Look outside your current 4 walls

When we’re no longer confined to our homes, just think of all the options that will open to you: you can work at a coffee shop, of course, but you can also work…..with your friends? A lot? And your kids will be in school, or in care, but most importantly, not with you? You can go work in a library, or a co-working space, or a park, or a different co-working space. What matters is that it will not be you, in your home, alone — unless you want it to be.

Source: Anne Helen Petersen - Culture Study by Anne Helen Petersen, https://annehelen.substack.com/people/799855-anne-helen-petersen

This… I hadn’t even realized this. While I am very content working from my home office most days, the future choice of work environment is… freeing?

The funny thing with my current job is that I worked all around campus all the time. The only real difference now is that I’m not physically present in meetings. Technology has caught up to that need now. Offices are nice but don’t need to be mandatory now.

Permanent link: Http://blog.angrybunnyman.com/look-outside-your-current-4-walls

Privacy protection and humor? Nice. 👍🏻

DuckDuck

I’m trying new browsers that are stricter with user privacy and I thought this image from the on boarding process for DuckDuckGo was pretty funny.

Permanent link: Http://blog.angrybunnyman.com/duckduck

Careers as adventure

Quests are actionable. They are understandable. They aren’t tasks. They are work with a bit of poetry. They are always front-of-mind, and if I’m not on a quest, my wife can confirm that my only goal at the point is, “Find a quest.”

A title is a sign-post. It tells you where you are. A title is a comforting reminder of where you are, but what is more interesting is where you are going next and how you will get there. This will involve a quest. I stand firmly behind my career title opener because it begins a vital conversation; it’s starting a story with the human across the table, not about what title they want, but what quest they need to begin.

Source: https://randsinrepose.com/archives/you-are-going-on-a-quest/ by , Rands in Repose

I love this framing. My current workplace does this fairly well… or at least did - the newer generation of leaders seems much more linear advancement focused. My career exists because of the adjacent possibilities of whatever I’m currently doing.

It’s side quests becoming the quest.

Permanent link: Http://blog.angrybunnyman.com/careers-as-adventure

organizing by color

Organizing bookshelves by color is by no means a modern novelty (nor is shelving books spine-in, but that’s a different kettle of fish). In 1848, English publisher Joseph Cundall remarked how, “in the British Museum, books of Divinity are bound in blue, History in red, Poetry in yellow, and Biography in olive colored leather. This is an excellent plan in a large library.”[i] Private collectors of the past were also concerned about the colors of their bookshelves: either as a navigational aid or as an effort to present an image of uniformity.

Source: https://www.bookhistoria.com/blog/no-mere-foppery-a-defense-of-rainbow-bookshelves

I wish books were still color-coded by subject! I prefer color blocking books - I find it soothing. For a large number of books, I’d organize by topic and then by color.

My work bookshelf is color organized. Interestingly, that shows trends in book cover art in the productivity sphere. Yellow was the new red. Blue is the new yellow.

Permanent link: Http://blog.angrybunnyman.com/organizing-by-color

On Ranking

A high SAT score is a measure of whether or not you scored well on the SAT. That’s it. A bank balance is a measure of how much money you have in the bank. That’s all.

In the face of the difficulty the system has in measuring things that don’t measure, we create proxies. Things like popularity as a proxy for whether a work of human creativity has worth or not. Seth’s Blog: https://seths.blog/2021/02/ranking-the-unrankable/

The human brain remembers things best when it has multiple traits to do so. Measures, rankings, location, color - all of that make things more memorable. But they are just traits.

These are not value. Value is not a measurable thing. It can be defined by a person but that is only that person’s definition. And it says more about them than you.

Permanent link: Http://blog.angrybunnyman.com/on-ranking

On doing versus improving.

When we do our job, what happens to it? Does it go away, to be replaced by tomorrow’s endless list of tasks? What would happen if we had enough confidence and trust to reconsider the implications of how we do what we do? Seth’s blog: https://seths.blog/2021/02/im-just-doing-my-job/

I have never been great at just doing a thing. I am regularly trying to find ways to “do better.” With work, it’s valuable because it keeps me advancing - new skills, new efficiencies, better results.

But. In life? This can be a problem. Take hobbies. Hobbies should be fun and enriching. I have an incredibly hard time just enjoying a hobby if there is “no value” it produces. My last hobby? I turned it into a business. And 5 years later, I was completely tired of it.

Now I don’t do that anymore.

Though I’ve tried, I can’t convince myself that doing a thing because I like it is enough. And that’s sad.

#LateStageCapitalism

Permanent link: Http://blog.angrybunnyman.com/on-doing-versus-improving.