Distractions can shift our focus away from project tasks that we need to complete to achieve meaningful outcomes. They also create environments and cultures in which we might fall prey to transactional practices that leave us little room to pause, take stock and reflect on what is most important: the work that we are doing together and how we interact and relate with each other while doing that work.
We call this Sleepwalking.
We discovered that most of us want to spend more time on meaningful work and work with teams that are engaged in making that happen. Projects where our skills and practice strengths are working well together that encourage us to learn, improve and thrive.
We call this Sparkle.
This is not a book telling you to quit your job and work for non profits.
This is a book on how we can take ownership of ourselves, extending to the team and organisation in taking micro actions to shape the desired culture and behaviours to insert meaning into what we do.
These micro actions help us to build the muscle memory of transferable soft skills we call implicit practices.
Micro actions that you take means that you are being proactive and not reactive, so this mindset and attitude encourages you to widen your perspectives, form new connections and make meaningful decisions.
The complex world we are in has lots of noise, so building a strong inner anchor and compass (using character) to help us navigate the complexity and have contextual adaptability capability to solve ambiguous problems we face in the 21st century.
Make Meaningful Work is a learning platform and this book is part of a larger learning experience.
Complimentary online Learning Adventures, as part of the larger learning experience, are included at the end of each Chapter for you to enjoy.
The Make Meaningful Work framework and tools can be used by individuals from the age of 8 onwards as well as teams and organisations.
The Make Meaningful Work tools include:
- Practice Spotting™
- Make Meaningful Work Guided Practice Journal
Dan is a co-founder and principal at Apogee and co-founder of Make Meaningful Work, as well as the co-founder of UX Hong Kong.He has been involved in the UX field for over 20 years, and has been based in Hong Kong for over 20 years. Dan has lectured about user-centered design globally. He has co-authored two books including Global UX with Whitney Quesenbery and the Usability Kit with Gerry Gaffney.
Jo is a co-founder and principal at Apogee and co-founder of Make Meaningful Work, as well as the co-founder of UX Hong Kong.Jo grew up in multicultural Hong Kong, with a Chinese-Burmese father and Chinese-Indonesian mother. She collaborates with global teams conducting research in Cantonese, Mandarin and English.Jo is passionate about the environment, political and economic systems and how we can live healthier and happier lives while not adversely impacting less fortunate people.
