Ten ways to shake up your work life
When I’m WFH, my morning commute is fourteen steps up to my attic, past this mural.
We had it painted last year as a call-to-action; a reminder about things we can do to redesign our working lives.
For the last two decades I’ve been on a journey of discovery: experimenting, trying new approaches, being curious about work habits, running workshops with teams to understand what fuels our best work. This slogan essentially sums up all that.
Yesterday I ran my ‘Shake Up Your Work Life’ webinar for General Assembly. We had a fantastic, interactive, curious group of people from all over the world from Dundee to the Dominican Republic; Lagos to London, Malaga to Manchester (and other non alliterative places in between!).
You can watch the webinar below. Here’s a summary of the ten tips I shared in the session:
Know where you work best. You can’t just plonk a human being anywhere and expect them to do great work. Rather than default to work at our desk, think about the different spaces and zones you can work from. Each shift can provide a new perspective, re-energising you (discover what I learned in my recent co-working experiment: Experiments at work: Co-working at The Bakery).
Focus on quality - not quantity - of hours. Time is our most precious commodity. So we have to use it well. Be clear about what you need to do, as well as what you don’t need to do. Notice the time of day when you are at your best. Are you an early riser or a night owl? And then schedule the work that matters - analytic, deep, planning, creative - when you’re at your peak (recommended reading: ‘When. The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing’ by Dan Pink).
Know where you get your best ideas. A creative mindset is a vital tool for innovation and problem solving. So where do you get your best ideas? Is it in the shower, on a run, or daydreaming out of the window? Know what gets your ideas flowing. And when it works - repeat!
Take a walk. It’s my single biggest hack to shake up your work life. Stretch your legs to take in your surroundings and see what thoughts it prompts; grab a friend or colleague for a more productive meeting, working through a challenge together; take a break when you’re feeling stressed; move around to get the creative juices flowing. Even five minutes can make a difference to your quality of day.
Create space to think. Many people work in cultures where they have days full of back to back meetings. And I feel for you! If you want breakthrough ideas - or you want to do deep work - you need space to think. So what steps can you take to carve out blank space in your calendar? Schedule a ‘meeting for one’. Try a ‘monk mode’ morning. Liberate some time.
Look for inspiration around you. There’s this wonderful resource available to us all for inspiration and innovation, we just have to look around. It’s the outside world! When Howard Schultz returned to Starbucks as CEO in 2008, he convened a leadership offsite. At the end of the first day, Shultz went out into Seattle’s food market seeking inspiration. He stumbled across an independent food stall. So wowed was he by the passion and knowledge of one of the traders he instigated a mega Starbucks retraining exercise. Getting ideas from the world outside our offices can help us see things from an entirely different perspective.
Bring You to work. When have I had the best experiences, when I’ve felt in flow and in my element? They’re the ones where I’ve not been trying to be someone else, it’s where I’ve felt most Me. How can we better show up as our real selves? It might only take a simple switch-up as wearing your favourite pair of red sneakers to work (read about Professor Francesca Gino’s experiment). Or perhaps you want to go deeper, and share the stories of who you are, where you’ve come from and the obstacles you’ve overcome along the way. Shedding our masks can be liberating and pave the way for strong connections with others.
Be intentional about rest. When life is full-on, building pockets of downtime into your daily life can help your wellbeing. Author of ‘Rest’ Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, advocates ‘deliberate rest.’ You need to resist the lure of busyness, he writes, and make time for rest. When we rethink rest from something that just happens (when we have leftover time between work and sleep), towards something we are deliberate about, Pang says it becomes more valuable and tangible (read about my experiments with rest Experiments at work: Getting serious about rest).
Think like a designer. Think about the changes you can make in the days and weeks ahead. Notice what makes a positive difference. When it works - do more of it! When we’re thinking about shaking things up, changing the way we work or redesigning our working lives, we might consider adding new things. But also do the opposite: take things away. What could you subtract - from your surroundings, your schedule, or where you put your attention - to improve your life?
Just have a day. Shaking up your work life is not about creating an Instagram-shiny “everything is awesome” world. Sometimes life feels challenging, overwhelming, unnavigable. And at times like those I’ve found it’s better just to take life day-by-day. Just to focus on the here and now. To take time to invest in self care. So no pressure - if you can’t have a good day, perhaps just have a day.
Life is about making choices. And having a good day relies on us making the right choices. I am not trying to squeeze results or productivity out of every waking hour, like squeezing a lemon. It’s my LIFE, not a business model! After all, where we put our attention informs how we live our lives. So if you want to shake up your work life, to live your life aligned with who you are, know what really matters and make time for it!
