#047 Designing Working Rhythms that Work for You
Many of us fall into the trap of working how everyone else works. Or working how society, or our workplaces have trained us to work. But are the working rhythms imposed on you by external forces aren't necessarily the best working rhythms for you.
So how do you create working rhythms that work for you?
In this episode I explore six things to consider to design working rhythms that work with your unique strengths, energy and ways of working.
1. Challenge norms
2. Understand yourself
3. Catalogue your work tasks and projects
4. Consider your constraints
5. Craft your cadence
6. Test and iterate
Transcript
[00:00:00] I'd like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which I record this podcast. The Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation and pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging. I'd also like to acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded. This was, and always will be Aboriginal land. Hey folks, how's it going so great to be here with you. I am just coming off a week or so of having tonsilitis joy of joys. So I've been just waiting in the sidelines, ready to record a podcast, waiting for my voice to get back to a point where I can do it again. So. Yeah, I'm really stoked to be sitting here and speaking, which is a novelty. But good times .Over it now. Very glad to be back and well again and thankful for modern medicine. Any who. Enough about my tonsillitis.
[00:01:50] Today, we're going to be talking about working rhythms and specifically designing, working rhythms that work for you. So it's something that I've been working with a lot of clients on recently is.
[00:02:02] How do you design your work days, your work weeks, your work year, to get the best out of yourself and to work in ways that make sense for you, makes sense for the things that you need to do and help you with things like productivity and effectiveness, but in a way that's really mindfully created for understanding your natural ways of working, your energy patterns, the things that you have to do that require different types of brain power. And yeah, really just being intentional about the process of how you set up your days, your weeks, your months, etc.
[00:02:45] This is something that I've worked a lot on myself over the years. And nothing's a better example of this than the fact that I have a really wonky schedule, which is by design, where I work with my clients every three weeks, not every two weeks or every month, like a lot of coaches do. For two reasons really: one of those is that it works really well for me because I found that having a three-week schedule rather than a two week schedule or a monthly schedule, or even a weekly schedule was really helpful for me in that what I actually do is I have two weeks on with clients and one week off. So that gives me two weeks where I can kind of really knuckle down or knuckle down is not quite the right word, but really focus in on client work on those two weeks. But there's not a lot of time for creative work when I'm working with clients. Now that I work three days a week having a little one who I look after two days a week. But then in that week where you don't work with clients, I have three full days to work on creative work. And that works really well for me because I find that I need a bit more spaciousness of time around that type of creative work. And also when I'm working with clients and I can kind of stack them together, I find that it goes much quicker. And my days just fly by and I get to the end of the day and I actually feel really energized. Having worked with a bunch of clients on the one day. And you start to pick the patterns of things that are happening and you can start to really kind of get into a rhythm with the coaching as well.
[00:04:16] So, yeah, I do this weird rhythm, which I have to say, I borrowed from someone who told me that they did this once and I was like, oh my gosh, you can do that? You can change up the normal monthly or bi-weekly rhythm. And yeah, I gave it a go and yes, there's been some little things over the years that have, made it a bit tricky because obviously three weeks isn't a normal cadence in terms of how we work as humans.
[00:04:45] But it's really working for me. On the flip side, it actually works really well for my clients too, because what I was finding was I work with a lot of busy professionals, leaders, business owners. And if you've done coaching before, what you know, is that a big part of the value you get out of coaching is the work that you do between sessions. And what I was finding, working such fully loaded people. That if, when I was working with people every two weeks, it wasn't really enough time for them to do the work between sessions. And so I'd get to a session and, the action items that clients had set for themselves, they, they weren't really getting through.
[00:05:26] So having this three weekly cadence, it just means that my clients have a bit more time to do the work between sessions. As opposed to coaching every two weeks or coaching every month, which is just for most people, when you're trying to get into a rhythm with coaching monthly, just isn't really enough.
[00:05:44] Unless you've been working with someone for a while and you kind of moved to that cadence later. So, yeah, works for me, works for my clients. And I just wanted to give you this example to start off the podcast today, because what it's an example of is a few things. It's challenging norms it's working differently to the way that society expects us to, or has kind of programmed us into. It's understanding myself, it's knowing how I work better.
[00:06:10] It's understanding the type of work I do and what works for that work. It's understanding the constraints I have in my life and what I need to work around. And then it's crafting a cadence that works for me and finally testing and iterating that cadence over time to get it right and work out where things work and where they don't. And redesigning things and making it work.
[00:06:35] So I very quickly ran through some steps there, which are really what I see as kind of the six key steps in designing, working with them's the work for you. So I'm going to go through those. In more detail now, but I'm just going to list them out for you again, to begin with.
[00:06:50] So number one, challenge norms. Number two, understand yourself. Number three, catalog your work tasks and projects. In other words, know the work you actually have to do. Four, consider your constraints, five craft, your cadence and six test and iterate.
[00:07:09] So let's go through each of those. So number one, challenge norms. One of the biggest barriers to creating, working rhythms that work for you is the fact that there are so many norms that we have fallen into that we've gotten used to through working the way we've worked for so many years. So. Some of those norms are the nine to five, some of those norms might be you have daily standup meetings at your work. Some of those norms might be. That you work five days on and have a two day weekend. There's so many norms and standards that we have ingrained into us. Which is for good reason. That's how many of us worked for so long. But now that the world of work is changing, COVID has changed so many things. There's far more opportunity these days to do things a little bit differently. And look, even if you think you are still constrained by certain norms, you might actually find that if you challenge some of those, that they're not a set in stone, as you think they are.
[00:08:13] I started this episode. I was thinking, you know Most of us. If we're working for ourselves, we do have this ability to design our days, our weeks and things in a way that suits us. But for a lot of you who might be working for somebody else working in an organization, you might think, oh, well, maybe this doesn't apply to me so much because I have the constraints of an organization around me. But I work with a lot of leadership clients who are working in organizations. And often when we start working on this stuff, it's really surprising to them how much they can actually design their own working rhythms within a 'quote unquote', normal working environment.
[00:08:54] So some things that you might want to think about in terms of challenging norms or some questions. So firstly ask yourself, which are the norms that actually serve you and which norms don't? So you might be the kind of person who works really well in a very standard nine to five type of rhythm. But if you don't then think about whether these things actually work for you. And then ask yourself what is adaptable and what's not? So it might be that some things are really set in stone. And we're going to talk about considering your constraints later, but yeah. What, what might be flexible? What might have some room in it for you to play with things?
[00:09:37] And then also think about if you are working with other people and you've got lots of things that are, the way that things are done around here or things that your organization or your team have always done ask yourself, what does the activity or group of activities that we're doing together... what does it actually call for? What is actually required here, or even with your own work you might say, well, what would make more sense here? Rather than doing things in the normal way.
[00:10:07] Just like I said, with, with my coaching. It's very standard that coaching is done every two weeks. And when I did my coaching training, that what was, what was advised to us. Do coaching every two weeks and work with people for three months and that six sessions. And that was kind of the norm. And that works really well for some people, but it's really easy to just fall into doing it that way because that's how other people have done it. Or that's how you've been told to do it rather than questioning is this actually the best way?
[00:10:36] So really think about what are those norms that you might need to challenge and break out of in terms of creating, working rhythms that work for you? Now I put that one up the front, because it's something that I think you should have in mind as we work through these other points. I could have put it at the end and said, these are all the things that you should do and now challenge the norms. But I just want you to have that lens of challenging norms up the front. So you really thinking about it as we move through.
[00:11:04] Okay, so point number two, understand yourself. Nobody knows how you work as well as you, nobody understands your preferences, your rhythms, your energy, your strengths and weaknesses like you do. Maybe some people will understand you well, to be able to give you some insight on these things, but at the end of the day, you're the one that has the experience of your own working life and your own working rhythms. So have a think about these things. What are your preferences? How do you like to work?
[00:11:33] And maybe jot down a list of some of the things that you really enjoy and, you know, work well for you. What are your natural rhythms? Are you a morning person? Are you a nighttime person? This is called your chronotype and it's actually something that's baked into our DNA to a certain extent, whether you're at say a morning, Lark or a night owl.
[00:11:53] I kind of sit towards the night owl side of the spectrum. I've actually had some DNA testing before where I've been able to have that, I suppose, illuminated for me. But I'm definitely not a night-night owl. I'm someone who works really well around about dusk. I call myself a dusk Um, You know, so from that time from around, like, I don't know, four o'clock to six o'clock that's when I get my best creative Juju energy. So I know that if I'm doing a creative task, that is the time that I want to be working.
[00:12:24] Which, seems really counterintuitive. Right? We get a lot of rhetoric that's told us, like, do the creative work in the morning before you get into everything else or eat the frog in the morning. But, for me that just doesn't work. That's not how I operate, but it's me understanding myself and knowing that and being strong in that, that is really important for creating my own natural working rhythms.
[00:12:45] Something that's worth thinking about with this is like the different types of energy that you have and need for certain tasks, not all tasks require the same type of energy. So, you might have. Creative mental energy that's required for say writing. Whereas you might need emotional energy for holding space for someone, or you might need physical energy for going for a run.
[00:13:10] And not all those types of energies are the same at different types of the day for all of us. My husband, for example, loves exercising early in the morning and at the start of the day and cannot do something kind of after five o'clock after work. So that's a real challenge for him, but it's something that he has to understand about if he's going to organize or create an exercise routine for himself, he needs to think about that time. That works best for him. Otherwise, he's just not going to do it. So, yeah. Really consider those different types of energy that you might have in what's required for things.
[00:13:41] Great example of from my own work is, yeah. Again, if we're challenging that norm of like, do the, eat the frog in the morning. I find that I have really good energy for just kind of repetitive, things like checking email and data analysis, or like doing my tax or something. That's that stuff is quite good for me in the morning. Because it, it doesn't take a lot of that creative thought and I can just plow through it. And also knowing myself, I know that I feel a lot better when those type of admin tasks are off my plate for the morning. And then it frees up space in my mind for the creative work. Whereas some people are absolutely the opposite.
[00:14:20] And something else to think about in terms of understanding yourself is what are your strengths? What are your weaknesses when it comes to doing different types of work? And just really tuning into those in terms of how you design your you're working with them's.
[00:14:34] If you haven't done it before, I highly recommend the Gallup Clifton strengths test for understanding your strengths and weaknesses better. That can be a really great way to aluminate this for yourself. And usually we have a pretty good idea of this, but I find when you do a test like that, it brings things to the surface and helps you understand them.
[00:14:52] So number one, challenge norms. Number two, understand yourself. Then number three, this is a bit of a practical one, catalog your work tasks and projects. What is all the stuff that you actually need to do in your work, on a day-to-day basis on a weekly basis, on a monthly basis, on an annual basis? And I say those different things, because for a lot of us, we have things that we do daily, but then there also might be things that we do have that come around once a year. And it's really important to know all of those when we're designing our working rhythms, because you might have something that say a biannual thing that happens that actually all of your work needs to kind of fall in around.
[00:15:33] So yeah. Catalog your work tasks and projects and things like that. Now, when you're doing this cataloging, think of the different types of work in terms of kind of four categories. So you've got one-off tasks, things that just need to be done once. Ongoing tasks, things that need to be done on an ongoing basis.
[00:15:52] Now, like I said, this could be daily, ongoing task, weekly, monthly, yearly, whatever. Um, One off projects, so projects that you have to do once and then repeating projects. So yeah, this a big project that happens once a year in your job. So once you've kind of catalog those things, you start to get a picture of all the things that you need and want to do. And then a good thing to do if you want to start getting some idea of like what's important here, because prioritization is always going to help us. It's not necessarily needed for working out you're working rhythms, but I do find that the Eisenhower matrix is always a great one for that. Working out what's urgent. And not urgent important and non-important and putting things out like that. Because it's when we're starting to kind of work around a working rhythms, we want to be focusing on the stuff that we actually need to get done. Less of the busy work. So in catalogging out your work, it just gives you the lay of the land. So you know what you're working with.
[00:16:53] Then step four. So I'm going to reiterate them every time. Step one, challenge norms. Step two. Understand yourself, step three, catalog your work tasks and projects. And then step four is consider your constraints. So, what are the constraints that you have to work with now? Some of these might actually be related to your catalog of work tasks and projects, or they could be different things.
[00:17:17] But they're kind of the scaffolding that we're going to begin to fit everything into. Particularly if you have any kind of major constraints now, what could be a constraint? Well, there's all kinds of things really. They could be things like holidays. So my husband is a school teacher. So one of the constraints that I like to design my work-life around is school holidays. So I can spend time with my husband.
[00:17:40] Or you might be a parent of school-aged children. So therefore designing around school holidays is important. There might be certain things that you have on certain days of the week. So that might be a constraint. You might have a certain meeting that you have to do every day or every two weeks or something like that in your jobs with that might be a constraint.
[00:17:58] A constraint could be a certain amount of client work that you need to fit in in order to make the type of money that you want to make. That could be a constraint. There could be a particular work project. So for example, I was working with a client at one point who in her job, she worked for a large charity.
[00:18:17] And that large charity had a very important fundraising event once a year, which huge part of her job was based around. So that was a really key constraint for her role and making sure that everything else that she did was considering that one event and making sure she had the time she needed in the space that she needed to devote the time and energy to that, that it needed to do a really good job at it once a year.
[00:18:43] Obviously she had other things going on in her work, but if she didn't consider that one big annual event and design it into her working rhythms, everything else could fall apart.
[00:18:52] Similar to that, I had another client who had something. It was a kind of an ongoing task that would come around. Once a year that required quite a bit of planning and organizing in a school environment. And what she would find is every year, she would go to plan for that event and, It, it would kind of sneak up on her every year and she'd always find herself chasing her tail. Whereas if she, and this is what we started working towards, if she started to design her working rhythms to allow for that within her working rhythms and leading up to it, she found that she wasn't so shocked by it when it came around every time.
[00:19:33] Another great example. I have another client who is working two roles in a part-time capacity. So one of her constraints is how does she actually fit those two things in. And, and make them both work. So that's a constraint to consider. Another constraint might be things like, if we go back to things like understanding yourself, a constraint might be that you want to do certain work when you've got the right type of energy for it. So you could actually build that in as a constraint.
[00:20:06] So consider your constraints. What are the things that you absolutely must do? What are the things that you want to, or should be designing your work around? Now, these could be anything I've just given you a few examples. Just something to kind of give you a taster to think about it, but you'll know this probably pretty intuitively the things that are the key things that your work should be designed around.
[00:20:29] So once you've thought about the challenging norms, understanding yourself, cataloging your tasks and your projects and considering your constraints. Then what you can finally get to do is craft your cadence. So step five is craft your cadence. What are the rhythms that are going to work for you considering all of this?
[00:20:50] Now in crafting your cadence there are a few other things that I think are really helpful. To consider. So some thing that is really important is creating time for the non-urgent important work, as well as the urgent and the day-to-day work, because we all know right. That it's easy to do the things that are right in front of us and the things that other people want us to do. But where are you crafting in time and energy for the not urgent important work. So the planning, the strategy, the creative work on new projects that always tends to end up at the bottom of the list. So make sure that you are designing time in for that as well as time in for the things the regular things that you have to do.
[00:21:38] Also something that I think is really important when designing or crafting your cadence for your work is to consider task switching and avoiding tasks, switching as much as possible. We all know and it's pretty well researched now that we lose effectiveness and efficiency every time we switch from one task to another or one type of work to another. So how can you begin to reduce that when you are creating your working rhythms? Now I know some people like to thrive in or feel like they thrive in really busy environments where they've got lots going on. But yeah, for the most part, the research tells us that. You might think that, but it's not true. Sorry.
[00:22:16] So think about, yeah, really designing that. So for example if I go back to the example of my client, who has the two jobs, what she's tried to do rather than actually splitting the jobs across one job is these couple of days and one dog is these couple of days, she's actually designed it so that she has meetings for both jobs on a couple of days. And does the more creative deep work for both jobs on a couple of days so that she doesn't have to be jumping into creative work and then switching into meeting mode. Which, if you think about it, you might think, oh, well, it makes more sense that I'm not context switching, which is another thing between the two jobs, but actually for, for this particular client. And it's a very personal thing. It made more sense to her to not be switching the type of task as opposed to the context of the work.
[00:23:06] So again, you've got to know yourself, point to understand yourself, to know. What the best way for you to design things are, but that's another great example of challenging norms, right? The norm would be yep. Split the two jobs onto the different days, but maybe you need to think about it differently and go, well, actually, what makes sense for the type of work that I'm doing and how I know myself to work better in that respect?
[00:23:32] Okay. So moving on something else to consider in crafting your cadence is thinking about habits, routines, and rituals. So a habit. What's a habit? A habit is something that you do kind of almost like on autopilot. So what are the things that you want to build into your cadence as a habit? That's something you just do all the time. Habits are hard to build, but once they're built, they happen automatically. So, the great example is brushing your teeth. We mostly do that automatically. We don't think about it, but it's something we've gotten into over time. So for example, like something that might become a habit over time is Something like sitting down and doing like a daily journal, that might be a habit that you can get to a point that is automatic.
[00:24:22] But until it's a habit. And maybe it always stays as it is, it would be likely a routine. So something that you get into a regular cadence with, that you do on a regular basis. But the difference between a habit and a routine is that a routine has a slightly higher level of intentionality that goes with it. You actually have to think about doing it as opposed to a habit that happens automatically. So, yeah. What are the routines? The things that you need to intentionally think about doing on a regular basis?
[00:24:54] And then you've got your rituals. So rituals. Kind of like the next level of intentionality, again, they're kind of like a routine, but you do them with a deeper sense of attention and intention and, even a sense of reverence in some ways.
[00:25:09] Some people, for example, might say that meditation is more of a ritual because it has that higher level of intentionality. Or someone might say that journaling is more ritualistic and you can make something ritualistic too, by adding things into the activity. So, you might put on a certain type of music, light a bit of incense, and then do your journaling, which makes it more of a ritual.
[00:25:31] So in crafting your cadence, what are the habits you want to build? What are the routines you want to build on? What are the rituals that you want to build in amongst the way that you work?
[00:25:42] Okay. But finally, let's talk about when we're crafting our cadence. What are we after? What are we crafting? What are the things that we can actually design in terms of our working rhythms? So we can design things like our general work cycles. So this is like for me, with my, my two weeks on one week off with clients. So that's kind of my overarching work cycle that I work in with.
[00:26:08] Now, something that's really interesting to think about in terms of our general work cycle for women particularly is, are periods and how they can actually affect us and can be something that's really interesting to work in with. But yeah what's the type of work that you do and what actually makes sense for that type of work. It might make sense for you to do a monthly cadence or a, like a biweekly cadence or a quarterly cadence, and you might have cadences within cadences as well. So, there might be certain things you do on a weekly basis, and then there might be also some things you do on a monthly basis.
[00:26:43] So what else can you design into your working rhythms? or you're working cadence? Well, you can think about holiday time designing that in from the start of your cadence, rather than kind of trying to fit holidays in at the end of everything else. You can think about how you might design client facing versus non-client facing time. When is meeting time, when his deep work time, when his admin time? Thinking about all those different types of work and what makes sense.
[00:27:15] If you are working in projects, what are the kinds of projects cycles that you want to work within? You might say, well, actually a project needs to be as long as the project is, but, there's that rule, that things expand to the amount of time that you give them. So if you were to design project cycles around what actually works for you, what would those projects cycles be? And then in terms of those rhythms and those cadences. What do you want to design into those projects cycles in terms of what you do within those projects? And do you say want to design into project cycles time off at the end of each project to recover and to recuperate and regenerate after a big project? I used to do a lot of kind of consulting work and working on big experience design projects and we would often work with like these three or six months project rhythms that they just always kind of fell into that cadence. Not intentionally, just, that's how they kind of ended up falling out.
[00:28:17] But what would often happen is we'd work really, really hard build up to this huge deadline. And at the end of those projects, you'd often come crashing down after the big high of a project. So, designing off time in after those big projects, if that's kind of the natural way that your work falls out can be a really great idea, so that you're not going from one into the other and ending up in a cycle of burnout as well.
[00:28:42] So when you're crafting your cadence, think about that. Think about how is your cadence actually allowing for work, but also allowing for rest, not just for the sake of recuperating yourself for productivity. But for the sake of rest in itself having a better experience of working life.
[00:29:02] Just as a side note to that, I'm starting to see so much out there at the moment, which is talking about productivity and, rest and self care, but more so that we can be more productive. And I've also seen counters to that at the moment we should like, well, we shouldn't just be resting. For the sake of greater productivity and, and I completely agree with that. Rest has its own value in itself. Sorry, you can hear my voice starting to go still, still a little bit of a hangover from the tonsilitis. But yeah, rest has value in itself and doing things for the joy of it has value in itself. It doesn't just have to be to recuperate for more work.
[00:29:43] So if I just share with you a little bit about kind of the cadences that I work with, yes, I have my three weekly rhythm, but I also have a number of things that I've designed around. So as I mentioned, one of them is school holidays. So I design my year so that I take roughly a month off, over December, January, so I can spend time with my family and my husband while he has the long school holidays.
[00:30:10] Also the benefit of having the three week on one week off rhythm is that given that my husband is a school teacher and has two weeks of school holiday at three other times during the year, that means I get at least one of those weeks off with my husband during the school holidays. So those weeks when I have a non coaching week and my husband is on school holidays, part of my cadence is to take those weeks off with my husband so we can go away. We can just potter around at home, whatever it might be.
[00:30:39] Designing in rest, designing in play, designing and time with family can be part of your cadence. On that note part of my cadence is childcare. So my son, I look after my son two days a week. My husband looks after him one day a week and he is in childcare two days a week. And so part of that cadence is he is at childcare on Mondays and Thursdays.
[00:31:00] And so, Monday is a really great day for me to do the, kind of the deep work, because I don't need to worry about Looking after my kid, but also Fridays are not great days for that because my kid and my husband in the house together with me. So that's a great day for me to have clients on because, I'm not tempted to just be like, oh, Hey guys, let's go out for lunch. And then I lose half my Workday. Which I'm very likely to do because two of my values are joy and ease. And so I'm very likely to just kind of take some work time off to go and hang with my family. Which I know about myself. So I purposefully try and make sure I have some clients on that day where they're both in the house.
[00:31:40] Having said that on the odd afternoon, I do go out and hang with them instead because work is to live right? Not the other way around. But also on that note I've been looking at changing the cadence that my my kid goes to childcare because what I was finding was that I have him two days in a row. And I was feeling like having a day, a work day in between the two days that I have him would be great for my productivity and the energy that I have and the joy that I have in spending time with him and time with my work,. Because what I find. Again, tapping back into what are your natural energies for doing certain things? I find that being with my son and spending a day with my son gives me greater energy to come back and do my business work. And then having a day doing my business work gives me greater energy to come back and be, and play with my son and be really present with him. So for the year ahead, I've changed my childcare days so that I can work with what I know works well for me in that sense. Which I'm really excited about.
[00:32:40] So that kind of brings me to the next point, which is test and iterate. So once you've started crafting this cadence based on all the things that I've talked about, oh, and I should run through the points again. So number one, challenge norms. Number two. Understand yourself. Number three, catalog your work tasks and projects. Number four, consider your constraints. Number five, craft your cadence and number six, test and iterate.
[00:33:05] So once you've designed things, you started working with them. What you're probably going to find is that they don't all work the way you think they're going to work and you'll have the best laid plans and you'll think something's going to be great. And then it doesn't work. So you have to test iterate. And then tweak things and, you'll find over time that there's certain things that you have to work with to make things work.
[00:33:24] Great example is that when I get to the end of the year with my three fabulous three week cadence it gets a little tricky if i'm also taking roughly a month off it means that my client's not sitting i might not see me for ages so at the end of the year i have to change that cadence slightly and i work with a few clients every two weeks just so that they don't have a huge gap between sessions so that was something i only learned through testing and iterating.
[00:33:52] Something else that I have iterated is I designed in a weekly end of the week kind of check in Roundup reflection thing ,that I would do on a Friday to try and Capture the week and kind of wrap that up, but also start me off well on the next foot for the next week. And I never did it.
[00:34:13] It just didn't work. Friday afternoon, would rock around and I was thinking about the weekend and it was, I was not in the right head space to be planning the week ahead. So I, now sometimes I might do that on a Sunday night. Sometimes I might do it on a Monday morning, depending on how I'm feeling. But yeah, my cadence is now to do my planning and thinking about the week on the Monday morning. And part of that Monday morning in terms of my, my ritual is that I go to my favorite cafe and I do that planning in my favorite cafe. Which I love the atmosphere of, and I love the coffee and it just really helps me make sure that I get that done because I'm stacking it with something else that I enjoy.
[00:34:51] And that's a little technique that a lot of my clients have found really helpful for anything that really needs to get done, that you want to make a really good ritual or rhythm or habit out of. Try and put it with something that's going to get you excited to do it. And then you're going to be more likely to get it done.
[00:35:08] So, yeah, so there are just a few little things about how I've tested and iterated my cadence. The childcare thing and the days that I have with my son and not, that's another thing that I've had to test in iterate, and that's a constant work in progress to anyone of you who has kids you'll understand that their needs are constantly changing. Your needs are changing as a parent, how you work together as a family is changing.
[00:35:33] So yeah, just being really flexible and looking at how you can change in test and iterate your, your cadence and your working rhythms based on your own needs, but also your family's needs the people around you. The things that are happening in their lives, too. And this should be a flexible process. It shouldn't be something that's really rigid and set in stone because nothing works when you do it that way. look, there's the odd person who works really Well, when they just lock things in. But for the rest Mere mortals. Yeah, I think you'll get far more out of this process. If you are flexible with it. And adaptable and agile and work with things as they change and work with things, as you realize, they're not working.
[00:36:13] The worst thing to try and do is if, you notice something's not working in like, no, I've got to make my routine or my cadence work that I thought was going to be really awesome. And there's a few times that I've questioned the three weekly cycle thing. And I've gone back to the drawing board and I've sat down and really looked at, okay, well, if I didn't do this, and I went back to working with clients every two weeks or whatever, what would that actually look like? And what would that mean for me? And every time I come back to the fact that knowing this actually really works well for these reasons. But I do reflect on that and that's part of this test and iterate cycle is take some time to reflect, ask yourself the question of what's working and what's not working? For you for the people around you. And yeah, test iterate and, eventually you might get it right? No, you're never going to get it right. It's going to be a constant work in progress. Let's be real here. So that is the or working rhythms that work for you podcast. One more time with those points challenge, norms understand yourself catalog your work tasks and projects, consider your constraints, craft your cadence, and test and iterate. Plus reflect.
[00:37:20] I hope that's been really helpful. If you've got something out of today's podcast, I'd love to hear from you. Have you got any really interesting working rhythms, rituals, routines, cadences that maybe different from the norm? Are there norms that you've challenged within your working environment? And I look, I didn't say this before, but I really do encourage you if there are things in your workplace where you work for someone else that, you think could use some challenging, don't be afraid to, to step up and say, Hey, look, I think this could work really well for me, if I did this a little bit differently. Or this could work really well for our team. If we did things really differently.
[00:37:59] There's always room for innovation within organizations, particularly now that things have changed with COVID sorry, a little notification going off there. And now is a time where there is opportunity to innovate because we're coming back into the workplace and things are different.
[00:38:17] And if you're a leader of teams, of people, I encourage you to think too, are there ways that my teams could be changing up how we do things and how we operate our cadence and our projects and things together? It could be even a really great opportunity to get together and have a brainstorm around right what works, what doesn't work? What does the work that we do need as opposed to are we trying to fit it into something that doesn't work for us? Great examples also might include, like, how does the general populous of your team like to work? Developers are often seen to be people that like to work at night and work really well at night. I don't know if it's true. If you're a developer shout out and let me know. But if you are a team of developers that do all prefer working in the evenings and maybe your whole team can begin to shift your cadence to work around that.
[00:39:06] So I just want you to really challenge how you think about this stuff, challenge, how your team might think about this stuff, challenged, how your organization might think about this stuff, because there's opportunity to innovate within the way that we work in our own working rhythms and the working with teams of our teams and our organizations.
[00:39:25] So hope you enjoyed it. Let me know if you've done anything interesting. Let me know if you do anything interesting. Uh, Off the back of listening to this podcast and have a play around with your rhythms and your, your routines. I'd really love to hear about it. So, yeah, shoot me an email. kate@leadingbeings.com. Hit me up on Instagram or LinkedIn. Love to hear from you.
[00:39:45] And in the meantime have a really great working week and I hope that your working rhythms are working for you.