👩🏻🔬 April; reading books, running experiments
Defragging the brain
I think I’m back.
If you caught my March newsletter, you might have caught a whiff of the mehs. And that would have been very perceptive of you. After a few weeks of feeling pretty flat, I’ve started to emerge and regular programming is starting to resume.
One sign that I knew I was feeling better is that last week I read three books. Given I’ve only read six books this year, this was quite the achievement. (Keep scrolling for some short reviews of those books).
Last Tuesday, I had the treat of finally meeting the wonderful human that is Tim Duggan. We’ve floated around each other on the internet for a few years, but never met in person. Listening to him talk last week at the launch of his third book, Work Backwards, I was reminded of the many reasons I work for myself, and how I’ve been a little delinquent recently on maximising some of those.
You see, lately I’ve been giving myself a bit of a hard time for not doing ‘enough’. A mixture of a sore brain and a tough market are not a good combination for ‘shooting the lights out’ when it comes to business performance. Listening to Tim, I was reminded that everything is seasonal, and we get to choose where we want to put our energy. With this reminder fresh in my mind, I decided that for the next couple of months I will play with a four day week experiment, to give myself a bit of recovery time to close out this funny financial year.
Whilst I am a fan of the four day week concept, I’ve often thought it wouldn’t really work for me. I enjoy a huge amount of flexibility and I like to just flow work into the weeks, and have it happen around other things I enjoy. The term ‘work life balance’ has always made me have a bit of sick in my mouth AND my eyes roll fully back in my skull. Because in my mind it’s all ‘life’, just different activities that we get to schedule and work around. (I also learnt from Tim that this makes me an ‘integrator’, as opposed to ‘segregator’).
Anyway, not one to be deterred by a mouth full of vom and back to front eyeballs, I thought I should at least run an experiment. Even if the experiment is only useful for this period of time where I’m putting myself into a bit of a defrag mode.
It’s only been one week (and this week is a three day week anyway), so more to come on this experiment next month. However, I have realised it’s quite freeing to give yourself the permission to do nothing.
To celebrating seasons,
Steph
PS. Last month I had a bit of a ‘pinch me’ moment when I presented at Creative Mornings, an event I’ve been going to regularly in cities all over the world since 2018. Each month there’s a single word that creates the theme for all 238 chapters to speak on. March’s theme was Perspective, so I gave a slightly different talk than my usual content, and talked about the different ways I think about big life decisions. You can watch it here. (Talk is 15 mins, with Q&A it’s around 30 mins).
PPS. To borrow from Austin Kleon, this newsletter is 'free but not cheap'. You can support their ongoing creation and keep me in books by buying me a coffee as a 'thank you', recommending it to a friend, or using one of the affiliate links in the email.
The it list 🔥
Here’s a few other things I’ve been obsessing over, enjoying, or doing recently…
Podcast - The Healthusiasm Podcast: I stumbled upon this podcast after seeing a post on LinkedIn that someone else had commented on. I really enjoyed hearing from the global experts on what interesting stories they’re following on the intersections of healthcare, policy, and technology, and what those could mean for how we think about healthcare in the future. Spotify | Apple
Download - Ministry of the Imagination by Rob Hopkins: This PDF is an incredible collection of provocations, ideas, and policies that could (and maybe should) exist in society. A brilliant piece of curation and collaboration by Rob and the team. Be inspired
Album - Play by Moby: Ok, I’m not winning any ‘hot off the press’ awards by sharing this album from 1999, but I’ve been listening to it a lot lately and I think it’s one of the most perfect albums ever recorded. (Fight me). Spotify
Playlist - Feeling Good Radio: This made an excellent accompaniment to dinner with a friend last week. Spotify
Film - Perfect Days: This was the perfect film to sit in front of at the cinema with an equally tired friend the other weekend. The film follows Hirayama, a toilet cleaner in Tokyo, through his life of routine, music on cassettes, books, and trees. It’s a sweet little film about care, connection, and appreciating unexpected moments of beauty. The soundtrack is also outstanding (listen).
📚 What I read this month 📚
Work Backwards by Tim Duggan
⭐️⭐️⭐️💫
Packed with sobering stats about the state of work today, Tim cuts through the noise on how we do and will work, and puts power back with us. This is not a ‘this is the future of work’ book, but more a guide on how to navigate your own approach to work by being clear on what you *really* want from life, and how to use work to achieve that. As usual with Tim’s work, it’s well written and feels like having a conversation with a friend.
QAnon and On by Van Badham
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I started this book in January, and whilst finding it fascinating, it was also quite dark and not an easy read. Particularly the first ~25% of the book which talks a lot about the Gamergate fiasco, which is steeped in misogyny and incel-adjacent. From there it goes deep into the weird and terrifying origin and evolution of the QAnon conspiracy. Despite the subject matter, Van does a great job of making the content compelling and readable. Horribly relevant and terribly fascinating.
The Referable Speaker by Michael Port and Andrew Davis
⭐️⭐️⭐️
I’m about to start the Heroic Public Speaking GRAD program, which is going to thoroughly kick my ass for the rest of this year. This book is part of the pre-reading. It’s short, sharp, and has some exciting concepts about turning yourself into a speaker who stands out, and the process of getting there.
Some places I popped up recently 👋🏻
Creative Mornings Melbourne - You can watch the talk here. (Talk is 15 mins, with Q&A it’s around 30 mins).
App - The People Spot: Each month I pop up in the audio tracks of the People Spot app sharing a few interesting signals about the future. These audio clips are included in the free download (iPhone only) and you can use the code STEPHC for access to more content in the app.
She's back!