Work-Life Innovation |

I sense a shifting in the force! Something is rotten is the state of productivity, and efficiency don’t live here…anymore.

Yep, the game is up. We no longer want (or need) to work 70 hour weeks, spend 15 years negotiating a complex corporate hierarchy and wait 40 years to experience the joys(?) of retirement. We want our lives back, and we want them back now.

There’s an old story about a corporate executive on holiday on a stunning island off Mexico who meets a fisherman. The exec says to the fisherman, “You have a good little business here, you should expand”. “Why should I do that?” says the fisherman. “So, you can earn more money and buy more boats. That, way you would be able to catch more fish.”. “Why would I want to do that?” replies the fisherman. “Well, so you could sell them and earn more money, expand your business even further, maybe even buy up some of the other fishing businesses here and earn even more money. Then, eventually you could sell it all, retire and go live on some beautiful island somewhere!”. “Hmm” says the fisherman, scratching his chin. “you mean like this one?”. “Oh…” says the exec.

Is the fisherman a slacker? Or has he got it right. What are we really working for anyway? Is it really worth the candle to defer your life to some uncertain future in which your too old to do the things you’d love to do now? Read the rest of this entry »

Dads are hard to buy for! Anything they really want they have probably already bought for themselves, and the usual staples of cardigans, socks and Black and Decker guffins hardly set the world on fire. So I think its time to mix father’s day up. Let’s not focus on Dad as he is today, instead lets mine his past for things he used to love but has probably forgotten about. Below are 8 father’s day time capsule innovations that may just put a smile on the old man’s mug.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ok folks, here’s the deal: send me your guest posts and I will enter the best five (selected by me) into a competition to be judged by WLI readers. Each of the five will be posted onto the site so that readers can read the posts and vote. See the poll to the right? I’ll enter each of the five posts into a new poll and WLI readers will all get the chance to vote. The Poll will run for 1 month. If you don’t fancy entering the competition yourself, why not send this page’s link to any friends you think might like to enter.

Some Tips on posting:

• Try to keep your post within the remit of work and life innovation (entries that stray from this will be rejected). Think about what you have done/could do that makes your job/work more interesting/successful. Or perhaps you have done something in your personal life that is unique and cool that others could benefit from doing also. Maybe you have some tips on staying happy in this crazy world, or how to tap the creative genie inside yourself. If any of these apply to you can think of anything else related to WLI then get posting!

• Keep your post original. Any found to be ripped off from another site will be rejected.

• Entries should be not too long or too short. See the lengths of the posts currently on the site to get an idea.

• If necessary I may correct your post for grammatical errors, typos etc. But don’t worry your post will remain your own.

• Please do not send posts that you have already sent to other sites, posted onto your own blog etc.

• Please do not include pictures in your post. I’ll select an appropriate picture for you.

• You have from today (31/05/2008) until midnight on the 14th of June to get yur posts in. Submissions sent after this date will be excluded.

• When all the posts are in I will pick five, post them on the blog and announce the opening of the vote.

• After the competition is over I will announce the winner and contact them to arrange payment.

• email your entries to sjm@worklifeinnovation.com.

So get posting and you could be the lucky winner of £50!

Dad’s are great, but hell! do they suck at communication - especially with the fruit of their loins. Often the nearest they come is when they ask you if you want to speak to your mother as soon as they’ve picked up your call, or when they ask archly why you want the car. And yet, they must have so much they could pass on to their unripe and in-desperate-need-of-a-shower progeny.

Here then are some nuggets of Dad Gold; 12 things all fathers should explain to their sons before they unleash them all sweaty and eager onto the world (I’ll leave it to you girls to comment on what you want to hear from Dad). Read the rest of this entry »

Update: See the mother of all productivity faceoffs with Bit Literacy vs GTD vs 4HWW here.

This post begins a series of mini book reviews that give you what you need to know about a book in an easily digestible nibble. It can also help you make the decision to go out and buy the full meal at full restaurant prices (ok, enough with the food metaphor!).

For this first post I am going to provide a condensed overview of Bit Literacy by Mark Hurst.

According to the Book, bit literacy is defined as:

..a set of skills for living and working with bits in a healthy and productive way. Much like literacy itself, bit literacy can grant a lifetime of benefits, and it doesn’t require any special software or expensive tools.

Read the rest of this entry »

Answer: Have a lot of ideas.

end of post.

Only kidding. It is true though that most of the people who have had great ideas have had hundreds if not thousands of terrible ones. As Thomas J. Watson of IBM once said: “Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It’s quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure.”

The common approach to getting good ideas is to brainstorm. To get together with others and throw ideas out there while holding back on the inner critic. It’s often advertised as an almost magical, zen like leap into creativity, where all our problems can be solved. Trouble is it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work because people can’t keep there mouth shut. Read the rest of this entry »

Ever thought you’d like to be doing something different? Ever dreamed about that high paid job with all the prestige, with the nice car and the big house? Ever contemplated going on a river boat ride down the Zambezi, or a hike through the Andean mountains? Ever wondered what it would feel like to swim with dolphins off the Florida Keys? Ever [insert personal dream here]? Are you doing anything about it? No? Then I suggest that what you’re doing instead is what you really want to do.

There’s a phrase that goes: you are what you do every day. What I am suggesting here is what you want to do is what you do every day. Sounds crazy I know but hear me out. Let’s be honest, for the most part we have all chosen to be where we are in our work and lives. Nobody held a gun to our heads, and even if they had, we could still have chosen the bullet! But no, we are where we are because of the choices we have made. If we are unhappy with our position in life no one is to blame but ourselves. What we do every day we have in a very real sense chosen to do. Even if that choice was the lesser of two evils, we have still freely chosen it. Luckily though, we are free to choose again.

You stack shelves for living or you clean the sewers or you’re doing a PhD or you work for a large corporation. You chose that, but you are free to choose something else at any time. If you do decide to change your situation then all you need is time and planning to make it happen. If you don’t do the planning, then ultimately you don’t really want it. And this brings us to the crucial point: what most of us don’t accept is that planning is part of the experience of what we want. Read the rest of this entry »