We owe it to future generations, and ourselves, to become the best professional we can be in our one and only wild and precious life. ☀️
Since my training of ‘how to work’ in my formative years was as a lawyer in a fast-paced law firm in New York (think: check BlackBerry every 2 minutes including sometimes at night; respond to partner and client emails within 30 minutes or everyone thinks you’ve gone ‘MIA’; leave coat in the office if you leave before 9 pm so that people think you just went for coffee etc.), I’ve had to spend years ‘unlearning’ what I had integrated to become a more focused and grounded professional, where I can harness the full brain power and energy I bring to my work in a way that works - for the work! 📕
This has become more paramount than ever, as Human Level has grown from a two-person organisation, to a ten-person organisation doing amazing cutting edge work on the inter-connections between human rights, climate and the environment. 🌿
I’ve had regular coaching (I highly recommend Amanda Barry!), and I read all I can on the topic when I can (Cal Newport and his work on deep work has changed how I work, and his new book Slow Productivity is a very good complement to that.)
I’m sharing here some of the things that have helped me the most over recent years, in case it’s of value to you too. I think as mission-driven knowledge workers (of which all of you receiving this are), this will for sure be an ongoing quest. 🌟 But it’s an important one, as it’s the foundation for everything else - our best work depends on it, and so do future generations.
Create rules of thumb for what you want your work week to look like. There will always be exceptions, and sometimes many, and that’s OK. As long as you know why you are accepting the exception and what to come back to. A bit like when you get distracted when meditating. 🧘
Tap into when your energy is the highest, and ensure you protect it. 💫 Gone are my law school days where I’d write paper in the library until the wee hours of the morning. I have found that my energy is the highest in the morning. It’s when I’m thinking the most clearly, when I get my best creative ideas down on paper and when I write my best reports. We seek to protect deep work in the mornings at Human Level. How this plays out: writing down the evening before what you are going to work on in the morning and commit to it, give it your full attention, until a pre-allocated time in the morning. Importantly: do not bring in any outside ‘noise’ (emails, slack, calls, etc.)
Ensure you are clear on your strategy - where you want your energy and time to go - and stick to it. We have a strategy at Human Level - obviously - but it’s not always easy to stick to it when you have other interesting non-strategy-aligned projects coming in the door. But saying yes to something means saying no to something else - as we all have limited energy and time to give. We have recently become firmer in applying our strategy to our advisory work, and in the process we are freeing up energy and time for expanding our non-for-profit work (more on this to come, very very very exciting! 🎉)
Organise regular team and brainstorming meetings. Rather than working each of us at our desks then passing the work on to someone else for review, we have been experimenting with an approach of front-loading the substantive brainstorms, before pen is even put on paper. ✍️ And then brainstorming in real time on outlines and content. It makes projects more fun, better - since we benefit from the team brain - and less prone to result in last-minute scrambling to meet deadlines. We have Mondays and Wednesdays as our in-the-office days - the flow of that works really nicely.
Group together tasks that require similar brain power. Instead of doing emails throughout the day, place chunks of time when you will do your email - all in one go. Instead of chatting to team members throughout the day, create virtual ‘office hours’ where you are available for all team questions. This one is not easy to do, but I’m getting better at it. I have right now Inbox Zero (I’m not joking 🥳) thanks to the system of labels and rules that I’ve put in place. If I’m working with you on an active project, I will see your email within 24 hours, and hopefully respond to it too. If the email is about a request to be a speaker/ a coffee/ etc., I’ll see it - but likely only on at the end of the week when I’m going through my non-urgent labels - or perhaps even later if I’m traveling. (Yes, I do have an EA to help me with this but you can do it alone, and email rules can become your best friend).
Invest heavily in personal, professional and team growth - and hold ourselves and others to account for growth. At the end of the day, this is about us becoming better professionals. How do we do that? We learn from our mistakes. We learn from each other. We learn from others. We now have a culture at Human Level of systematically giving feedback on work products and delivery, in alignment with our professional expectations that we have written up so that we are clear on what we can expect of ourselves. Yes, it can feel uncomfortable, but as I say to my team, the most growth I’ve received is when people have been generous enough to give me candid and open feedback. Feedback is a gift. 🎁 We are also organising a number of trainings this year, and looking to more pro-actively build on learnings from others. (Our four active areas of growth are: (1) strategic and systems-thinking; (2) communication; (3) writing and (4) team work. We’ve had a number of book recommendations on those - if you have read a book you think is a must-read, do email me!). If you’re working with us, chances are you’ll receive a survey from us at one point to provide us feedback. 🙌
All of this, why? Because we are the only generation who can make a difference.
And within that, we only have the next five years where we can truly make a difference.
Tipping points are well and truly around the corner so we owe it to ourselves, and the future generations, to give it all we’ve got, to get us to where we need to be.
We’ve got to believe that we can, and give ourselves the best chance to succeed.
Here’s to continuous growth as impact-driven knowledge workers ✨
Anna
