When I was a kid I would sometimes wake up in the morning early enough to watch my dad put on his work boots and then load up his truck. He would bring his lunch, sometimes a thermos and a couple of shirts. He worked in construction as a plumber. Growing up that way I was accustomed to loading your tools every morning. On the weekend my dad would repair, clean, sharpen and in rare instances replace his tools.
Today's employees expect everything given to them. This is not an article about shaming a different generation, it is about the lost art of being a craftsperson with the work you do.
I want to be clear here. This is about productivity. I am seriously envious of those people that can start work at a specific time and quit at another time. That is a thought technology that does not come in the Gen X model (BTW, I am using this relationally, not as an endorsement of the F your feelings moniker that has been ascribed). You should expect and advocate for these tools. What I am talking about is for those that have both the need and the want to remove obstacles out of their way and have no issues in investing in their day. This path is pathological. Be wary to those who follow. this past is fraught with pain, loss dollars and disappointment in the tools, tech and most impactful, yourself. Just like dodgeball, this reveals your character, just not in a good way.
With being a knowledge worker, there is a decision that you need to consciously make. Are you content with your productivity to remain in the pack? That is perfectly fine (or should be). I should take a second to talk about the pack. First and foremost thank you. The majority of the grind work is done by the pack. In any good system you need efficient people that work on specific tasks and get stuff done routinely. The pack deserves lots of love and attention by management. I have sat in high up meetings where they look at ways to unleash the pack. Some are great ideas, some are base and frighten me but the focus is there. There is not a lot of thinking about how do we get "Jake" to perform better on the 5 key tasks that nobody else knows how to do. It happens during a crisis for sure. But typically, no, not a lot of fretting. There are and need to be specialists. Not everyone should be one. The normal distribution wins again as it always will.
Specialists should take on responsibility on how to get thoughts out of their heads reliably and completely and learn how to process, and to optimize for productivity that is needed to achieve. Know that in practice through your career productivity changes and not always in the ways you think. There tends to be a steep curve, followed by a plateau then a slight bath tub curve. As knowledge increases the quality of the work becomes better and quicker. Productivity should be plotted against quality and if you really want to get nerdy, against knowledge. I imagine the curve in 3D space similar to when you blow up a balloon when you were a kid and let it go (I am only kind of joking).
As a specialist knowledge worker you need to have your clear head. There are days when you should not go in to face the day. Especially if the decisions you make are mission critical. Hopefully you have a person to rely on because I have been there when you should not go in but you have to anyways.
You need ritual, you need a place to put your tasks. You need a commute that is understood and accepted (notice I did not say easy).
I am going to go on a bit of a ranted list of things that you should try to have.
- If you are not okay at home, work is not the place to try to force to be okay
- Be you, be weird, enjoy your quirk. Just don't be creepy.
- Be a life long learner
- Listen to the younger associates, seek out the people who have been there years for institutional knowledge
- Talk less, listen more, find new places to eat to expose yourself to new perspectives
- Art will save you
- Toys and play at all ages are essential. They inspire.
- Make yourself comfortable without making other people less comfortable.
- Share and mentor as much as you can tolerate.
- If you must win because you must be right, then you are done. Get out. Don't talk to people.
- Quiet places, loud places, whatever works for you, do it.
The message is, ritual is part of your process. Embrace it. It is the enabler of the best version of you.
For knowledge workers our tools are different. It really does not matter what type of technology you use, it matters to what is effective and more to the point productive with your workflows. Find the behaviors and you will find your process. There are even tools that do things even better than you already do. Take that mental load off and automate what you can without losing the spirit or substance of what you add to it.
Productivity changes over time. You can have a machine that turns out many widgets, or a process that creates valuable masterpieces at a modest clip. The value of the process does to a serious degree have to include the rate of production (see how long it takes for you to get your dinner at a fine, expensive restaurant ) as we are human and have expectations driven by biology.
When I started in the industry I had a lot of throughput. Lots of validations, lots of specifications, reports, change controls, etc. My value as an individual contributor was 'good'. It was what you would expect from a new quality professional. If I held it to today's requirements meaning my requirements, the rate would be good but it would not be the finished product that my experience would say in review of my own work 20+ years down the road. There is an elegance to what to put versus what not to put. There is the textbook answer to every deliverable and then there is the craftsperson's. For productivity, you need to find the sweet spot.
At the beginning, my productivity was through brute force. It was absolutely the wrong way. I had no quality toolset. I had no ethos. I just worked hours. So you could say it was not really productivity, it was multiplication of efforts. But 80+ hours a week was not fully effective or productive. That last hour of the week was no where near as good as the first.
Out of necessity which I won't really go into here because journey's vary I had to look at how to get through a productive week with a sense of worth and feeling like there was a point to it all. The existential piece is not what I am talking about here but what I saw was how to minimize effort by standardizing on a way to do things. It meant investment to think about how to do it right the first time. But the shortcut was to mimic tools and habits that I see better and more productive performers use. Trying these tools out was a pathway. Some find the right fit, others find nothing at all. But it means that you find many disciplines and ways of thinking to approach a problem. Helping you become the solution rather than the person experiencing it for the first time. It is the way that you think about work that matters as much as being present at work to get it done. These tools both mental and physical are what you should be bringing to work every morning. Unloading your tools and laying them out being if that is on the drive in preparing yourself for the day or the ritual every morning of setting up your processes. The word journeyman comes to mind, you are on a journey and along the way you pick up tools and ways to think about the work you do. We need a better word not stepped in the patriarchy so let's call ourselves on this pathway a 'journeyist'.
My journey so far.
I have read books and listen to philosophers through podcasts. They all say some of the same things, some mention the same systems, some get into the details. My point to you is to consume as much as you can and see what fits. In the end you need to find some serious time to think about what your journey is. Where do you want to go.
To further the point the title knowledge worker says what we need to do. We need to think about how we work as much as we think and produce work. The quality of our knowledge work is only as good as our state of mind. Clearing our obstacles in our thinking is key. That does not mean shut the world away, but to have a process to make it less of a din or roar. Our lives inform us why we work, but as knowledge workers it can keep us from success of doing just that.
I love candles as they can set the mood for the day. I need a space to do my work that makes me at ease. If it can't be at home I have the escape backpack that has everything I need to work pretty much anywhere I want. Music is great but can change a mood without much leverage at all. People coming up behind me, NOPE. Respect is everything of the dojo. Having a clock or other type of widget device to tell me what is going on in the outside world is helpful for connection and valuing time. Being the right temperature or humidity can really make the day. Having a place to take breaks is clutch, maybe even meditate. Nothing can be so weird if it makes you comfortable or centers your brain. Make sure you value yourself through the day including meals and hydration (I suck at both).
Automated tools are great if you have the capacity to maintain them. They can save so much time. Know what you are doing every day and enable yourself with the right mindset. Sometimes if you are not in the right mindset, move it to another day.
Take breaks throughout the day to review what has happened and where your pace is. I start my day typically be cleaning off my workspace and setting up. When I don't I tend to know my world will soon be in disarray. Sometimes it culminates in weekend cleanings or when I was in a brick and mortar going into work to reset for the next week.
I schedule time in my calendar to do the maintenance I need to my "knowledge work areas". Sometimes that is in electronic file management, calendaring, buying the snacks I need and stocking the area, or getting paper scanned and shredded.
I review my projects to see if they are worth doing. I buy tools to try them out to see if it is better for my workflow. I have standard pieces of kit such as my mouse. I have keyboard preferences. I have keysets with macros sitting on my desk with specific functions. My area is automated so I can use voice commands where possible for lighting or other comforts. Ergonomics are somewhat shaky but I do have a good chair. My floor pad is glass but way too small for the amount I move.
I will have more on this. Right now I am saying this out to the world and don't know what is worth saying so I will say it all or as much as I can formulate. Best of luck on your journey. Always willing to have a chat for those who have questions.