Illustrated Blog

As you might remember, last week’s tip for a meaningful workweek from the Purposeful Palm was to forgo meat. My favorite reader response was from Ernesto: “No way, Bea. I love parrilla [bar-b-q]! Try to get your little plant to give me some other advice.” After the Palm stopped chuckling, it agreed to stay away from suggesting a culinary sacrifice this week. Thus, the above tip on something close to the opposite: Shopping! Here are resources to help you find black-owned businesses: The Buy From A Black Woman Directory New York Magazine’s 180 Black-Owned Businesses to Support The Black-Owned Market Etsy’s Black Owned Shops  Black Enterprise’s Top 100 list  Bank Black Bon Appetit’s list of Black-owned Restaurants  A list of 181 Black-owned businesses across the United States in many different

When I recently looked at the smoke-shrouded palm outside my California office wondering what to do about the raging global wildfires, it offered the above suggestion. Try it out and see how you feel!

When I stared at the Purposeful Palm outside my office window this week, it suggested we help with the other pandemic afflicting us: social isolation. In our work-at-home reality, many of our colleagues feel as though they have faded into the background, neither heard nor seen. The resulting loneliness can be crippling. The above tip can help reduce their suffering. Amazingly, research shows that if we are the ones suffering from social isolation, doing this good deed helps us as well.

Above is the advice the palm outside my office window provided when I pondered how people could find time to do good at work during these demanding times. Hope it helps!

I spend a lot of time gazing out my office window at a palm tree wondering how to ignite a sense of purpose in whatever work team I’m trying to help. It turns out the tall palm often has surprisingly helpful, simple and broadly applicable ideas. Above is one. The Purposeful Palm’s first tip might take no more than five minutes and be ridiculously simple but make no mistake: It will bring more joy to its beneficiaries than we likely know. Furthermore, there is evidence that it’s sufficiently meaningful to boost the happiness of those doing the good deed—for days or even weeks!

Is there a productive assignment we can give our work-at-home team members who don’t have enough to do? I believe there is. And it happens to also serve the world. For many managers, COVID-19 is an opportunity to invite idle or semi-idle employees to develop social-purpose skills (defined as their ability to help others or a societal cause) and craft plans to apply these skills at work. For example, we can encourage employees to develop their capacity to: Respond to medical emergencies. Having team members who are equipped to respond to medical situations at work is unquestionably beneficial. This pandemic might be as good a time as any for our team members to take a company first-responder online training, the American Red Cross’ first aid/CPR/AED course or the University of Glasgow’s basic

To help people turn COVID-19 “sadness into song,” as his website put it, a music composer gave away $20 downloads in March. This action inspired a musician in Massachusetts who benefitted from a $20 freebie to establish a collaborative music website “to promote peace, understanding, healing and happiness.” This, in turn, nudged a CEO of a technology company to better promote his policy of offering free services to nonprofits operating in areas declared a disaster. The CEO’s actions inspired a Florida art-school owner, whose school is temporarily shuttered, to help newly unemployed customers apply for government assistance. Her actions, in turn, led a manager at an Illinois entertainment company to ask his team to start planning a free post-pandemic event to thank healthcare and other workers who are risking their lives throughout the pandemic. One of