If you know me well, you know that I’m almost constantly trying to learn new things, or that I’m trying to find better ways of doing things. I’ll openly admit that some of these things are still works in progress, but I wanted to offer up the things I am “playing with” right now.
- There was an excellent HBR Podcast recently on “Why Meetings Go Wrong (and How to Fix Them)”. While I am still working my way through Rogelberg’s book, I am trying out his suggestion of using questions for agenda items.
- I’ve moved team meetings off of Fridays. I’ll admit that is in part a selfish move so that I can use the time available to me on Friday for Finish it Friday, another idea from the HBR podcast above. Who doesn’t want to go into the weekend with their major projects for the week finished up?!?
- You know all of the stuff that’s turning up about “dopamine hits” when our phones ping? Probably a year ago I made a decision to turn off nearly all notifications on my phone (because I can’t turn off messaging when I use my phone as a pager!). Although the relative silence was weird at first, I have come to realize that I don’t miss getting pinged about all things at all times. I raised the bar even higher for myself when I got a new phone in October and didn’t reinstall the app to be able to access my work email. Yes, you read that right. I can still get to my work email, but I increased the “friction” because I have to do so through a browser. Again, this is something that for me is helpful for reinforcing “healthy” interactions with technology.
- Another recent HBR podcast talked about wellness (“How we take care of ourselves”). I openly confess that I get a little twitchy these days when people use the word wellness because it’s become almost prescriptive. However, the descriptions and discussions in this podcast are frameworks that are particularly helpful overall because they aren’t prescriptive and they do leave room for individual variation. And while they are both relatively “small” things, I’m doing my best to not send emails between 8 pm and 7 am (because, honestly, I don’t want to be expected to respond during those hours either), and I’m trying to keep weekend and holiday emails to a bare minimum with no expectation of response until the next business day. Microsoft developers, if you’re reading this, PLEASE create something like the gmail feature so I can schedule when an email will be sent. Thanks!
- Current work in very early progress: Using appreciative inquiry tools to facilitate generative discussions. More on this as it happens because I have plenty of homework to do before implementation occurs.
What are YOU working on /trying on for size right now?