I had to write a proposal over the weekend and I was astonished by the words that seem to come unbidden from my fingers. Playful language, evocative language, jocular language. Where on earth did it all come from?
A moment’s thought and it wasn’t difficult to deduce. I’ve been doing some more conventional work in more conventional organizations. Everyone is so angry, so abrasive, so concerned that they are losing out.
Any good wishes seem calculated. The smallest problem is a disaster. Little is an opportunity to create a better and more joyful world together.
My proposal was little more than a response to 4 months in an emotional desert. The flowers came out at the first opportunity.
Playfulness and joyfulness begets playfulness and joyfulness – I hope
Then I got two emails from people I don’t know – at all. I had contacted them about their work. In both cases, it gradually had come through that they were having to make a stand at work to be heard. They are doing a good job. Smooth. Polished. And very, very professional. But there was an emotional cost – an unnecessary emotional cost.
With no expectation of any sort of reply, I replied to each raising real questions about their work. I also pointed them to connections and opportunities that might benefit them. They then replied to me with more connections. They weren’t that interested in my ideas but they liked it that I had created a loop in their lives or reminded them of one that had fallen off the radar.
What is your essential environment?
I’d never thought of myself as needing to be in a playful environment. I am not playful person. I don’t come from a playful culture. And that’s the under statement of the year. I can at least make people laugh by taking off the favorite phrase of ‘my people’ – we will make a plan.
But I think I need a playful, joyful environment otherwise I try to be the playful, joyful one. And I’ve not had much practice.
But I sent off the proposal anyway. It began “I’d be delighted to spend my time in the company of lively burbling . .”
I am a work psychologist and we design work. We are brought up on a diet of (ersatz) experiments and (dated) statistics. That’s not all bad. We are good at operationalizing – taking an idea and saying “what exactly are we going to do“? We find Google Analytics easy to understand.
But we become very bad at people. We even joke that is why we become psychologists. Because people mystify us.
So we set out to learn from people who are good with people.
Psychologists learn from designers
Here are three questions that were blogged as a summary of Bantjes (see that training, pedantically precise!). If we are going to set up mock experiments and tiresome evaluations, I suggest we hold ourselves accountable to these.
My rendition does none of these things. I can feel the energy hoovered out of me. So do look up Bantjes when the videos on TED Global 2010 come out. And let’s put the fun back into life. Being orderly is good. But being dispiriting is not.
When I was a young psychologist, I advised people to schedule their time. My boss, an organized goal-oriented man, disagreed. He said that as long as you are doing something important, then it doesn’t matter what you do.
Before we went to meetings with clients, he would go through the our goal and sub-goals, which he would put in a meeting planner. Clients were well aware that he had a check list because they could see him looking at it and ticking things off.
He also ran the office with tight deadlines. He would phone in that he was coming to pick up his overnight work and he expected someone to be at street level to hand it to him through the car window.
His work was returned in the morning and with a ‘rinse and repeat’ the next night, all our work was turned around in three days.
I think working out how much time we have available is helpful so that we can work backwards to sensible work practices.
We can find a daily, weekly, and monthly rhythm that is enjoyable and effective.
We can discover what is important
Yes, we have a year, a month, a week, a day or an hour to spend. What will we do with it? We have a year, a month, a week, a day or an hour to spend. What would be the most enjoyable and satisfying thing to have accomplished in the next hour?
We need a system to make to find our priorities
Long “todo” lists and massive schedules are oppressive. I find people who have “calendars” simply fill them up and then claim they are very busy.
I don’t want to be busy. It only makes me impatient with others.
My 2010 priorities
I simply ask whether what I am going to do in the next hourenjoyable, satisfying and meaningful?
I simply ask how my day will be enjoyable, satisfying and meaningful.
Right now, I am asking why this week (or weekend) will be enjoyable, satisfying and meaningful
How will the remainder of this month be cherished and celebrated?
As I take my blank calendar for 2010, where are the moments in 2010 that will be enjoyable, satisfying and deeply meaningful!
And I will leave time, plenty of time, for events to surprise me and make the year better than I could ever dream.
