Meaning of work/Not know and be ok/Art, Creativity & Science/Leaping this year

What does your work mean to you

It's always a good time to think about what you want from your work and what you work gives you.

Work, workplaces and the world of work is changing -- and continues to change. And you might need to adapt or change what you do for work or how you work.

Read more in this piece from Psychology Today and take another look at the meaning of work and how things might, possibly, be able to shift for you.

Not know and be ok with that

It sounds unusual but we can be bored and frustrated... and it can be ok.

We can be caught up with wanting to feel wonderful and put-together all the time, but there are benefits to these other states.

This is a reminder for me frequently; to not keep pushing and busy-ing but to let the uncertainty or unknown of boredom, irritation and frustration be a place of great things.

Read more in this article

The art, creativity and science of …

It’s summer here in Australia and for those who get annoyed by it … there can be ‘sand everywhere!!’

No matter your season, take a moment to feel the sand between your toes in this lovely read of the art and science - and creative uncertainty - of sandcastle making.

There are themes here of

▫️Philosophy

▫️Impermanence

▫️Uncertainty and that which is outside of our control

▫️Resources and sustainability

▫️Ingenuity

▫️Friction and

▫️Tension.

Thinking of making a leap this year

Career changes, pursuing that which you’ve always had an interest in, or just thinking it’s time for a change.

Making a leap into a new way of working can mean a career or job shift — and that can mean working for yourself, registering a business or taking a whole new work direction.

What are you thinking about work … and how might things be new for you this year?

This article in The Age shared some inspiring examples of what's possible and practical and implementable, not just what is a faraway dream.

Fixing Broken Work/A New Skill/Meet Less/Café Work Life/Productivity Theatre/Work Week Insights

Fixing the broken bits of work 

Will AI fix work? It’s a great question that new ways of working people are asking and wondering about. 

In Microsoft’s latest Work Trends Index Report we get to see how much we’re:

- drowning in information 

- detesting meetings … still

- wishing work had no meetings at all, and 

- innovating, not. 

Artificial intelligence provides opportunities to relieve us of

▫️heavy work

▫️dreary work

▫️preparatory work

▫️first draft work 

and 

▫️routine/repetitive work. 

And this could give us more time to be creative in our work. 

Although the promise of ‘if this then that’ in the history of work always delivered just another load of other work for us to do in its place.)

Grab a coffee, sit and read the report. Better still, get AI to do something for you. 

Depending where you are on the AI curve, you could get AI to:

▫️read it for you

▫️provide a 100 word summary 

▫️select the three most relevant quotes 

▫️generate a list of six action points 

▫️tell you which parts you should be most worried about

▫️start working automatically with you on your work day, schedule, meetings, presentations and reports 

▫️redesign your work flow to incorporate AI wherever possible 

and 

… head to the beach. 

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A new skill to learn 

No part of work is immune from the requirement to learn some new skills now and then. 

Any skill to be learnt can take a little time. And some of us give up when the first 10 mins experimenting or trying don’t go so well! 

We can be perfectionists when we don’t meet our own expectations of it working perfectly … immediately. 

If you’re still clutching onto your electric typewriter, floppy disk or dot matrix printer, keep on scrolling. 

But otherwise, there are some opportunities to tinker, play and begin learning how to make use of artificial intelligence. These are skills connected with the use, guidance, prompting and re-prompting, assessing and editing of AI. 

Skills like : Questioning, briefing, querying, framing, directing, finessing, checking, editing — they’re all skills we can be applying for working with the next tech that’s here. 

Give it a little time. No need to rush or be impatient. Bit by bit. Try it again. Read a bit more. Try something different. 

Learning is not a perfect process.

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Meet less. More happy. 

It’s one of the quickest ways to free up time in a packed schedule. And an immediate way to release some of the pressure of having too much on. 

Delete, remove and decline meetings. 

I’ve called this out as a key strategy in my book ‘Sync Async: Making progress easier in the changing world of work’. 

More research data is revealing the sweet spot of meeting less and the benefits to be gained. 

Three ways you can meet less for more happy are:

▫️check in messages rather than check in meetings 

▫️meet only when absolutely necessary, and

▫️let people opt out. 

These are some of the modern evolutions to work and changes occurring to the way we do work. 

See more in this piece from Inc. Australia by Minda Zetlin 

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NOW SHOWING at Productivity Theatre 

Quick … read something, look busy. 

Leave your laptop on, open and the screen set to never sleep. 

Anecdotes, research and reports about how employees are ‘performing’ to look busy, could be in response to recent layoff fears or perhaps the pressure of returning to the office.  

But this show has been going on for decades. It’s a classic!

Ron, a colleague I worked with years ago had some curious advice for me on the first day of my new job. He said, “Here’s how to look busy around here: walk around the office, factory or site quickly … with speed and pace … swing your arms. 

“Carry with you a single piece of A4 paper with something, anything printed on it,” he said. “Always make it look like you’re going somewhere, to see someone, to do something.” Thanks Ron. 

He was the laziest person I’d ever worked with. He did so little at work, counting the weeks, months and years until he could get a redundancy payout and retire with his beloved fishing rod. What a couple : Ron and Rod. 

A colleague in another organisation used to slot in cross-country skiing on the nearby slopes when their employer thought they were out on the road seeing clients and making sales calls. 

I know of people who have an app set to automatically tap their keyboard so it looks like they’re logged on and on duty. The range and examples of ‘slacking off’ at work are broad indeed. 

Appearing busy when we’re not isn’t new. 

Maybe there’s just less people walking around offices holding pieces of paper these days because most of their work is online, digital and tech based. We just need to gaze into a screen. 

The creative and contemporary performances screening in Productivity Theatre today are:

▫️rapidly replying to emails to show you’re there

▫️attending pointless or irrelevant meetings

and

▫️scheduling emails to be sent at later times.

Whatever you do — or don’t do — at Productivity Theatre, it’s all a daily performance. 

Read more in this piece by Chloe Berger in Fortune 

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The café work life

Also becoming known as ‘work from hospo’ (hospitality) this third space or third place is another option in the working from home era. 

Read more in this piece by Tracey Cheung in The Age or The Sydney Morning Herald to see why cafes, restaurants and other hospitality options are working so well for some remote workers. 

There are benefits such as :

▫️Comfort

▫️Convenience

▫️Social Connection 

▫️Coffee, Catering and Snacks

▫️A new location for new ideas

▫️Ambience, mood and vibe

▫️A mental reset

and more. 

For the venues, there’s an income stream at times they might usually be a little quiet.  

For me, the ambient noise of the buzz of a cafe is a clear winner. 

The whirrrrr of the coffee machine, the clatter of crockery and the light chatter of people - oh, and the often barely noticeable music - has shown to be the most magnificent combination for idea generation and creativity. 

It’s why apps like Coffitivity have been popular, to try and recreate that buzz and ambience. 

Are you are third place kind of person? 

And a shout out to the team at Third Place who have made moving between venues via a membership even easier. 

Hybrid working/Asynchronous audiobook/New ways in schooling/Workplaces for the anti-work trend

3 things needed in hybrid working 

As the world of hybrid work keeps evolving and changing, we’d do well to check on how it’s going and what tweaks and changes are needed. 

Two out of three key requirements for people seem to be lacking. 

Let’s look at them: 

🔸Choice or Autonomy

🔸Mastery or Learning

🔸Connectivity in all its forms. 

From your experience and observations, which one/s are working in hybrid do you think? 

And which is being missed? Read more in this article from Fortune quoting the great work of Lynda Gratton. 

And consider how you and your teams can lead with greater focus on the important parts that are being missed. 

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Sync Async Audiobook is out now !

My most recent book ‘Sync Async: Making progress easier in the changing world of work’ is now available in audiobook. 

What’s it about? 

One of the best ways to respond and adapt to the changing world of work is to consider not just the work itself … but the WAY it gets done. 

Consider:

◻️ Do we really need everyone at the same meeting at the same time? (synchronous work)

◻️ Could some people contribute prior to, or after the meeting or begin working on tasks outside of a meeting? (asynchronous work)

A growing number of teams and businesses are learning and experiencing the value of deliberately working in sync / async ways. 

That is, some work is completed synchronously — at the same time with other people; and other elements of work completed asynchronously — at a time and in a way that suits them. 

In this book you'll hear about:

◻️ how, why and when to work in sync and async ways

◻️ tools for creating your team’s sync async strategy

◻️ ways to identify the type of work you prefer 

◻️ techniques to work in more async ways

◻️ how to make daily progress easier — get started on things that have stopped and accelerate things that have slowed. 

You don’t need to wait for a culture to change or for someone to give you the go ahead on this. You can start working better in both sync and async ways from today. 

There will always be too much to do and not enough time in which to do it. Putting practical sync async techniques to work can make your work easier … and the rest of life better. 

Available via your usual audiobook app or supplier. Use one of your Audible credits to get the book now. 

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New ways in schooling

Evolutions in how we work don’t just happen in corporate offices or businesses. 

New ways in how a school can work are most certainly working for the glorious Hester Hornbrook Academy led by their highly regarded principal, Sally Lasslett. 

In this great piece in The Age, insights abound on how innovation, inclusion and new ways of thinking and working are helping make education happen … for the better. 

Adaptive thinking in education is working on things like: 

▫️meeting students where they are

▫️classes starting at 10 am 

▫️no rows of desks, replaced with flexible seating like groups of desks or beanbags

▫️a focus on who students want to be,

and

▫️no need to leave after a graduation; students can keep coming back!

Funded by Melbourne City Mission (MCM), the independent school is thriving and growing and gaining attention for the right reasons. 

It’s a most beautiful example of how to think beyond the default or mainstream … no matter the kind of work you do or the services your organisation provides. 

Read more here

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A workplace for people who don’t like work 

What would it be like? 

Following on from the above post about Hester Hornbrook Academy in Melbourne, Australia, which has created a school for students who don’t like going to school, let’s think further …

How might we apply this to the workplace, more broadly? 

Some changes in ways of working have been successes for those who need them:

▫️the non linear work day

▫️remote work

▫️asynchronous work

▫️work from anywhere 

▫️the four day work week 

▫️flexible working hours …

And so what else? 

How else are workplaces helping make work better for those who don’t like work? Or don’t much like going to work? 

There are things like:

▫️quiet spaces, booths and soundproofed areas

▫️collaborative cafe-style designs for a less formal feel

▫️softer furnishings to create a more comfortable environment

▫️ambient sounds and effects to create calm yet productive spaces 

▫️creative tools for communication and collaboration 

▫️online apps for contribution and collaboration 

▫️cross functional teams to create greater progress and autonomy 

▫️self-selected teams enabling people to exercise choice

▫️incremental work to help make better progress 

▫️less time wasting activities like boring meetings and more outcome focused work

▫️iterative work to break tasks down in to manageable pieces

▫️a mindset of good enough to reduce the effects of perfectionism, …and plenty more. 

What else?

What do you see that companies, business, leaders and teams are offering to make work that little more workable — particularly if you don’t want to go to work? 

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The meh of work / the anti-work trend 

Any leader leading a team, any worker trying to work, is sure to have felt and seen that malaise … the discomfort and disinterested feeling towards work. 

Where did the motivation go? How long has it been gone? And was it ever really there? 

The stats are showing that many of us are wading through the ‘scrap heap of broken promises’ about a version of a future dream we’ve been quietly conjuring. 

It’s a 50/50 moment. Some of us are happy enough and interested, some of us not so much. 

With job roles important to our identity, if something isn’t quite right then it can feel incredibly wrong, having compounding effects elsewhere in our lives. 

While a magic fix might not be as entirely visible — or as possible — as people would wish it to be, simply understanding that people are pretty ‘meh’ with things is important. 

You know the … ‘I don’t need a solution, just give me some support, empathy and understanding’? Yeah, that. 

As a team leader or HR practitioner, consultant, adviser or manager, be aware of these tones so you read the room and respond accordingly. 

Read more here in Fortune 

Where does your work come from

How do the things on your ‘to-do’ list get there? 

We can be overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of tasks and things we have to do. 

A reality is that we may not ever get to the end of our task list. 

So how do you become overloaded? 

When you see things starting to pile up, stay alert to the overload of work. 

Consider if:
- I created the work
- I allowed it to be added to my list of responsibilities (and yes, sometimes that’s the nature of work, we have to do things as we are directed or expected)
- I ignored it and then more and more work was added to my list 
or
- I outsmarted it...I stayed alert to what was happening. Consider whether or not a task or project is really what you need and want to do, whether it belongs with you.  

We may not be overloaded and overwhelmed with work everyday. But the next time you feel the pressure of ‘there’s too much to do’, consider where it’s coming from. 

Too much to deal with

I’ve been reading, researching and thinking a lot about overwhelm.

Overwhelm means to bury or drown beneath a huge mass of something. And frequently ... it’s our work and responsibilities!

When you see the usage of a word over time, it’s interesting to note when it started, peaked and what it is doing today.

Overwhelm as a word was at its peak in the 1800s. Use tapered off in the early to mid 1900s and the word has experienced a great resurgence of use since 2019. 

I wonder why?!

The Cambridge Dictionary says overwhelm is a verb, of force. To defeat someone or something by using a lot of force.

Alternatively, the emotion defines overwhelm as to cause someone to feel sudden, strong emotion.

At its simplest, overwhelm means to have ‘too much to deal with’.

We’ve all experienced this - a time when things felt ‘too much’.

Rather than just ‘sucking it up buttercup’, ‘soldiering on’ or ‘pushing on through’ in a war with our overwhelm, I think we can do something different...

My book ‘Argh!: Too much information, not enough brain’ is out.

I hope it helps you outsmart overwhelm from some different perspectives.