Morfternight - Morfternight #47: Unlimited Time Off
Hello! I am Paolo Belcastro. You are reading this because you subscribed to Morfternight, the weekly newsletter about leadership, product management, distributed teams, and anything that tickles our brains. Morfternight #47: Unlimited Time OffThe one where we talk about disconnecting, warping the WFH revolution, and the customer journey. 🤩 We welcome six new Morfternighters who joined us last week! We love to have you here, and remember: like a smile, this newsletter can be shared with others without you losing anything. 📷 Photo of the weekFly me to the Moon - More Photos👋 Good Morfternight!Vacation week #2 reached its end. I surprise myself by spending several hours in a row each day not thinking about work. It is easy to underestimate the time it takes to disconnect from something we do daily. It’s not just my opinion. I learned a few years ago from a Neurologist in Vienna that our brain requires two weeks off of a routine daily task to stop thinking about it for good. A few days away, don’t even get close. This is why I prefer to take time off less often but in longer chunks as years go by. I have one week left; let’s see how far my mind can go! 😉 🌍 It’s about quality, not quantity!
This sentence is extracted from the Automattic Field Guide, the handbook we all refer to in the company. It’s the opening line of the related page, which goes on with more details:
The point is that, to be at the top of your form when you work, it is essential to disconnect periodically from it. The net benefit of those days off is positive as the quality of the work done will improve. We also take two to three months of paid sabbatical leave every five years. Long leaves have additional collateral benefits beyond one’s ability to disconnect, recharge, and come back ultra-motivated. They force every one of us to document our work, train and mentor our successors, and, in other words, guarantee that our team can keep running smoothly in our absence. If doing great work with a fantastic team in these conditions is appealing to you, check out our open positions. 🤦 Warping the work-from-home revolutionOver the past two years, many humans have experimented with multiple distributed, remote, or hybrid work forms. The pace of evolution in that field has accelerated tenfold, if not more. Of course, we all read the stories about tensions between leadership and staff in companies that want to force everyone back to the office. But there are other ways to ruin progress.
The Rise of the Worker Productivity Score describes how intrusive and pervasive productivity monitoring creates the wrong incentives for workers, ultimately alienating them and the customers they serve. 🪩 The customer as heroSpeaking of customers, I found the ideas in The customer as hero fascinating. Angelique Little, the author, and designer at Dropbox, explains how her previous Hollywood career served her new one in Design.
Don’t let the similarities with the classic “user personas” approach fool you; this approach has much more depth. That's it for today!I write, and publish photos on paolo.blog If you know someone who could enjoy Morfternight, share it with them! 🤩 Cheers! |
Older messages
Morfternight #46: Rearranging websites is fun.
Friday, August 12, 2022
The one where we talk about enjoying the journey and learning without forgetting.
Morfternight #45: Gone Fishin'
Thursday, August 4, 2022
The one that wasn't sent because of travel and now is late.
Morfternight #44: Am I wrong?
Wednesday, July 27, 2022
We discuss the possibility I may need to change my mind. It feels good.
It's still Wednesday somewhere...
Thursday, July 21, 2022
Morfternight #43: We talk about Jane, Lily, Sam, and Martin, but also a product mindset lesson about transatlantic crossings.
Morfternight #42: A trip to Death Valley
Thursday, July 14, 2022
We also discuss the weather, the best camera, and the JW Space Telescope.
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