My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I liked this book, but ended up wanting a bit more from it…

The book provides a very compelling argument as to why the current system of work/performance (largely based on time) is broken and the advantages of ROWE (Results-Only Work Environment). But for me, this was really preaching to the converted… I first read about ROWE on Tim Ferris’ blog (I think) and was attracted to the concept right away. I completely agree that work (and associated remuneration and performance measurement) should be based on value created rather than hours spent in an office.

But where I thought the book fell short (and where I personally wanted more) was in relation to helping managers and their staff manage solely on the basis of results. The book (pg 129-130) suggests that ‘ultimately a ROWE is not a test of the employees, it is a test of the manager’ and asks ‘Can they [managers] do their jobs communicating expectations and holding people accountable? Can they develop systems to get the information they need without doing it through drive-bys or fire drills?’. As a new-ish manager seeking to implement a more results-based performance culture in my team (a full ROWE is not something within my control) I would have appreciated some more guidance/ideas/tips on setting, communicating and measuring performance expectations, and providing feedback.

My notes from Why Work Sucks

[Disclaimer: The notes below are rough, and may be a mixture of direct quotes, paraphrasing, and my own thoughts/ideas/reminders. They're written here primarily for me (so they may not make much sense out of context, especially for those who haven't read the book)].

(16) Knowledge work requires fluidity (ideas can happen at any time, not just between 8 and 5) and concentration… and creativity.

(18) If you are standing by, filling the hours, watching the clock then what are you doing with your life.

(34) When people have high demands and high control, their life can be hectic but manageable. They figure out what needs to be done and when. When people have high demands and low control, their life is both hectic and miserable.

(72) The right questions to ask yourself in a ROWE – ‘am I doing what I need to to meet my goals?’

(79) A seminar can give you tips and tricks. What people need is power.

ROWE is a TiVo for your work.

(81) Culture audit

(92) Our attitudes about time are perhaps the hardest obstacle to overcome because they are so ingrained. Even if someone waved a magic wand and said “You are no longer judged based on time”, you would probably still judge yourself based on time.

(125) When you hold a meeting be very specific about what the meeting is for, what people are specifically expected to contribute, what they are going to take away from the meeting, and how it’ll help drive concrete, articulated results.

(129-130) Ultimately a ROWE is not a test of the employees, it’s a test of the manager. Can they do their jobs communicating expectations and holding people accountable? Can they develop systems to get the the info they need without doing it through drive-bys or fire drills?

Managers can’t be uncomfortable getting negative feedback or getting push-back from their employees.

(130) When you take care of your life do you develop overcomplicated processes for getting things done? Why do we spend so much of our business life talking about the business we need to take care of rather than simply taking care of it?

(162) How do you advance the cause of ROWE? Start working on your own behaviour (practice not sludging people), talk about ROWE.

(167) Time is no longer a factor in judging performance. People get paid for a chunk of work, not for a chunk of time.

(168) Work on the people who get it and don’t worry so much about the ones who don’t.

(172) How to focus on results within your team

• get clear about performance goals, communicate often, and hold people accountable. what do they need to succeed?
• trust you people (like you trust yourself). stop making rules for the few you’re afraid won’t live up to your expectations.

This is January’s newsletter….

New Year is traditionally a time of reflection and goal-setting. Many people (perhaps yourself) have made (and hopefully kept so far!) new year’s resolutions to exercise more, eat healthily, save more money, take up a new hobby. But have you also given consideration to new year’s resolutions and goals for your professional life? Here are some links that might inspire and assist your reflection and planning….

On the Harvard Business Review (HBR) blog, John Coleman and Bill George suggest young leaders are increasingly being asked to take on major leadership responsibilities in their organisations and their communities. They propose five resolutions to help aspiring leaders prepare for leadership challenges ahead.

Looking for new books and ideas to inspire, challenge and educate you in 2012? Stanford University professor and author, Bob Sutton, has compiled his list of 11 books every leader should read, and the Forbes blog has a great post on how to be more interesting in 10 simple steps.

In another recent Forbes article, Mike Myatt argues that one of the most often overlooked aspects of leadership is the need for pursuit.  What will you be pursing as a leader in 2012?

If you find that you’re struggling to stay committed to your goals, Peter Bregman suggests that your problem isn’t motivation. So how can you maximise the likelihood that you’ll stick with your resolutions and achieve your goals? Decades of research on achievement suggests that successful people reach their goals not simply because of who they are, but more often because of what they do. In this HBR blog post, Heidi Grant Halvorson outlines the nine things successful people do differently.

In addition to setting goals for 2012, why not try making note of your 2011 mistakes and taking action to avoid repeating them in 2012… and maybe even consider making a mistake or two on purpose.

And finally, a good reminder that leadership education and professional development doesn’t always need to come from management journals or expensive training courses… In this post, Chris Walter shares what he learned about leadership, teamwork and innovation by watching Junior Masterchef.  Perhaps you can rethink that resolution to watch less reality TV?

There are only two ingredients: 2 cups self-raising flour and 1 cup natural/Greek yoghurt. Yep, that’s it!

Mix the ingredients together and knead into a ball. Cover and refrigerate for 1/2 an hour. Roll out dough to desired thickness (remembering that it’ll rise a little bit on cooking). We use a little bit of salsa over the base (which has a lighter flavour than tomato paste or pizza sauce) and then top with whatever we’ve got handy (fresh basil, tomato and mozzarella is always a winner!).

Delicious!

One of the core drivers of success in business is also among the most ignored elements: ALIGNMENT.

If you want to own your career, your business, your life, you need to align 4 elements:

1. What makes you come alive (people, process, content, culture, mission & setting)
2. Your preferred mode of service (live, remote, video, text, audio, interactive or transmission, private, small group,mass audience)
3. What you either are good at, or are capable of and interested in becoming good at, and
4. What people will line up to pay you enough to live well in the world for.

If there are major gaps in any of the above elements, you will either:

• Fail completely
• Succeed at making money,but hate your business and maybe even your life, or
• Love what you do to earn a living, but hate how it never gives you the money needed to live well in the world or the freedom to do your “art” full-time.

If you don’t work with a high-level of alignment, you’ll very likely never come close to your personal or professional potential, your businesses will continually cap out and you’ll never understand why. It’s also immensely draining, on a personal level, to live a life where your personal and professional “selves” aren’t well aligned. Presenting as different people in different scenarios is, over the long haul, a gutting experience.

Tonight, as we sat around my dining room table while he put the finishing touches on his Grim Reaper-esque ‘gang’ jacket (a prop for the shoot), Andy told us about his day. The conversation went something like… ‘I didn’t have time to get to the post office to pick up my Styrofoam sculpting kit which I need to make five shark fins and a bee-hive, but I did manage to call our agent about organising a taxidermied polar bear, and I arranged for a fake palm tree to be delivered from Queensland’.

Umm… even on my most interesting, surprising days I couldn’t come close to topping that!

I’ve taken the test a total of 7 times between August 2007 and today (January 2012). The signature strengths that topped today’s test are as follows:

1. Creativity, ingenuity, and originality
 (signature strength in 7/7 tests taken)
   Thinking of new ways to do things is a crucial part of who you are. You are never content with doing something the conventional way if a better way is possible.
2. Love of learning
 (signature strength in 7/7 tests taken)
   You love learning new things, whether in a class or on your own. You have always loved school, reading, and museums-anywhere and everywhere there is an opportunity to learn.
3. Capacity to love and be loved
 (signature strength in 2/7 tests taken)
   You value close relations with others, in particular those in which sharing and caring are reciprocated. The people to whom you feel most close are the same people who feel most close to you.
4. Curiosity and interest in the world
 (signature strength in 5/7 tests taken)
   You are curious about everything. You are always asking questions, and you find all subjects and topics fascinating. You like exploration and discovery.
5. Judgment, critical thinking, and open-mindedness (signature strength in 6/7 tests taken)
   Thinking things through and examining them from all sides are important aspects of who you are. You do not jump to conclusions, and you rely only on solid evidence to make your decisions. You are able to change your mind.

Overall, I think my test results are pretty consistent – with the exception of the ‘capacity to love and be loved’ strength. This strength has only appeared as one of my signature strengths in the last two tests taken (it was ranked 8, 7, 15, 14, 7 in the previous tests) which I think reflects a growing comfortableness with myself and deepening of a number of important relationships (Jason and I got married last year too!).

I didn’t deliberately set out to regularly take the test or monitor my test results over a number of years but I’m glad I have (and grateful that the Authentic Happiness site keeps all the previous test results – I would have surely lost track of them otherwise). Looking back, the results seem to provide both confirmation of the key elements of my character/personality and evidence of how I’ve grown and changed over time.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My notes from The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working

[Disclaimer: The notes below are rough, and may be a mixture of direct quotes, paraphrasing, and my own thoughts/ideas/reminders. They're written here primarily for me (so they may not make much sense out of context, especially for those who haven't read the book)].

(8-9) Four primary energy needs: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual.

(11) Physical level – sustainability. Four factors are key: nutrition, fitness, sleep and rest.

(14) Perhaps no human need is more neglected in the workplace than to feel valued. Noticing what is wrong and what’s not working in our lives is a hardwired survival instinct. Expressing appreciation requires more conscious intention.

(15) Mental level – self expression.

(18) Spiritual level – significance.

(38) Building rituals:

1. Undertaking no more than one or two at a time
2. Precision and specificity (make a specific time)
3. Focus on something we do rather than on something we try to resist doing (dieting – plan what you are going to eat rather than resisting tempting foods)
4. Expect resistance to implementing the ritual
• “We derive a sense of safety from doing what we’ve always done, even if it’s suboptimal and even if it has the potential to damage us in the long-term”
• Bring competing commitments to light. Recognise the fears that are associated with change.
• “How can I design this ritual so I enjoy its intended benefits but also minimise the costs I fear it will prompt?”
5. Enlist support of others

(69) Many of us are programmed to believe that time spent ‘not doing’ is time wasted. Building intermittent breaks is counterintuitive and countercultural in may organisations. Implicit assumption – effective renewal requires significant periods of time. Renewal depends less on how much time we devote to it than how effectively we do it, just as productivity is less a function of how many hours we put in than of how productive we are during the hours we’re working.

(81) Broad and compelling evidence that fitness improves cognitive capacity and emotional well-being – two factors that powerfully influence performance and productivity.

(133-135) Bad is stronger than good. Fight – react by turning negative emotions against others. Flight – turn negative emotions on ourselves.

(135) Whenever you begin to notice negative feelings arising – apply the ‘golden rule’ of triggers. “Whatever you feel compelled to do, don’t.” Move from automatic to intentional mode.

(140) Need for a secure base – reliable source of emotional renewal. Over time the source of the secure base shifts from parents to spouse/partner.

(144) Humility is often a measure of a leader’s true confidence. Leader who is secure in his own value is free to invest energy in empowering others.

(148) Fact is something that can be objectively verified by any person. A story is something we create to make sense of the facts. Problem – often we mistake stories for facts and treat them as if they’re irrefutably true.

(149) Importance of awareness. Move from the role of the person experiencing our feelings to that of self observer.

(151) James Stockdale. POW in Vietnam (7 years). Stockdale Paradox. “I never lost faith in the end of the story. I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would turn the event into the defining event of my life”. “You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end – which you can never afford to lose – with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they may be.”

Alternative Stories:

(155) Reflective lens:

• what are the facts here?
• what is the story I’m telling myself about those facts?

Triggers almost always prompt us to tell stories that leave us feeling devalued. Reflective lens gives us a chance to consider an alternative.

(156) Reverse lens:

• what is he/she feeling and how does that make sense?

(157) Long lens:

• being able to imagine a better future
• how can i learn and grow from the experience?
• not a permanent reality

(161) Just as individuals perform best when they move between renewing and expending energy, so leaders inspire highest performance when they move between challenging people to exceed themselves and regularly recognising and rewarding accomplishments.

(162) Stress is the means by which we expend capacity as long as it’s balance by intermittent renewal.

(167-168) Jill Bolte Taylor – “I needed those around me to be encouraging. I needed to know I still had value. I needed to have dreams to work toward. I needed people to celebrate the triumphs I made every day because my successes, no matter ho small, inspired me.”

(169) Ritual at Sony Pictures – “code”. Shorthand for ‘I really want to know what you’re feeling, so be straight with me.’ Created permission to tell the truth and shared expectation that team members would do so.

(171) Alan Mulally – Ford. “If someone calls you a son of a bitch, take it as a chance to learn. You say ‘Thankyou very much for telling me, and I’d like to know more about why you think that’”. Culture grounded in realistic optimism.

(179) Herbert Simon. Nobel Prize in Economics. “What information consumes is rather obvious. It consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”

(184) Multi-tasking often leaves us feeling emptier and more disconnected. Multi-tasking sends an unmistakable message: “You’re not worth 100% of my attention”.

Split attention also means you won’t absorb everything the other person is saying – complexity, subtlety and depth.

(191) The only thing more horrifying to most of us than an inbox that contains 200 new emails is one that doesn’t contain any. We want to be wanted.

(192) Marshmallow test. Successful children managed to push the marshmallow (and therefore the temptation to eat it) out of their awareness (close eyes, turn chair, singing). The key is to avoid thinking about it in the first place.

(196) Single most effective mental ritual – “doing the most important thing first”.

(200) Improving attention of schizophrenia patients. The more focus the subjects were able to mobilise on the external task the less preoccupied they became with their own distress.

(201) Mindfulness is a more practical form of attentional training for people working in an open office environment where distractions and interruptions occur at random times throughout the day.

(202) Control your attention, and you control your life.

(213) Intentionally setting aside time to quiet the mind and activate the right hemisphere – through meditation or drawing for example – is a powerful way to induce creative breakthroughs.

(229) The real measure of people’s effectiveness in an organisation ought to be based on the value they create, not the number of hours they work. That requires a relationship between consenting adults, grounded in trust, funded by mutual responsibility, and regulated be periodic accountability.

(238) Values provide internal compass.

Defining/renewing intentions <-> embodying intentions in behaviour.

(243) “How would I behave here at my best?”

(245) Willingness to recognise shortcomings saves us from squandering energy on denial, rationalism and blame when we fall short.

Irony – efforts at self-preservation and self-protection often cause precisely what we’re seeking to hold at bay. eg. we get angry and hostile when we don’t feel we’ve been treated fairly.

TS Eliot – “Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go.”

(247) Q. “When did my more primitive, survival instincts guide my actions today?”. “How would I have behaved at my best?”

(255) “I feel most aligned with myself when I help others to find their inspiration and creativity.”

(256) “I’ve become the guardian of my spirit rather than just its beneficiary.”

Ubuntu – me vs you -> me and you.

No career automatically provides a purpose, but no job precludes our finding purpose in it, either.

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

My notes from Rapt

[Disclaimer: The notes below are rough, and may be a mixture of direct quotes, paraphrasing, and my own thoughts/ideas/reminders. They're written here primarily for me (so they may not make much sense out of context, especially for those who haven't read the book)].

(10) That little piece of reality that you tune in on is literally and figuratively far sketchier and more subjective than you assume.

Top-down attention (conscious choice) vs Bottom-up attention (biased toward most salient thing/signal). Competition for attention.

(18) Drawback of sharpening focus on a target = shrinking larger experience. FOCUS EXPERIENCE.

(28) To enjoy the kind of experience you want rather than enduring the kind that you feel stuck with, you have to take charge of your attention.

(31) Main advantage of paying attention to an unhappy emotion is that it attunes you to a potential threat or loss and pressures you to avoid or relieve the pain by solving the associated problem.

(35) Carl Jung – ‘There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year’s course, Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.’

Paying attention to positive emotions literally expands you world, while focusing on negative feelings shrinks it.

(36) When you feel frightened, angry or sad reality contracts until whatever is upsetting you takes up your whole world. Bad feelings – shrink focus. In a potentially ominous situation, homing in and reacting to trouble is more important than taking time to get the big picture. Good feelings – widen focus. Expand into new territory. Think more flexibly and creatively.

(38) Reactive, behavioural and reflective elements of the brain. Conflict when two or more of these networks insist you focus on different things.

(50) Older people – increased skill in focusing on things that foster feelings of contentment. William James – wisdom is ‘the art of knowing what to overlook’.

(52) Directing attention away from negative experiences can be a superior coping strategy.

(53) Treat your mind as a private garden – being as careful as possible about what you introduce and allow to grow there.

(67) Who you are affects what attracts your attention, but what you focus on also affects who you are.

(85) When employees focus on how their efforts affect other people, rather than just on the details of their tasks, their sense of relationship boosts both their satisfaction and productivity.

(88-89) Approaches to / importance of dinner time. In a perfect world – parents would focus everyone on nonconfrontational conversation. They’d encourage anyone so inclined to raise a topic and invite feedback, and be able to accept ‘just listening’.

(91-93) When you live with someone it’s easy to assume you share the same reality. Story about couple having pre-marriage counselling during a hot summer. She – ‘Things have changed, we barely have sex anymore’. He – ‘I thought we weren’t having sex because the airconditioner is broken’.

(96) Happy couples – resolute focus on the positive.

(98) Relationships – must commit to effort of seeing that person’s often very different world.

(101) Nicholas Hobbs (mid 20th century psychologist) – way to ensure calm but heightened attention to the matter at hand is to choose activities that push you so close to the edge of your competence that the demand your absolute focus. Select projects that are just manageable. Too easy – lose focus and get bored. Too hard – become anxious, overwhelmed and unable to concentrate.

(106) Happiness is a later reflection of flow, rather than the result of the experience at the time.

(107) Turning chores into play.

(108) Deciding what to do with leisure time – avoid the temporal equivalent of junk food.

(109) Antidote to leisure-time ennui is to pay as much attention to scheduling a productive evening or weekend as you do your workday.

(110) Set goals that are fun but also stretch you in some way.

(118-119) How you experience your lie is what you think about your life. There is a gap between your real life and the stories you tell yourself about it. Experiencing vs remembering self.

(127) Attentional conflict. When you first think about a long-term project you focus on the goal and barely consider the matter of how you’ll get to that point – why we over commit ourselves.

(151-155) Problems with multitasking.

(158) Brain Fitness program – effort builds and strengthens neural pathways.

(159) Breath focused mindfulness meditation.

(161) Energy flows where attention goes.

(166-167) ADHD.

(178) Grit – involves motivation and perseverance in pursuit of goal, but also maintaining consistent interest in a project or idea over time.

(181) Life is relatively short, so don’t labor under the delusion that you can keep switching your focus from goal to goal and get anywhere.

(183) Practice/rehearse in your head how you’ll react ahead of time – when trying to stick to a goal and faced with a difficult/stressful situation (giving a speech/attending a banquet when you’re dieting).

(184) Conflict between voices. Temporarily but strongly inclined to pay attention and choose the behaviour that brings the quickest rewards.

(189) Life is a creation rather than a reaction.

(205) William James – ‘I don’t sing because I’m happy; I’m happy because I sing’.

(213) Working on being a better person. “Wouldn’t it be great if instead of just working out at the gym, we’d go off and focus on doing something that makes us better people.”

(215) You see what you look for. And you can train yourself to attend to the joy out there waiting to be had, instead of passively waiting for it to come to you.

More and more business leaders and management writers are realising that failure is a necessary (and even desirable) part of innovation. To innovate means to try new things, to have a go. But anytime we try something new there is a risk that it won’t turn out as we hope or expect, and that we’ll get it wrong. But as Ken Robinson notes in his humorous, inspiring and powerful TED talk “if you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.”

While we might know that risking failure is part of the innovation process, there’s still something quite uncomfortable about it (the title of this blog post pretty much sums it up – ‘Failure Sucks But Instructs‘). To me, failure is kind of like debt. It’s what you do with it that determines whether or not it’s a positive or negative thing – whether or not is allows you to grow and build, or weakens and depletes you. So, with that in mind, here are a few articles that may be helpful in thinking about how we build our own resilience to and understanding of failure (and that of our staff) to ensure that it positively enhances our personal and organisational innovation capability.

• In this article, Seth Godin points out that not all failures are the same and proposes a hierarchy of failure from ‘good all the way’ to ‘please don’t'! A hierarchy of failure worth following – http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/07/a-hierarchy-of-failure.html
• And in another post, Seth shares six ideas to help you fail better, more often and with an inevitably positive upside. How to fail – http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/04/how-to-fai.html
• Dealing with failure is part of being a leader. Rather than expend enormous energy to avoid it, this HBR blog post (part of the recent failure series) suggests you should build an organisation that is resilient in the face of inevitable failures by taking the following three steps: create a culture of sharing failures as well as successes, reward the act of risk-taking, and define the limits. For fans of good stories, this post also has a great story about how Domino’s Pizza admitted and addressed a major failure. The Art of Admitting Failure – http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/03/the_art_of_admitting_failure.html
• On the topic of good stories, in this post regular HBR contributor and master storyteller Peter Bregman shares a personal story about kayaking rapids in the Grand Canyon to highlight the power of visualising failure. Visualize Failure – http://blogs.hbr.org/bregman/2011/03/visualize-failure.html

There are many other HBR blog posts published as part of the special issue on failure which are listed here – http://hbr.org/special-collections/spotlights/2011/apr

The Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research’s Innovation Blog has also recently published a piece (and started a discussion) about how we share lessons from failure – http://innovation.govspace.gov.au/2011/04/15/how-do-we-share-lessons-from-failures/.

And rather than just rolling my eyes or having a little rant to whoever is unfortunate enough to be near me every time I hear the term ‘work-life balance’, I’ve done some thinking about how I’d like to apply an alternative way of looking at balance in my own life and figured that as it might be interesting, relevant (or perhaps just humorous!) to others, it was worth writing a blog post about it.

People who know me well know that I’m a visual person and like to construct or use stories and analogies to make concepts/ideas/opinions more tangible. And those people will also know that I’m not a gardener. But, for whatever reason, it’s a gardening analogy that helps me to explain my concept of ‘life well-being’…

Your life as a garden

In the previous post, I identified six aspects that I think make up my well-being:

• financial
• mental/emotional
• social
• intellectual
• spiritual
• physical

I like to think of each of these as different plants in a garden. In a garden at certain times of the year or in response to certain events, one or two plants may need more focus and attention than the others. Just like at times in your life, for a variety of external and internal reasons, you may need to focus more heavily on certain aspects of your life. The plants in your garden do not always need to be maintained in exactly the same way, with exactly the same water/fertiliser/pruning regimes, nor do the aspects of your life always need to be attended to in equal portions of time or energy. Instead attention and maintenance must be applied based on the specific needs of the plants in the garden. Often in a garden there are synergies between plants. Where one is going particularly well it may provide benefits for another, reducing the need for active maintenance or intervention.

But what is necessary is that you keep a regular eye on your garden. Take the time to observe it and see what’s working and what’s not. Where one plant is starting to look like it’s not doing so well, you can give it some attention to get it back on track. It’s important not to let the health of any of the plants suffer too much. To let a plant become completely neglected means that the effort required to get it to recover is much greater. And once a plant in the garden becomes completely neglected, it stops having those important synergistic benefits for other plants.

Multi-tasking is good

I know there has been much recent commentary and discussion about the downside of multi-tasking (especially in our hyper-connected, always-on world). It’s common to feel pressured to fit more and more into our already time-poor lives which leaves us distracted and overwhelmed. But, in creating ‘life well-being’, multi-tasking can be a good thing.

I think you achieve the greatest feelings of satisfaction and fulfillment in your life where you can undertake activities or spend your time in ways that provide benefit and nourishment for two or more areas of your needs. I guess in part this is about the return or benefit you get for the investment of time and energy. If you’re in the garden it makes sense to water all the plants at once, rather than tending to each plant independent of the others. And to know that you’re undertaking an activity that’s making your whole garden flourish as opposed to an activity that only benefits a single plant can provide a greater sense of purpose and achievement.

I noticed this particularly strongly when I started running. Clearly running has a physical benefit – it made a huge difference for my weight loss and fitness – so it definitely contributed to my need for physical health. And it also contributed the mental/emotional health aspect of my ‘life well-being’ – both as a result of the ‘runners high’ and the increased feelings self-esteem/confidence from losing weight achieving new challenges/fitness goals. I also began to run regularly with a group of girlfriends, and this activity provided a catalyst for renewing and deepening some important social connections. One activity – running – was something that nourished three of my needs (physical health, mental/emotional health and the need for social connection). And just like the synergies in a garden – the flourishing of one of these aspects contributed to the flourishing in others. For example, the social connections I enjoyed while running helped me to achieve greater physical benefits (running with friends often pushes you to go a little further or faster), and the support and interaction from my friends no doubt benefited my mental and emotional health.

Now getting back to work… One of the reasons why I think that many people are dissatisfied with their work or are seeking greater ‘work-life balance’ is because work often fails to benefit multiple needs. Work for many people may only really deeply satisfy one or two needs (most commonly financial health). This is like going into your garden for 8 hours, and only looking at and tending to one plant the whole time.

We all have limited time. It’s a finite resource and there’s no way to get more or less of it. So, the more aspects of your ‘life well-being’ that your activities (including work) can address the more fulfilled and ‘in balance’ you’re likely to feel.

Minimising negatives as well as maximising positives

In addition to seeking out those activities that nourish aspects of our ‘life well-being’, we also need to be aware of the activities that damage or deplete us. In the garden it might be easy to focus on the benefit that an activity is having for one plant, while overlooking the fact that you’ve had to trample on another plant to achieve it. Over some periods this might be necessary or desirable, but we need to remain conscious of both the positive and the negative impacts of the activities we engage in. And perhaps take time to consider if there is an alternative way of tending to the plant, so that you don’t need to tread on another to do it.

Everyone’s garden is different

Everyone’s garden is different. There is no design you must follow, no generic formula to apply, no one-size-fits-all garden maintenance strategy. You get to decide how your garden should look. And only you can know exactly how your garden is flourishing at any point in time. The observations of others can be important – they can provide a different perspective on your garden, and help to identify those plants that are starting to wilt and that you may have overlooked, or they may provide praise when they notice plants that are blooming and healthy. Other people may also share their own garden maintenance strategies and suggestions which you may find helpful in finding the best ways to maintain yours. But ultimately you need to decide how you want your garden to look, and how you’ll maintain it. And you are responsible for undertaking that maintenance.

Three steps to achieve a great garden

I always like presentations or articles or books that contain practical information that I can take away and apply in my own life. So, here is my attempt at providing three ideas to help you ensure that your garden of ‘life well-being’ continues to flourish…

1. Noticing. Take time to check on your garden regularly. Inspect the plants individually, but step back and look at the whole garden. Look carefully for signs that a plant may need some more attention, but also take time to celebrate and enjoy those plants that are thriving.
2. Find a gardening buddy. A trusted friend, mentor or coach can be a great help in providing a different perspective on your garden, sharing their own gardening tips, and allowing you the opportunity to reflect on and discuss your garden maintenance strategies.
3. Multi-tasking. Seek out activities that benefit two or more plants in your garden. It’s more efficient and you’ll see a greater return on your investment of time and energy. You can also adjust the way you undertake or look at your current activities so that they’re fulfilling multiple needs. For example – invite a friend to join you on your regular lunch-time walk or put up your hand to take on a new challenge at work.