Ten weeks of experimentation
Posted: Wed Dec 18, 2024 6:42 am
What is knowledge work and how do you become good at it?
In the introduction to Every workday is a top day. Deal with your busyness and do what really matters (aff.), Mirjam Wiersma asks: “Who taught you to work?” You have learned all sorts of things in your life, but how work works is rarely one of them. Most of us have the freedom to plan our own day, organize tasks and projects, attend meetings, process email. And most of us just do it. Maybe you once received a tip about processing emails. But usually you do your work without thinking too much about how work works. Or better yet: how you work best.
If you decide to turn work into work, it is not so easy to find the right steps to do so. What helps? Standing while working, stopping in the middle of tasks, no coffee? Or using optimal production times, a smartphone diet, cold showers, no snoozing, making tasks concrete and layering your to-do list?
There is no official almanac of knowledge work. Knowledge work is not a protected profession with a fixed education with final terms. In fact, it seems as if no one knows exactly what that knowledge work is, which an estimated five million Dutch people do. So how do you become really good at it?
Wiersma decided to spend a year doing a whole series of experiments to find out what works and what doesn't. That year resulted in a ten-week program that became the book.
The power of diets
Anyone who has ever followed a diet will have noticed an improvement. Apart from the commandments and principles of your diet, you were forced to look more consciously at something that until then was quite automatic, namely eating. By looking more consciously at your food, you immediately make progress. It does not even matter what your exact diet is. Determining eating moments, determining what you do and do not eat in what quantities and when, helps.
Wiersma's experiment has a similar approach: there are so many productivity tips and insights that all have in common that you look more consciously at how you do your work. You question automatisms and conscious behavior takes their place. That is, regardless of what you are going to do more of, already a gain.
In the ten-week program, Wiersma shows how you can get started with proven methods and how you can turn a number of learned improvements into habits. The book thus contains a catalogue saudi arabia telegram data of productivity advice:
The concrete workflow improvements of Getting Things Done (GTD) . Wiersma goes through some of the best practices that help knowledge workers gain more control and overview of their obligations. Such as recording all potential actions, making concrete actions that you actually want to do, leaving room in your agenda for moments of reflection and maintenance of your lists.
Techniques to experience more focus through meditation and breathing exercises . With a short exercise, in which you breathe consciously, you can regain your focus when you are restless and distracted
Techniques to achieve courage and creativity . For example, by doing three things that you actually don't dare to do. Such as: walk into an organization where you don't know anyone and make a coffee or lunch appointment with someone who can do something for you. The famous psychiatrist Albert Ellis (author of How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything-yes, Anything! ) had the subway experiment. To illustrate that you probably assume too much that others will have an opinion about you if you try something, he had a client get on the subway and loudly announce each stop. You can imagine that everyone dreads this and finds it difficult. But everyone who did it was surprised at how little people cared. A few look up and then go on about their own business. These are ways to notice that you should occasionally test your assumptions about what others will find normal or strange.
In the introduction to Every workday is a top day. Deal with your busyness and do what really matters (aff.), Mirjam Wiersma asks: “Who taught you to work?” You have learned all sorts of things in your life, but how work works is rarely one of them. Most of us have the freedom to plan our own day, organize tasks and projects, attend meetings, process email. And most of us just do it. Maybe you once received a tip about processing emails. But usually you do your work without thinking too much about how work works. Or better yet: how you work best.
If you decide to turn work into work, it is not so easy to find the right steps to do so. What helps? Standing while working, stopping in the middle of tasks, no coffee? Or using optimal production times, a smartphone diet, cold showers, no snoozing, making tasks concrete and layering your to-do list?
There is no official almanac of knowledge work. Knowledge work is not a protected profession with a fixed education with final terms. In fact, it seems as if no one knows exactly what that knowledge work is, which an estimated five million Dutch people do. So how do you become really good at it?
Wiersma decided to spend a year doing a whole series of experiments to find out what works and what doesn't. That year resulted in a ten-week program that became the book.
The power of diets
Anyone who has ever followed a diet will have noticed an improvement. Apart from the commandments and principles of your diet, you were forced to look more consciously at something that until then was quite automatic, namely eating. By looking more consciously at your food, you immediately make progress. It does not even matter what your exact diet is. Determining eating moments, determining what you do and do not eat in what quantities and when, helps.
Wiersma's experiment has a similar approach: there are so many productivity tips and insights that all have in common that you look more consciously at how you do your work. You question automatisms and conscious behavior takes their place. That is, regardless of what you are going to do more of, already a gain.
In the ten-week program, Wiersma shows how you can get started with proven methods and how you can turn a number of learned improvements into habits. The book thus contains a catalogue saudi arabia telegram data of productivity advice:
The concrete workflow improvements of Getting Things Done (GTD) . Wiersma goes through some of the best practices that help knowledge workers gain more control and overview of their obligations. Such as recording all potential actions, making concrete actions that you actually want to do, leaving room in your agenda for moments of reflection and maintenance of your lists.
Techniques to experience more focus through meditation and breathing exercises . With a short exercise, in which you breathe consciously, you can regain your focus when you are restless and distracted
Techniques to achieve courage and creativity . For example, by doing three things that you actually don't dare to do. Such as: walk into an organization where you don't know anyone and make a coffee or lunch appointment with someone who can do something for you. The famous psychiatrist Albert Ellis (author of How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything-yes, Anything! ) had the subway experiment. To illustrate that you probably assume too much that others will have an opinion about you if you try something, he had a client get on the subway and loudly announce each stop. You can imagine that everyone dreads this and finds it difficult. But everyone who did it was surprised at how little people cared. A few look up and then go on about their own business. These are ways to notice that you should occasionally test your assumptions about what others will find normal or strange.