Work-Life Innovation |

“Hey Steve, want to go for a drink?” “Uh, no thanks. I’m tired and I have some work to do anyway. Sorry!”

“Hey, we are having a get together next week, you should come!” “Oh, sorry, I can’t, I’m er, …busy that day.” “But I haven’t told you which day its happening!”  “Well, I mean I’m busy all week, I don’t think I could make it, I’m really sorry”

“Steve, we are going to London on Saturday for a day out. You should come”
“Ahh, I think there’s something I have to do Saturday, I just can’t remember what it is right now. Can I let you know later in the week? Cheers”

Ever found yourself saying any of the above? Of course you have, everyone gets invited to things they don’t want to or can’t attend for one reason or another. What’s more troubling however are those times when you find yourself taking a rain check when you have no real good reason to.

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We all have moments when we get inspired. Moments when we feel we can turn things around; really makes a change in our lives. In those moments we discover new goals that inspire and motivate us. We start planning how we can satisfy those goals and our future seems deliciously ripe with promise. Unfortunately, over time we tend to drift away from those goals. Something happens so that they just don’t seem to be as compelling anymore. They lose their shine and slowly, day-by-day we get pulled back to our everyday life and before we know it, the goals have died and we are back to the status quo. Why is this the case?

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Though it’s been a little quieter around here on WLI lately, it’s not that I’ve been neglecting my posting duties. A few weeks ago, I was honoured to be offered a writing gig over at TastefullyDriven.com (TD). TD is a brand spanking new lifestyle site that offers quality products, unique blog articles and a community forum to provide a 360 degree lifestyle design experience. Set up by four 20 somethings from Albany, NY, the site also has a conscience - giving 5% pre-tax profits to charitable orangizations in Upstate New York.

My first post for TD talks about problem solving and how we can all improve it. Here’s a quick appetizer:

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Commuting to work; most of us have done it or know people that do. Traveling mid to long distances to work either each day to a work location or staying over for the week and traveling back home again for the weekend. This has become so prevalent that it’s given rise to a new phenomena - the relationship commute, or the telepartner. This is where you spend the majority of your time at your work location and commute back to your partner at specific times - e.g. the weekend. In the US, apparently more the 3.5 million couples live like this, double the figure taken in 1990.

You would think this would be a tough challenge for most relationships, and yet the figures given by the Center for the Study of Long Distance Relationships (and who knew that existed!) show that such couples are no more likely to break up than couples who spend the majority of their time living together. Indeed, such couples are likely to be no less satisfied in their relationships or more likely to cheat.

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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 »

What was the goal of the Apollo Moon Program? To put a man on the moon and bring him safely back, right? Wrong! Remember this was during the cold war and what the Americans really wanted to demonstrate was that they were superior to those pesky Commies. United States thinktanks examined several options and worked out that the US could probably (with a lot of effort) get a man to the moon and back within a decade, but crucially, they believed the Soviets couldn’t. President Kennedy then announced it to the world, and the rest is History. So putting a man on the moon wasn’t the goal; the goal was to be able to shout out to the world, “Hey, look how much better than the Reds we are!”, and putting a man on the moon was the means by which the Americans achieved it.

What has this got to do with being rich? Well, most of us would admit to having the goal of being wealthy, or at least being wealthier. But, like going to the moon, this is not our real goal but rather a way of achieving something else, which I would guess is to be happy, or obtain some peace of mind. Going to the moon or becoming rich are technically only the means or objectives - particular ways to satisfy goals. Read the rest of this entry »

Update 29-04-2008: This post has been selected as one of the editor’s picks over at Are We Balanced Yet.

How can something so useful be so sucky? Yep, email - you can’t live without it, yet you can’t kill it. For many of us its the primary task stream, with requests for information, meeting invites, FYI’s, Newsletters, dodgy offers on blue pills and so on all landing unceremoniously into an increasingly obese inbox.

For some time now, I’ve been experimenting with different ways automate the handling of my email in order to increase effectiveness in the office. Read the rest of this entry »