. As an intercultural career advisor, I also work with clients who decide to start a global, transferable business so that they can follow their life partner to other locations and become location-independent. Thanks to technology I can support clients in NYC as well as in Mumbai. We also support candidates to improve their personal branding in the host market, learn to network effectively and improve their interview skills and online presentations. But it’s crucial that Global Mobility Leaders update their policies and promote spouse support services rather than pay lump sums.

6 – Intercultural Bias of Our Recruiters

Our recruiters often do not understand intercultural differences. Recruiters often don’t understand resumes from other countries and outsourcing talent specialists to HR-shared service centers has not improved the chances of “foreign” candidates in the recruitment process. Most selection methods and assessments are culturally biased. For example, in Switzerland, psychometric testing and other assessments of candidates are used to assess candidates next to interviews. Riedel (2015) shows examples where highly skilled candidates from China fell through the assessment roster in a German company because of their indirect communication style. Companies should provide training on Inclusion and Diversity in an attempt to eliminate unconscious biases and ensure all worthy candidates are being considered for global mobility. This practice is not yet spread. According to KPMG, 39% of employees surveyed aren’t aware of inclusive leadership training within their organizations.

7 – Unconscious Bias of Sending Home Sponsors

PwC issued a study in 2016 on female expatriation where it appears very obvious that a lot more women would be interested in an international assignment than the ones that are actually sent. As a matter of fact, some types of assignments (like short-term, very short-term, and fly-in and out commuter assignments) are notably more popular among women than among men. If women make up 20% only (PwC, 2016) of the internationally mobile population across all sectors, it’s probably due to the unconscious bias of the sending-home sponsors who assume a female manager is not mobile even though she might have mentioned it several times. I speak from experience. If you want to guarantee that the selection of women and other underrepresented groups is fair and objective, you need to measure the relative inclusiveness of mobility assignments and ensure policies on equal access are working. If you find out they are not working, intervene as soon as possible.

8 – Research to Measure the Impact of Dual-Career Programs

In 2012, ETH Zurich conducted extensive research with several European universities on barriers to dual careers within the EU and EFTA countries. For most companies (NetExpat & EY, 2018; Atlas World Group, 2019) the presence of dual-career couples negatively affects the decision to relocate. There’s more: the spouse’s unwillingness to move because of his or her career is the first reason for turning down relocation. After all, it’s 2020, and the increasing number of households relying on two salaries should not surprise us. While in the past, small firms were relatively less affected by spouse/partner’s employment than medium and big firms, in more recent times, the impact has been similar across company sizes. There is evidently still a lot to do in order to integrate the needs of dual-career couples in the expatriation process. If you want to keep pace with reality and stand out with a far-reaching Global Mobility policy, please keep this issue a top priority. 

On the receiving end, I can report that more and more expat spouses are male. There is hope. If you want to see how all these work in practice and would like to receive a proposal from us, please drop a line to Angie Weinberger (angela@globalpeopletransitions.com). I am happy to support you!

Further Readings: 

https://www.sirva.com/learning-center/blog/2019/12/20/supporting-accompanying-spouses-partners-during-relocation

Why Building Professional Relationships is Harder for You

The Modern Professional’s Guide to Avoiding Career Stagnation

My favourite Productivity Hacks – Seven Tips to claim back your Diary

Global Recruiting – Helping Global Talents succeed in Switzerland

Offline and Online Presence is the Way Forward for Modern Professionals

References:

Atlas World Group. (2019). 52nd Annual Atlas Corporate Relocation Survey. https://www.atlasvanlines.com/AtlasVanLines/media/Corporate-Relo-Survey/PDFs/2019survey.pdf

KPMG. (2018). Inclusion and Diversity: How Global Mobility can help move the Needle. KPMG International. https://assets.kpmg//content/dam/kpmg/xx/pdf/2018/06/global-mobility-inclusion-and-diversity-how-gms-can-help-move-the-needle-FINAL.pd

NetExpat & EY. (2018). Relocating Partner Survey Report. https://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/ey-2018-relocating-partner-survey-final-report/$File/ey-2018-relocating-partner-survey-final-report.pdf

Permits Foundation. (2012). International Mobility and Dual-Career Survey of International Employers. https://www.permitsfoundation.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Permits+Global+Survey+2012nw.pdf 

PwC. (2016). Women of the world: Aligning gender diversity and international mobility in financial services. PwC. https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/industries/financial-services/assets/women-of-the-world.pdf

Riedel, Tim (2015): “Internationale Personalauswahl”, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Gottingen.

Silberbauer, K. (2015). Benefits of dual-career support for expat spouses, International Journal of Business and Management, vol 3, no. 2. DOI: 10.20472/BM.2015.3.2.005. 

Weinberger, A. (2019). “The Global Mobility Workbook”, Global People Transitions, Zurich.

Weinberger, A. (2016). “The Global Career Workbook”, Global People Transitions, Zurich.

Guest Post by Nabeha Latif, Social Media Guru

If you’ve got all your social media covered, why leave out YouTube? If you haven’t gotten around to capitalizing on the video platform’s huge audience, now is better than ever! When it comes to numbers, YouTube is hitting it out of the park! With around 500 hours worth of video content uploaded every minute, no wonder, it ranks No. 2 for global and domestic web traffic globally.

In the current era of media consumption and content consumption, whether it’s education, entertainment, or news updates, YouTube has a vast variety for it all. With the whole social trend gradually moving towards video-based content on almost all platforms, YouTube is in the spotlight. Surely you’re familiar with the homepage for your own video consumption on the site, however, there’s a lot more that goes into a video from the back-end to market and get your content out to the right audience. Here’s all you need to know to get your business running on YouTube.

YouTube for business

Although you can view videos without having to sign in, but for uploading and interacting, as with any other site, you’ll need to sign-up/register your Company/Business to get started. Here’s a quick rundown of the process.

• Sign-Up with your Business: If you use Gmail for your business email, you’ll use the same username and password for your YouTube account that you use for Gmail. Alternatively, you can create a new Google account that you use solely for YouTube business purposes.

• Enter the Homepage: Here you can double-check if you’re in the company account or your personal one.

• Open your profile (click on the avatar): You’ll find this in the top right corner. It’s a small circle containing your picture, logo, or a default letter.

• Select your channel: Click your avatar and select the channel from the drop-down menu.

• Select Business or another name: You’ll need to select this option to get started with a business YouTube account. You can then enter your company’s name.

• And click create: Done! That’s all you needed to do.

Once completed, head back to your homepage to get on with the setup. On the top left you’ll see three thin lines, which drop down a menu when clicked. This contains a host of options such as a homepage, trending videos, your library, and your subscriptions.

On the other side, on the top right, you have a lot more going on. You’ll see four buttons, a camera that lets you upload your next video, a set of mini squares that open up YouTube apps, a bubble-shaped icon for messages, and a bell icon for all your account notifications. The account photo or avatar as mentioned will guide you to your account information and settings.

Channel Customization

That’s all the basic setup you need to start pushing out videos, but not necessarily the best way it can be done! Make your channel, your very own by customizing it according to your brand to get the most out of your content and brand image.

Here are a few things you’ll need to shine the creative light on:

• Channel Art: Channel art mainly refers to the top banner, similar to that of Facebook and Twitter. A solid place to add a quick tagline and logo for your brand. And on the topic of similarities between Facebook and Twitter, the YouTube icon is similar to that of a profile picture, so uploading your logo is the best bet!
  
  Here are the dimensions for both:
  Banner: 2560 x 1440 pixels (For mobile devices and a safer bet 1546 x 423 pixels)
  Icon: 800 x 800 pixels (displays as 98 x 98)

• Business Info: It’s essential to share data about your business, its offerings, etc. You can do this in the About segment of your YouTube account while adding your website along with your company’s slogan.

Begin with your About segment’s channel description. Keep it short and sweet: You simply need a compact statement of purpose with all things considered three links and a minor source of inspiration. Then, at that point, look down to the “email for business requests” box and put the fitting email address there.

In the last segment, you can add anything links you need: your business website, your other online media pages, and some other web pages to which you need to coordinate your watchers. The more links you have, the higher your possibilities of directing people to your business website and drawing in your YouTube watchers. The maximum is 30!

• Channel Trailer: While optional, a channel trailer is a brief video that introduces viewers to the content they’ll find on your YouTube channel. It is an excellent customization option to increase YouTube viewer engagement. Once you add this trailer, it will appear on your account’s homepage when viewers visit, helping to reel them in and acquaint them with your brand.

• Engaging with users

After all, YouTube is a social platform so its best to keep updated on your content consumers, here are the options you can choose from:

• Comments: You can boost your video’s engagement by responding to users who comment on your videos. You can sort them by newest/oldest or most popular.

• Likes: Optional to showcase on your channel, but a more public and passive form of response from the audience.

• Subscriptions: To help get your content out to the users so they stay up to date. Every time you upload a new video, your subscribers receive a push notification. You should constantly encourage viewers to subscribe to your channel, as it improves your engagement and increases the number of views.

• Sharing: The site’s social widget allows users to share videos on other social media networks, such as Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, Blogger, Reddit, Tumblr, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.

• Messages: Respond to your friends and queries, You can also share private videos and messages with friends and contacts on YouTube.

• Playlists: You can organize related content together using the site’s playlist feature. This is another way to organize your own content on your channel and help users watch content of a similar type with an easy click.

• Verification: Let your audience know that your channel is the real deal from the sea of accounts and users. Much like other platforms, you’ll see a small checkbox, which indicates a verification badge next to the channel’s name. To apply for verification, your channel must have 100,000 subscribers. Contact Google if you’re a business and help them verify it’s you before the milestone requirement.

Going Live!

All social platforms like Facebook and Instagram have the option to stream live content to talk to or just showcase a trailer for example. Similarly, YouTube works all the same. Your account does need to be verified for live videos on YouTube though. Once your account is ready, then going live has four ways on YouTube. The first, which is the quickest, is the Stream Now option. The second is through the Events tab, which gives you more control because you can preview your stream ahead of time. The third option is found on the site’s mobile app; if you use this, the stream will later be archived on your channel. Lastly, you can stream from your computer’s webcam. 

Trending Content

Is certain content on the rise? Perhaps a new type of challenge, maybe even a meme, or even a worldwide breaking news! So hop on the bandwagon to get your content out to popular searches being looked for globally. YouTube users are interacting at very high rates. Often, these videos were uploaded within the last couple of days. You can view the current trending videos under the Trending tab on the YouTube homepage even if you’re not logged in or don’t have an account.

For brands, the goal of creating trending content isn’t necessary. It could be a shoot-for-the-stars goal because if one of your videos goes viral, it could end up on the trending page and thus create significant exposure for your company. Trending videos on YouTube are the videos currently getting the most engagement. Going viral is a nice goal, but not necessarily the ultimate marker of success, depending on your channel’s audience and tone.

Influencers

Famous people and channels gain a substantial amount of traction and views with each upload, mostly and primarily found pushing video content out on the platform. With each market and genre, you’ll have a host of content creators for the big, the small, and even very particular hybrid niches! Many influencers have corporate sponsorships. These sponsors send influencers their products to mention or use in their videos. Often, YouTubers will verbally mention the sponsor company and how awesome its product is. Connecting with influencers to establish partnership deals can elevate your brand on YouTube, helping you reach more viewers and legitimize your channel.

Advertising

And now we come to a more direct form of content marketing, advertising your videos to your desired audience to grab and hook them to your channel! Although most YouTubers and channels have gained success from the free atmosphere of the platform, companies and organizations can get their ads in! Since the site is based on video content, companies are encouraged to add a call-to-action link directing viewers to their website following the video.

There are 4 options when it comes to YouTube ads and placements:

1. In-stream ads, which play before, during, or after other videos can be skipped after 5 seconds. You’ll be charged when 30 seconds of the video is watched.
2. Discovery ads appear when a user is searching or browsing content on YouTube or across the web. This content has no limit! You’ll be charged based on clicks.
3. Bumper ads are six seconds or less, and users can’t skip these. Ads like these can appear throughout the video. You’ll be charged for these ads based on cost per thousand impressions, or CPM.
4. Paid advertisements on YouTube can help you monetize your video content by giving your audience an easy way to buy your products and services.

YouTube Premium

YouTube Premium or previously called YouTube Red, is a paid subscription version of YouTube, which starts from $11.99 ($12 realistically). This allows for a seamless experience with extra perks such as no ads whatsoever and the ability to download videos for offline play. Remember that videos are ad-free with this subscription. At the end of the day, though, YouTube Premium could hurt your business, because the premium services take users away from in-stream advertisements.

Tips

Now that you’re familiar with YouTube and how you can promote your business, here are a few extra tips to keep you above the crowd:

• Ask and motivate your users to subscribe to your channel, no harm in asking (nicely)!
• Get traffic from other platforms onto your video, by sharing it with more of the crowd.
• Use of keywords, hashtags, and trending phrases to stand out with SEO.
• Get social and mingle with similar content creators to learn and also attract more relevant people!
• Make custom playlists for your channel, especially if you have a series going.
• Regular and timely uploads!
• Use links to more of your content, and links within your videos.
• Work with trending and high-profile influencers for product placements, reviews, and collaborations.
• YouTube really is inspired by other platforms, so get onto YouTube stories as well.
• To get the crowd going, how about arranging a giveaway or a contest to get the “hype train” going?

Request: Please follow angieweinberger on Youtube.

August so far has been more of a summer than the “Summer of ‘69”. Random song references are my thing now, and that makes sense because the #RockMeRetreat was never about “Rock’n’Roll Music” or “Jailhouse Rock.” “We will rock you!” so that no stone will be left unturned once you start on this journey of self-discovery with your Coach “Angie.”

Still, my dear, fall is here. We can still have a glass of “Summer Wine,” but the days are as short as the “Itzy Bitzy Teeny Weeny Honolulu Strand Bikini.” 

Rose petals sprinkled over my neglected Zen Garden, sunflower fields turned brown, and you have started to turn on the lights in the morning again. When you get home from work, you don’t want to sit outside anymore as it is dark, but you might vaguely remember this feeling you had as a kid when you were playing hide and seek at this time of the year, and it was just a notch better because it got dark at dinner time.

Apples are ripe for harvest, and the smell of onion pie and early wine hangs in the air. How do you remember the early fall, back when we were in high school? I remember a particular moment going down the stairs from our horrible grey concrete school building of the 70s, thinking, “This is great! I love being back at school!” I swung my newly acquired pepita jacket across my shoulders and closing my leather school bag with a sense of accomplishment. 

Do you miss those times where you felt like the world was in order and that you had all the opportunities ahead of you? You know when you feel like a “Rockstar” sipping champagne in a limo, with your Bono hat on, driving through “New York” with a bass drum pounding similar to the headache you will have the following day? 

Is this the life you want to have, without limits, without regrets, and certainly without the need to have a “boss” tell you what to do, as you know best how to do your job, how to build your contribution to the world and how to achieve your goals in work and life?

If you want to get to this focused and productive life level, you can start with building weekly practices and adding them to our RockMeApp. Last week I already spoke about seven easy-to-implement steps to help your body adjust to a new culture or new environment. This week, I would like to dive even deeper with these seven deadly rituals for focus and productivity

1 – Start Your Week with Monday Wishes

Starting your Week with Monday Wishes is a powerful way to start your week. Use your Have-Done-Diary (journal) to write down your wishes for the week without limiting yourself. Even if you end up re-writing your to-do list, just brain dump everything you wish for the week. The list should include fun stuff like “a bunch of flowers,” too.

2- Craft Your New Morning Ritual

I believe we should all have a morning ritual, and you can design yours around your needs, lifestyle, family, and pets. For example, you can think about, which order you ideally go through your morning to have a happy and productive day ahead. Pro tip: Don’t check your mobile phone during this time of the day.

3 – Finish with Friday Reflection

If your workweek closes on Thursday or Friday, use the last hour of your day to clean up your desk, sort paper or emails, write a task list for the week ahead, and then go through our four reflection questions on the RockMeApp. Here’s a helpful virtue of separating the workweek from the weekend. I’ve talked about taking 90 minutes on Saturday to finalize open tasks instead of working late with a few of you. Test this; for me, it works well.

4 – Plan a Digital Detox Day 

Taking a real break from Social Media, especially those funny videos on Facebook, isn’t easy unless you have a plan on where you can hide your phone for 24 hours. You might be a parent and need to be reachable for your children. Using my uncle’s strategy to have an elementary mobile phone to remain reachable over the weekend for essential clients and family can pay off. Alternatively, you can try to apply willpower (just kidding). Turn on the “Radio GaGa” and listen to unexpected songs, hear the news without images and enjoy that wonderful feeling.

5 – Weekly Practices You Can Do Anywhere

Weekly practices are a vital element of our programs. They help with sanity maintenance and make you a happier person to be around (as opposed to your inner Mr. Hyde, who is also a corporate zombie.) If you are struggling to define what practices are helpful to you or haven’t even started, I encourage you to define weekly goals that you can achieve no matter where you are. Examples could be daily walking targets and relaxation exercises or keeping your space clean of clutter. 

6 – Consider my Productivity Hacks 

If you feel you have maxed out your productivity already, please test this: If you can implement one of these seven productivity hacks (1- Have-Done Diary, 2 – Pomodoro Method, 3 – Eisenhower Matrix, 4 – Pareto-Principle, 5 – Peace Island, 6 – Repetition Checklists, 7 – Outsourcing Housework) and you notice any changes you might still have potential to improve, and there’s always space to learn and get better at tools. Also, to let you in on a secret, I used to waste a lot of time with mundane tasks such as looking for the correct passwords or making sure I had the right document version. A year ago, I often needed to follow up on team tasks and could not always rely on them. We now use password managers, a few master spreadsheets, and SLACK for team communication. I cannot say that this has increased our productivity. Still, my stress level is lower as now everything is well organized and accessible from anywhere and all team members.

7 – Revisit Your Weekly Planner

When you started working with the weekly planner (we usually hand this out at the end of all programs), you might have noticed an increase in productivity right away. Now, with a bit more practice, you might see that you could make optimizations or you could change your meal or exercise plan for the fall. I recommend that you keep the general structure and only optimize what doesn’t work well yet.

How about you practice one virtue for eight weeks and let me know what happened? I would love to hear from you. If you wish to further work on your purpose, performance, and productivity, I recommend joining our RockMeRetreat. Sign up here to be invited, and we’ll set up a call to discuss this further. 

Further Reading

https://teachings.eckharttolle.com/path-to-liberation-resisting-and-demanding-nothing/

https://globalpeopletransitions.com/tech-sabbatical-10-ways-getting-offline-helped-me-to-live-la-dolce-vita/

https://www.greenhomediy.co/love-your-home/

5 Things Highly Productive People Do Every Sunday That Most Others Don’t

https://intermountainhealthcare.org/blogs/topics/live-well/2018/07/5-powerful-health-benefits-of-journaling/

https://positivepsychology.com/benefits-of-journaling/

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/benefits-of-journaling-_b_6648884

https://www.thespruce.com/decluttering-your-entire-home-2648002

This post is inspired by sundaebean.

We often hear our fellow expats complain about a lack of sleep and work taking over their lives -it seems that expat lives involve far too much work and impact sleep significantly. So for this edition, I thought I would talk about setting certain ground rules in our lives to get out of overdrive.

Getting Out of Overdrive Mode in Life

Christine Hansen, sleep expert and founder of Sleep Like a Boss, has detailed and often surprising insight into how expats can improve their sleep hygiene. Let’s dive in:

• Before any ground rules can be established, it is important to figure out why expats have such frequent complaints about their sleep. The root cause can be traced down, surprisingly, to expats themselves. We just want to do everything as international professionals. Work, explore new locales, experience the local food and culture and architecture, give time to the family back home in another time zone and engage the kids in activities. As a result, sleep is the first thing that gets sacrificed in the quest to make each day last longer.
• Many people, expats or otherwise, still question the science behind needing to sleep a certain minimum amount. The evidence is clearly there in your daily productivity – work output is shoddier and error-prone and any time you theoretically “saved” by sleeping less is consumed in correcting those mistakes. The evidence is also there in the long-term effects of low sleep, our bodies deteriorate with age and too little sleep not only accelerates it, but it also leaves us vulnerable to a host of symptoms and illnesses. Is that really a price worth paying for “a little more time” every day?
• Sticking to the scientific approach, a good approach for expats who want to do it all is to figure out precisely how much sleep they need. It may seem counter-intuitive, but you start by getting slightly less sleep than you need. Then, by keeping the time you wake up at unchanged for the next two weeks – maybe use an alarm, you work your way backward in increments of 30 minutes until you reach a point where you find yourself waking up just a few minutes before the alarm is supposed to go off. That point may be less than 8 hours for some people, more than that for others, but this exercise will allow you to pinpoint the right amount for yourself. That way, you can schedule the rest of your life around the optimal sleep time.
• As with most things in life, consistency is key to establishing great sleep hygiene and getting optimal quality sleep. That can sometimes get difficult if you have kids and have to travel, jet lag is the ruin of any good sleep routine! That’s why it’s important to try and continue on that routine even during travel, it really helps! An interesting tip here, especially for children, is to make certain fragrances part of the “going to sleep” routine. Our bodies react really strongly to familiar scents, so you can take these fragrances everywhere you go and they will help maintain the same sort of sleep your children get in the comfort of their own beds. This works for adults too, our olfactory senses really are that amazing!
• Let’s face it, most expats have busy lives. There are many however whose lives are so busy that they frequently have no time for themselves and they end up encroaching on sleep time for their hobbies. The recommendation for them, inflexible and tough as it sounds, is to schedule “me” time in advance. It’s really the only way to consistently squeeze in hobbies and relaxation time into the very busy schedules.
• Throughout these suggestions, the recurring theme has been “add structure, plan your sleep and your life around sleep” which can seem boring, but the benefits reaped from high-quality sleep are immense! Tired people are irritable, prone to more illness and generally not nice to be around. I am sure we can all relate to that last one!
• One thing that can really help you get into the right frame of mind to improve your sleep hygiene is to remind yourself why you are doing it: Whether it’s for better work performance, or quality time with family, reminding yourself why you want quality sleep will help you be motivated – it’s human nature to prioritize yourself last and choosing external motivators will prove more effective for this.

To wrap up, one last tip: Something you can do immediately to improve your sleep hygiene is to start a sleep journal. Just take five minutes out of your day to just jot down all the crap and rubbish and stress you face in a day. That way, you’ll take it out of your brain and see an immediate uptick in the quality of sleep you get.