6 Habits You Need To Thrive in a Rapidly Changing World.
Laptop, passport, headset, pen and notepad. These are the essential items I need to get my job done. They all fit neatly in my backpack and, for 20 years, I’ve taken them with me everywhere I work and travel to. I used to have a corporate job with my own private executive office. A very fancy one with a great city or sea view. Looking back it was a lot of space for just a few essential items.
Working from Bromo Tennger National Park - Indonesia
Now with the rise of co-working spaces I have foregone my own office. For most of my life I’ve been a digital nomad. I’ve spent half of my life in Europe, the other half in Asia. I’ve commuted between cities and worked with people from all over the world. Flexibility and freedom of movement, it all sounds wonderful, but how do you cope with permanent change? Over the years this nomadic way of living has shaped my habits and who I am today. Let’s see what they are.
1. Discipline
This is probably not the first thing you associate with flexibility but without it you’ll end up wasting many hours or even your life. Typically my day starts around 6 am because I tend to fall asleep at 11 pm-ish. I begin my day with a 45-60 minutes routine that includes an outdoor walk - without my phone - combined with a few high-intensity exercises, and a short 10 minute mindfulness at the end before my breakfast. Then work, 3 to 4 hours straight with short 5-minute breaks in between. Lunch starts early at around 12 pm and lasts a generous 1.5 hours. After lunch I have another 1-2 hours of focused work. Whenever possible the rest of my afternoon is reserved for meetings, research, reading, and gallery visits. Why meetings in the afternoon? Because I can’t get much work done during a meeting. Complex thinking is better by myself in the morning than in the afternoon. This schedule works for me because it allows me to concentrate on things without interruptions. Everyone, of course, is different, so develop your own schedule to get things done.
Open air exercise on Lamma island, Hong Kong
2. Journaling
Writing down my thoughts helps me to reflect and prioritise. Entries don’t need to be long or every single day. Even reflecting and assessing what really matters once a month is a great mental practice. My purpose of journaling is not to meticulously document every single thought. Instead, it serves as a tool for self-reflection, allowing me to introspect on my thought process and personal growth over time. By engaging in journaling, I gain valuable insights into my own evolution as an individual and can better understand the patterns and changes in my thinking.
I use a rather old-fashioned Montblanc ballpoint pen and a small black notebook. When journaling, there are broadly three parts:
A highlight or notable event of the day. It’s not a list of things that happen.
Why is it notable or relevant?
What I learnt; a reflection on the day.
3. Life beyond work
“Do what you love, and you never work again.” A popular quote found all over the internet. I think this is total garbage and wishful-thinking. A slogan devised perfectly for Pinterest. Try monetising a hobby into a profitable and sustainable business, the fun ebbs away pretty quickly. I love my work. Paying bills, retirement savings, insurance, and holidays are only possible because I work. And there is nothing wrong with that.
A hobby is something I want to do, not something I need to do. And I have many interests, in fact too many, if that’s even possible. My curiosities range from arts to reading, philosophy, whiskey, cigars, and other activities that probably don’t make sense. Not necessarily in that order but having other delights in life keeps me sane and, most importantly, my novel solutions come from serendipitous discoveries and activities. FYI, 50% of patents filed came upon by accident. (P. Kennedy, 2005)
4. Socialising
But not on social media. I spent what might be considered a stupid amount of time on conversations with people from all walks of life and from all over the planet. In coffee shops, in offices and in the virtual world as well. Great gatherings discussing ideas, different viewpoints and conversing about divergent cultural realities. Investing in socialising is like having a hobby. When I want to, not when I need to, beautiful and surprising collaborations develop when you invest in social connections.
From my personal experience, shared space is the only professional environment to cultivate intended but unplanned collaborations. Coworking spaces aren’t perfect. Yet, for now, they are the most conducive environments for unexpected collisions (in a good way). Would you walk up to a stranger in a coffee shop or airport lounge? Or if you work in a conventional office have you ever spoken with people one floor up? Even though coworking spaces offer opportunities to connect I also need to make an effort and lean in. Things don’t happen in life without stretching or pushing myself.
5. Tech
To function in today's business environment a healthy possession of tech competency is needed. Zoom, Asana, Slack, and Google are my daily applications. I use Adobe, Sketch, InVision, Keynote, iMovie, and OBS regularly. In 12 months time my choice of tech will likely be very different. The constant and rapid change is sometimes tiresome and always exciting. Whether I like it or not, keeping up is imperative because the need for tech in business is like the need to write or to read. Tech has many benefits but there are also times to consider other options.
Online is often compared with offline. Avoid doing this because it’s like comparing apples to oranges.
They offer different, not better or worse, experiences. Both are used for different reasons and one is not a replacement for the other.
Imagine you need to write a letter. You can do this with pen and paper or using software on an electronic device. The first option may offer a personal and tactile experience, the latter may be more conducive to quicker distribution and making an immediate impression. The appropriateness of the options depends entirely on my objective. Both pen and software are tools that attribute to achieving my objective, yet for writing a great letter a tool alone won’t suffice. Being tech savvy is going beyond just using tech. Being tech savvy is the ability to transform something ordinary into something extraordinary. I aspire to be a techie.
6. Habits
I started this article with discipline. To come full circle I finish this article with the need to stop my own bad habits and routines because discipline is more than rigidness. Breaking with familiarity is necessary when overcoming unique challenges, living abroad, working with different cultures, and especially for innovation to flourish. During everyone’s life, new situations will occur. A lot of literature is available on “how to cope with” and I’ve read enough books in the self-help section myself. Some claim to have the perfect 7-step solution for complex situations. Others have been a source for inspiration. Now, I have to admit there is nothing better than reading a book from my comfortable chair but remember, it’s just a book. To help yourself and stop certain habits, you need to get up and do it yourself. No, you can’t outsource this. I’ve tried. And when you finally decide to deal with it, you’ll find out that your situation is unique. Much more complicated than a case study from a best-selling book.
When facing new radical uncertainties and changes, like the recent ones, conventional knowledge and practices no longer apply. Shifting from physical meetings to virtual ones is an example of a situation when we have to break our routines because virtual meetings are conducted differently than physical ones. Equipment, environment, behaviour, expectations, preparation, and experience are in both cases distinctly unique. We are all creatures of habit. We like to see ourselves as unique animals with our capacity for reasoning yet when logic tells us to change, we discover that breaking our habits is very hard. We fall back to old safe havens because we fear what we don’t know or understand. Safe havens and old ideas that used to work but don’t work today. Breaking old habits and building new ones, just try it.
