Who drank my cheese?

After what seemed a quiet week the first week of January, everything has suddenly leapt into life. Business development, new proposals, and key deliverables all seemed to be battling for attention this week. It was a relief to get to Friday.

Of course outside of the ‘cozy’ world of financial services and collections (if it can be even called cozy), it was even worse.

Pressing questions such as when is a party a work event, or a work event actually a party (hint: they were all parties), and a clash of culture between those who like to see what they can get away with vs those who accurately follow the rules, actually became matters of state (well at least in the UK and Australia). Plenty of arguments in the media and on social media ensued.

Then, in other news, we also had volcanoes exploding, geopolitical tensions and the onward march of Omicron… and this was all this week.

Caveman dynamics

If this is all getting a little overwhelming, you are not alone. Sometimes I feel I have the distinct desire to go and hide under a rock somewhere… it must break out the latent caveman in me somehow!

The danger here is with such a volume of change, pressure at work and external factors we cannot control, it can be easy to get overwhelmed.

And, with the pandemic timer now at over two years, are we running out of steam?

It certainly feels as if there is something going on here. This week alone I had three instances of people with open job positions looking for recommendations of good people, and four or five notifications of job moves. It is not exactly the great resignation, but certainly all change.

So what is going on? Are we all bored? Is it a search for certainty? Or is it a micro-indicator of work burn-out that is building

I am not sure, time will tell, but what I am sure of is that the one thing we cannot get more of is time. Time has ticked on throughout the lock-downs and is seems in some areas, sometimes, not much as happened. It has flown by and maybe a little too quickly with not much to show for it… other than the numbers on the birthday cards getting bigger.

Slowing down time

So how do we create more time… we need to slow down time, well at least the perception of it. The best way I have found to do this?… do more, new stuff.

An experiment along these lines in 2017 yielded interesting results. Activities included learning new skills, activity-based weekends, and a mad dash to the US to watch the solar eclipse one weekend. It showed it can be done and the year really did feel longer (albeit I was exhausted)… and what was the key, experiences must include something new, and not so routine… yes you need the routine day to day, but discover some new things too.

So maybe this is also a goal for this year… try out some new things again, learn new skills and discover new places.

If nothing else it could be a welcome distraction from everything else going on! [Ideas and suggestions welcome, please post in comments below}

Other stories this week

Will remote work stick after the pandemic?

Ovo expected to make a quarter of staff redundant due to energy crisis

British Gas owner Centrica warns high energy bills to last two years

6m UK homes may be unable to pay energy bills after price hike, charity warns

UK bank branch numbers have almost halved since 2015, analysis finds

Remote work is becoming permanent — for a sliver of the workforce

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