Testing tools for Personal Accountability

Looking back pre March 2020, while in theory I was based at home, I was always out of the house.  If not working at client premises, I’d find a cafe, library, anywhere so that I could be around people as I found I fed off their energy and stayed on task much better with a general hum of voices, keyboards tapping, coffee machines whirring…. So to say that lockdown was a seismic shock to the system, and cause for extreme unease would be an understatement.  Suddenly it was me and my dog, stuck in the house 24/7, but I surprised myself with how quickly I adapted and recognised how much better I felt with a rather less frenetic pace.

However, like most people, I’d assumed it was a temporary hiatus and I could forgive myself for dips in productivity.  In addition, I threw myself into an unsustainably large number of voluntary projects to give me a positive distraction from what was going on.  Since then, I’ve hit the ten year mark with Resourcefully and the general situation, plus undertaking the Upfront Global Bond have given much pause for reflection and looking ahead consciously to what’s to come next.

A few weeks ago I realised, or at least more clearly acknowledged, that there was an accountability and productivity gap in how I have been working.  While  I pride myself on always meeting or exceeding client deadlines, moving forward with personal tasks and, more importantly, those that are important to my business has been a challenge.

Digging deeper there are many layers to why this is, but as with the “blogger’s block” I’ve been experiencing, I recognise the nagging feeling that this creates becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, draining me of the motivation to get going and making me more inclined to push these important but not urgent activities to one side and focus on those things where there is a clear external driver.  In recent months, I’ve tried various techniques, including time blocking but found that while this is a statement of intent,  I’ve struggled to sustain it.

It reached the point where I felt the need for hivemind help and surfaced the dilemma in a post on LinkedIn.  As so often happens for me, the act of sharing made a difference on its own.  I realised as I began to receive some responses that I knew largely what I’d been looking for, and some of the places I could find it.  While a return to my previous racing around is, for now, out of the question, the benefits of working alongside others have been lacking for some time.

I’d been somewhat sceptical as to whether virtual working with strangers would cut the mustard although these doubts seem somewhat foolish given the virtual World I often now inhabit.  I’ve written before about a workshop with Bec Evans who had spoken about Writer’s Hour and I decided now was the time to test the water. I was worried about Impostor Syndrome but it’s been a great experience and one I grasped with both hands, perhaps a little too enthusiastically.  After a couple of weeks attending multiple sessions, I began to realise that the link between how I was spending the time, and writing, was becoming increasingly tangential.  Although I resisted the temptation to work, I was interspersing writing with reading and learning activities. While not a problem in itself, it was cheapening my resolve to carve out dedicated writing time.

So as well as following Emma Cragg’s LinkedIn recommendation of joining some Freelancer Magazine Virtual Coworking, last week I became a fully paid up subscriber to Focusmate.  It’s been a fantastic investment of only $5.  With the fixed working time, and the mere thought of my “mate” on the other side of the camera, time has raced by, moving me rapidly forward with a host of tasks that would probably have taken twice as long otherwise, and giving me the impetus to start breaking down some some long term to-dos alongside client work.

An unexpected bonus has been snatching a few moments at the beginning and end of sessions with my “match” which has been fun and far less awkward than I anticipated.  Of course, these are all people of like mind who’ve joined a community to support each other – just the kind of activity I gravitate towards, so this shouldn’t have been a surprise.  

I’ve found I’m rarely paired with someone in the UK, linking up with buddies in the US, Canada, Australia, India and Paris so far, and even having a little chat in French which I hope to repeat.    My co-workers have been students of law, finance, linear algebra and AI; I’ve worked alongside a digital artist, someone writing references, someone designing a wellbeing course and while I’ve spent 25 minutes at my computer, others have cleaned the kitchen or done their morning exercise.

In the meantime, I’ve designed some governance learning plans and workshop outlines, prepared for a meeting, written a proposal, caught up with admin and blitzed my inbox.  Not only is this time but has helped break through the sense of brainfog and overwhelm that I realise has been clouding my perspective for a while.

So today I’ve started again with gusto, and as I look ahead to the week, I’m already planning how I’ll use my focus slots to accelerate a content review project, catch up on some admin and progress with developing content for my website.  

I’m also looking forward to meeting some fellow co-workers and hearing how they’ll be using the time as well as encouraging friends to join me for some sessions. There’s definitely a degree of novelty value and a likely peak in usage as other activities have slowed significantly over August but seeing the number of sessions my fellow Focusmates have clocked up, it has an enduring appeal so it might be a tool I continue to use, although perhaps as another I met today said, with ebbs and flows depending on other commitments.

For me, I see this as all part of experimenting with new shapes and patterns of work and life as I recognise that the COVID induced limbo has to end, even whilst recognising that I’m unlikely ever to be feel as fixed on forward planning as I did before.

And what do you know? I drafted this post last night in Writer’s Hour and am finishing in this evening’s session.  So if you’re reading this and feeling stuck, I’d say plug away, try something even if you don’t feel like it – the very fact of doing something may be all you need to start breaking through some blockers.

Unusual Visions for the Future of Good Work

On Wednesday evening, I attended the first of a series of events I’m participating in as part of the Unusual Suspects Festival 2017.  The question for the evening was “Work isn’t working- can we co-create a radical vision for the future of work?”.

The subject of how a scenario where everyone has the opportunity to find “work that works” for them has been of great and growing interest for me since, five and a half years ago (and several months thinking about it prior to that), I took the decision to step out of full time, permanent work.   There is much more I could write about my motivations for doing so, what I have learned along the way and why I am still pursuing this work structure, but that’s for another post (or several).

Above is the visual representation of our discussions by Ariadne Radi Cor of Chantilly Cream

At the session, we were initially challenged to think about what our own “radical vision” might be.  For me, this recalled a question I’ve been pondering “What if all work were flexible by default?”.  What I mean by this is rather than the most common (although evolving situation) where role design starts from a premise of 9-5, five days a week, and some elements of flexibility are “retrofitted”, what if this was turned on its head?  In that case, roles would be designed with the key needs in mind, and then any “must have” practical constraints would be added in (eg I need someone to be able to open the office building by 8am on a Monday) and opened up to the applicants to propose how they could make this work.  This might be through applying with job share partners, working compressed hours, working at weekends and having a couple of weekdays off etc.  Clearly this is not a quick win, but I know examples such as Happy and the case studies in Frederic Laloux’s must-read “Reinventing Organisations”  that are successfully takings similar approaches.

The evening continued with a panel, offering the varied perspectives of Adam Wood who spoke about his research into the online “gig economy”; Sara Allen of Further and More on the benefits of job-shares; Dr Malcolm Torry of Citizen’s Income Trust on the potential for a Universal Basic Income; and Professor Tim Jackson on reframing work as the provision of a service to each other and the importance of work in its broadest sense in giving a sense of respect and identity.

There were a number of key takeaways and things I’d like to investigate further including:

• the emergence of co-operatively owned platforms, and the challenges of obtaining investment for this model
• the idea that if we reviewed the way we view and distribute work, there are potentially as many jobs as people
• the fine balance between maintaining an incentive to participate and contribute to society whist minimising bureaucracy in the case of a Citizen’s Basic Income as well as the opportunity to learn from the immense amount of research and case studies on this topic.
• the subject of what work is “for” and the interplay between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation

However, this is inevitably a hugely rich topic and I was also left with a several key questions that I think a similar group could investigate further:

• The discussion was focused very much on structures, flexibility and reward, but how can we reshape work to enable those who are currently excluded due, for example to disability or long term physical or mental health conditions, to find meaningful opportunities that accommodate their needs?
• I love the concept of a shift towards co-operative and social enterprise models, but what might this mean for our tax system and the way public services are funded? Also within this model, what are the implications (which could include some exciting opportunities) for the way we commission, conduct and fund research and learning and development activities?
• How can we distribute the “nasty and boring stuff” more widely (unless it’s removed via automation) so that there are few or no jobs that only consist of this type of task?
• In a World where we were “freed” to be more self-directed in our work, what does this mean for those who lack the motivation, skills and most importantly confidence to assert themselves and seek opportunities? And what would the role of “employer” be, given that it is currently not purely about restriction and control but also employee welfare, stability and skills development?

I’d love to hear other views on the issues above and ideas/ examples of how we can continue and broaden this discussion so that the pathways and forums for change can be better defined and more relevant to the widest possible population – please share!