Tag: Work

Liked Work is a Place (tomcritchlow.com)

Here are some of the distinct types of socializing that I might be missing:

  • Belonging. A sense of being part of a team and some kind of shared objectives / goals / shared values.
  • Support. Being able to have people around you to help you when you get stuck with something specific.
  • Jam partners. People to feel energized and electric with, to help brainstorm or cram on projects.
  • Creative collisions. Existing in a space where you can bump into new people or make new introductions.
  • Micro human interactions. Being able to step out and grab coffee or talk about the weather.
  • Tacit experience. The experience of passively observing others at work and seeing how people structure their time and work.
  • Separation of home and work. The ability to go somewhere to work.

Work is a Place by Tom Critchlow

Bookmarked Job vs Career (heartsoulmachine.com)

A career contains a multitude of jobs. Some of them are the ones you get paid for, but many of them aren’t. And that’s often where the confusion comes into play. The paid job begins to bleed into other areas, and you associate the paid job with all the other jobs. They get lumped together as a career, but they are distinct and need to be kept separate. It’s our mind that blends them together, so every so often, we need to pull focus, reevaluate and paint in the edges to make it clear what our jobs really are.

https://heartsoulmachine.com/blog/2024/03-11-job-vs-career/ by Tim Klapdor

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Tim Klapdor explores the difference between a job and a career. This all reminds me of the adage ‘you are more than your job’ and Mary Catherine Bateson’s idea of ‘composing a life’. I feel that the challenge is to balance between the demand of the job and a wider passion. In my occupation, I often find myself having to justify my professional development desires against the demands of the project I am a part of, however it is often my side interests where my growth often occurs. I wonder then who is responsible for my ‘career’ if it exists outside of any clear notion of ‘return on investment’.

Bookmarked The ‘overemployed’ online community is engaged in a profitable workplace deception (ABC News)

Boundaries between work and life have blurred like never before, with checking emails after hours becoming increasingly normalised.

On the other hand, suspicious bosses aren’t able to glance over at their employees to keep an eye on them.

New concepts like “quiet quitting” emerged in 2022; older ones like “presenteeism” found new resonance in the remote-first era.

And, in Australia, the government has responded with newly passed, right-to-disconnect laws.

It was while navigating the changing terrain at the height of the pandemic that Tony adopted what he describes as a “Marxist” viewpoint to justify his choices.

He felt his employer was exploiting him by profiting off the excess value created through his hard work.

If an employer is happy with a worker’s output and signs off on their time sheets, Tony asks, “Is it unethical to do something else [on the side]?”

Fiona Macdonald from the Centre for Future Work says this is akin to saying “two wrongs make a right”.

Source: Tony was working two jobs. His bosses didn’t know by @abcnews

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Although I have issues with open offices, I am really intrigued when some colleagues want to work five days at home. It feels like in a post-COVID work that there is a lot of innuendo around people having side-hustles. To be fair, this has always been the case, it just feels like it has become front and centre. This feels like it is leading to a culture of survellience. I like the point that this is a ‘race to the bottom’ is pertinent.

“Workplaces that run on fear and a lack of trust – that’s a race to the bottom,” she explains.

“If you’re communicating regularly with staff, you’ll know which employees are performing well and which ones aren’t. We don’t need a Big Brother approach to tell us that.”

Source: Tony was working two jobs. His bosses didn’t know by @abcnews

Really, if I was going to the effort of having two jobs, I would get two devices. Also, I personally think that beyond ‘communication’, I add regular notes and updates to projects or incidents. I believe that this tells enough of a story. this still runs the risk of becoming performative, rather than productive.

Bookmarked https://www.theredhandfiles.com/ever-felt-alien-to-yourself/ (theredhandfiles.com)

A committed artist cannot afford the luxury of revelation. Inspiration is the indolent indulgence of the dabbler. Muses, Tam, are for losers!

Source: Red Hand Files Issue #274 by Nick Cave

Nick Cave responds to questions of inspiration and muses, arguing that what is important is to just keep going. This also reminds me of another letter in which he spoke about ‘talent’ and ‘success’.

Art gives much, but it asks much in return. It demands nothing less than complete commitment and significant sacrifice. Talent is nice if you have it, but in some ways it is a secondary requirement.

Source: Red Hand Files Issue #138 by Nick Cave

Reading amd listening to numerous music memoirs recently, one of the things that has stood out to me is how many succeed simply through the persistence of turning up again amd again.

Liked The Year in Quiet Quitting by Cal Newport (The New Yorker)

Quiet quitting is not a life philosophy or policy proposal that needs logical scrutiny. It’s also not a political weapon to be wielded to prove how much more woke or conservative you are than everyone else. It’s both more incoherent and essential than all of that. Figuring out how work fits into a life well lived is hard, but it’s an evolution that has to happen. Quiet quitting is the messy starting gun of a new generation embarking on this challenge. The specifics of what a young engineer says in his TikTok video might annoy or confuse many of us, but it shouldn’t. The content here isn’t that important. What matters is that Generation Z is waking up to the fact that the unnatural melding of self and work induced by an adolescence lived within online spaces isn’t sustainable. They’re finally—thankfully—ready to ask what should come next.

Bookmarked You’re learning a lot, but is it valuable? (oliverquinlan.substack.com)

The more you’re learning is about discovering how to function in a dysfunctional situation, the more wedded your skillset is to those types of situations.

The more you focus on learning that is transferable and valuable, the better off you will be.

Oliver Quinlan reflects on productive learning in response to new situations as opposed to learning to cope with a dysfunctional workplace. Thinking about my current work, I wonder if learning to live through dysfunction is simply the first step towards more productive learning? Something of a foundation for deeper work maybe? I think that although these activities in fixing up problematic workflows or clunky technology may not seem ‘transferable’ as a set of skills to be listed on LinkedIn, what I do think is transferable is the mindset in how I approach these situations. I am not sure if it is related, but this has me thinking about the Solo Taxonomy, but maybe that is different. Not sure.
Bookmarked Why ‘digital literacy’ is now a workplace non-negotiable (bbc.com)

The growing importance of digital literacy doesn’t mean workers have to master all the software out there to get a job. Instead, they have to be digitally confident: keen to try new technologies; embrace how the right tools can streamline routine tasks and improve workplace collaboration; while also having the flexibility and adaptability to learn new processes.

Today, employees need to assume they’ll keep upgrading digital skills. After all, the expectation when a worker begins a new role is either they have the digital skills to do the job or they’ll learn them – fast. “Hybrid and remote working were only relevant to 5% of the workforce before the pandemic,” says Zhou. “It’s nearly half of all workers now. Regardless of what work you did previously, an employer now expects you to learn whatever digital skills are required in a role.”

Alex Christian talks about the importance of digital literacy today. Beyond my issue with the plural of ‘literacies‘, I am left wondering about how we talk about something that is continually morphing and changing? There is a danger of describing it as something that one all of the sudden becomes, like Neo learning Kung Fu in The Matrix.

In part I was reminded of a tweet from Gillian Light:

Of course ‘digital literacies’ are a non-negotiable, my question is when are we going to stop talking about them as if they are static and instead talk about them as a process and practice, not a product or professional development session attended?

Bookmarked A vision of life beyond burnout (ABC Religion & Ethics)

The Protestant work ethic that persisted into the post-industrial era helped create the vast wealth of the very countries that are today most concerned about burnout. But it also valorised a destructive ideal of working to the point of martyrdom. To overcome burnout, we have to get rid of that ideal and create a new conception of how work fits into a life well lived.

In an excerpt from The End of Burnout: Why Work Drains Us and How to Build Better Lives, Jonathan Malesic suggests that the answer for burnout relates to moving dignity back to the individual rather than being dependent on work.

So many workers are at risk for burnout because the degraded reality of our jobs since the 1970s coincides with a too-lofty ideal of work. The gap between our ideals and our experience at work is too great for us to bear. That means, if we want to halt the burnout epidemic, we need to close the gap, both by improving working conditions and lowering our ideals. Because our burnout culture results as much from our ideas as from the concrete facts of our jobs, we will need different ethical and spiritual expectations for work as much as we will need better pay, schedules, and support. In fact, we will need a new set of ideals to guide us as we construct those conditions.

Referring to the work of Henry David Thoreau, Malesic talks about the importance of genius.

We have all read the standard advice on business and wellness websites for how to prevent or heal your burnout. Get more sleep. Learn to say no. Organise your tasks by urgency and importance. Meditate. These are all basically superstitions: individual, symbolic actions that are disconnected from burnout’s real causes. Our workplaces and cultural ideals contribute more to our burnout than our personal organisation methods do. Still, individuals are not powerless in the face of burnout. We do have a role to play in aligning our ideals with our reality at work. And Thoreau, the individualist who preached self-reliance, can help us identify it.

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Too much work and too little autonomy contribute to burnout; Thoreau’s program limits work in order to foster self-determination. Thoreau’s individualistic streak means he undervalues community. But he wants to create conditions in which people who recognise their own dignity can follow their genius and thus perform a higher labour: to harmonise themselves with their supreme sense of value.

This reminds me of John Spencer’s discussion of personal genius hour. I am guessing this may have been the source of 20% time for companies like Google.

Malesic talks about the notion of work, what constitutes burnout and the challenge of our self-impossed penance with Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens on The Minefield podcast.

Replied to The Problem with Blaming Robots for Taking Our Jobs by Jane Hu (The New Yorker)

[p]roductivity will continue to shrink worldwide, producing fewer and fewer jobs, not just for those living in high-income countries but for everyone.

This poses a few problems for automation theorists. First, the very fact of overcapacity means that economic growth is unlikely, and this results in fewer companies being able, or willing, to invest in new automation technology. Second, rising levels of unemployment mean more workers are vying for jobs, and competition both keeps wages low and further reduces incentives to invest in automation. In this way, Benanav writes, automation optimists mistake “technical feasibility” for “economic viability.” Why would companies throw money at a machine that might work tomorrow, when there are plenty of humans willing to work for much less today?

So it would seem that human’s ‘automating’ and producing productivity gains is the future of automation? Less magic and more hard work.
Listened CM 211: Liz Wiseman on Standing Out at Work from gayleallen.net

If someone asked what they should do to succeed in their job, you’d probably have a quick response. You might say something like, just do what you’re asked, get your work done on time, or don’t step on anyone’s toes.

But what if the question wasn’t about how to succeed, but how to stand out as the best of the best?

These are the high performers Liz Wiseman calls “impact players.” They’re the ones who leave an indelible mark on their work and the people around them. Liz spoke with nearly 200 top professionals, and she uncovered 5 behaviors that set them apart. Her findings inform her latest book, Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger, and Multiply Your Impact.

In a conversation with Gayle Allen, Liz Wiseman talks about her new book Impact Players. According to Wiseman, impact players look to how they can make a difference, rather than just play a roll. Most people aspire to make a difference and have a contribution. She shares five characteristics of an impact player:

  • Useful – what’s important now
  • Step up and step back – leading without it being a land grab
  • Finish strong
  • Ask and adjust
  • Make work light – removing the phantom work

Allen and Wiseman discuss the questions to consider when trying to hire an impact player:

  • How do they handle messy problems?
  • Leadership problems?
  • Roadblocks?
  • Moving targets?

Wiseman explains that the book does not serve as a recipe, but rather the start of a conversation. WHat matters most is creating the right conditions.

The best leaders … create both safety and stretch.

Wiseman also discusses the current challenges of remote work. She touches on the breakdown of chains of impact, explaining that when we are apart we often fall into a habit of going from task to task.

We burnout not from too much work, but too little impact.

This all reminds me of something that David Truss recently wrote about improvising:

The world is your stage. The play is your playground. Improvise your roles as best as you can. And remember that others are improvising theirs roles too. Work with your fellow actors to create the best performance you can. But remember it’s all an act, and if you aren’t playing a role that works, change the role or change the way you act in it. All the world is an improv stage, and so you get to write the script as you go. Enjoy the performance, you only get one.

Liked The ‘ghost colleagues’ of the remote workplace (bbc.com)

For some people, of course, the loss of these interactions may be less significant. Introverts may not miss their ‘ghost colleagues’ as much, while those with caring responsibilities may find the benefits and convenience of remote work outweigh any negatives linked to fewer interactions with people in the office.

The onus is also on companies to find better ways to translate in-person culture into the online space so that colleagues can continue to connect in meaningful ways. Good remote company communications may mean things like creating a newsletter, podcast or virtual town halls to share information workers may have otherwise absorbed in the office. “It takes a deliberate practice, and usually it takes a person or a group of people who are leading the charge and really paying attention,” says Lisette Sutherland, author of Work Together Anywhere.

Bookmarked AI Won’t Steal Your Job, But It’ll Sure Make It Suck by Clive Thompson (onezero.medium.com)

We often worry that AI and automation will take our jobs — that software will do work so efficiently and cheaply that corporations will chuck their humans aside. That certainly can happen; bank


Clive Thompson provides examples of the way in which AI has had some jobs suck. This includes food delivery drivers working for a phantom boss, with transcriptions AI takes the good work and leaves humans with the crap, while Amazon has automated things so much that workers are unable to stop for the toilet.
I was asked to call a school today who explained we had made a mistake. It was an honest mistake, a case of misinterpretation, but a mistake none the less. I negotiated with the person that I would put together a list of errors I found and fix them. I think they were a little taken aback, they were fearing that they would have to do the laborious task of clearing things up. It made me think that although you cannot always prevent issues and errors, you can appease anxiety by being humble and saying sorry.
I was listening to someone reflect upon the perils of outsourcing compared to just doing something yourself. I had a similar experience today. As a part of my work in improving processes, I had created a spreadsheet template, which provided feedback as you went. I had someone email to say how useful it was, except it seemed to be broken. On further investigation, I realised that I had not implemented a recent update throughout the whole spreadsheet. I managed to put together a fix quickly. However, the issue was that the template had been copied 150 times and to apply the fix, I had to open upon each spreadsheet and past in the updated set of formulas. I thought for a minute whether I needed to rope somebody else in to help me. But I decided that it was my problem and best to make sure it is fixed properly, so I put my head down and hammered it out.
Replied to Your priorities are not your priority (Daily-Ink by David Truss)

If I were to start my day planning and scheduling to accomplish my one priority, what would that look like? How successful would I be, compared to trying to divide my day between the many things on my ‘To Do’ list? Yes, those things still need to get done, but are all of them a, or my, priority? If I had a daily focus on my one priority for the day, would that change my sense of purpose on those days when things generally get in the way of what I intend to do?

Will the daily act of determining my one priority change my ability to plan and execute?

What’s my one priority for today?

As someone who works in support, it can be frustrating to lose any semblance of the ‘one thing’ that is the focus of each day as others dictate your ‘to do’ list. However, I think that it is a useful framework to centre each day.

Another approach I stumbled upon recently via Oliver Burkeman was keeping a ‘done list’ to celebrate the fact that you do actually get a lot done each and every day.

Bookmarked https://www.oliverburkeman.com/donelist (oliverburkeman.com)

What if you worked on the basis that you began each day at zero balance, so that everything you accomplished – every task you got done, every tiny thing you did to address the world’s troubles, or the needs of your household – put you ever further into the black? What if – and personally I find this thought almost unthinkable in is radicalism, but still, here goes – what if there’s nothing you ever have to do to earn your spot on the planet? What if everything you actually get around to doing, on any given day, is in some important sense surplus to minimum requirements?

Oliver Burkeman wonders about keeping a done list, rather than being stressed by a never ending to-do list. Interesting to read this alongside Clive Thompson’s piece of to-do applications.
Bookmarked Hundreds of Ways to Get S#!+ Done—and We Still Don’t by Clive Thompson (WIRED)

This is what makes to-do software unique. The majority of tools we use in our jobs are about communicating with someone else. All that messaging, all those Google docs, all that email—it’s about talking to other people, documenting things for them, trying to persuade them. But a to-do list is, ultimately, nothing more or less than an attempt to persuade yourself.

Clive Thompson takes a fascinating dive into the world of to-do applications. It is fascinating to consider the applications I have tried over time, including Evernote, Google Keep and Trello. All have worked to a point, but eventually get to a point where they no longer serve the purpose intended. With my work, I have come to rely on the incident management system to manage things.
Bookmarked Remote workers work longer, not more efficiently by The Economist (economist.com)

The return to the office is well under way, just as summer in the northern hemisphere begins. Pretty soon, people will be able to resume the habit of staring wistfully out of the window, hoping it will still be sunny at the weekend. As many workers embrace a hybrid pattern, perhaps commuting 2-3 days a week, the experiment in full-time home-working is ending. At the same time, assessments of its effectiveness are proliferating.

The Economist discusses the results associated with a new report “Work from home & productivity: evidence from personnel & analytics data on IT professionals”, by Michael Gibbs, Friederike Mengel and Christoph Siemroth. They found that although there were changes, some were detrimental, such as more meetings.

Despite working longer hours, the employees had less focus time than before the pandemic. Instead, all their extra time was taken up by meetings.

This continues the reflections on the changes to work based on coronavirus. In a separate piece, Derek Thompson discusses the winners and losers, such as the growth of suburban-town-centers and downturn in regards to city businesses.

Listened
Another great Tao of Wao Doug, Laura and Bryan.

The discussion touched upon devices and calling out usage. This reminded me of something that danah boyd once shared:

  1. Verbalize what you’re doing with your phone’
  2. Create a household contract

In regards to ‘work’, I was intrigued by Doug’s discussion of work and non-work (if that is what we want to call meetings etc). It made me wonder if there are some people out there who maybe never ‘work’?

In relation to clocking hours, I personally do not have to worry about that, and must admit, I prefer not stressing about every minute. However, I do quite a bit of development in the creation of various Crystal Reports with a third-party. One of the biggest lessons that I have learnt is that everything counts. This has definitely made me more mindful of the emails I send and the testing I do, especially when you think of every update and request as a fifteen minute block.

As a side note, I wonder how we might rethink email requests and interruptions within organisations if they were billed in fifteen minute blocks?

Lastly, Bryan’s involvement reminded me of the pre-TIDE conversation?