This is excellent, thank you for illustrating a key challenge for creatives that is "especially problematic in a remote-first world". My business was recently acquired, and you've described the challenge better than anyone else I've read (you are hardly the first to notice an underlying problem that also might present as zoom fatigue but is actually over-indexing on zoom meetings). In terms of solutions, I have two thoughts although not anything like an answer (my new company's zoom meeting tendency remains a "tax" on my creative work). First, I think it helps to distinguish between different TYPES of meetings; a taxonomy of meeting types helps us to parse their importance, eg., I know that a "roundtable" does not need me. Second, and I think this is the more profound dynamic: we are not going to need many of these meetings. Technology changes what it means to be social. Here we can look to Asana (and its category of project managers like wrike, which we use and is the best piece of software that I've ever encountered) which is disrupting what it means for an organization to work together (e.g, asana's work graph https://blog.asana.com/2013/11/workgraph/). Put another way, even managers will need to learn how to "become a bit more like developers" as organizations who disrupt (and speed is an enabler of disruption) will find that shrinking the time spent on traditional meetings will help them win.
Thanks! And yeah, it feels like we're all still in the early stages of figuring out how to make things work in such a remote-heavy world. I wouldn't be surprised if what you're describing starts to emerge, where we start differentiating between types of meetings. Right now, we basically have two modes for working: Heads down on your own stuff, or sitting in a zoom with a bunch of people. When you put it that way, it feels unimaginative that we haven't really come up with anything other else yet.
I think of calendars as "reminder to future me that past me wanted me to focus at this time." When inspired, I will take that time to think/build/iterate, and when I am not inspired, they help as a prompt to "you should be thinking about this right now." Thanks for the article - nice nuance.
Great article, Thanks! For myself I would divide my "making" into three phases: Spark, Explore, Edit. I think that you wrapped the first two together, but I find that a lot of my Sparks come from doing things that are not related to the Explore phase directly. When I read a book with an interesting idea, sometimes I will think "how could this idea apply to that thing Im working on?". I have heard that some standup comics say that their best material comes from going out into the world and having experiences. The joke gets written later by exploring the ideas that came from the experiences and linking those ideas together in different ways. Then the editing happens on stage as they try out iterations of the material and rework it based on feedback. If you agree with this process split, then your points become even more salient since the "making" process becomes even less interruptable.
Thanks! I think I agree with that split. If exploring is sitting in front of computer occasionally typing a few words, sparking is, as you said, a kind of open-mined observation, letting yourself wander but paying attention to where you're going.
At least for me, the "spark" phase is much more passive, and requires a lot less prerequisite energy. As long as I'm able to pay attention, those sparks could come at any time. That's not true for me in the explore phase.
That said, I think we still shortcut the spark phase because it looks so...unproductive. We don't let ourselves wander because it feels like we should be doing something, and going out into the world and having experiences doesn't feel like doing anything.
This is excellent, thank you for illustrating a key challenge for creatives that is "especially problematic in a remote-first world". My business was recently acquired, and you've described the challenge better than anyone else I've read (you are hardly the first to notice an underlying problem that also might present as zoom fatigue but is actually over-indexing on zoom meetings). In terms of solutions, I have two thoughts although not anything like an answer (my new company's zoom meeting tendency remains a "tax" on my creative work). First, I think it helps to distinguish between different TYPES of meetings; a taxonomy of meeting types helps us to parse their importance, eg., I know that a "roundtable" does not need me. Second, and I think this is the more profound dynamic: we are not going to need many of these meetings. Technology changes what it means to be social. Here we can look to Asana (and its category of project managers like wrike, which we use and is the best piece of software that I've ever encountered) which is disrupting what it means for an organization to work together (e.g, asana's work graph https://blog.asana.com/2013/11/workgraph/). Put another way, even managers will need to learn how to "become a bit more like developers" as organizations who disrupt (and speed is an enabler of disruption) will find that shrinking the time spent on traditional meetings will help them win.
Thanks! And yeah, it feels like we're all still in the early stages of figuring out how to make things work in such a remote-heavy world. I wouldn't be surprised if what you're describing starts to emerge, where we start differentiating between types of meetings. Right now, we basically have two modes for working: Heads down on your own stuff, or sitting in a zoom with a bunch of people. When you put it that way, it feels unimaginative that we haven't really come up with anything other else yet.
Give the people what they want! Mr Worldwide!
I wonder if Mr Worldwide quarantined.
I think of calendars as "reminder to future me that past me wanted me to focus at this time." When inspired, I will take that time to think/build/iterate, and when I am not inspired, they help as a prompt to "you should be thinking about this right now." Thanks for the article - nice nuance.
Calendars as insurance, telling us what we could be doing if we can't come up with anything better, I like this.
Great article, Thanks! For myself I would divide my "making" into three phases: Spark, Explore, Edit. I think that you wrapped the first two together, but I find that a lot of my Sparks come from doing things that are not related to the Explore phase directly. When I read a book with an interesting idea, sometimes I will think "how could this idea apply to that thing Im working on?". I have heard that some standup comics say that their best material comes from going out into the world and having experiences. The joke gets written later by exploring the ideas that came from the experiences and linking those ideas together in different ways. Then the editing happens on stage as they try out iterations of the material and rework it based on feedback. If you agree with this process split, then your points become even more salient since the "making" process becomes even less interruptable.
Thanks! I think I agree with that split. If exploring is sitting in front of computer occasionally typing a few words, sparking is, as you said, a kind of open-mined observation, letting yourself wander but paying attention to where you're going.
At least for me, the "spark" phase is much more passive, and requires a lot less prerequisite energy. As long as I'm able to pay attention, those sparks could come at any time. That's not true for me in the explore phase.
That said, I think we still shortcut the spark phase because it looks so...unproductive. We don't let ourselves wander because it feels like we should be doing something, and going out into the world and having experiences doesn't feel like doing anything.