Being ‘in a groove’ is comfortable, easy, and unsurprising. It can also be useful, inspiring, and satisfying. When we’re in a groove, it feels right, and things seem to go our way. Problems get solved, and there is little conflict.

But at some point, it’s worth looking at that groove and trying to decide if, in fact, it’s actually a rut. Maybe that groove – or rather, rut – means that you’re no longer learning, no longer challenged.

Perhaps it’s worth a shake-up now and then, to shake us out of our rut, which we might have thought was a groove.

The opposite of uncertainty is, of course, certainty. The nature of the human mind is such that we struggle with uncertainty. When faced with uncertainty, we strive to reach certainty of some sort. Certainty is found – imperfectly sometimes for sure –through applying heuristics, stereotypes or generalisations. These shortcuts are applied for new situations, new experiences, or to pigeonhole that new person we’ve just met.

In times of uncertainty, especially when it’s multiple aspects, these shortcuts can be detrimental. The new situation, experience, or person doesn’t fit into those pigeonholes. Be forgiving, patient and kind. Those are easy shortcuts to apply.

Some of the work I do involves facilitating a group of people to agree on some tangible outcomes.

In my role facilitating risk workshops for the safety of our built infrastructure, we spend time trying to predict the behaviour of others. It’s relying on the behaviour of others – following procedures, doing the right thing – that can make or break the effectiveness of some of our risk control methodologies.

Prediction of human behaviour, or in a similar sense, of how an unseen infection may behave, is fraught with difficulty. I don’t envy those currently trying to determine the right next steps.

Never before have we paid so much attention to what is actually essential. And also, in the opposite: identifying what is non-essential.

In the times before these, everything we had, and everything we were doing, seemed essential. It was essential to make time to go to the café. It was essential to have friends over on the weekend. It was essential to hug a relative when we met after a time apart.

Giving up those essentials opens our mind to think about what is left. But on the other hand, in a modern society, enjoying life is an essential too.

I’m guilty of recently – like about 6 months ago – lamenting that the world needs ‘a reset’. I remarked that we as a society were getting too comfortable, too bored. We’ve had it too easy for at least a generation or two; many of us have never seen real hardship.

Well I guess we’re now having that reset.

But I’m oddly okay with it – because it tests fragility. This reset might, hopefully, clear out some shoddy practises, the nonjobs, and the focussed greed on always wanting to get more.

For humans and society to excel, we need to not be fragile.

Our ability to think and understand can get muddled when there’s an enormous amount of information coming in, especially when combined with uncertainty.

Analogies and metaphors are useful to quickly understand a complex issue. A good metaphor can clarify the intent or idea, by relating it to something recognisable or already known.

The Queensland Premier gave an excellent example of this for our current lockdown situation: We’re in a cyclone. Every day, for the foreseeable future. You wouldn’t go out in a cyclone, so, just imagine when you wake up every day, there’s a cyclone coming. And don’t go out.

When faced with a decision which is based on a piece of information that you don’t yet have, it seems that the human brain has a habit of shutting down; or being otherwise irrational.

What faced us last week was the question: when can we fly back? And the answer was: after the test results come in. When will that be? (Crickets.)

In the bigger picture, this situation is faced all the time in the arena of technical expertise. Managing – and supporting - the decision-making process in the face of lack of information, is the root of many stressful jobs.

Obviously, life has changed. What hasn’t changed is time: there are still seven days in the week, and there are still 24hrs in a day.

Time continues to tick over, whether we are commuting into an office or not. Calendars mark time, though those calendars may look a little different these days.

Revere time for what it is: it is something we all have in the same amount, no matter who we are.

Perhaps this is a good time for a pause, time to rethink about the important things, and a chance to spend some time with that reading pile.

It was a relief when the 14-hour flight landed in Brisbane this morning.

Airline travel has become a ubiquitous part of ‘doing business’ in many parts of the world. When I started working in Calgary in the early 90s, a business trip to Toronto was a “Big Deal”.

By the mid-2000s, business travel was a staple in many workers’ lives; I’ve been hopping up and down Australia’s east coast regularly and without fuss for 10 years. And for 20 years I’ve been doing an at-least annual trip back to Calgary.

I feel for the workers in the airline industry today.

The anxiety of the unknown is being studied and discussed in every corner of the connected world right now.

Another state of mind that would be interesting to study is when the unknown is resolved.

Because we all face that awakening about all this, at some point in the future – and won’t that be a grand feeling indeed.

The relief felt when things work out, like a negative covid19 test, is remarkable. Perhaps a few dances and jigs took place. We’re now bracing ourselves for the jump to the next spinning plate: getting our feet back on terra firma australis.

We deal with obligations all the time, and probably don’t think too much about it.

Today, a test result is yet to be returned to us – it’s still pending, 6 days after the test was done.

We’re obligated to stay in isolation, even though the tested person has recovered and no longer has symptoms. However, our obligation is that we wait for an official negative result. Meanwhile the curtains come down all over the world, and we’re as far away from home as we can be.

Obligations rely on humans doing the right thing. The right thing sometimes tests us.

We’re living through history at the moment. In the future, there will be ongoing reference to the year of 2020, and everyone will know what it refers to. Same as terms like 9/11, WWI or Princess Di, there will be a moniker for 2020, be it covid or something else. We will immediately know what it means.

I had a terrific week slip-sliding down glistening snow on the left side of the land of the maple leaf, as I reached for the half-century. The second week, though, has been spent in the land of uncertainty. Many 100-word thoughts to come.

Some of us around here will be taking a break from #100wordsaday, for about two weeks, because, some of us around here are having a big "0" birthday very shortly.

So, some of us have decided to celebrate it; and some of us will be celebrating it by intentionally slipping down a slope; slipping down that snowy slope as fast and/or as gracefully as we can.

Ok, it's me.

This will occur in the land of the maple leaf, and it will occur on the better side: the left side.

See you on the other side of the half-century.

In the business environment, we’re either consuming or producing. In fact, in our lives in general, we are either consuming or producing, every day, all the time.

The food we consume was produced by someone else. Watching TV or Netflix is consuming the creative production of someone else. That also consumes electricity, which was produced elsewhere. An engineering design we produce is consumed by the manufacturer, who then produces something for the user to consume.

Also important is that the producer (usually) makes money to produce the thing, and the consumer (usually) spends it in order to have the thing.

In the modern office workplace, many required skills are just taken for granted.

Workers in the knowledge economy are expected to know how to, say, prepare for meetings and take relevant notes, though I don’t recall being specifically taught that. Similarly, we’re expected to operate MS Word, Excel or even PowerPoint to the extent that they are useful tools, though formal training is rarely arranged.

More importantly are skills in the accumulation, storage and retrieval of relevant information, be it in an email, or worse, in an online article which is gone when you go to look for it again.

On entering a networking event, choose to join a loose group of two or three, especially if one of the three is looking around and isn’t fully engaged.

Don’t push into a tight-knit group who are animatedly talking and leaning into each other, unless you know one of them well; this is a tough crowd to start with.

Also be aware that the person standing solo might be standing solo for a reason – but that doesn’t mean don’t talk to them. If you’re new and don’t know many people, even the boring person might be better than standing alone yourself.

There’s a fundamental part of gaining knowledge that is easy to overlook: the role of curiosity.

Knowledge is defined in the dictionary as some form of these definitions: a) an awareness or familiarity gained by experience of a fact or situation or b) facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education.

They seem similar. But a closer look differentiates them between “familiarity” and “acquired”.

You can have a familiarity about a wide range of things – just check your Facebook feed for that.

But consciously acquiring knowledge? That requires a certain amount of curiosity in the mix.

Knowledge is gained through experience, or reading, or being trained, or sometimes just instinct. When there is a conscious need to learn something, there’s a way to do that: read a book, find a training course, or just jump in and try.

With online tutorials, or Wikipedia, or of course the ubiquitous Google search, information is at your fingertips. The quality of the information, of course, is a different topic.

However – it’s true that knowledge is more easily absorbed if it is in short amounts, and often.

This seems to be much better than reviewing large amounts of information, infrequently.

Recently I became aware of a list of “overlooked eight” items that quality auditors note are often missing during infrastructure development projects:

1. Defined objectives and KPIs

2. Interface management between stakeholders

3. Risk management (people, environment; business risk and integrity risk)

4. Project handover plans

5. Safe operating limits: at what defined point are things ‘really bad’.

6. Emergency response

7. Recovery and repair plan

8. Ongoing status and insight into the effectiveness of own plans and procedures.

So, if you have a handle on these aspects in your business or your project, then you’re ahead of many others.

Knowledge can be described as either procedural skills or declarative knowledge. A procedural skill is claimed by stating “I know how to…”, and declarative knowledge is claimed by stating “I know that… ”. Procedural skills and declarative knowledge are visible, measurable, and tacit.

If I say, “I know how to … ride a bike”, there’s a way to demonstrate that knowledge. If I say, “I know that … the Pythagorean Theorem will help solve this problem”, that knowledge can be demonstrated.

One way to demonstrate what we know, is to categorise by “I know how to…” or “I know that…”.