Euan Semple's Blog, page 97

Structure

Hearing Mollie deal with the challenge of the unstructured nature of University after the imposed order and discipline of school brought back memories. Wandering around wondering what I was meant to be doing, feeling guilty about not doing it, lost in a slippery quagmire of expectations. Looking back I regret not having dealt with the challenge better. I would have done so much better with what I know now.

And what do I know now? After ten years of working for myself, and much of the time alone, I have become so much better at knowing what I need to do, refining my ability to do so effectively, and proactively seeking out the next challenge and opportunity for learning. In fact just in terms of reading I read more, and "better" now than at any time in my life. I am also more disciplined about how I spend my time and building my own structures to do so. Applying and refining David Allen's principles from Getting Things Done has been instrumental in this and a life saver in so many situations.

But this is not for everyone. I often make the mistake of thinking that everyone can, and should, work like this. I have to remember that some people respond better to an imposed structure, to tasks delegated by a boss, to clear and extrinsic rewards. I forget that for many the daily commute is part of that structure as is sharing space with others in an office.

My worry is that these structures look likely to become less common in the future. As our large corporations crumble under their own inefficiency more people will work for themselves or in small groups. Fewer people will commute to offices. As artificial intelligence nibbles away at work tasks the nature of the "knowledge work" that is left will become less routine and call for more individual input.

The comforts of our structures will become liabilities rather than benefits.

Growing up

While proud and delighted at Mollie leaving for university at the weekend, we have also all been dealing with the emotional wrench of such a dislocation. It got me thinking what a particularly middle class right of passage this mostly is. Talking to a builder and his wife who we met on a walk yesterday reinforced this thought. Their kids hadn't gone to college and so the transition out of the family home was much gentler and more gradual. The need for toughening up and coping with the emotional upheaval had been avoided.

I've also been thinking about the many ex boarding school students I encountered in my own university experience at St. Andrews. How much more grown up and intimidating they seemed to those of us who had stayed at home and gone to comprehensive school. In the hey day of public schools, the days of the empire, the emotional wrenches started earlier, the toughening up of the managerial class was more systematic.

I remember my own transition into management and the stress of feeling that I was expected to be "in charge of" other people. The pressure to don the armour of the suit and tie was enormous. I was expected to join the grown ups.

I thought of friends who change as they climb the managerial ladder and of middle managers I meet who talk managerial bollocks and cultivate aloof distance from others. This urge to differentiate themselves as different, as more responsible, as more grown up, is endemic.

You will have seen me dismissively using the phrase "the grown-ups" to describe those in business who over enthusiastically assume this fictitious mantle of responsibility. Who throw their weight around at work, assuming that the "children" they are "responsible for" need controlling. Being hard nosed. Making tough decisions.

But do they really grow up? Is all of this toughening up a good thing? Does it result in well balanced human beings, happy in themselves, capable of inspiring and supporting others? Is it all necessary?

I wonder...

Every time

Every time I define myself by difference
Every time I indulge in righteous indignation
Every time I assert myself over a fictitious other
Every time I play "the hard man" to hide my fears

I make it easier for Trump to exist.

Hope

This struck me as describing what bogging can be at its best.

Hope - by Victoria Safford.

"Our mission is to plant ourselves at the gates of Hope — not the prudent gates of Optimism, which are somewhat narrower;
nor the stalwart, boring gates of Common Sense;
nor the strident gates of Self-Righteousness, which creak on shrill and angry hinges (people cannot hear us there; they cannot pass through);
nor the cheerful, flimsy garden gate of “Everything is gonna be all right.”
But a different, sometimes lonely place,
the place of truth-telling, about your own soul first of all and its condition,
the place of resistance and defiance,
the piece of ground from which you see the world both as it is and as it could be, as it will be;
the place from which you glimpse not only struggle, but joy in the struggle.
And we stand there, beckoning and calling, telling people what we are seeing, asking people what they see."

Finding life amazing

We think that we know all about life and have made it ordinary.

We label things and think that means that we understand them.

We focus so much on getting what we don't have that we miss what we do.

We get upset when life isn't as it should be without realising that it is perfect as it is.

We want the ups without the downs and fail to see that one can't exist without the other.

While doing all this we forget the power of just being.

We forget how amazing life is and how lucky we are that, despite incredible odds against it happening, we are here at all.

We might as well relax more and enjoy it while we are.

Drawing lines

Last night I read some of the anti-semitism being shared on Twitter. In one tweet the poster asked Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, whether his company was unable to police anti-semitism or just unwilling to. I then thought of Facebook’s decision to delete the iconic image of the child running along a road in Vietnam because it had crossed some line of decency (they later reversed this decision).

Both of these examples reminded me of the early days of the internet when too incautious an exploration of Usenet would invariably expose you to really disturbing images or ideas. We learned to look away, but we also learned what fellow humans are capable of.

It takes a lot of work by dedicated teams to filter extremes of human nature from any of the public facing platforms. Given my view that the greatest opportunity afforded by the internet is that it is a mirror, part of me thinks that this is important work – part of me worries that it is protecting us from ourselves.

Where do we draw our lines? Do we draw our own or do we rely on others to draw them for us? Is it better to be made aware of the darker side of our nature and forced to face up to it - or do we need protected from it?

Maybe there is no easy answer…

Mirror, mirror

Mirror, mirror

"The internet is full of idiots."
"The internet is dumbing us down."
"The internet is spoiling our kids."
"The internet is destroying society."

The internet is wires and code.

The problem is you.
The problem is me.
I can't change you.
You can't change me.

But we can see each other
[waves]

Staying ahead by slowing down

I have always loved the phrase "Don't just do something stand there." It conveys the paradox that very often doing things is less productive than taking a moment to reflect. A moment to work out what is really going on. A moment to ponder what we we really want to happen. A moment to gather ourselves before stepping back into the hectic stream of modern life. 


This willingness to be still is becoming ever more important. The fad for mindfulness in the geek and startup communities that has emerged over the last few years is a sign that chasing the newest shiny thing and frenetically pursuing the ultimate in productivity eventually takes its toll. We end up "busily bored" as Todd Henry calls it. Never having enough time but constantly wondering what the point is.

I used the phrase "Staying ahead by slowing down" in my talk at Learning Live last week. My theme was that we need to get better at our most human characteristics if we are to add value when AI and robots can run rings around us in terms of efficiency. Rather than efficiency, effectiveness needs to be our main focus, doing the right things for the right reasons. Sometimes sitting quietly in a room on our own, even for a little while, is the best way to work out what those are.

Being at work

A long time ago I wrote a post entitled "When an office becomes a liability". It was about how having an office was shifting from being a status symbol, a place to get things done, to being a place where the network was slower than at home, someone controlled what apps and technology you could use, and your creative energy was sapped by endless meetings.

Ten years later, having experienced over that time the joy and increased effectiveness of being a freelancer in charge of my own productivity, I marvel at organisations agonising over whether or not to give their staff the choice to work at home, over engineering the technology they feel is needed to allow them to do so, and having time wasting meetings about whether they can be trusted not to waste their time!

Work is more about attitude of mind than place. Most of us can do it anywhere. I am writing this on my phone in bed! It could be a report or an email. I could even be taking part in a phone conference - with the camera turned off!

Too often being at work is about being seen, about politics, about insecurity. Given how much time and valuable natural resources we waste getting to and from the places where we may, or may not, be able to get things done, we need to get braver about taking the alternatives seriously.

We the media

A friend in Australia just asked me what I thought about an article on celebrities leaving Twitter as a result of trolls and the amount of vitriol they increasingly face. My initial response was "Don’t follow celebrities or people who post bile! Oh, and stop reading newspaper articles about it."

I said this for two reasons. The first is that I see none of what she was talking about. I don't see celebrities, nor the appalling behaviours that they unfortunately attract, when I visit Twitter. My experience is deliberately limited to the 100 smart people who I pay attention to on there.

The second is that the journalist who wrote the article works for a newspaper and is part of the media engine that has a commercial interest in building up celebrities and thereby making them a potential target for the envy, and at the worst abuse, that they attract.

Many years ago, when Stephen Fry began using Twitter and the early conversations he was able to have in the relatively small world of Twitter users began to turn into something very different, someone commented that "On Twitter celebrity doesn't scale". My response was that the problem was with celebrity not with Twitter.

But Twitter chose to aspire to be a media company. They chose to be part of the problem not the solution. If they are going to play that game they have to take responsibility and be more assertive in managing the behaviour of those who use their service.

As to the long term, the Internet is a mirror that is forcing us to see aspects of our behaviour that we may not be very proud of. I remain optimistic that, eventually, more of us will realise that "we all have a volume control on mob rule." We will take responsibility, both individually and collectively, for what we link to and what we ignore, what we react to and what we resist. We will more actively manage the attention which both celebrities and trolls crave.

We will realise, at last, that we are the media.