I am fortunate to have variety in my work. I wouldn’t change it, but it comes with the challenge of focussing on the task at hand rather than being distracted by what has happened before or what comes after. As I look back over the day it is a rich mix.

I wagged my Tuesday morning swim in favour of some family farewells. I had a city meeting to punctuate some tricky people issues in an organisation I am involved with then a discussion to plan for an upcoming Board meeting. Back to Roslin and the usual e-correspondence. It was cold in Melbourne today … I wore a woollen top for the first time this year … the grey drizzle was both miserable and enjoyable with the experience of changing seasons.

I sat in my exit row seat, looked up and landed eye contact with a bloke sporting a Carlton Football Club cap, worn backwards. “Did you go to the game yesterday?” I asked. His polite but indifferent face transformed as if he’d recognised a long lost friend. He pumped his fist and looked at the floor as if showing off his bicep … people were juggling their carry on bags between us so the words were few, but the shared emotion has palpable.

Maria and I had gone to the game expecting to witness a Carlton loss. Geelong’s 3^rd quarter last week was apparently as good a football as they have played in their recent years of dominance. That our fleet footed young guns beat them at their own running, play-on, risk taking game was heart warming to the faithful who are willing this young team to realise their promise ahead of time. I remember thinking midway through the 2^nd it was all about belief … psychology is a funny thing.

I took out my reading and got started before we had pushed back. I got to the last page just as we started out decent 3 hours later, my head swimming with the possibilities and challenges ahead of the organisation I am working with this week. While I was immersed in strategic planning I wished I had the time to engage the couple beside me in conversation who spent much of the trip north watching TED Talks on the bloke’s iPhone.

The phone call home after dumping my bags on the hotel room floor bought news from the regular hospital visit that is one of our children’s lot. The news was sobering. I wish I was home.

And now I am on the water front; spicy Indonesian noodles and a cold beer filling the gap after resisting the Jet Star fare. The night air is warm and the relaxed Japanese tourist language is undulating around me. The misty and cold Melbourne air a world way.

Sadness, regret, resolution. Celebration, concentration, anticipation. Helplessness, satisfaction, tiredness … what a day.

It’s Monday morning and I’m scanning the week ahead so I’m clear what the key deliverables are. As I’m doing so I find myself tempted by one of the key dimensions of the ‘turning up’ syndrome discussed in my last post. The inbox.

Now this is not a new thought, for years now people have been lamenting the double edged sword that is email. But let’s be honest, it is probably the single biggest reason why people fail to get to the important strategic stuff in a typical office environment. Why? Because we’ve facilitated a business culture where email has higher priority than most other discretionary activity.

Walk in, say g’day, grab a coffee, then check your email. One hour later ….

The issue of course is not that there is nothing of strategic value in your’s or my inbox, its all the other stuff that gets mixed in. So the answer is unfortunately not as simple as ‘don’t look at it’, although some people advocate that you shouldn’t open your email until late afternoon.

For me, if there is discretionary use of any time in the morning I usually do (check it). The discipline is simply about not getting distracted. The only way this works for me is to have determined before I look at my inbox what the deliverables for the morning are. We’re talking about email, but the same can probably be said for Facebook, Twitter, online newspapers or any other ‘go to’ places.

This is related to the ‘turning up’ thing because if my daughter sits down to do home work and opens Facebook, or I go to work and open my inbox, I can think I’m ‘busy’, when I’m actually not doing anything productive in the bigger perspective.

So, this is not so much an anti-email post as a pro-stick to the deliverables one.

Everyone will navigate their own way through the managing e-distractions. Good luck defining your path.

Since we moved our office from Albert Park to West Melbourne we have learned a lot about the value of unassigned workspaces. There are a lot of freedoms and efficiencies to be gained from being mobile and ‘working light’.

Over the last couple of days I have been thinking about the next level … pushing the principle of mobility even further. One of the observations I have made from across a variety of organisations, is that mediocrity and even slackness in performance is usually accompanied by an unconscious attitude that once I have turned up and am sitting at my desk, I am 80% of the way to doing my job.

But turning up does not contribute directly to delivery. Delivery, execution, high performance or whatever we want to call it, has to do with focussed and disciplined work that is aligned with strategic priorities. So if ‘turning up’ is irrelevant to delivery, why turn up at all? Seriously.

(Now, I’m aware that I am speaking from a professional services paradigm and that this will not apply to say retail or manufacturing. But that doesn’t mean those who can apply these ideas shouldn’t push the boundaries.)

Maybe it is time we changed our language, because as postmodernism has taught us, language not only describes but also creates reality. So let’s eliminate the phrase ‘going to work’. If we are clear about the items that we need to deliver on any given day, our perspective would better be about doing those things, rather than going to a place. The fact that I might be able to do those things more effectively if I am at a certain place is irrelevant … infact we might assume we could do them more effectively ‘at work’, but maybe we should rethink this.

So, I hereby announce that I am never going to go to work again – at least not in the sense that I will get up on a weekday morning and press play on a routine that has me dressing up and ‘going to work’ as if that in and of itself is of any value.

And there is another side to this musing … that I have learned from yurting. If turning up is replaced by delivering, then when I’ve delivered I can do something else. No, not even that is right … there are some things that I need to do to keep my soul and body energised. Planning the ‘pause points’ in my delivery routine and filling them with regenerative activity is the go, I reckon.

What is that supposed to mean? (I’ve just invented more consultant mumbo jumbo!!)

OK.

“Delivery routine” means the disciplined and focussed workday rhythm that says no to anything that will prevent me from delivering my strategic priorities. (assumes I know what they are!)

“Pause Points” means the breaks I plan in. This is absolutely necessary because most professional work can be all invasive and apparently never ending. There is always too much to do, so unless we plan breaks we will never stop.

“Regenerative” means life giving and sustainable. Just stopping work is not good enough. I need to fill the break with stuff that energises and refreshes. Different for everyone. Some people haven’t figured out what it is for them … they are in trouble.

Let’s never just turn up again.