Apologies for the provocative title, but I feel this is worth emphasising today at the start of the working year.
I’m going to innovate my workday for the darkest and deepest part of this winter of Covid, the first three months of the year.
So, I’ll begin by telling you why I will do this, then what the innovation will be. I’ll then highlight why you probably won’t do it, even though (once you’ve seen what I will do), you’d likely love to copy my innovation.
Oh, and finally I will share a simple innovation that could change all of our 2021 lives for the better around the approach to Covid and again, why it won’t happen (unfortunately).
Why innovate my workday ?
Simple, because I struggle with the short daylight hours yet our working days in winter often start before full daylight and end in the dark.
For most of my adult life I lived in the Cayman Islands, where the length of the day varied from 11 hours in midwinter to 13 hours in midsummer and where a cold day meant 21c lows and a local band in the 90s was named after the rarely changing weather forecast in the local newspaper: “No significant features”.
Living now in the London area, “temperate” though the climate is, as we start 2021 we are facing days only eight hours long, typically around freezing, often grey.
As you can perhaps imagine, I struggle with the short days more than the temperature and having just moved to the edge of the country and loving the infinite range of walks I can choose to explore, I’m going to innovate my workday this winter to support my proactive resilience. (I do focus on this topic, see this somewhat prescient post from last September).
What will I do to innovate my winter workday?
First, a reminder that innovation can be easy, it often only takes a small shift in mindset.
Innovation is simply doing different things and doing things differently
I said that innovation can be simple. Mine is to block out a chunk of time every day around 11am and go for a walk.
I’ll then extend the working day as needed to balance having taken that time out while there is daylight.
This is so simple, a simple as people from the hottest climates taking a break for several hour in the heat of the day.
(oh, and I also innovate my midsummer workdays, but more on that nearer the time, by which time I hope we can all travel too!)
Why won’t you do it?
Am sure, having read this, many of you would love to take an hour (or even two) out for yourselves in the middle of the day then work a little later to balance it out.
However, chances are you won’t. Normally this is for one of three reasons:
- Your employer won’t allow it (as they are stuck in their way.. remember “we’ve always done it this way”?
- You have children or other family circumstances that mean you have to fit around all of their schedules
- You simply haven’t applied innovative thinking to how to make simple changes
I said three things normally apply. There are more, but one thing you can take off the list around innovating your workday is point 3, as at least having read this far you have seen how I am applying innovative thinking and so now you are, I hope, at least considering how you can innovate. I hope you are!
How could we change all of our lives for the better around Covid?
Over the weekend I saw a tweet suggesting a simple innovation to how we live our lives in the UK that could make a massive difference.
In considering it, do go back to points 1 and 2 around employers, family circumstances etc, but also, for this, point 3 applies. We would need an entire system of government with a bias towards innovation, rather than (as we have) one with a bias towards both “status quo” and, even more dangerously, where politicians are deeply concerned with popularity and feel this is rooted in sticking to not only the status quo, but often also myths of past “glory days”.
Still, a brilliant idea that, if bravely grasped in 2021, would change so much. Kudos to Dr Nisreen Alwan.