Evolution

A new(ish) direction.

Photo by Ashkan Forouzani

I started this newsletter as a way to share my learnings from the startup world. Frustrated by inefficiencies, repeating problems and obvious bad practices, I wanted to craft frameworks to help improve how work gets done. I still do. However, I now find myself following the same trodden path common to many content creators. (Side note: I really hate that term). Eventually there is a pull to branch off into more “life” focussed topics. Many of my favourite newsletters, such as Every, Jungle Gym, and Lessons, pursued this direction, morphing from startup guides to sometimes life sharers who still publish work related content. It’s not that frameworks aren’t valuable. But at a certain point I came to realise that:

1. Most business problems are actually people problems.

2. There is no separating the human from the work. How we work and what we choose to work on often reflects who we are, including what we value and desire in our lives.

3. Frameworks are useless if the fundamentals are broken. Individuals and their ways of being cause a lot of those breaks.

Another factor I failed to recognise when I started this newsletter is how much I would change. 2.5 years later, my views on what makes a good workplace and what I want to achieve out of my work have evolved entirely. I’m incredibly grateful for many of the career experiences I’ve had. However, a big part of me can no longer identify with the person who chose some of those particular paths. The shape of my ambition has changed. That fact was surprisingly hard to accept. In the midst of this transition, I’ve learned two things about evolution which may be helpful:

1. Resisting evolution can often come from trying to hold on to beliefs/circumstances/dreams we clung too tightly in the past. Part of the process is making peace with the fact that you no longer care about the things you previously cared so deeply about.

2. Evolution is part homecoming, part creation. I’ve realised this next phase of my career (and newsletter), is about returning to areas important to me that I had forgotten/ignored, whilst also foraging into unexplored spaces. 

Until AI comes to replace us all, people and all of our idiosyncrasies, dreams and fears will be at the core of deciding what gets created in this world and how it’s created. Work transcends so much of our lives and our beings. But we transcend into our work too. That interconnectedness is what I’m interested in exploring. And so Ways of Working is evolving from fewer how-tos to more whys and what-fors. I hope you’ll continue to join me.