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It is easy to compare yourself to others – especially those with whom you interact a lot, like your co-workers. And although nobody wants to be jealous of a colleague, sometimes it just happens. But the good news is that you can use that feeling to improve your own performance. Dr. Camille Johnson, associate dean and professor at San Jose State University, speaks this in an article for psychology today. Here’s what you should know.

Different types of envy

First of all, what is envy? According to Johnson, “Envy is the emotion caused by others having relatively more than you do.” But it is important to remember that there are different types of envy. Here is how Johnson explains:

A typical response to envy is to reduce this discrepancy between yourself and the other. This may include bringing the other person up to your level directly or indirectly, bringing yourself up to their level, or deciding that the entire area of ​​comparison is worthless.

Benign vs. malignant

Dutch professor of marketing and human behavior expert Dr. Niels van de Ven says that there are two types of envy: benign and malignant. “Benign envy leads to an ascension motivation aimed at improving one’s position, and malicious envy leads to a withdrawal motivation aimed at damaging the position of the superior other,” explains Johnson.

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We have been conditioned to think that any kind of envy or jealousy is bad, but benign envy is different: it’s more about being dissatisfied with yourself than having negative feelings about someone else.

How to Use Benign Envy to Your Advantage

Once you’ve established that what you feel about your coworker is benign envy, you may as well be taking advantage of it. Benign envy comes from a place of admiration rather than resentment, and therefore can give you the kick-start you need to work a little harder. Here’s how it works, according to Johnson:

Focus on what you are in control of and the results you want. When people focus on the other person’s characteristics rather than their own goals, they get stuck. Instead, you may need to change jobs, find areas where you can be successful, or seek mentors and advice to improve your status.

No dad in 1978 Superman gets a ton of screen time, but Jonathan (Glenn Ford) raises Clark and, along with Martha, helps him instill the values ​​he needs to use his incredible powers for the benefit of others. Marlon Brandos Jor-El is also commended, not only for developing and building the strangely tiny rocket that sent his son to Earth, but also for showing up to offer advice from beyond. Kal-El was the only survivor * of this doomed planet, and that’s almost entirely thanks to his father, who sent Kal an interactive virtual dad to talk to if the young Superman needed a morale boost, or just one kryptonian history lesson. I say it took two fathers (and some great mothers too) who worked together from all over the universe to shape Clark.

(Between salary and earnings points, Marlon Brando made roughly $ 20 million in 1978 for less than 20 minutes on screen, making him not only one of the best, but also one of the highest-paid fathers on the list.)

* Or one of dozen, including at least one dog, depending on which version of the story we’re talking about.

Where to stream: HBO max

Photo: Yuliya Bulanovskaya (Shutterstock)

We’ve told you in the past that if you find a tick, you should save it for testing. However, that depends on it: In 2010 my husband found a nasty little tick that sucked the life force out of my lovable little son, and the pediatrician had us tested the tick at the district health department. We rushed to do so and the results were negative. Phew

But a few years later another of our children was bitten by a tick and the doctor shrugged and told us tests were no longer recommended. Tick ​​bites are pretty common these days, the tick can have Lyme without giving it to you, and you can get Lyme disease even if that particular tick wasn’t the deed. Ask your doctor if he agrees with ours. This advice can vary.

A blood test for Lyme, by the way probably doesn’t help either. Instead, your provider will likely recommend looking for watching Symptoms of Lyme Disease– not only the famous rash, as it does not always appear, but also flu-like symptoms, tiredness and pain. If you have any of these, with or without noticing a tick bite, call the doctor. And if Lyme is common in your area, it is possible that your doctor may want to treat you with high-potency antibiotic treatment whether or not you show symptoms.

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The away message is one of the most formulaic features of the modern workplace, so much so that most of it seem to be derived from a Mad-Libs game: “I’ll be away from the office [date] with limited access to email. If your message is urgent … “etc. etc.

The Writer Charlie Warzel recently released a devastating dismantling of this standard form response. In fact, the OOO usually starts with a greeting followed by an apology with the effect of “I’ll reply more slowly than usual”, with colleagues on hand in the event of an urgent request. That’s crap, argues Warzel, in a hate speech that offers a multitude of alternatives to the staid reaction we all know and loathe. You should have more fun with it, he says. Be more honest about your actual availability (which hopefully is extremely limited – it’s your vacation after all) and just make your answers generally more colorful and therefore better overall.

Much ink has been spilled for polishing up such boring corporate formalities over the years, but I want to defuse and simplify this term: the only thing your OOO needs to convey is the brutally honest reality that you shouldn’t be checking emails and not expected until you come back are on the clock.

How to write an effective out-of-office message

The aforementioned ad-lib formula is a holdover from traditional office culture that is about to die – now more than ever. There are many guides try to teach the uninformed about the most professional way to create an OOO, but unfortunately they all maintain the notion that we must at least instill a willingness to respond to a business email even when we are not working.

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Too many of us work in an “always-on” work culture that prioritizes an incessant flood of digital notifications arriving around the clock. These messages can come in Slack, email, or text messaging, but they all have one thing in common: They remind you of the ever-present demands of work.

I would argue that the only way we as workers can hope to counter this onslaught is to put tighter boundaries between our work hours and personal time – and part of that is to produce OOO responses that are clear Make that email, Slack, phone calls, and Zoom meetings won’t be a priority – or even an issue – until a vacation is over. This doesn’t mean you have to give a hostile response; something like “I’m on vacation from vacation [insert date] until [insert date] and won’t check any emails until I come back “would do fine.

It really is – you no longer have to bid the sender as your vacation time should be yours and you alone.

Why is your out of office message important?

Think of this small change as the first frontline in the fight against the always-on-work mentality. The US work culture is notoriously relentless, especially when compared to our colleagues in other countries who enjoy more flexibility: France passed a labor law in 2016 that formalized “right to separation”, That is, “Employees don’t have to take calls or read e-mails related to work during their free time.” Many corporate leaders in America would probably dismiss this type of worker protection as frivolous, but it should at least inspire people here, their free time actually to use instead of just taking them.