Carrying professional weight

As we move through our professional lives, we find ways to carry increasing weight. We develop systems, routines and strategies to help us. Ahead of the day or the week, we brace for the work and the firehose of tasks: to-do lists to complete, conversations to conduct, emails to answer, decisions to make, and meetings to manage. Leaders are often expected to be endlessly available, responsive, decisive and consistent. We can feel perpetually busy; hamsters on the wheel running to stay in place, or Sisyphus eternally pushing his boulder up the same hill.

Our calendars reduce our days into linear, compartmentalised coloured blocks. The relational happens in meetings, corridor conversations, office pop-ins, lunchroom banter, and in the tone, cadence and timing of written communications. Blocking reflective time into the calendar cannot guarantee the conditions in which thinking comes alive, so the strategic finds its place in progressing projects, reviewing plans, revising policies, and reporting on initiatives delivered. Perhaps we make time for family and self through movement, recovery, and opportunities for social connection or being in nature, probably in the early morning, late evening or on weekends. And then we repeat the cycle, continuously reflecting on how doing more, or doing better, can help us carry more.

The sparkle in work and life

As we reflect on a given week, we might see glimmers of joy, reward, connection or achievement. An event enjoyed, a milestone reached, a task completed. But we often defer pleasure, renewal, reflection and being ignited by those things that light us up, to an imagined future where the current pile of things has been cleared (the weekend, the next holiday, when a specific project is finished, when things ‘settle down’). I wonder what becomes of our identity, our energy, and our inner life when we continually postpone what we find energy-giving.

In a recent conversation with a colleague, I was offered a unique metaphor to explore how we equip ourselves for the work and its weight. This colleague had caught sight of my black sparkly powerlifting belt, designed to protect the lifter’s core to enable lifting heavier weight in the gym. The thick, wide leather belt and its heavy-duty lever buckle is something practical that supports me to do hard things. It is also covered in black glitter, at once an item of function and delight. Occasionally, it starts a conversation in the gym. It reminds me that carrying weight does not require me to put aside what delights me, and that in fact what catches the light can provide fortification in the necessary work of bracing and carrying load. My belt resists the binary that the useful must be separate from the delight-full. In effort there can be pleasure. In exertion, playfulness. In repetition, humour. Of course, I can also choose to put the load down, and take the belt off.

Engaging in what keeps us intellectually and emotionally alive

My doctoral research explored how professionals learn and grow throughout their careers. It found that learning was not confined to formal development. Rather, it emerged across the whole of life: in relationships, parenthood, postgraduate study, difficult experiences, reflection and conversations with others. Professional learning was life-wide, personal and nonlinear.

Our professional apparatus, too, is broader than our suite of technologies, courses and efficiencies. Part of what sustains us and grows us in our work includes the places, relationships, rituals and life experiences that keep us intellectually alive, emotionally engaged and attentive to the world around us. These help us think, notice, imagine and connect. They sustain not only our wellbeing, but our professional judgement, creativity and capacity to contribute.

The challenge is to equip ourselves with what we need for the load that must be carried, while retaining the glint of what makes the work energising. We can consider what ignites our thinking. We can notice where we are and what we are doing when our best ideas emerge, such as the moments we experience Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s sense of flow, where we are entirely engrossed in, and propelled by, the work. We might notice what brings us a sense of calm and peace, what feels life-giving, and what accompanies us in moments of struggle.

Integrating these opportunities into the everyday is what fortifies us. Writing, reading, walking, creating and spending time in nature are often framed as ‘taking a break’ from our duties, but in reality, these are the spaces where cognitive work is enabled. Bolts of inspiration and clarity in decision making frequently stem from unconscious mental processing. We experience breakthroughs when we step away from a problem and occupy ourselves elsewhere – in the outdoors, in the shower, or over an uninterrupted coffee. Creativity is enabled when we step outside of conscious striving, allowing ourselves to relax into noticing and being.

Constant striving is not how we do our best work. Pursuing intellectual, emotional and spiritual nourishment is not separate from the work of serving our families, colleagues and communities. It is part of how we remain able to think well, lead well and do the work.

What sustains us can be beautiful. The thing that helps us carry weight can also catch the light.