Readers of this blog will know that I am an avid consumer of books. In my ebook, From Apps to Zen: 26+ Ideas for Building a Business with Balance, the letter 'K' stands for Knowledge and my goal to read a (non-fiction) book a week (which I have managed this year!).

Being a minimalist, I tend not to buy and collect books but prefer to borrow them from the library or friends or pick them up second-hand in charity shops (the Oxfam bookshop in Bloomsbury is excellent). But there are a few key books that I have bought and that I return to again and again, and I wanted to share a few key ways that these books have shifted my perspectives on work and life.

So if you are looking for a little inspiration or a new direction for 2012, get some of these onto your Christmas wish list!

1. Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long, David Rock

I first saw David Rock being interviewed at the Wisdom 2.0 conference in February this year. He was speaking about mindfulness and our brains and how we can work with our brain rather than against it to be more effective and productive. I bought this book from Amazon before the interview was even finished (so much for paying attention in the present moment!). Using the characters of a self-employed consultant and a corporate executive, he follows their working day showing on one hand the difficulties of the modern workplace, and on the other how much easier things are when we work with our brain. A fascinating book that will illuminate your working habits in a new way.

Perspective Shift: Our pre-frontal cortex (the thinking brain) doesn't cope well with doing more than one task at a time. To get stuff done, single task don't multitask.

2. Full Catastrophe Living: How to Cope with Stress, Pain and Illness Using Mindfulness Meditation, Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn

An expert in the area of stress and meditation, Dr. Kabat-Zinn runs the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. Written over 20 years ago, this book is a practical handbook for anyone who wants to delve deep into the science and practice of mindfulness and how it can be used to deal with stress in our everyday lives. I read this book a year ago during my month in Amsterdam researching mindfulness at work and its key messages have influenced my work today.

Perspective Shift: You only have moments to live. Every moment is a new beginning. We can choose to ruminate in the past or dream about the future, or, choose to live intentionally here in the present, from moment to moment.

3. Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality, Scott Belsky

Scott Belsky is CEO of Behance, one of the most innovative and creative companies in the world. Though his work and his blog, the 99%, he has observed that Edison's statement that genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration is true. Making Ideas Happen is a guidebook to ensuring your creative ideas happen through getting organized, collaborating and leading effectively.

Perspective Shift: Not all projects are created equal. Create an 'energy line' of your current projects in order of the energy they should receive. Use this when prioritising your work.

4. How To Be Free, Tom Hodgkinson

A funny book with a serious message, How To Be Free asks how can we be free of the absurdities of modern life with its focus on working to buy more stuff and to get a bigger house. While I don't aspire to some of the rural bliss that Tom advocates, being too much of a city girl, reading this book was a key driver in my current minimalist lifestyle.

Perspective Shift: Stop working to buy more stuff you don't need to impress people you don't like.

5. Happiness at Work: Be Resilient, Motivated, and Successful - No Matter What, Dr Srikumar S. Rao

Based on his popular courses at top business schools, Dr. Rao poses the question of how we can be happier at work and delivers 35 digestible nuggets of wisdom of how we can get there. A chance find while 'wasting' some time in a bookstore, this book has been a solid companion to me this year.

Perspective Shift: Positive thinking is bad for you. If we stop labelling things that happen to us as 'good' or 'bad' we can start to see that life is just series of moments ebbing and flowing, and that everything, happiness and sadness, passes.

6. Conscious Business: How to Build Value Through Values, Fred Kofman

I came across the work of Fred Kofman and particularly the ideas in this book again in my month in Amsterdam. One of the owners of The Hub also ran a company called Realize! and there was a downloadable summary of this book on their website. A conscious business is one that operates with integrity and creates value for all of its stakeholders, employees and customers. In these interesting times when the Occupy movement are asking for an alternative to capitalism, conscious business with its emphasis on responsibility and authenticity could be the way forward. I wish every business leader would read this book.

Perspective Shift: The power of Unconditional Responsibility. You have the power to become the main character in your life and choose how you respond to external factors.

7. The 4-Hour Work Week: Escape the 9-5, Live Anywhere and Join the New Rich, Tim Ferriss

I have written many times on this blog about Tim's book and how it shifted my perspective from a structured career path until retirement to design my business to suit my lifestyle. It was instrumental in my move in Spain in 2008 and my current part time location independent lifestyle (I will be writing my final blog post of the year from sunny Lisbon next week!). You can take parts of this book with a pinch of salt but Tim's new perspective on work is worth a read.

Perspective Shift: Parkinson's Law: work expands to fill the time available. Set yourself crazy deadlines to work faster and better.

8. ReWork: Change the Way You Work Forever, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson

I love this book so much I dedicated the letter 'R' in From Apps to Zen to it. If you are looking to change your perspective on the workplace, then this book is for you. In fact, buy one for every member of your team. With ideas such as Meetings are Toxic, Long Lists Don't Get Done, and Planning is Guessing, ReWork will debunk some of the persistent myths about what it takes to make a successful business.

Perspective Shift: Good Enough is Fine: find a judo solution one that delivers maximum efficiency with minimum effort.

9. Do More Great Work: Stop the Busywork Start the Work That Matters, Michael Bungay Stanier

A little gem, the book inspires us to stop the ‘busywork’ and start the work that matters. With 15 practical exercises or ‘maps’ Michael takes your through step by step how to identify, start and sustain your Great Work. This book was my holiday reading this year in Vietnam and it allowed me to get a fresh perspective on my work and provides daily reminders about how important my Great Work is and how to focus on it.

Perspective Shift: Tap into the power of Role Models – when you are trying to identify what your Great Work is, think about your top 5 role models in your work and life. What are their common or distinct characteristics? What do they tell you about your Great Work?

I hope one or more of these books has captured your imagination so ask Santa if she will bring one : )

Merry Christmas!

Ever have those days when you feel you get nothing done? Sadly, for many of us those days the norm rather than the exception.

With the UK in recession and our 24/7 connected lifestyles, many of us are finding that our workload, email and daily information diet is increasing exponentially, while our capacity to deal with it all is stuck in analogue mode.

At first glance the solution would seem to be to increase our time through reducing our workload or implementing efficient systems. However, adding extra hours to our working day will not fully solve the problem - if we are working ineffectively work will eventually expand to fill the extra time and we'll be back where we started.

Managing our time better is only one part of the jigsaw. To be fully effective, and thus happier at work, we also need to manage our energy and attention. We need to balance our TEA (Time, Energy and Attention) to optimize our workflow.

Time

We can have an impact on our time at work. Most of us have just too much to do - a never-ended To-Do list of projects and tasks. One exercise I do with my clients is a Brain Dump of projects. Try it out:

List all your current projects and commitments. Yes everything! Professional and personal. Critically review your list. What can you get rid of? What's been around so long it doesn’t matter any more? What can you delegate or outsource? What can you postpone for a few weeks or months?

Remember the things you could do are infinite – your time, energy and attention is not.

Secondly, instead of having a massive To-Do list, have a Stop Doing list. Identify areas of your work that are not creating cashflow, opportunities or visibility and stop doing them. Now.

Thirdly, make less time for your work. This may sound counter-intuitive but Parkinson's Law states that work expands to fill the time available. If you have two weeks to write a report, you will take two weeks. If you are given two hours, you will get it done in two hours. It might not be as 'perfect' as the two week report, but it might be 'good enough'. Experiment with setting yourself ridiculous deadlines and see how this focuses the mind!

Energy

All time is not created equal. There are times during the day when you are at the top of your game, awake, focussed and in your flow. And then there are the times when taking a nap could be your most productive work.

Listen to your body (and mind). Start to notice when your productive times happen and ring-fence these for your Great Work. Leave the reactionary work like emailing or meetings to other times.

Many things impact on our energy at work from how much sleep we got the night before to that one colleague who just drains you. Be mindful of what drains or adds to your energy and seek to minimise or mitigate against the negative energy and expand the positive. Have a read of 55 ways to get more energy for some inspiration.

Attention

Finally, we can work on managing our attention to improve our effectiveness at work. Practices like yoga or meditation can help to focus our attention as in theses practices we gently focus on bringing the attention to the breath again and again.

Shutting down your distractions will help to focus your attention so shut off your email, turn your phone to silent and close down any social media if you have an important piece of work to focus on. Brower extensions such as StayFocused for Chrome or LeechBlock for FireFox can limit your access to certain programmes such as Gmail or Facebook if you don't yet have the discipline yourself. For writing try WriteMonkey for PCs (I am using it to write this blog post) or OmmWriter for the Mac to provide an application free writing space.

If you would like to learn more about being more effective at work, this autumn I will be officially launching my Mindful at Work programme, an innovative combination of productivity training, awareness and mind/body practices helping employees move from a stressful, reactionary workday towards being proactive, focused and relaxed. To find out about upcoming workshops, do sign up to the Mindful at Work mailing list.

 

 

Scanning my twitterfeed yesterday, a tweet linking to an article called "Social Media: The End or Start of a Golden Age?" naturally caught my eye.

The article in question was by Vivek Wadhwa, an academic and researcher from Duke University in the US. Mr Wadhwa had recently been to a conference where Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, and other commentators were debating whether the internet is rotting our and our children's brains.

We've heard this debate before. On one side sit authors like Carr who argue that due to the plasticity of the brain, the internet is fundamentally changing the way we think and communicate, with the prediction that "mankind will lose its ability to perform 'deep thinking;' that we will become as shallow as the websites we visit."

On the other side sit commentators like Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everyone and the recent Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age. Shirky is a web positivist - he sees the internet as a force for good that connects people and has the potential to bring about significant social change (some of which we are already seeing in the Arab world). Mr Wadhwa sits in this camp dismissing the naysayers in the same vein as the clergy in the late eighteenth century who thought that the mass production and availability of novels would rot the brains of the young people.

So where do I sit in this debate? Well, somewhere in the middle. I truly believe that the social web is an amazing thing - it opens up the potential of what we can achieve to a global audience; it allows us to interact with loved ones all over the world; it allows us to be as informed about the world as we wish. However, our increasing digital lives, where we are never very far from a computer, tablet or smart phone, has meant that sometimes we are just not very present. The danger is that we can miss the tiny opportunities and moments that make life interesting because we are buried in our device rather than open to the world. In this way, I think I am most aligned to the views of William Power in Hamlet's Blackberry who advocates balance, the smart use of our technologies, and disconnecting from the crowd, now and again.

But what has this got to do with multitasking? Well, one of the major disagreements between the two camps of opinion is that of multitasking versus monotasking or singletasking. The first camp say that multitasking is bad for you and that the internet is rendering us incapable of deep thought; the second camp say that our brain is adapting to this new phenomenon and that our children are becoming excellent multitaskers.

Another presenter at this same conference, Clifford Nass, is firmly in the first camp. He talked about how multitasking — walking and talking, eating and reading, texting while watching TV — is making us inefficient, distracted, and hurting our memory. In the second camp is one of Mr Wadhwa's colleagues Cathy Davidson, author of the forthcoming book Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn. Davidson talked about the industrial workplace which was designed for monotasking, in which an individual takes one task from inception to completion. She asserts, however, that the harder we concentrate on one task, the more we miss everything else happening around us. This is the phenomenon of 'attention blindness'. Wadhwa concludes that monotasking, in this context, not multitasking, limits us.

I think both arguments are wrong.

Nass's arguments about doing more than one thing at a time totally miss the point. The fact that we can walk and talk at the same time or cook a meal while emptying the dishwasher or text and watch TV is because these activities do not require much thought. They are embedded routines controlled by our basal ganglia not requiring any original thinking by our pre-frontal cortex. If you were not used to cooking, however, you might find it difficult to cook and do other chores at the same time. Similarly, just because you can watch TV and text as the same time doesn't mean that you are really paying attention to either.

I also disagree with Wadhwa's opinion that monotasking limited us. What mindfulness teaches us is to become aware of awareness itself. When we use mindfulness in a work context we can create a relaxed state of focus that provides an expansive awareness, not a narrow 'fight or flight' contraction of awareness. In this way we can really open up the potential of the task in hand to new insights. This is impossible when we are distracted by our email notifications, texts or tweets.

What do you think? Are we becoming better multitaskers?

 

 

Do you feel overwhelmed by the ever increasing choice of networks and platforms on the social web?

This mini-podcast takes a quick look at choice and why less is sometimes more.

Grab a cup and tea and press play!

This is one of my favourite videos of the year so far.

Chade-Meng Tan, Jolly Good Fellow at Google (that is his actual job title!) talks about how compassion in the workplace is good for people and great for the bottom line.

A compelling business case for more compassion in the workplace. Chade-Meng - I salute you!

How I would have loved to attend the Wisdom 2.0 Conference last month. A three day event all about living with awareness and compassion in the digital age - it was slightly up my street : )

Finances and time did not lend themselves to a trip to Silicon Valley but thanks to the wonders of live-streaming, I was lucky to catch some of the talks, one of which I want to share with you today.

David Rock is the author of 'Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus and, Working Smarter All Day Long'. He has spent the past three years working with neuroscientists and workers to discover what happens with our brain at work. David's straightforward ideas about how we can work better with our brain rather than against it echoed with the work I have been doing around mindfulness at work and I bought his book on Amazon before he had even finished speaking (how's that for paying attention!).

Seriously, though the ideas in this talk and David's book might just change the way you work forever.

And that's worth paying attention to.

Your Brain at Work from Wisdom 2.0 Conference on Vimeo.

This week I am reading a fantastic book called 'Your Brain at Work'.

The author David Rock, spent three years talking to neuroscientists about how the brain functions and why we act and react the way we do at work. One of the insights from the book refers to our pre-frontal cortex - the part of the brain that controls 'conscious thought' - those activities that require mental effort. David's research found that this cortex is a hungry beast and uses up a lot of glucose or sugars when it is hard at work. These sugars deplete quickly which explains why we reach for sugary drinks or cakes during the afternoon lull.

Essential to the proper working of this cortex is giving it a refreshing break now and again and using other areas of our brain either through physical exercise or meditative practices.

With that in mind (no pun intended!), here are 4 digital ways to get your Zen on at work:

1.   Equanimity App 

Equanimity is a neat little app for the iPhone. Set a meditation time, for example 5 minutes, and a Tibetan bowl will ring once. Sit quietly, eyes closed and focus on your breathing. Focus on the sound of the breath as you inhale and exhale. Feel the cool air of the in-breath and warmer air of the out-breath as you breathe. 

After your time is up the bowl rings three times and it’s time to get back to work. A great way to refresh and refocus during the day.

2.   Just-a-Minute Meditation 

If guided meditations are more your thing, then have a look at Just-a-Minute with their free one minute guided meditations, with or without background music. Choose a concentration meditation at the beginning of the day to get you focussed on your important work. Listen to an energising meditation after lunch to counteract the afternoon lull. Follow a relaxing meditation during stressful moments in your day. 

Meditations can be played direct from the site or downloaded to your iPod or smartphone for listening on the go.

3.   Shibumi App

Shibumi is a Japanese word with its roots in the Zen aesthetic ideals of art and architecture, encompassing ideas such as elegant simplicity, effortless effectiveness and beautiful imperfection.

Matthew E. May wrote a book, The Shibumi Strategy, about these concepts and how they can be applied to everyday life, and there is a handy app to go with the book. Part of the app is the shibumi card deck with 52 cards. The 11 Principle cards contain explanations of Zen aesthetic and design ideals such as Kanso (simplicity), Datsuzoku (break from routine) and Fukinsei (imperfection). Practice cards lead you through Japanese business techniques such as Hansei (reflection) and Mantra (purpose). Path cards contain introspective questions to help you on your Shibumi path. Philosophy cards contain inspirational quotes.

I use Shibumi if I am stuck on a problem, having a frustrating day or simply looking for some inspiration. I flick through the beautifully designed cards on my phone, reflect on the concepts, and usually find something that inspires or helps me move forward.

4.   Meditation Reminders 

There are a host of meditation timers and reminders that you can either download to your desktop or set up in a web browser and set them at specific or random intervals to chime. I use them as a reminder to stop what I am doing for a moment and recalibrate. I ask myself: "am I working mindfully and with intention or am I just being active and busy?". I also use them as reminder to get up from my computer and take a walk around the room or even just stretch my neck and head to ease tension from sitting hunched over the laptop.

Two good reminders are this one from Dart Frog Media which sits on your desktop or this browser or desktop based one from Mindful Technology.

I hope you have a Zen day!

[image with thanks to pittaya via CC]

Yesterday my broadband decided not to work.

I turned the router on and off. Unplugged at the wall. But nothing. Just a red light staring at me. Reminding me.

You. Have. No. Internet.

After the initial frustration wore off, I decided to approach the day from a different perspective. What could I get done without the Internet? In the end, it was quite a lot:

Read the rest of this post »

I have been following blogger and fellow yogi Gwen Bell for some time now and her considered writing and mindfullness always makes me think. As a yoga practitioner and meditation newbie, I was drawn to her recent post on 10 Social Media Meditations.

Working on building 8fold as a social enterprise, attending the School for Social Entrepreneurs, co-organising RewireLondon – a non-profit venture, managing StartaTheatreCompany.com, as well as my consulting, teaching and writing work, can mean that some weeks are a little crazy!

When you are logging onto your email at 6am before you go do a day’s work for a client or find yourself constantly Tweeting at midnight on your iPhone, you start to wonder if this is the best way of being effective. Gwen’s meditations (which come as a lovely printable PDF for you to hang above your desk), remind us to stop once in a while and breathe.

The idea of being mindful about what ‘work’ we are doing is something I hold very dear to my heart. Being busy and effective can be two separate things. One of the things I am trying to achieve with 8fold, is to help people use their digital tools to create more time and space for other things in life, like travel and family, or just finishing work at a decent hour!

Have a read of Gwen’s 10 meditations. If you feel they resonate, print them out and post them near your computer.

Then … turn off the computer.

Have a great bank holiday weekend!