Work-Life Innovation |

Fuck It!

I like these two word a lot. I especially like the first word (who doesn’t?), but I like Fuck It in particular when they join forces - oh and I love it when they come with the exclamation mark!

I like Fuck It! because amongst other things Fuck It! represents an almighty letting go of what we had previously been clinging on to so tightly - typically in the face of overwhelming evidence that we are wrong about the Way Things Are. Notice I capitalised that last phrase, and I did so deliberately. It deserve capitalisation because The Way Things Are is pretty fucking fundamental. You can’t argue with The Way Things Are, it just is that way. Sure, things will change and the Way Things Are right now will become the way things were (deliberately uncapitalised), but the Way Things Are will still be, well, The Way Things Are!  You had better get used to it, because it’s all you have to work with. Fuck It! can help you to see that - actually Fuck It! is pretty much all you can say when you do see that!

The other reason I like the phrase Fuck It! is because it represents a Read the rest of this entry »

You hear a lot these days about work/life balance. About how it’s becoming more important for people to integrate their lives better with their work. It’s a big buzzword in corporate life, and many large companies stress their commitment to helping their employees pursue it.

Jazz Up Your Life

If you’ve been thinking about work/life balance lately, forget it! It’s wrong headed thinking. The balance analogy implies a win/lose relationship between the two - a pair of scales where as one goes up the other goes down. I prefer the approach of Dr. Stewart Friedman presented at T4HWW. He argues that a much better analogy is to think of our lives like a jazz band, where the aim is to be a tight, integrated musical masterclass - think Miles Davis and John Coltrane:

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