I’ve just watched an episode of ABC’s “A Dog’s World” series. Putting aside the obvious about how dogs make people happy etc, the bit about eye contact was a new insight. Surprising to me was that the physiological ability to use ‘puppy-dog eyes’ was a factor in the adoption rate of shelter dogs.

It’s a long bow, but I connect that to the difficulties many have had during the pandemic, without a variety of opportunities for human eye contact. For two years, mostly just family, and dogs.

Let’s not underestimate the importance of actual eye contact with our fellow humans.

If competence is a combination of knowledge, skills, and experience, then the direct opposite means being inexperienced, unskilled, and/or uninformed. Though, there’s a scale for competence levels.

Looking at competence from the opposite side provides an alternative perspective, and perhaps some clues of what to do about it.

If knowledge is needed, there are books or courses or Google rabbit-holes to explore. If skills are needed, repetitive action on a task will develop that. And if experience is missing, then get out there and do things. Experience is crucial to showing competence, and with no activity, there is no experience.

Which comes first: do habits develop into a sustainable workflow, or, do we fall into workflow patterns that then become habits?

Habits can protect us from decision fatigue. Habits help by just being a given, so there’s no decision, such as whether to have coffee or tea in the morning.

Habits are also known for providing “freedom in routine”. Performing the same actions in the same context or location or decision point means that there really isn’t a decision, there’s no emotion, it’s automatic and situational.

Repetitive workflows, or habits, are recognisable patterns. Our brains function better in recognisable environments.

The word ‘comparisonitis’ hasn’t yet made the dictionary, and isn’t yet a recognised medical affliction, but it seems to be a thing.

It’s the negative feeling that rises while scrolling social media, with all its glamour and announced successes.

I think the way to avoid comparisonitis, and to healthily observe others’ successes, is to do it from a position of strength. To know that while they are doing great things, so are you, in your own way.

Do something each day that makes you proud. Then you’re comparing yourself from a position of strength. Then you did good today, too.

A key part of business (in a capitalist environment, anyway) is to make a profit. Profit comes from money exchanging hands. Money exchanges hands because something with value has been produced.

When leading, a leader isn’t producing, they are motivating others, to produce that thing of value. The role of a leader is to lead others, motivate others, and inspire others.

Motivating, leading, and inspiring others is important, as long as those others are producing something of value, something someone else wants.

The world needs all types, and so does a business.

Businesses need leaders, but businesses need doers, too.

Multi-tasking is not effective in the knowledge work world. The effort needed to concentrate on one thing requires significant cognitive load. Concentrating on more than one thing is just about impossible. Both things suffer.

The other hidden cost is the time needed to switch between tasks. It is underestimated in the time management and productivity hacks. There is little recognition of the time needed between tasks.

The effort to switch banks, or to switch health insurance funds, perhaps doesn’t directly compare to switching between responding to emails, to knuckling down and writing a technical report. Not really, but maybe almost.

In the trying times of the past 24 months, I’ve given some attention to overall health, including exercise, sleep, and mental health in general. I’m aware of the benefits of ‘quiet time’ (some call it meditation, but I don’t), and also the benefits of a regular schedule and having boundaries on your time.

A new learning is about the positive effect of getting into daylight within 30 minutes of waking up. Our circadian rhythm benefits from that. As I listened to the podcast this morning, I learned that the lux (light) levels are sufficient even on a cloudy, rainy day.

There’s a collective cringe that occurs when the emailed request comes in: ‘please review and comment’.

Attached will be some long and probably tedious document, awaiting that review, with little further guidance provided. And there’s usually more than one person copied on the email as well. Technology may be improving on this, especially within companies (hello document sharing), but not so when multiple organisations are involved (i.e., committee work).

With multiple reviewers, and no clear guidance on ‘what’ is supposed to be reviewed, it’s a recipe for confusion.

There has to be a better way, and I’m looking for it.

As observed by Cal Newport in his book “Deep Work”, three groups will have a particular advantage in the future:

those with access to capital;

those who can work creatively with intelligent machines; and,

those who are best at what they do.

So: if you are born into or come into money, or, if you are comfortable with the influx of machines and AI, you will be okay.

Otherwise, and perhaps more satisfying, is to be very good at what you do, and, able to communicate it. Being able to learn new and complex things very quickly will help too.

Technical skills rely on knowledge and insight; often using math. They are context and industry specific. Having expert technical skills across a multitude of scenarios is unlikely and unusual, because excellent technical skills are context specific.

Behavioural skills rely on emotional awareness. We can’t ignore it: human behaviour involves emotions. Just like you can’t have an experience without emotion, you can’t behave without emotion.

Behavioural skills are more easily transferred between contexts and roles. Being professional, kind, considerate, and honest is the same in any situation. Doing project specific calculations for a variety of assets needs more conscientious switching effort.

When a worker finds themselves with a perceived lack of knowledge, or having made a mistake, or not knowing what to do 'next', “need more training" seems to be a default conclusion.

While possibly correct, a follow up question should then be, “what does it look like when I’m trained?”

Training in isolation does not guarantee change. Training is a temporary fix; without follow up, it isn’t always permanent. For training to stick, the trainee should also be obligated to either tell someone else what they’ve learned, or, should prove that they’ve used the knowledge soon after the training session.

It almost goes without saying that details are extra important for technical, design, or even construction information. To document technical information well, you do need to sweat the small stuff.

As the world automates, detail gets hidden behind ‘black boxes’ of programming, coding, and screens. But: the details are where the problems are.

The details require a thorough review and validation; however, the summary report or output need not belabour the details.

So, it’s a tricky dance to know, and sweat, the small stuff, but also to know, and not sweat, what needs to be left out of the summary.

We all need some good news stories, no matter how minor they may be.

This morning I left my headphones behind at a café. When I later realised I didn’t have them, of course I thought, ‘they’ll be gone, of course I’ll have to buy new ones’.

But I took the chance and went back to the café, in the hopes recovering them. And there they were, still sitting where I’d left them. Dozens of people would have seen them, walked by them, maybe wondered whose they were. But nobody took them to keep for themselves. It warms my heart.

Those who work in the built environment know that documentation is impossible to get away from. In whatever form, be it online or on paper, the need for documentation never goes away. And it increases with increasing complexity of the project or asset.

When things go wrong, documentation is one of the first things gathered together.

There’s another view that says there are too many documents. Too much paperwork, too many checklists and signoffs and, dare we say, too many approval responsibilities out there.

I wonder if there was ever the right balance between not enough and too much paperwork.

I looked around my home office this evening, and the word I couldn’t get out of my head was clutter.

We moved house months ago, and I still haven’t found a place for the papers and books and reports and my ‘life lived’. The thing with moving is the loss of ‘everything in its place’. Everything doesn’t have a place yet. Sometimes, I know, it takes years to find the right place for everything.

Some might say, get rid of the paper, scan it all. But I can’t. I’ve tried going electronic. Many things have, but not everything. Hence, clutter.

No, this isn’t about the influx of screen-based meetings that have infiltrated our lives now.

The zoom I’m thinking of is the field of vision on a topic: zoomed in or zoomed out.

Having a constantly zoomed-in view leaves you unaware of what’s happening in the zoomed out bigger picture. Conversely, always adopting a helicopter view means a lack of appreciation for the details.

Both views are needed, and maybe not even by the same person. But at least be aware of your zoom level, and what that means for the depth and position of your knowledge of a topic.

Communication is often identified as a key skill to have. There’s no doubt that being good at communicating will help with almost any career path.

But “communicate better” doesn’t mean simply sending more information.

Originally, I learned that successful communication needs three parts: a sender of the information, a medium in which the message is conveyed, and a receiver of the information.

There’s another view: communication is participatory. We are all more than senders and receivers: we are participants. Day in and day out, we are constantly participating in communication. Being an information sender is only part of the exchange.

The ease of gathering information has never been so obvious. Information availability is ubiquitous.

But keep in mind the importance of a variety of sources for your information. The source has an influence on the information.

I acknowledge this because in the last month, while we come out of our pandemic hibernation, I’ve been exposed to a wider variety of information sources. Through talking to people at industry events, I’ve realised my sources for the past two years were whittled down, and that’s not good.

Talk to someone you haven’t talked to, about a topic you thought you knew about.

Good project management, and, good services marketing as well, are better when they have considered the benefits of the outcome. It’s the benefits that the customer or client wants. Project benefits, especially infrastructure ones, are obvious: a bridge is built, or a solar farm installed.

In knowledge work, it really helps to often think of the benefits of what you’re doing. It’s not the inputs, deliverables, or even the outputs. It’s the benefits: who benefits, and why. Benefits aren’t hours or reports or meetings or reviews. Benefits, for infrastructure businesses, are outcomes like increased revenue, maximised productivity, or improved safety.

Searching for information is so different now, compared to even 20 years ago.

I’m not sure we have adapted very well yet, to this new approach.

For better or worse, information is basically free, and easy to find. With it being so free, found via simple searches, there is a risk of having information, but not knowledge.

So, if you need to search for information about, say, risk engineering, or project engineering, or the Australian pipeline standard, I’m pretty sure these days, it starts with Google.

And that’s okay, as long as we appreciate that’s just information, not necessarily knowledge.