Recent content on Jonathan Vieker
I live in Kirksville, MO. Here’s what I’m doing now. 
 
 Serving as AVP of Institutional Effectiveness and Assessment at Truman State University 
 Spending quality time with my wife and our two daughters 
 Finishing my PhD at the University of Missouri (dissertation time!) 
 Playing music daily, by myself and with others 
 
 I’ll update this page when…
Below are a few resources I’ve collected for possible reference by interested parties during my interview at Truman State on June 8, 2022. 
 The links below are examples of interesting ways higher ed. institutions are making institutional student success data available. These particular examples may not be appropriate for Truman (and I am not necessarily advocating for them), but neither…
Our jobs will always ask for more. 
 More time, more energy, and more commitment. That’s just the way life works—if we’re effective at what we do, people will seek us out. Work flows to capable people as dependably as water flows to low spots in a landscape. 
 And today, it’s possible to work non-stop, answering emails on our phone during dinner with the family,…
Letting go of perfectionism is a challenge, but like all bad habits, it’s easier to drop if we replace it with something else. 
 An alternative to perfectionism is experimentalism—a posture of seeking truth through trial and error. The experimentalist expects lackluster results and even some outright failure, but they also improve over time because they’re analyzing their…
Perfectionism is costly. In addition to driving us to work longer and harder than necessary, it also prevents us from being happy with our work once it’s done. “It could have been better,” we tell ourselves. 
 If we never let ourselves feel good about our work, eventually our brains rebel. “Forget this—I’m not working this hard for no credit,” they complain. 
 Perfection is an illusion.…
The customer/client/student has a problem, and they’ve brought that problem to us. We didn’t cause the problem, and it’s not our job to fix it, either. We get to say, if we want to, “it’s not my fault.” 
 But the person who brought us the problem doesn’t care whose fault it is—they just need help. “It’s not my fault” lets us off…

 A couple years ago, I volunteered at MOMOM , an annual free dental clinic that takes place over a weekend and travels around the state of Missouri, serving the underserved. 
 
 
 It was a massive operation—dozens of dentists working on the floor of a college basketball arena, doing everything from filling cavities to pulling multiple teeth, all for people who couldn't afford…

 Our inner critic is powerful. 
 
 
 It's the voice that speaks up to tell us we're not doing a good job, we don’t measure up, or we need to try harder. And it's so convincing that its opinions can seem like fact. 
 
 
 Learning to recognize the voice of our inner critic is a powerful step in the direction of self-care, but just as important is understanding what it's…

 Psychologist Amos Tversky said that, and it's true. If every moment of our time is spoken for, we have no time to think about how we're spending our time. Big-picture thinking is so important yet so easy to avoid. 
 
 
 There's more to life than constant productivity, and it's worth putting a little slack in our schedules. The payoff can be immense.
We talk a lot about Future You, who has to live with the consequences of Present You’s decisions. Thinking of your future self as different person is a useful way to examine and manage life choices. 
 I’m a big fan of signing up Future You for beneficial activities like running a 5K. But, as a reader recently pointed out , it’s also possible to fill up Future You’s time…
It’s easy to feel guilty about taking break from work, whether it’s a a 3:00 PM walk or a weeklong vacation. But serious performance requires serious rest. It’s true in the gym and in our careers: rest makes hard effort possible. 
 The break isn’t separate from the work—it’s part of the work. Break freely and without guilt. You’ve earned it, and…
The first time you try something new, you’re not going to do it very well. Instead of over-preparing (so that the first try goes better), maybe you should just get the first try out of the way. 
 To get good quickly, fail early and often.
At a friend’s recommendation, I recently tried a service called Focusmate . 
 It’s pretty simple—you spend 50 minutes in a one-on-one video meeting with a total stranger, each of you working on some task you need to do. Interaction is limited to a brief greeting (including a quick summary of what you plan to work on) and a quick debriefing and farewell at the end. 
 Even…
When I find myself procrastinating on a big project, it’s often because I don’t remember where I left things last time or what needs to be done next. Here’s a tactic I’ve successful employed recently to fix this problem. 
 In starting the day’s work on a project, I set my first task as: “load project into working memory.” This means getting all my…
Decisions are hard for many of us. And while some people make decisions too carelessly, I doubt that’s a problem for most readers of this blog. More likely, you (like me) tend to overthink things. 
 Careful deliberation is appropriate for massive, irreversible decisions. But most decisions are reversible—they’re what Jeff Bezos calls two-way doors . 
 Making decisions and…
We’re not good at walking away from our work. 
 We eat lunch at our desks. We compulsively check our work email well into the evening, and on vacation, too. We log a few hours on the weekend to catch up from last week (or get ahead on next week). 
 There’s mounting evidence that constant work makes our lives worse without improving our output , and the solution is simple, if…
The urgent would like your attention, please. 
 The urgent does not care about the important. The urgent is not concerned about year-end numbers or long-term professional goals. The urgent wants you to check your email. Right now, if you don’t mind. 
 Giving in to the urgent feels good. Other people appreciate quick responses, and putting out fires seems productive. On the other…
Sandra Boynton is the Shakespeare of board books . 
 She’s the best there ever was. The GOAT. Her books are short and punchy, so kids love them. They’re hilarious and fun to read, so parents love them. Our household’s current favorite, Dinosaur Dance , begins, “Zang! Bop! Kiddly-pow! The dinosaur dance is starting now!” Now that’s how you start a board book.…
Many of us keep a mental list of “things to fix” in our lives, from saving more for retirement to cutting back on coffee. 
 The thing is, drinking too much coffee isn’t a serious problem for most people. Unless we’re guzzling the stuff, it’s just not that bad for us . But it’s easy to give everything on this “things to fix” list the same mental…
Two months ago, I signed up for a webinar about my state pension. 
 The webinar was yesterday. It was two hours long and not exactly riveting, but I did learn quite a bit about how my retirement system works, and the knowledge I gained might save me many thousands of dollars in the future. I’m glad I went. 
 And if the sign-up process had taken place last week instead of two months…
It can take weeks to get an important meeting together. You need to: 
 
 decide what needs to be decided at the meeting and construct a solid agenda 
 figure out who needs to be there (and who doesn't) 
 find a time that fits everyone's schedule (especially Maria and Will, who are always booked out for weeks). 
 
 When the big day finally arrives, all that prep work is a…
What needs to be true for us to start our work? 
 Do we need to be well-rested? Feeling good? Do we need at least a solid hour free? We all have unspoken conditions for starting our work, and it’s easy for these conditions to constrict over time, to creep toward perfection. 
 Freelancers particularly struggle with this. When you control your own schedule, you can decide under what…
Most of us don’t really choose our hobbies. We bike, hike, or homebrew beer because, well, that’s just what we like to do. 
 But it’s worth giving some thought to our hobbies, because they’re not all created equal. Take running and bourbon, for instance. 
 Serious running and bourbon connoisseurship are both rewarding. Both relieve stress, are social, and are easy…
Daily planning , as useful as it is, can create tension between Present You and Future You. 
 Present You makes tomorrow’s plan, but Future You will have to carry it out. So in planning tomorrow, it’s easy for Present You to sign up Future You for some unpleasant experiences. 
 
 'Five hours straight on the hardest report of the year? Sounds good!' 
 'Lightweight…
What do we do with our mistakes? 
 Jim Rohn’s advice here is the best I’ve found: “let your past be a school.” There’s no reason to ruminate endlessly on past mistakes, but neither should we sweep them under the rug. We can learn from our errors. 
 Especially the habitual mistakes, the ones we fall into time and again. We should all have a mental list of our…

 
 
 I bought a Fitbit recently, and it tells me an awful lot. A few highlights: 
 - When I check the time, it shows me how many steps I've logged today. - It monitors my heart rate and encourages me to keep going when I'm on a brisk walk or a run. - If I've been sitting too long, it reminds me to get up and walk around. - And my favorite feature: each morning, it issues me a…
There’s a lot of writing on the internet—some of it mine—about how overcommitted most of us are. Productivity bloggers urge us to narrow our focus to our most important work and cut out much of the rest. Do less, better . 
 The problem with this otherwise sound advice is that most of us struggle to put it into practice. Voluntarily backing away from commitments is easier said…
When you’re upset, it’s worth considering what your situation would look like to someone who deals with that kind of crisis professionally. 
 I advised college freshman for seven years, and I still remember the first time a student cried in my office. I don’t know which of us was more shaken! After that had happened a few times (not that it happened often, mind you), I…
Start anyway. 
 Feelings get a lot of attention in the modern world, and that’s great! We’re emotional beings, like it or not, and our feelings help color our lives. But it’s easy to give them far too much credit— to assume that feelings reflect reality , for instance, or to let them determine how we spend our time. 
 Take work, for instance. It’s tempting to let our feelings dictate when…
Most of us are in planning/reflection mode this time of year, and as 2021 begins, we’re eager to make lasting positive changes in our lives. 
 Motivation levels are high on January 1st. We’re jazzed to eat better, exercise more, and generally improve our lives. But motivation never lasts. How do we plan accordingly? 
 By making good behaviors easier. 
 Take someone who has…
What a year. 2020 has been so difficult that it’s hard to find anything nice to say about it. 
 Has it taught us, as a society, how to deal with true hardship? Maybe, but plenty of us already knew. 
 Has it made us count our blessings? Forced us to appreciate what we have? Helped us see ourselves in a historical context—subject to plagues, just like every other human society…
Next week, I’ll take my twice-annual Think Days . I’ve been doing this since 2018—two days every six months for nothing but reading, journaling, and thinking. 
 Ahead of time, the idea always feels frivolous and not worth the time. Clearing two full days from one’s calendar is a lot to ask! Afterwards, it feels essential. I achieve so much clarity during those unbroken…
There’s an approach to work that’s common among top freelancers in many fields. It’s a “whatever-it-takes” attitude, a willingness to go above and beyond one’s official job description in order to ensure a successful outcome for the project one has been hired to work on. 
 For a freelancer, this can-do approach is a great way to rise above a crowded field of competition. If…
“I feel overwhelmed, so I must be in over my head.” 
 When we’re stressed, we tend to assume that our feelings reflect reality. This is called emotional reasoning , and it’s very common. We experience a negative emotion, and we take that experience as evidence of some dark truth about ourselves or others. Life’s far from easy, but emotional reasoning leads us to see things as far…
Thanksgiving is the holiday of gratitude. And it’s followed immediately by its complete opposite, Black Friday—the holiday of greed. 
 What a juxtaposition! It feels like a set-up, like we’re being asked to choose between the two. Do we want a little more Thanksgiving in our lives, or a little more Black Friday? More gratitude, or more desire? More contentment, or more dissatisfaction? If you…
At the very beginning of a new project, keep your standards low. 
 High-quality work rarely comes from building up thin layers of perfection. Instead, it’s the result of hacking together a half-finished, half-decent deliverable and tweaking it until it runs, then polishing it until it gleams. 
 Think of the fiction writer starting a new book. If she holds every freshly-typed sentence…
There are right and wrong ways to say “no.” 
 First, some wrong ways: 
 
 “No, and why would you even ask?” 
 “No, and can’t you read the sign?” 
 “No, and can’t you see that I’m busy?” 
 “No, and you're the 10th person who's asked me that question today.” 
 “No, and boy, do I love telling people no.” 
 
 Now, some right ways: 
 
 “No, but I understand…
Last spring, I took on a leadership position at work. And I soon realized that I had leadership pegged all wrong. 
 Like many folks who’ve never led before, I used to think leadership was mostly about making good strategic decisions—about analyzing a complex situation and deciding how best to act. While strategy is massively important, I had way underestimated how much leadership is about…
I wrote a couple weeks ago about my recent productivity slump . As I’ve worked my way through it, I’ve realized that sometimes productivity is about having some self-compassion. 
 In The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People , Steven Covey talks about balancing production (P) and production capability (PC). Anyone who focuses only on maximizing production will eventually see…
It’s a basic truth of life that what we focus on helps determine the quality of our lives. 
 When times are tough, it can be hard to manage our attention. We seem to be wired for rumination when difficulty arises, even though it rarely helps. What does help, though, is focusing on helping someone else. 
 Helping others allows us to experience the joy of giving, but it also gives us…
I’ve been in a productivity slump for the last three weeks. For some reason, I’m struggling to maintain my normal level of professional performance, and I haven’t yet found a solution. 
 This productivity slump isn’t too concerning—even if I can’t work my way through it, it’ll pass soon. Besides, human performance waxes and wanes, and there’s only so…
In hard times, we’re tempted to focus only on survival. “Just get through today,” we tell ourselves. And tomorrow. And the next day, and the day after that. 
 And when we’ve gotten through all the days—what then? 
 It’s easy to fall into a trap of constantly looking to the future for happiness, especially when the present looks dim. But even the hardest…
When we’re facing a tough problem, it can feel we’re on our own. I’ve certainly felt that way. But there’s always someone who can help, and most people like to help others. Helping feels good—it’s a deeply meaningful experience. 
 Yes, people like to help. But everyone is busy, and the most helpful people are often busier than most. The key to getting help…
Yesterday started off as a very unproductive day for me. 
 There was no obvious cause. I’d time-blocked my day as I always do, but I found myself unable to focus on even the simplest task, let alone anything particularly challenging or important. 
 Who knows why. I hadn’t slept well the night before, and I’m just coming out of a weeklong illness—either issue could…
Each branch of the US military maintains a reading list : a list of books that are considered recommended or required reading for service members in that branch. 
 Unsurprisingly, these lists lean heavily toward military history and leadership development, and their contents aren’t that important for our purposes. What I want to discuss is the larger concept of a professional reading list and…
When I’m drowning in email—which happens most weekdays—I write out the following on my daily plan : 
 ☐ Process office email (5) 
 This means I’m going to read the 5 oldest emails in my inbox and either reply or archive each one, extracting any tasks along the way. Each email successfully processed earns me a little hash mark, and then I get to check the whole thing off: 
 ☑…
A major trait of highly effective people is a posture of intentionality —of living one’s life in alignment with one’s deepest values. Happy, productive people tend to know what they’re about, and they spend their time and energy on those things that are important to them. Consciously choosing how to live has at least two major benefits. 
 The first is self-evident: when we make progress in…
I used to think that being really organized was a prerequisite to being highly productive. Yet plenty of folks are very successful without having read Getting Things Done or The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People . 
 That’s because having a sophisticated productivity system isn’t really about productivity—it’s about reducing stress. It’s possible to be completely unorganized yet insanely…

 For most career destinations, there's at least one existing path. For example, let’s talk about how to become an astronaut. 
 
 
 Lots of people want to be astronauts—so many, in fact, that NASA has shared the job requirements on its website . If you’re a US citizen who wants to be an astronaut, here’s what you need: 
 
 
 A master's degree in a STEM field, like…
In our quest for a meaningful life, we need both knowledge and wisdom. 
 Knowledge is easy to access, thanks to the relentless march of scientific progress and, of course, the internet. All the information we need is available—the sum of human knowledge, on tap. More than we could absorb in a thousand lifetimes. 
 When it comes to knowledge, especially scientific knowledge, the more…