It’s summer in the northern hemisphere and for many, that means road trips, flights, layovers and other relaxing activities. Whether you’re enjoying longer days on-the-go or closer to home, we encourage you to expand your reading (and listening) lists to include expert commentary on the world of work. We compiled a list of essentials with brief descriptors to get you started.
Whether you have 5 minutes or 5 hours, hopefully you find something here that challenges the way you think about individual, team and organizational workplace dynamics.
Poolside Podcasts
- Rethinking Flexibility at Work WorkLife with Adam Grant (20 minutes)
- This episode examines “the science and practice of creating more autonomy, and making it work for people and organizations”.
- Virtually Present: Meta’s Vision for the Hybrid Workplace HBS Managing the Future of Work (30 min)
- This episode explores a futurist, product leader’s approach to innovating how, where and when work gets done.
- 3 Strategies for Dealing with Procrastination HBR IdeaCast (30 min)
- This episode features a conversation with an author and former psychologist about why we fall into cycles of postponing our work.
- Quieting an Ambitious Brain Deep Question with Cal Newport (1 hour)
- This episode addresses questions such as, How do I turn off my ambitious mind? How do I get back on the productivity horse after I fall off?
- 5 Steps for Planning Your Day For Optimal Creativity The Accidental Creative with Todd Henry (30 min)
- This episode introduces a simple 5 step method for allocating resources such as time, focus and energy.
Airplane Articles
- The Future Workplace Depends on Efficiency, Effectiveness, and Balance (10 min)
- “To be successful, companies must strike the right balance between driving for efficiency and achieving effectiveness while also supporting employees to balance work and life in meaningful ways.”
- 11 Trends That Will Shape Work in 2022 and Beyond (10 min)
- “We’ve all been living through the greatest workplace disruption in generations and the pace will not slow down. What will change is how variable that disruption becomes. In 2022, leaders will need to learn how to thrive in a period of disruption that plays out unevenly across their organizations.”
- Leaders Offering Hybrid Work Should Practice What They Preach (4 min)
- “By creating options for both in-person and remote collaboration, you're acknowledging with action that no two employees are the same while also providing real autonomy, empowering them to make decisions based on what works best for them.”
Beach Books
- Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers Chip Heath and Karla Starr (4 hours)
- “Understanding numbers is essential—but humans aren’t built to understand them. Until very recently, most languages had no words for numbers greater than five—anything from six to infinity was known as “lots.” While the numbers in our world have gotten increasingly complex, our brains are stuck in the past.”
- Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups Daniel Coyle (8 hours)
- “It’s not as simple as carving a mission statement…High-purpose environments don’t descend on groups from on high; they are dug out of the ground, over and over, as a group navigates its problems together and evolves to meet the challenges of a fast-changing world.”
On the Itinerary
- The Nowhere Office: Reinventing Work and the Workplace of the Future Julia Hobsbawm (5 hours)
- “The Nowhere Office describes a unique moment in the history of work which, if understood and handled correctly, can provide a springboard for the biggest transformational change in the workplace for a century: something better, more meaningful, and more workable for everyone.”
At ActivTrak, we genuinely care about improving the workplace experience. We’re in the business of enabling organizations to create more supportive, fulfilling and engaging environments, all while achieving business success. Because when the workplace works, so do people.
This summer and always, continue to be a student of your own productivity. Reflect on what makes you more or less productive. Consider what focus means, how you cultivate it and what you need in order to reach and maintain it. Through this, we can not only be more productive and get more done during our workdays, but we can be happier and healthier before, during and after.
