The positive consequence of getting used to boredom is that you allow time for things to happen.
You do not check every other day if something is happening, you do not ask for a new report, a new deadline, a new update, you do not seek daily rewards, you do not rush to change the inputs hoping for a faster outcome.
You have a plan and you stick to it.
You’ll let me know if the plan changes.
Fake dilemmas make the world flat.
To make decisions that are not impulsive and destructive, we need to be able to add shades (and data) in between the dichotomy.
Some shades regarding remote work from three recent studies: The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers; The Blinkered Boss: How Has Managerial Behavior Changed with the Shift to Virtual Working?; Work from Home & Productivity: Evidence from Personnel & Analytics Data on IT Professionals.
Note: thanks Ethan Mollick for sharing the studies in the first place.
In whatever you do that matters to you, make sure to put a touch of your own unique personality.
When you apply for a job, when you write a blog post, when you deliver a speech, when you interact with others, when you are in a meeting, when you are bringing your boss up to speed, when you are out with your kids or talk to your parents. In every single situation there are many rules that have but one job: to make things predictable and dull.
Rules are important, and you should follow them. Few people are happy when all of their expectations are disregarded.
But remember to add a touch of your own unique personality. Few people are happy when all they see around is predictable and dull.
It is a difficult balance to strike. Just don’t forget who you are and what you stand for.
Who owns customer research? is a misleading question.
A better one is: Who can aggregate customer research and plan actions?
Research does not end with someone sitting down with a customer and asking a bunch of questions. Research is about putting the pieces together, identifying patterns, anticipating trends, sharing the knowledge and the insights, and eventually enabling everyone interested to access all this at their own convenience.
If you do not have someone responsible to aggregate customer research, you are not doing customer research at all.
Herding information will eventually keep you from doing.
Articles, white papers, eBooks, webinars, podcasts, online classes, books, live and virtual events, tutorials are great resources, when they serve your higher purpose. But they can quickly become a self-serving treat: “just as our brains like empty calories from junk food, they can overvalue information that makes us feel good but may not be useful” (Assoc. Prof. Ming Hsu).
And clearly, the whole space (physical and mental) you occupy while you feed on information is space you cannot use otherwise. Is space you are taking away from focus, care, delivery.
There will be times in your digital life when you will be subscribed to plenty of newsletters, getting updates from a wealth of podcasts, consuming bottomless blogs, and recycling all of that in social media posts of doubt relevance.
Stop that now.
Find the bare minimum you need and bring the focus back to doing.
For your own sake.
In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.
Herbert A. Simon
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