Lured by the new

Are you a ‘bright shiny object’ kind of person? Do you chase after those fun and bright new things? 

Or are you more persistent and resourceful, making do and working with what you’ve got on hand? 

We can be so tempted to get the new, see it and try it, buy it and use it, that perhaps we may not really need it at all. 

We can have the old sitting here, still useful... but you know, it’s OLD. We may be bored with it, have heard it or used it before and feel like its time has passed. 

The new and the old. 

It’s why words come in and out of favour; how colours and styles have their time; and how hairstyles can give us a laugh decades later!

We can turn over a new leaf and teach old dogs new tricks. 

Consider what’s new and what’s old for you and what it means. 

We can always take a new perspective of something ... even if it’s, you know, old. 

Some of the old can be worth looking at anew. 

When flowers are a better way of working

Some days during these pandemic times are better than others. We may feel better and brighter on some days or feel more rested and hopeful. 

Some days though .... Urgh! 

It can help to look for a better way of working. Something that’s more: 
- Productive
- Creative
- Effective 
- Collaborative. 

Here’s a better way of working I’ve used through some of the many weeks in lockdown in Melbourne, Australia. 

It’s a vase ... with some flowers in it. 

Over recent weeks I’ve bought a bunch of flowers for my desk; a cheap and cheerful bunch of coloured blooms!

It’s a little luxury, and I’m getting an enormous benefit from them. 

I look at them, the intricate design, the beauty of nature. I meditate on them, gaze at them and think and write and breathe them in. 

This is a better way of working, for me. 

They’ve made my office space a better place to be. 

There’s no dog at my feet or cat on my keyboard but there are pretty blooms to enjoy when indoors is a work space and a living space in a time of lockdown. 

More conversations - less presentations

As more of our meetings are online, there’s also an increase in the number of times we’re disappearing down a deep hole of ‘share screen’ and PowerPoint. 

Our meetings shouldn’t be all about the presentation, the monologue - just one or two voices. 

We can have better collaboration and co-creation online and remotely by having more conversation... the dialogue, many and all voices. 

This means we have discussion, debate and exploration of a topic and people’s perspectives of that topic. 

As we witness and experience disconnection and disengagement of people online, we’d do well to try for more conversation than presentation. 

But the pressure !!!
- what questions should we ask
- how do you get the conversation started
- how do you open things up
- and then what
- how do we summarize, synthesise or bring that information together
- what will keep it going
- and how do we wrap it up?


Each of these is a nuanced skill of facilitation - always balancing and rebalancing, conversation and making progress towards outcomes - ebbing and flowing. 

Instead of defaulting to sharing your screen, giving a presentation, try something new and default to conversation. 

Working smarter, more efficiently

When our to do list is long, we can be keen to find a quick productivity fix: a better app, a new method, a new book. 

But these fixes take a process and just apply it over the top of our existing behaviours, band-aid style. 

All the years we’ve been working, we’ve been forming our own habits and ways of working. That’s how we got like this!

Meanwhile, many teams and businesses have shifted and adopted some newer ways of doing things. 

Some of these are smarter and more efficient vs what we might be doing: slower, requiring more effort. 

How are you changing to smarter ways? 

Rather than stressing over our to do list or day full of meetings, we can rework the work, re-imagining how it can be done. 

There is much to learn about these newer ways. And they can be far more efficient for us than a productivity bandaid. 

A cause of our overwhelm

Productivity techniques abound for organizing our email and managing our day, but there’s a BIG contributor to overwhelm that we may overlook.

We have too much ‘on the go’ at the one time: ‘too many planes in the air’; ‘juggling too many balls’.

These sayings we use to explain overwhelm are so true !

Too much up in the air, unfinished, not landed or not done.

The problem is less about our ‘to do’ list being too long and more about how many things from the list we’re doing at once.

We inch ahead on too many tasks simultaneously, diluting our efforts ... and our attention. Our mind is full of everything we’re juggling.

These are the classic conditions for overwhelm. No wonder we feel buried, overwhelmed or inundated.

A better way of working is to reduce the number of tasks we’re working on.

‘Stop starting / start finishing‘ is an often-used mantra for this better way of working.

If you lead a team, help them prioritise and reduce the number of things they’re working on.

And if you’re your own boss or run your own business, experiment with your focus ... on fewer things.

You’ll then be in a powerful position to get the upper hand on overwhelm.