Want to help build better ways to work? Here’s what you can do today

Hi there,

As some of you know, I’m spending most of my time these days working on my startup, called Rise. We’re building what we think could be the calendar of the future—a calendar that helps you and your team make the most of your time.

I’ll talk more about our thinking in this newsletter, but also on another level I’m so happy I decided to work on this. After leaving my previous startup Blendle in late 2019, I found I really missed product development and engineering. I mean, I love talking and writing, but nothing gives me the deep satisfaction I get from building a digital product. It’s work I can truly lose myself in. And it’s also exciting to keep pushing myself to put the tools and ideas I’ve talked about in GRIP to work every day.

In the last couple of weeks we’ve been inviting the first batches of users to try Rise. If you want to be a part of that, you can sign up at risecalendar.com.

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At Rise, we often get asked “What exactly are you guys building? I mean, I already have a calendar.”

It’s a fair question. And one we’ve thought a lot about.

We think about it at a practical level of course, in terms of functionality, but we’ve also done something else. We’ve collected our ideas for a new and better way to work in a manifesto of sorts. And to be honest, I think that’s one of the strongest aspects of Rise. We’re not just creating some shiny new tool; we’re consciously building on these five principles of what we think work should be like. You can read the Rise manifesto here.

And because these guiding principles can stand alone—regardless of how you implement them—I’d like to share three of them with you today. Then I’ll connect them to concrete steps you can take, with or without Rise. 

We believe everyone benefits from longer stretches of uninterrupted time to work and think

How often do you find yourself hopping from one distraction to the next? We all tend to do this, even though we know true progress only starts when we take the time to think and write and build. 

What you can do today: 

• Use your calendar to claim time to work longer on a single task. 

• Talk with your team about when you all do your best work and how you can help each other preserve those times.

• Turn off any potential focus-killers, like notifications.

We believe a significant portion of our work should take place asynchronously 

We often work as if everyone else is always available, just waiting around to answer questions. Or that everyone’s working roughly the same hours as we are.

Asynchronous work involves those things we can get done without others working at the same time. That may mean you have to write down or sketch out what you’re doing, so your colleagues can pick up where you left off. You may also have to give more thought to what you’re doing (which is almost always a good idea).

And bonus: if we do our work asynchronously, we’re helping move towards a world where it’s the best idea that matters, and not, for instance, who happens to claim the spotlight at some meeting.

What you can do today: 

• For the things that take place synchronously, see if you can prep as much as possible asynchronously. Say you’re putting together the agenda for a meeting. Maybe you can work out your own proposals ahead of time? Or perhaps even get some feedback on them before the meeting?

• Try and make some headway before you ask for feedback. Let’s be honest—that initial idea rarely represents your best work. Sleep on it, take a fresh look, and then share. 

• Experiment for a while with not shooting all kinds of questions over to coworkers on WhatsApp, Teams, or Slack. Aside from the fact that you might be able to find answers yourself instead of disturbing a colleague, odds are that person feels pressure to respond right away, even if they could benefit from taking some more time to think about it. And so you may not be getting the best answer anyway. 

We believe that making plans for the future can boost strategic thinking and help you make better decisions today

I hear it everywhere: We often choose to do things because they feel good—and not based on any clear sense of where we’re headed. Having plans for the future makes it much easier to figure out what to do. And what not to do.

This third point is something we love to complain about: The boss or team leader who continues to postpone confronting the bigger picture. The structure that doesn’t really work in the long run. Or the priorities that get set and then ignored by everyone. I hope you’ll dare to take this one on. Looking farther down the road isn’t the easiest part of work, but it is the part that has tremendous power to change things. And another thing: if there’s a larger culture of chaos or lack of direction where you work, don’t presume that you and your team are stuck with that.

What you can do today:

• It’s just as much your responsibility as anyone else’s to know your organization’s top objectives this year. Perhaps that’s already been communicated, but it was unclear? Let folks know. Has nothing been done about it yet? Get the proper people to put forward an initial plan by the end of the month. 

• With or without an overarching plan, you can take the initiative to reserve an hour for yourself (or with your team) to figure out what things you can do this month that would help move you and the team forward in big ways. That means identifying important, non-urgent matters and tackling them. 

• You can also come at this from another direction: Scan your calendar. What tasks might still benefit you a year from now?

I can’t wait to see what our working lives will be like in ten years, and I hope to help out in some small way, through GRIP and Rise. Despite the stress of increasing pressures at work and ever-higher expectations, I hope you’ll find a way to try radical experiments in our collective search for new ways to do great work. 

Have a good week, 

Rick

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