This past week, in a workshop I’m taking, I was prompted to write down my process of creating.
While this seems obvious, I hadn’t done it before. Writing the process down was quick and the result was so valuable.
This reminded me of Laura Woodruff from Organize 365. She talks about the four kinds of work – Housework, Invisible, Hobby and Unique Purpose*.
The invisible work is defined as “the mental load and related tasks to running a household”.
Ideas to Consider
As I thought about the concept of making invisible visible, I realized that there is so much of what we do every day in our work that is invisible.
How could we apply this concept to our personal development and everyday work.
Here are just three ideas I came up with:
- Personal Operating Systems – We could make information visible to others about how we work. For example, letting someone know that after a couple hours of meetings, you need time alone to decompress and process all the information.
- eMail – This tends to be a time drain. You go in with the intent of answering a message and two hours later you are still there. What is the process? How do you manage your email? Is it intentional or random?
- Personal Projects – At work, there are many activities that are the individual tasks of the work. What is your process for creating a PowerPoint? How do you approach a deliverable? Can you write down your process? If you do, are there insights that emerge?
Your Turn
There are all kinds of things happening behind the scenes in our minds as we go through our workday.
When you think about your work, are there things that you or others around you could benefit from if the invisible became visible?
Consider the ideas above of find one of your own.
With just five minutes, you might discover something you haven’t realized before.
__________
*To learn more about Organize 365 and the four kinds of work, this podcast is a great introduction to Laura’s thinking on the topic.