Joyful effort
(I posted these thoughts in response to a thread here: http://www.talesfromthe.net/jon/?p=39)
I am reflecting on the points made about conflict and greatness. Coming to a related crossroads in both personal and professional life. I think I’ve done some ambitious work over the last few years. I seen my best self rise to meet a lot of hardship over the last year and I do feel proud of all those things. I think in time I will probably say that I was glad to have an opportunity to see what I am capable of.
At the same time, I’m tremendously burned out and longing for peace. I ALSO remember a time where I worked hard on a team and we were in flow. We had each other’s backs, we passed the ball fluidly to whomever was open for the shot and we celebrated each win as a team win. Maybe its just nostalgia playing tricks on me, but I long to get back to that experience.
I want my family life to feel like that too. I’m not saying I want to run my family like a business. I’m saying I want my family to be a good team. I want my family to respect and honor each others’ dreams and work together on them. I feel like we’ve been silo’d just like we say Microsoft is.
I’ve been writing a lot about the emotional aspects of ideas and change. A common thread from people I talk with is this notion that the term “work/life balance” is misleading. These are not two separate entities to be “balanced”. The threads between work and personal concerns are deeply connected and interwoven. We tend to work out the same life and relationship themes in both our personal and professional lives. At least I tend to.
So I have been consulting for the IdeAgency team and witnessing a team culture that is definitely NOT in flow. At the same time, Steven is right, I’ve produced some of my best work and met some incredibly talented people. Is it possible to produce great work with joyful effort?? I would sure love to think so. But I really don’t know.
I used to joke that I only write well about unhappy topics. I don’t write happy songs, and I don’t write happy poems. So that leaves prose. I would like to start telling a different story. I would like to tell stories about work and corporate life that help people feel less trapped, feel more personally empowered. That was what I loved so much about Ad Astra - our stories. Stories have power. Stories show people how to act differently. So who wants to start crafting a new story about how renaissances happen?
December 22nd, 2007 at 1:04 pm
Well said, Eve, and thanks for reposting. Combining a couple of my responses over there:
One thing to keep in mind was that Ad Astra often wasn’t in flow; for example the time between June 2006 and January 2007 where we hit our stride with the January workshops and Mashups. And while as you say we did great work during that period, there was also stuff that didn’t come out anywhere near as well as it could have (the December Mashup leaps to mind). It all looks a lot rosier in retrospect, especially since we *did* start to establish flow and people generally got to new and better roles … believe me, though, at the time it didn’t feel like flow.
Totally agree with the point about stories and being very conscious of narratives we’re crafting: in work, in life. I like the term “balance” because it conveys a positively-stable equilibrium, and tend to use in the more general sense of “taking into account”, e.g., “balancing multiple considerations” … unfortunately sometimes it does have the connotations of trading one thing off against another. Like we’re discussing in the dream job thread, you want to look for the opportunities that advance your career while having it help create and fit into the life you want to lead — and vice versa.
There’s a great quote I first read in bell hooks Teaching to Transgress: “I could make the past mean anything I want, as long as I was honest.” When I’m concentrating on future-looking narratives, I treat the past as a “backstory”: while respecting it and be honest about it, use my current perspectives to re-interpret it in a way that is most useful to me going forward.
And good point as well about remembering to focus on joy — and all the other related positive emotions like happiness, meaning, and (my personal fave) bliss.
jon