Perhaps one of the most valuable attributes in life is to judge wisely when to go with the flow, and when to resist and create our own reality.

Spring in Melbourne. Teased by the weather. Last weekend in shorts and T-shirt cleaning up the back yard, trimming, mulching, wiping down the furniture and re-hanging the hammock. Come on spring. This weekend, wind, rain and cold. Resistance is useless so go with the flow and pretend that we’re not ‘so over winter’. For us that meant an open fire (first for the year), a massive pot of tolouse sauage and borlotti bean soup and the Concert in Central Park quietly playing in the background. Donning the rain coats and walking down to Ceres to catchup with friends, and oh yeah, screaming at the screen during the AFL Grand Final.

I love fruitcake, but a good one is almost impossible to buy. I’m sure I could find a Lions Christmas cake in September if I looked hard enough but …  Our local supermarket used to stock something called a ‘celebration cake’ – ordinary name but top shelf quality. Alas, no-one else must have thought so because ‘used to’ is the operative phrase. What’s a bloke to do? Go with the flow? I don’t think so.

Enter Alan Campion and Michelle Curtis’ Italian spicy fruit cake. Never made one before but when Coles lets you down what can you do? I had a slither to taste it when it came out of the oven, but decided to wait until a cup of Tetley’s had brewed later in the evening to savour it properly. Initial impressions were excellent and I wondered if I should perfect a recipe and challenge the old hands whose handiwork we had seen on display at the Royal Melbourne Show on Friday.

I was sitting in the car waiting to pick up Heidi from netball training … it was cold and wet outside and I was already tasting the combination of tea and cake. Then Zac calls. Him and two of his mates are going to the Red Triangle (iconic pool hall in Brunswick Street), do I want to join them? Opportunities to do stuff with your 19 year old son don’t come around too often. But it’s late already. The fire is still going at home. And the fruit cake. Decisions. I said ‘no’.

I sat in the car and waited for Heidi for another couple more minutes. Decisions. I had plans. Why tonight? I’ve created a nice little evening for myself. I called back…

… and crawled into bed three hours later satisfied that the tea and cake will be waiting for me another time.

Life is a relentless series of decisions. Go with the flow or create your own reality? May you make some wise calls this week.

Working away has its obvious downsides. One of the little upsides is the accumulation of hotel loyalty points … which translate into freebies. So for my birthday Maria and I did the 5 star thing. To complement the accommodation we ate up-market as well; the seafood from the Waterfront was sensational. It got me thinking about quality.

There are two ways that a commitment to quality expresses itself in delivering value at work. One is expressed through another of our participation behaviours.

But I think the more significant way that quality is demonstrated is via a pervasive attitude. It’s not so much about the little things, the extras, the fine tuning: it’s about the overall philosophy. Indeed, the ‘trimmings’ get their meaning from the context and the overarching commitment to a particular way of being.

Quality is about at least substance and design. Neither is sufficient on its own. The best substance can be lost if the presentation doesn’t invite engagement and appreciation. A business development proposal can articulate a great solution, but if it is not presented in a way that is clean and attractive the substance will likely be lost. Clearly, design without substance also doesn’t work … it leaves a hollow sense of unmet expectations.

Quality is one of those contagious things I think. A long time ago in this blog I talked about how our office helped breed an increased commitment to quality. My experience of high quality hospitality on Friday night has helped me lift the bar for myself this week.

Have a look around and see what you can plug into to lift the bar for yourself. Ponder the design of your Mac, take in the architectural genius of the surrounding buildings, listen to an inspiring speech from TED, or smell a rose. And be inspired.

I recently received a document with a typo in it. Not a bad one, but as mistakes go it was not what should have been sent to a client.

At Ergo, we have developed a custom that has served us well by minimising the errors and improving the quality of official documents. Among our nine participation behaviours which line the walls in our stairwell is this one, we call it ‘collaborate and validate’:

Collaborate & Validate
Value the input of others and be confident to offer your own. If you don’t know – ask. If you know something useful – share it. Ensure someone else has given input on the quality of your work with the opportunity to “make it better”.

The habit of shooting our work to a colleague with the subject line ‘make it better’ has helped us reduce the number of typo level errors but also allows others to offer strategic input into our work. Simple but effective.

If you are interested in our other participation behaviours, you can see them here.

After chopping and pureeing I left the potage of lentils (great Jewish soup with loads of lemon and garlic) to brew on the stove. I slumped on the couch while the rest of the family read and (internet) surfed – a peaceful late Sunday afternoon. Channel V was doing a classic song countdown, and among them was Dire Straits, all time classic ‘job-envy’ tune Money for Nothing. Mark Knopfler sings about appliance store workers trying to ‘move colour TVs and microwave ovens’, while watching rock star vision on the wall of TVs in the store. So unfair that these young rock stars get their “money for nothin’ and their chicks for free”.

It got me thinking again of the wisdom of Alain de Botton’s The Art of Travel. One of his significant reflections is the idea that we always ‘take ourselves’ on holidays. The palm trees and white sand are impotent against the absence of inner peace, and inner peace is cultivated in the normal routines of everyday life.

It can be easy to look at the jobs of others and imagine how good it would be. Of course there are important shaping realities about the kinds of work we do, the workplace environment and the people with whom we work. However, I wonder whether the most significant determining factor in job satisfaction is our overall wellbeing.

The key to being productive and satisfied at work is being productive and satisfied in life. I’m sure there have been studies done somewhere, but I reckon it would be interesting to see how things like physical healthiness, hobbies, community engagement, family relations etc influence how satisfied we feel at work.

Curious if anyone has any thoughts on this.

My last generative edge post was a while ago and there is unfinished business. TT rightly outed me by pointing me to the hilarious www.stuffwhitepeoplelike.com and entry  #122 – Moleskins. Busted.

So moving on to more ‘white people msuings’ I want to dedicate this post to Dell and Kelsy (not their real names but you know who you are.) Dell and Kelsy are colleagues at an organisation we worked with a few years back and they say nice things about this blog. In my recent silence they were kind enough to ask if I was OK. Dell and Kelsy leadership roles but do not have much scope for discretion or flexibility. It is easy to feel stuck.

One of the things I am learning from my partner Maria is that there is always choice. There is always choice, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t consequences in the wake of those choices. You can do anything you want. Really. You could speed. You could run naked through the streets. You could move to Antarctica. You could make peace with an enemy. You could shave your head. You could quit your job and try to live off next to nothing and experiment with self-sufficiency. Weigh up the consequences and then make courageous choices. We only have one life.

Without exercising our choice, life happens to us. Of course there is heaps of stuff that does happen to us, we really don’t have choice except from how we deal with it. What I am talking about is the capacity to move beyond the habits and momentum of the status quo and choose the things that we wish for.

The parallel thought that goes with this, is that if we weigh up the consequences and determine to maintain the status quo, we need to choose to do so. Embrace the positives of our current situation and suck the marrow out of it.

Now I don’t pretend making significant choices is easy. I do know that change is hard and we all need encouragement to exercise courage. Especially in the workplace and family; inertia and poor habits are too often swept under the carpet. Sometimes it all feels too hard. It is hard, but it’s not too hard.

How’s this for some kitchen table philosophy? Deeply satisfying things in life don’t just happen, they come from hard fought battles with discipline and courage. That’s what I reckon anyway.