Michael Rill

Einfach machen

Tag: values

  • Clarity

    Productivity isn’t the challenge; it’s a red herring. The true unlock is in clarity. Without it, we are just checking off tasks – busywork. Real productivity comes from clear view on where you want to go which will drive focus. It’s not about long lists. It’s about meaningful work.

    Ignore the siren call of social media; it’s a trap that drains energy and blurs your focus. Strive instead for those days where you are so engrossed in your task that time stands still and flies at the same time. Those are your best days. And they need clarity on what is meaningful and makes a difference.

  • … and then?

    Interesting contemplation about how recent advancements in AI will make us all more productive:

    You rush through the writing, the researching, the watching, the listening, you’re done with it, you get it behind you — and what is in front of you? … But in the more immediate future: you’re zipping through all these experiences in order to do what, exactly? Listen to another song at double-speed? Produce a bullet-point outline of another post that AI can finish for you? 

    The whole attitude seems to be: Let me get through this thing I don’t especially enjoy so I can do another thing just like it, which I won’t enjoy either. 

    and then? – The Homebound Symphony (ayjay.org)

  • Companies are not families

    Good New York Times interview with the new Peloton CEO Barry McCarthy. Near the end he dropped a nice nugget:

    And I say you’ll never hear me say we’re a family. We’re a sports team, and we’re trying to win the Super Bowl. And so we’re going to put the best players on the field we can. And if you go down the field, and we throw you the ball, and you drop it a bunch, we’re going to cut you.

    We spend the majority of our waking hours at work and with the people at work. But I always die a little inside when I hear teams talk about being a family. While it might be an alluring thought, it is neither realistic nor appealing. Family is about being bound together and in the best of cases about shared values and unconditional love.

    Work ultimately is always at the base level a transactional relationship. You work and get compensated for it. At work, you are replaceable. Everyone is. To your family, you are not. A workplace is replaceable. A family is not.

    In that regard, I’d rather aspire to establishing a community at work. One that promotes values like caring, love, a sense of belonging, respect, empathy, joy, and fairness. These might all be attributes shared with families, but there should be a clear line separating work and family.

    High functioning teams add layers on top of it like shared values, growing together and standing up for one another. But ultimately, it’s a loose band that last for a few years until it doesn’t. And that’s OK.

  • Adam Grant – How to stop languishing

    Earlier this year, Adam Grant hit the Zeitgeist with the word “languishing” (There’s a Name for the Blah You’re Feeling: It’s Called Languishing). The word describes the feeling of being joyless and aimless that most of have been experiencing over the past 18 months. I remember receiving links to the article from all over the world – typically with all caps and exclamation marks (“THAT!!!”, “ME!”, “Must read!”).

    From zero to 100 in one New York Times column

    I’m glad that he followed his discovery up with a TED Talk on how to deal with that feeling. The short version is:

    • Master something: Find something that you like where you can make tangible progress.
    • Be mindful: Dedicate your time and attention to one activity, rather than playing time confetti and spreading it across multiple things.
    • Do stuff that matters to others: Don’t just do it for yourself, but make a difference for somebody else. This can be as little as spending time with somebody.

    Spending time at the intersection of these three will help you address the feeling of languishing. This very much resonated with my own experience. Over the past winter I got back into chess, which addressed the first two buckets. But chess became a lot more meaningful when I started playing with a friend every Tuesday. It suddenly became a lot more meaningful as it helped us maintain and nurture our friendship despite him being on the other side of the US.

    But have a look at the entire TED Talk. It’s 16 minutes well spent:

  • Webstock 2016 – Celebrating the web’s values

    Webstock 2016 – Celebrating the web’s values

    Webstock turned ten last week. It is a conference that celebrates the web and its makers – the creativity, the magic, the craft and everything in between. Although Webstock is hosted in Wellington, they have an excellent reputation and attract great speakers from all over the world. It has been on my radar for a couple of years and this year I finally managed to go to Wellington. It was an amazing experience, an emotionally exhausting ride on the rollercoaster – in a good way. Hands down, the best conference I’ve ever been to. 

    Speakers typically have a tech background (web development, software engineering, UX design, long-time bloggers), but the presentations were mostly non-technical. While the Above All Human conference three weeks ago in Melbourne focused on startups and entrepreneurship, this conference focused on the web and its values and culture. You get a good idea of what Webstock is about from last year’s closing note by Natasha Lampard, where she talks about onsens, entrepreneurs and the long-game (also written up here).

    A key asset of Webstock is the diversity of its speakers regarding gender, background, race and topics. None of the talks could or should be compared with each other. Therefore, by the end of the first day I stopped trying to figure out what my favourite talk was – they all were really good. Because of this diversity in topics, it took me some time to recognise the common thread: They all talked about a shared set of values, promoting and preserving values like openness, contributing, inclusiveness, simplicity and caring deeply about your work, not your ego. It is a conference that is undeniably, beautifully, human.

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