work – Page 12 – The Consulting Artist

Moments Like These

It’s Friday – how’s your week been? I feel like I’ve been on a particularly mountainous stage of the Tour de France, culminating in a flat, sprint finish towards the weekend.

The Work

I love my work. Ohhhh noooo – shut up with the happy clappy crappy willya! Truthfully – I love some of my work, and I’m just like you, in order to get the love, you have to put in the hours and the effort. I’ve forced myself through to do list hell this week. Proposals, admin, marketing – the beginning through to the middle of the week was full of productive, useful slog.

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Thursday produced a welcome change of pace and direction. I was a guest of Herman Miller at one of their excellent Scenarios 2018 workshops. I’m going to write a post about what I learned soon, for now suffice to say this was an excellent session full of insight, humour and good conversation. I walked from Victoria to Aldwych to get to the workshop, and returned to Victoria on foot again afterwards. It’s great to find time to get out, walk and think.

The Recognition

Keira showed Carole and me around her class and the new library at school yesterday. It’s great seeing Keira and her work in the school environment. After we got home – Keira gave us her school report – the last one she will get at Stanley Park Junior School, as she leaves next week to start at a new school in September.

Progress: Outstanding. Well done Keira. And here’s the thing that really does it for me. Effort: Outstanding. Talent is nothing without effort. Here’s what her head teacher had to say…

‘This is an outstanding report for an outstanding student. Keira displays a sense of pride in so many areas of learning: sport, drama, music and the academics. She is also a caring and supportive member of the community. Thank you for all you have given your school. Well done Keira! Celebrate your successes and believe in yourself to achieve your dreams.’

In the evening we saw the year six production of The Trial of Mr BB Wolf, a play written, produced and performed by the whole school year. It was great fun with lots of twists and turns, and as you can see, the bulldog prosecutor was a very stern character.

Proud Dad? Yes – definitely.

The Celebration

Twenty two years ago today Carole made what many of our friends would consider a grave error of judgement. I can’t lay my hands on our wedding photos just now so whilst you miss seeing Carole’s radiant beauty – you are at least saved my car crash of a haircut!

In truth, the whole of life is like the topography I described earlier. And I’m thankful that someone as smart, kind and patient as Carole has chosen to accompany me. We are celebrating our wedding anniversary today with a visit to see Jools Holland at Kew Gardens.

Have a great weekend!

Routine – And The Importance Of Tweaking It

Do you have a routine, or are you a slave to it?

I don’t have a typical commute to work, I travel at different times, and often to different places. When I do travel in the rush hour, I’ve come to notice people waiting for the train, often stand at the same spot on the platform. Many people know precisely where the doors on the carriage they want to get onto, open. Gaggles of commuters huddle in bunches near these spots and I enjoy standing alone, in between gaggles.

I get funny looks from the gagglers. ‘Why’s that weirdo not standing in a gaggle? Doesn’t he know that we know precisely where the doors are going to open?’ I find myself taking an almost perverse pride in trying to find a different spot on the platform every time I travel.

My journey into London starts out in the suburbs, it’s a frequent service, and it takes just under 40 minutes. I can see how people faced with the prospect of fighting for a seat, might be driven to gaggle. In my case, regardless of the time of day I travel, I have never boarded a train from our station into London and failed to get a seat. Never. Not once. In these circumstances, I just don’t get the whole gaggling thing.

Yesterday I took part in a meeting at Workhubs – a really handy coworking venue run by Philip Dodson near Euston station. I was there to take part in one of a series of International Collaboration Days, organised by a bunch of interesting folk including Bernie Mitchell and the aforementioned Philip. We enjoyed good breakfast and good company. Here are a few notes I took:

99u – Insights on making ideas happen
750 Words a Day – the practice of writing
Routine – tweak it.
Only 3% of freelancers currently use coworking spaces.
Structure – you can hop from place to place on a scaffold, only up and down on a ladder (hierarchy).
Conversations – small groups. Four or five max – beyond that it’s more like a series of monologues? How can we help the quieter voices get heard?
It’s important to do a few small things, often.

I want to focus on routine. We all have them, and the conversation was around how to use our natural desire for habit forming to our advantage, rather than get bound up in it, like the gaggles seem to. A few suggestions were made which I found interesting.

Bookend your day with routine. Do your habitual stuff at the beginning and the end of the day – and try to practice being more free form in between.

Take breaks – don’t be a prisoner.

Do some of your routine stuff in different places. Lots of enthusiasm for working out doors bubbled up, and the recognition of limitations too – we were trying to keep it real.

Tweak your routine. I found this part of the conversation really useful as it helped me get more comfortable with the sense of having routine – something I struggle with at times, and something I’ve wrongly railed against in the past. There’s no doubt that since I found an appreciation of routine, I’ve got better at getting stuff done, and simultaneously I’m a fan of experimenting with different ways to work. I encourage my clients to try different things, so I have to find a way to get the routine stuff done, and the tweak idea interests me. Let’s go back to the travel thing again.

I routinely walk to the station. I get a mile walk under my belt and I enjoy being with my thoughts for the time the walk takes me. The tweak happens when it comes to which way I go. There are many routes I can take from home to the station, I’ve mapped out some of them here (nerd alert):

Some are a bit longer than others, and on the days I find myself ready to leave a few minutes early, I take a slightly longer route. The super sharp eyed among you will see that there are two stations on this map. I can and do use both – just to further mix things up. The walk is my routine, the route I choose is my tweak.

As a result of these conversations – I’m looking again at how I do what I do. Am I getting the mix right enough of the time? I’ll let you know how I get on. Meantime if you’ve any helpful ideas on how you make routine…less routine, please let me know.

A Picture Paints a Thousand Words

Working on a social media strategy in Riga. How to take advantage of fine weather and get some good work done too.

Deep in the midst of developing a social media strategy, I asked one of the team of people I’m working with about their use of Flickr. The particular channel they shared with me relates to the Latvian armed forces, and when I asked why they used it, I got a very simple reply:

‘A picture paints a thousand words’

It was late afternoon and the hot Riga spring sunshine was streaming through the windows as we were started exploring the possibilities of using visual aids: photos, videos, info graphics and more, as part of a wider communication strategy. Rather than continue to let the fine weather distract us, I invited the team to split into three groups and go and photograph the city. Each team would then present their view of the city back to the group in the morning, as a way of promoting the city for the upcoming EU Presidency. Extra points would be awarded if the slideshow could capture the three Latvian EU Presidency values: Involving, Growth and Sustainability.

The following day we reconvened and were treated to a series of interesting and entertaining slide shows of Riga. Here are a few excerpts:

Often when the town or city where we work is just somewhere we walk through every day, we take it for granted. It was great to get out and enjoy the sunshine, sure, but the feedback that really interested me from this exercise was how much people appreciated the opportunity to see their city in a different light.