Driven to distraction
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!
When I began writing about work-life design at the beginning of the year, my initial focus was to help myself and other parents of young kids better navigate the challenge of managing career and family demands.
It seemed to me, seven years after my first child was born that while I'd improved how I prioritised and optimised my time at work, I could still do better.
I have read and listened to hundreds of books, articles and podcasts over the first six months of 2020. In the process, the interrelationship between our personal lives and work has become ever more apparent.
Of course, COVID-19 has added an entirely new dimension to the conversation. Thankfully, this has pushed work-life design right up everyone's agendas irrespective of their jobs, their life stage and circumstances at home - from CEOs to interns, and whether parents or not.
Over the next few months, through a combination of interviews and surveys, I'll be researching how individuals, couples, families and businesses have responded to this practical and existential challenge, with an emphasis on what that means for the future. If you'd like to take part, please contact me, and we can arrange some time to talk.
In the meantime, I'll continue to cover a variety of subjects related to work-life design. Take working parents, for example. In an article in February, I wrote:
"Time management as a parent and husband is, it goes without saying, a significant challenge. Since I became a dad, I've always had the nagging feeling that I neither spend enough time at home nor at work. I've been wracked with guilt over the years, questioning whether I'm getting either part of my life right, which is why I'm grasping this opportunity to redesign my work life."
Working from home over the past few months has, of course, had many benefits. In my case, the stand-out one is the proximity to my wife and children which has created many more opportunities to experience special moments throughout the day.
However, there is also an obvious downside.
The same people creating so many moments of laughter and joy are also a massive distraction! The feeling of loss that many of us occasionally feel when we miss family moments while at work has been replaced by the constant pull of seeing the kids playing right outside the window.
As a result, in a clear case of 'take my advice because I'm not using it', I've found it increasingly difficult over the past month to plan my time sufficiently well to create periods of focused work - those times when I achieve disproportionate productivity. A beckoning child is not ideal when you're trying to concentrate on solving a difficult problem or attempting to be creative!
I am writing about this stuff all the time and yet sometimes find it difficult to follow my own advice, which results in feelings of anxiety and frustration.
Yet, this is very common. Since I started speaking to people for the Future Work-Life survey over the past couple of weeks, almost everyone reports experiencing something similar.
I will, therefore, be starting the second half of the year with a fresh reset; taking a step back to review everything positive that I've achieved over the past six months, in what has been the most bewildering and stressful of times. I mentioned offering gratitude to your work colleagues in FWL#8. Well, there's no harm in giving yourself some every once in a while too!
I will also spend the next few weeks looking at work-life design from a parent's perspective.
I will bring you insights from the best thinkers on families and work, as well as some of my own.
And I'll start with this:
Ellen Galinsky, of the Families and Work Institute, asked a thousand children, "If you were granted one wish about your parents, what would it be?" When she asked parents to predict what their children would say, the parents said: "Spending more time with us." They were wrong. The kids' number 1 wish: that their parents were less tired and less stressed.
(From The Agile Family Meeting)
Fingers crossed, in a few weeks, whether you're a parent or not, you'll have a few new ideas that help reduce your stress and increase your opportunities for happiness.
Cheers,
Ollie
Any Other Business:
How a learning culture helps organisations address major issues including the pandemic and racism by former NBA basketball player John Amaechi, who is now a high-performance coach and organisational psychologist. In this talk for the CIPD, he offers great insight and clarity of thought.
How To Raise Distraction-Free Kids by Nir Eyal, which includes one of the best GIFs I've seen in a long time. Watch it!
Curing Our Productivity Problem by Sangita Myska on BBC Radio 4, addresses the ongoing issue with productivity in the UK and whether a fundamental shift in working culture can reverse the trend.
Tsedal Neeley on HBS' Managing the Future of Work podcast. Neeley has spent decades studying distributed organizations and gives advice on how to best manage remote work. She also discusses the disproportionate toll of COVID-19 on African Americans and other minorities, and the systemic change needed to bring more diversity to businesses.
4 Different Approaches Companies Are Taking to Performance Reviews This Year by Samantha Maclaren on LinkedIn.
Why Remote Work Is So Hard—and How It Can Be Fixed by Cal Newport, author of Deep Work, in The New Yorker.
What is Rewarding Work? on The Why Not Lab by Christina Colclough.
And finally...
