Skip to main content

Individual Contribution

By Bamboo In The Wind

I am realizing that liking for individual contribution is important no matter what you do for a living. It stems from hobbies or liking. They tend to be personal and usually are doable without anyone else's help. e.g. Reading, Gardening, Travelling, Exercising.

The problem is when we work, we fill up our day with a number of activities that are generated not out of liking but out of interaction needs and hence they tend to be an annoyance. Often the label is a prioritization problem (i.e. urgent vs. important etc). Even when we have the choice to prioritize we do not focus on work of our liking, something that stimulates, something that creates (thoughts, artifacts, collaborations, etc.).

When the workplace ceases to be available to you, you are left on your own and then the time that is available to you is hard to spare. There is too much of it with too little hands-on work (individual contribution) of our liking. 

Then we simply do not know how to spare our time even when it's abundant.

The takeaway is to develop a liking for doing work yourself and in more than one area of your work!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Checks and balances!

By Bamboo In The Wind
Defining a good purpose, setting a target goal and getting people working on them is usually not enough! There are too many aspects involved in getting the results we want. For example, there is an aspect of painting the big picture, working on motivation management, productivity tracking, building experimentation labs, and erecting resilient systems that systematize the workflows. Just putting bodies to work and defining milestones rarely achieves the right results. The other aspects that help march towards the milestones in an orderly manner, they are equally important. At the very least, they make objectives widely understandable and results more attainable. The job of a thought leader is to enable progress and enable recovery. Therefore, it is never enough to have just ideas. Those with ideas also have the responsibility to assemble the work environment in such a way as to create situations containing the energy disperses. Energy dispersal from lack of clarity, loss of motivation, ...
Post a Comment
Next »

Choking the communication channel.

By Bamboo In The Wind
There are instances where everything looks in order. Structures are rightly in place. Right roles are defined. Responsibilities are distributed. Bi-directional open communication is expected to take place. And with that, collective work is expected to turn out productive. Yet, when the action begins, everything breaks apart. Productivity dwindles, cooperation is missing, and ad-hoc interactions are common-place That creates chaos. No one appears in charge even though there is someone responsible. It clearly is a sign of broken communication channels. A well-orchestrated workplace focuses on methods to communicate grounds-up and top-down. It encourages patient listening, internalizing and responding rather than reacting. All effective open communication channels are a result of making such communication possible. Often, the structures are set such that you centralize communication of every bit of your activity to someone in the hierarchy. Over time it turns into a permission-based inter...
1 comment
Next »

Unentangle.

By Bamboo In The Wind
Some circumstances warrant protecting your time and effort. Saying no to everything and ruthlessly keeping space becomes your priority. Space that can hold the opportunity to take something that excites you. There are distractions thrown your way. Carrots are dangling in front of you, making you believe that a brighter future lies in following a defined path. They are others' views of the opportunities, not yours. When you are picky about what you want to do - the right way to go is to say no until you can say whole body yes to something that ignites you. Eventually, what you do may work or not. But you made your choice. Some other circumstances warrant a mechanism for creating opportunities. You ought to find ways to use your time and effort to do something worthwhile. Say yes to what comes your way, and keeping up with exploration provides experience. Experience in what among many options to pick from. By knowing what those options involve. When you are open about what you want t...
Post a Comment
Next »