Trusting (and enjoying) the process
Future Work/Life is a weekly newsletter that casts a positive eye to the future. I bring you interesting stories and articles, analyse industry trends and offer tips on designing a better work/life. If you enjoy reading it, please SUBSCRIBE HERE, and share it!
‘Quitters Day’ - the day on which, on average, most people give on their new year resolution - was the 14th of January. I hope if you’ve made them, you’ve been able to stick to them. Either way, if you have big plans for 2022, I’d suggest listening to the wise words of LSE professor and author of Think Big, Grace Lordan, who’s my first guest on the new series of the Future Work/Life podcast. As Grace explained on the show.
"The key to thinking big is to imagine where you'd be with no constraints, then think about the small steps to get you there."
Tune in to hear us explore the role of talent, hard work and luck in shaping your career. Grace also explains why our emotions matter when it comes to how we receive feedback and act upon it, and we discuss what the future of work holds for us all.
In my imagination, the Christmas holidays was a period of relaxation, time spent with family and friends, and an opportunity to switch off and reflect on another busy year. I'm sure you won't be shocked to hear that's not how it went down, with Covid and its restrictions scuppering our plans, like those of so many others. I've only just recovered from the last virus which followed in Covid’s wake, hence the delay in this first newsletter of the year.
Not that I find switching off easy in any circumstances, although I avoided reading and listening to the usual work-related content over the break, which is a small victory. I also read three books, one of which will stick in my memory. Unlike the two novels I read, you wouldn't say it was escapism because it addressed a subject about which I've always been fascinated. And no more so than since I've had children:
TIME.
Or specifically, the distinct lack of it.
My obsession with time has weaved its way into every part of my life over the past ten years. At work, I've been on a quest to maximise it to achieve more, in fewer hours. At home, my wife and I are seemingly in a perpetual dance, maneuvring our commitments around one another's, restricted by the seemingly exponential growth in the number of kids activities and parties.
The thing is, I've been thinking about it wrong. If we have four thousand weeks on Earth – and I'll come back to why that number shortly – I'm coming up to halfway, and I've spent most of that time thinking about "what's next?" and "what does the future hold?".
I'll tell my wife how much easier it will be when the children are through 'this tricky stage' during the more frustrating moments.
As I mull over my latest work challenge, I'll project how "if only I can get this done, then the pieces will slot together perfectly."
But, of course, you can never anticipate what's going to happen next. As I look back at the previous twelve months, for example, how much of what happened could I have predicted? Not very much at all.
Like so many others, I'm in the middle of a career transition, and fundamentally reconsidering what to do and how to do it isn't easy. There are frequent moments of self-doubt. But it's ok to question your own decisions and fears for the future. Everyone does it (apart from sociopaths, of course), so the trick is to learn to 'trust the process.' To believe in your choices and recognise progress every step of the way.
While having a north star can provide motivation and purpose, true satisfaction only comes if we recognise and enjoy the moment we're experiencing right now. It's not just that we should trust the process. The process is all there is. The things that we do every day are all that matter.
Here's where I turn to Oliver Burkeman's wonderful book, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management For Mortals. For two decades, Burkeman's job was to write about productivity for The Guardian in a column entitled "This Column Will Change Your Life". After years' attempting to extract value from every second of the day, you can understand that he'd have a complex relationship with time, which is why, I suppose, his thesis is so refreshing.
"To see if we can't discover, or recover, some ways of thinking about time that do justice to our real situation: to the outrageous brevity and shimmering possibilities of our four thousand weeks."
Refreshing may not be the first adjective that jumps to mind upon first glance at the book's key themes. For example, Burkeman explores German philosopher Heidegger's ideas about finitude - the idea that the limited time we have isn't just something we have to manage. It's the defining feature of human life.
He also puts into context the relative insignificance of all our lives when judged against human history. While we hear people talking about making an impact on the world, he explains, the reality is, they won't.
And his commentary on relationships is entitled, 'The Inevitability of Settling.'
Yet, Burkeman isn't attempting to depress us all with morbid pronouncements about the pointlessness of it all. Instead, he discusses that life is finite only to emphasise that each choice we make affirms our priorities and sacrifices things of lesser importance. As he puts it, 'time management is all life is.'
On a practical level, he rightly identifies that in the context of the modern workplace, gaining a reputation as someone always available and incredibly productive - judged by response to emails or working hours - is ultimately self-defeating. The more emails you clear, the more your colleagues see your capacity to help them with other projects. Cue more email and requests, demanding even more efficiency. And on, and on, and on…
So, what's the alternative?
Try giving in to the fact that there are some things you can't control. For example, you're rarely able to stick rigidly to the plan you create for yourself each morning, let alone project your career trajectory and route several years in advance. Rather than see this as a negative, consider how boring would life be if everything happened as predicted? And one thing is for sure, something unexpected will emerge, and new opportunities will arise that you would never previously have considered.
Yes, giving in to the power of time may seem like giving up, but actually, it's the opposite. It's liberating to accept that you can only influence what's happening in front of you now - the small decisions you make every day about how you prioritise your time.
For me, this is the perfect philosophy with which to kick off a new year, with my time focused first on the things that matter most– relationships, health and things that bring joy - before deciding what I can do with what's left. From this place, great work will flow.
Have a nice weekend,
Ollie
Any Other Business:
It’s rare a month goes by that I don’t link to some story or other about the 4-Day week. The Times reported yesterday that a significant six-month pilot programme began in the UK this week to, “test the hypothesis that reducing working hours increases productivity for businesses and wellbeing for staff…Six companies, including the British arm of the Japanese company Canon, have signed up, and the organisers expect another 20 or more to join before the trial starts in the summer.”
Interestingly, the project is led by Andrew Barnes and Charlotte Lockhart, who were among the first to prove that asking staff to work fewer hours increased productivity after they switched their New Zealand-based business to the model.
If you want to track the results of these trials and other experiments worldwide, the best person to follow is the man who literally wrote the book on it, Alex Soojung Kim-Pang. He recently released his annual report, which is well worth checking out via his website. You can also hear him discuss the research for his book, Shorter, in this interview with me on the Future Work/Life podcast.
As it’s been a few weeks since I last wrote one of these, I haven’t yet shared this great Economist article with you, which manages to weave in a George Costanza reference. The author writes that although we may not currently be seeing ‘presenteeism’ in the sense of bums of seats in the office, a new type of ‘performative work’ has taken its place. Think of the kind of gestures that suggest busyness rather than effectiveness, and you get the gist - green dots on IM channels and full calendars, for example.
"Before the pandemic turned everyone into remote employees, managers worried that working from home would be a paradise for slackers like George. People would be out of sight and out of mind: starting late, clocking off early and doing nothing in between. The reality of remote working has turned out to be different. Days have become longer and employees are demonstratively visible. Work has become more performative.”
Depending on who you speak to, there are some key trends we need to keep an eye out for this year. Among them are the emergence of talent marketplaces. As this article in Talent Quarterly explains:
“Consulting firms and industry professionals are pitching it as the latest holy grail of HR tech, and it seems like the industry is suddenly saturated with vendors offering various platforms in this space, like Gloat, Eightfold.io, Avature, Fuel50, and Phenom. Talent marketplace evangelists have claimed it to be everything from the future of work to the panacea for flagging employee engagement.”
If this sounds like something you should know about, read this comprehensive article by Allan Church and Natalie Cori, two senior talent management execs at Pepsico.
And finally, a debate currently rages as to whether ‘Web3’ is the future of the internet or just another money-maker for a select band of VCs. I happen to think it opens up some fascinating opportunities, particularly the opportunity for people to take control of their personal and work data and share ownership in the organisations they help create. One fascinating innovation is the social token, which creates a direct financial relationship between creators and fans, providing the chance to invest in the talent’s future and, in some cases, grant exclusive access. Next week, I’ll be interviewing the founders of Talent Protocol, a platform on which anyone can launch a career token. Their view is that:
We need a better way to reward those who find and nurture talent.
We still look at careers as a single player game, where only a few can win. What if we saw careers as a multiplayer journey and a positive-sum game, where everyone could be rewarded for the role they play in someone's success?
That's where Talent Tokens come in. It's like having shares in someone’s career (with additional utility and benefits). With Talent Tokens we can create the social, emotional and financial incentives to spot and support talent early, and reward all players accordingly.
Interesting stuff. To test it out, I’ve just created my own token - $OLLIE - so if you feel like getting involved, take a look, and if you’re feeling particularly generous, you can invest in my future!