We worry putting our family first means we'll be forced to abandon our careers. We're afraid if we pause our careers, we'll be forever off-track. This thinking is outdated—forget what you've heard about how pauses are career limiting, about how those who pause lack ambition, or that if you do pause you won't be able to re-enter the paid workforce. That's a flawed reality, one that doesn't reflect the truth of the careers of some of the most successful women in this country. Author Lisen Stromberg knows this success firsthand. After the birth of her second child, she did something she never imagined she would do: she opted out to focus on her family. But her career didn't end there. Lisen paused then pivoted to become first a social entrepreneur and then an award-winning journalist writing about women, work, and life in Silicon Valley. Along the way, she learned she wasn't alone. Lisen met many highly successful women who told her they never "opted out" but who had, in fact, temporarily downshifted or paused their careers. Their hidden journeys revealed alternative nonlinear paths to the top that enabled them to achieve their personal and professional goals. In Work PAUSE Thrive, Lisen shares their stories. Deeply rooted in social science research, cutting-edge data collected from nearly 1,500 women, and through 186 first-person interviews, this book reveals how trailblazing women have disrupted the traditional career paradigm. What worked for them can work for you. In this book, you'll learn: Who pauses, how they do it, and why How pausing can enrich both your career and your life How to innovate your own nonlinear career path What we can—and need—to do as a society to make it possible for more people to achieve their personal and professional goals Work PAUSE Thrive also reveals new and exciting trends in the workplace and offers targeted solutions for companies to help ensure they have cultures that will enable you to lead the life you want, a life in which you can build both a career and a family, and ultimately your own version of a life well lived.

Feeling overwhelmed, burned out, or stuck? Discover the power of the pause. Sometimes life throws you for a loop. You’re stressed out at your job; you’re torn between work and family; your motivation and productivity are taking a nosedive. Your impulse might be to lean in and tough it out, but what you may really need to do is take a step back. Reassess your life with a clear head and dive back in with purpose and poise. In this enlightening book, Rachael O’Meara guides you through the steps of your own pause journey: - The signs that you’re in need of a meaningful break - Planning your optimal pause—whether it’s as short as a day or as long as an epic journey - Reentering the world with renewed clarity and purpose. Incorporating the latest findings from psychology and neuroscience and peppered with inspiring stories of successful pauses, this book will show you that the fastest way to happiness is to slow down. Whether you pause by taking a five-minute walk outside, spending a day unplugged from digital devices, or taking a few weeks off to yourself, Pause will give you the tools to find what “lights you up” and the ability to lead the most satisfying and fulfilling life you choose. As seen in The Washington Post.

A revolutionary approach to understanding the emotional dynamics within our working lives. 'Nobody understands the everyday madness of working life better than Naomi Shragai. This book should be read by everyone who ventures anywhere near an office' - Lucy Kellaway You probably don't realise this, but every working day you replay and re-enact conflicts, dynamics and relationships from your past. Whether it's confusing an authority figure with a parent; avoiding conflict because of past squabbles with siblings; or suffering from imposter syndrome because of the way your family responded to success, when it comes to work we are all trapped in our own upbringings and the patterns of behaviour we learned while growing up. Many of us spend eighteen formative years or more living with family and building our personality; but most of us also spend fifty years - or 90,000 hours - in the workplace. With the pull of the familial so strong, we unconsciously re-enact our personal past in our professional present - even when it holds us back. Through intimate stories, fascinating insights and provocative questions that tackle the issues that cause us most problems - from imposter syndrome and fear of conflict to perfectionism and anxiety - business psychotherapist Naomi Shragai will transform how you think about yourself and your working life. Based on thirty years of expertise and practice, Shragai will show you that what is holding you back is within your gift to change - and the first step is to realise how you, like the rest of the people you work with, habitually confuse your professional present with your personal past.

When Designing Your Life was published in 2016, Stanford’s Bill Burnett and Dave Evans taught readers how to use design thinking to build meaningful, fulfilling lives (“Life has questions. They have answers.” –The New York Times). The book struck a chord, becoming an instant #1 New York Times bestseller. Now, in DESIGNING YOUR WORK LIFE: How to Thrive and Change and Find Happiness at Work they apply that transformative thinking to the place we spend more time than anywhere else: work. DESIGNING YOUR WORK LIFE teaches readers how to create the job they want—without necessarily leaving the job they already have. “Increasingly, it’s up to workers to define their own happiness and success in this ever-moving landscape,” they write, and chapter by chapter, they demonstrate how to build positive change, wherever you are in your career. Whether you want to stay in your job and make it a more meaningful experience, or if you decide it’s time to move on, Evans and Burnett show you how to visualize and build a work-life that is productive, engaged, meaningful, and more fun.

We live and lead in an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world. But paradoxically, Kevin Cashman contends that leaders today must not merely act more quickly but pause more deeply. He details a catalytic process to guide you to step back in order to lead forward in three critical growth areas: personal leadership, development of others, and fostering of cultures of innovation. You and your organization will learn to move from management speed and transaction to leadership significance and transformation.

Business psychologist Tony Crabbe outlines a unique three-step approach to combating one of the modern life's great problems: being too busy. So many people feel far too busy—unable to work properly on the things that are important to them and stuck in a rut. This book, written by a well-connected business psychologist, puts that feeling in context and provides practical solutions for people to become happier, more motivated and more successful. If you want to take control of your career—and your life—make sure you're not too busy to read to this book. Today's world is one of too much: too much work to do, too much communication, too much competition, too much uncertainty and too much information. We are striving to keep up, but inevitably we're falling behind, leaving us with a nagging sense of failure that is hard to shake off. In Busy, Tony Crabbe debunks the myth that satisfaction at work comes from getting everything done. Instead, he demonstrates that what will enable you to thrive is regaining a sense of mastery over your life, focusing on making an impact, engaging with loved ones and creating the momentum necessary to make changes. Busy is divided into three digestible sections—Mastery, Differentiation, and Engagement—that will teach readers how to switch from managing time to managing attention, how to transition toward a career strategy that doesn't hinge on productivity, how to think differently about success by re-engaging with what matters, and how to create the impetus, energy, and clarity to put all these changes into effect. Crabbe draws on entertaining psychological studies to show why we're getting it wrong at the moment and to develop a fresh new approach to taking back one's life from chaotic outside forces.

You can thrive and excel when you’re working remotely, if you adopt the mindset, habits and tech tools of professionals who are even more productive outside the office: Learn to think like a “business of one,” and that entrepreneurial mindset will transform your experience of remote work. Remote work can be satisfying and productive—once you craft a strategy that taps into the unique advantages of working from home. After a year in which many of us plunged into remote work overnight, we finally have a chance to make thoughtful choices about how to combine remote and office work, and how to make the most of our days at home. Remote, Inc. gives you the strategies and tools you need to make remote work a valuable part of your renewed working life. Learn how to... Gain control over how and when you work by focusing on objectives, not the 9-to-5 workday. Wow your managers by treating them like valued clients. Beat information overload by prioritizing important emails and messages. Make online meetings purposeful, focused and engaging. Build great relationships with your colleagues—whether at the next desk, or another city. Find a balance between work from home, and life at home. Make a remote work plan that lets you get the best from time at the office—and the best of home. Remote, Inc. takes you inside the mindset and habits of people who flourish while working outside the office some or all of the time: people who function like a “business of one.” That’s how productivity experts Robert C. Pozen and Alexandra Samuel describe the mindset that lets people thrive when they’re working remotely, whether full-time or in combination with time at the office. You can follow their lead by embracing the work habits and independence of a small business owner—while also tapping into the benefits of collegiality and online collaboration.