Lessons learned – A musing Mulcahy

The Illusion of Productivity – Procrastinating through Work

I’ve been having interesting conversations with people lately about “how busy we are.” Busyness is an incredible modern affliction. We can fill our days with activity and, in the end, look back and wonder what we’ve accomplished. But, in work and life, if we labour without clear priorities, we often labour in vain.

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Care enough to be constant

Life is a peculiar mix of the constant and inconstant. Our days are filled with variability, and yet, some things seem to remain the same. Our life span is such that the pace of change of certain things seems almost immeasurable. Despite this, as constant as certain things seem, deep down, we know nothing lasts forever.

On Listening to Experts

I recently did something I’ve never done before. I moved a thermostat from one point on my hot water tank to another. I did this based on the advice of a plumber, an “expert” in these matters. Five minutes after I had done the work, my brain started to function, and I wondered why I had done it in the first place.

Find and fix problems, not symptoms

I’ve had my share of medical interventions over the last ten years – sometimes, I feel like I’ve had more than my share. My experience with the medical practitioners I’ve interacted with is that they tend to focus on the symptom the patient presents with. That is what they treat, particularly as that is often their specialisation. A knee surgeon will look at the problematic joint because that is where the patient reports the symptom. That makes sense, right? Doesn’t it? What does this have to do with the broader work and life sphere? What if this is the wrong approach?

On seeing and being seen

I’ve been thinking a lot about perspectives recently. I’ve also written before about the value of different perspectives from a leadership point of view. But, lately, because of something lovely that someone did for me at work, I’ve also experienced what it’s like to be seen.

Understanding outcomes

My teenage daughter lost her phone last week. It’s not hard to imagine how devastating that was for her. So many of us rely on our phones for everything from real-time payments to maintaining our online social identities. For a teenager the potential data loss was one part; the loss of access was another, more important part. (Honestly, she also thought my wife and I would be mad at her, as well, so add that to the emotional stew).

On Feeling Stuck

There’s a feeling I get sometimes. It’s a stressful, sometimes even anxious feeling. And it comes from feeling stuck, creatively or practically. Having come back from a week’s vacation, I should have been feeling energised, but instead, I had a feeling of a significant loss of traction, and it took me a little while to figure out why.