Finishing one Ironman triathlon wasn’t enough for me. I started planning number two within weeks of the first one, choosing the June 2016 Cairns swim-bike-run.

Another long-range plan, requiring more schedules and spreadsheets and tracking and reading and learning, planning nutrition and fitness, and planning how to peak 12 months later.

The thing with plans is, they’re only a guideline. On the morning in Cairns, a tropical storm blew in and the 3.8km swim was a choppy washing machine of despair. You can’t plan for the weather! Still, finished the whole thing, and again looking forward to the next one.

In March 2015, I completed my first of five Ironman triathlons, in Melbourne Australia. And to my credit, I didn’t just complete the 3.8km swim, 180km bike and 42.2km run, I finished it actually wanting to do another one. That’s a finish that many don’t imagine: wanting to do another one.

Taking on endurance events takes a certain kind of mindset: that of a finisher. Preparation took 12 months, and it took a steely eye on the goal, dedication to the plan, and the ability to forge ahead when things got tough.

Being a finisher is more than just starting.

Today’s reflection is about the effects of uncertainty, change, adventure, and amongst all that, still being in control.

In March 1997, I turned 27, and it wasn’t an easy time for me. Even though I was employed in a good job in my beloved home city of Calgary, I was restless and unsettled. It was a pivotal year, and it turned out alright.

Full credit to my wise mother for putting me back in control. By August I’d found a pipeline engineering job in Australia, and in October moved to Brisbane without knowing a soul here. Call it controlled adventure.

In 1988, I turned 18 and inherited a bit of money, $6000. My mother made it very clear that I was to spend it on something meaningful. “Spend it on something that will impact your life”.

Even though I grew up in Calgary and was (am) a city girl; somehow, I fancied myself in the horsey-set, via horse camp and riding lessons. Capital outlay for a horse (then) was about $6000.

1988 was also high school graduation. A 6-week summer student trip beckoned, for $6000. A (chaperoned) drive up the east coast of Australia, for fifteen 18-year-old Calgarians. Meaningful! Impactful!

I’ve always credited Mr Wereley, my high school physics teacher, for encouraging my engineering degree decision. Though I wonder. My father was an accomplished seismic geologist; we lost him in a car accident when I was very young. My mother, an English teacher, then married a wonderful civil engineer. He’s a respected retired professor at the University of Calgary and a well-known concrete expert. There must’ve been some influence there.

But I distinctly remember Mr Wereley saying to me, “Don’t be a scientist… get an engineering degree! You will do so much more in the world with an engineering degree”.

The “About Me” sections of websites and LinkedIn give me the heebie-jeebies. Same with biographies for the emcee to announce me as a speaker.

I’m not sure if it’s due to a strong sense of privacy, or something else. It’d be easy to say it’s because I don’t feel comfortable writing about my accomplishments, and maybe that’s some of it. Mostly I don’t think people are that interested. And, I like my privacy.

Having said that, it’s time to get personal here. Through December I’ll be writing 100 words about me, and how life’s experiences fit with what I do.

An 8-year-old asked me, “what’s a deadline?”. Oh, the innocence of not knowing what a deadline is.

The origin of the word is from the mid-1800s, being an actual line around a prison that if a prisoner crossed it, well, that’s the deadline. I didn’t tell the 8-year-old that definition.

I wonder when it became a business term, now being a key tool used to motivate us to accomplish something by a certain date.

To paraphrase Douglas Adams, “I love the whooshing sound deadlines make as they go past”. Fortunately, in this context, no one dies when they whoosh past.

There are two aspects to communities that define them: common ground, and, the boundaries.

The common ground is the similarities, the language, the ‘knowing winks’, the inherent sharing and coordination amongst similarities. The common ground represents the part of being human that humans crave: belonging to a community of similar thinking humans.

The other aspect of communities are the boundaries: the usually ill-defined “line” for which if you are inside it, then you’re inside the community.

Boundaries connect, but they can also cause alienation and discord. Boundaries are there to define, and by defining them, they can also inspire connection.

When you move house, or move office, you realise how important routines are. Moving disrupts those routines, because now the order and flow of work or tasks is different.

Not only are routines mixed up and need to be re-established, but where things are put needs to be re-established. The books don’t all fit in one room anymore. The storage space is in a different location, and your desk orientation is switch around.

These are disruptions that are not to be dismissed. Finding places for stuff (even electronically) is a key feature in being organised. And with organisation comes efficiency.

A thesaurus lists words in groups of synonyms and related concepts. Using a thesaurus on the word ‘thesaurus’ gives us synonyms and related concepts such as “vocabulary”, “glossary”, “phrasebook”, “word list”, and “lexicon”.

So, using a thesaurus on a word gives us a list of similar words and concepts, which might expand our understanding of the word.

We can extend the concept of a thesaurus into communities; the words and language used matters. A community will have a common ground in language and sense-making, like a thesaurus provides. Communities and groups have in-built thesaurus-like boundaries, to structure and organise around.

A post-workshop report tries to capture the events of the workshop discussion. But the truth is, the context is lost, and with that loss, some of the value of the report is lost.

The goal of the report is partly memory jogger, to help attendees remember the discussion. Sufficiently capturing context for someone who wasn’t there, that needs different skills. And then, it gets even more difficult when time passes between the workshop and the report. Even if the report is written in a timely matter, coming back to read it months later sometimes leaves everyone wondering what went on.

The knowledge work economy emerged in the 1950s, after we’d perfected the industrialised factory approach to making things. Now that machines and production lines were starting to produce many of our goods, there needed to be a cohort of people managing that… and improving it.

But there was no structure attached to those roles. Over the next 50 years, chaotic workflow has emerged, now mostly driven by emails.

Knowledge workers are expected to ‘just know’ what to do next. And we often have – and want - the autonomy to figure out what’s next. This makes for haphazard approaches, for everyone.

It’s that time of year when I start looking for next year’s calendar, for planning, tracking, and dreaming.

For over 20 years, I used the Daytimer brand. When Daytimer left Australia a few years ago, I found another (better) solution with Agendio. It’s a terrific ‘design your own’ provider. I recommend it, though it’s expensive. Unfortunately, at the moment, they’re not delivering to Australia due to pandemic-reduced flights.

So, for 2022, I’ve cobbled together a made-up version. I can’t go without the month view. It gives me the big picture of available time, and importantly: my weekend and holiday plans.

Expecting to “increase productivity” in knowledge work is a flawed target. Increasing productivity works when there’s a direct relationship between increased input and increased outputs. But humans don’t work that way. Humans don’t function like a production line where the same widget is added the same way repeatedly. Work in the knowledge sector is more chaotic and unpredictable than that.

A better way to ‘increase productivity’ is to get more organised with the work and the workflow. This means strategies such as time planning, time blocking, task capturing, task categorisation, intentional prioritisation decisions, and daily, weekly, and quarterly goal planning.

When we sit down to do work, that’s what we should be doing.

I’m guilty of the other type: planning to do work, but an hour later I realise I’ve been doing administrative email reading and scrolling, rather than work.

I do good work when I actually block the time, and say to myself, for this 90mins, or whatever, all I’m doing is writing that report, or editing that standard, or reading that article. And then for that block of time, that’s all I do. No emails, no scrolling, no admin.

When you go to work, how about you do.

Doing something well, once, might be considered beginner’s luck. For example, running your first 10km in under 45minutes, or having your first book proposal accepted: these are amazing accomplishments. Doing an impressive thing once is good for the ego, and yes the bragging rights are worth it. No problem with that.

Doing things well over and over again is probably more satisfying. In the work world, there are many tasks that need doing many times. For example, writing reports, sorting through data, solving complex design problems. The best way to improve is to do them many times. Quantity builds quality.

A basic, often overlooked, need within organisations, in order to function efficiently, is categorisation and standardisation of what it does. Successful businesses have successfully categorised, simplified, and standardised.

Categorisation and standardisation applies to information storage, the findability of that information, the procedures, processes and outputs of a business. Useful categories and standardised processes allows newcomers (and oldtimers) to identify, manage, retrieve, and connect knowledge within the business.

No doubt it’s kind of boring to think about. And there’s a logical thought that being too standardised will inhibit innovation. On the contrary: standardisation can provide a stable launching point for innovation.

Deciding how to file our information doesn’t get enough attention. By this I mean our personal projects and filing.

Large corporate projects, particularly engineering ones, have whole teams to sort it out. It’s our own project information filing that ends up in a heap.

I think there are basically three information storage nuts to crack: the email folder system, the (cloud-based) file folder system, and our handwritten or electronic notebook files. They need different strategies, but similar processes. Personally, I haven’t been able to rely on the ‘one storage folder’ and search function; I still like a logical folder structure.

When facing a multitude of documents, and versions of documents, there are some simple things to do to help manage them.

For simplicity, I find the file name is the easiest thing to use to manage my own documents.

• Establish a consistent file naming convention. If outside your organisation’s system, there’s flexibility, so use what makes sense to you. It’s useful to include the date in the file name.

• Have a method of version control. The simplest way is to change the file name.

• For documents under development, keep the history but preface the file name with “SS”, for superseded.

Here are 3 tips I heard recently, to get on top of workload and expectations.

1. Allow enough time to do the work. For example, reading a 30-page report cannot be done “in a few minutes”. You probably need 30 minutes to read and absorb it properly.

2. Pause before proceeding. Particularly before sending an important email, but also before moving to the next task, and before making that difficult call. Have a pause. Catch your breath.

3. Systematise wherever possible. Use post-its or checklists or calendar reminders.

These won’t make the work easier, but they might make work easier.