I recently rediscovered the movie Encino Man, with my kids.

The movie, released in 1992 is about two teenagers from Encino, Los Angeles who discover a caveman in their backyard, frozen in a block of ice. The teenagers manage to “unfreeze’ and revive the caveman who must learn to live how in the 20th century.

Of course, so many aspects of modern-day existence make no sense at all to the caveman.

It got me thinking about the aspects of our working lives that make no sense at all if we look through fresh eyes.

Here a few things that come to mind…

It makes no sense to commute to work at the same time each day spending hours simultaneous cursing the traffic and being the traffic.

It makes no sense for men to put a small noose around their necks and women to put their feet into pointy, spiky torture devices at the start of each workday.

It makes no sense to expect ourselves and each other to work as if we don’t have families and other passions.

It makes no sense to work for eight straight hours five days a week (complying to a standard created in 1938 to protect factory workers from exploitation).

It makes no sense to try to cram all of our much-needed play, rest & recovery into two days of the week.

It makes no sense to pay people based on the amount of time they spend in the office instead of based the actual amount of work they produce.

It makes no sense to think about work as a location when it’s now (for most of us) an activity.

It make no sense to continuously rank ourselves when we yearn for connection.

It makes no sense to keep pretending that we always have all our sh#t together.

It makes no sense to betray the truth of we are to be a good “cultural fit”.

Why would we go back to how we worked “before Coronavirus” when so much of it make no sense at all?

SELF-FIDELITY PRACTICE TO PLAY WITH

This week I invite you to through fresh eyes to reimagine, reinvent and redesign how you work.

Here are a few questions you could explore:

What structures no longer serve me?

How might I be the architect of a working life that uplifts me, my colleagues and those I care most about?

What would it look like to give my working life a gentler structure?

 

It is the task of the architect to give life a gentler structure.

Alvar Aalto