How to give yourself some time back

Hello and welcome to Working It.

I was delighted when a longtime friend of Working It, Jonathan Black, invited me to the Oxford university Careers Service last week to see “graduation day” 🎓for students taking part in the university’s Making a Difference programme. In a tight employment market, the scheme offers students a chance to gain valuable experience and contacts in the world of charities and social enterprises.

The first cohort of 50 students presented final projects brimming with ideas for organisations including the United Nations Development Programme and Leukaemia Care.

This model of giving extra skills and support to committed students before they go into the recruitment market can surely be scaled or replicated. Do you know of something similar?

Read on for some achievable, small fixes for your performative busyness 📥 (come on, we all do it) and in Office Therapy we encourage a generative AI novice.

As always, email about this stuff — and anything else: [email protected].

How much is ‘too much’ on the calendar 📅?

I often work late into the night on this newsletter, having taken too many daytime meetings and calls when I should be blocking out “focus” time to research and write 🎧. This kind of self-inflicted overwhelm is common, not least because humans underestimate how long it will take us to complete tasks, so we get overambitious about what we take on. (This has a name: the planning fallacy.)

So how should we decide which opportunities to follow up or initiate — and which to delay or reject? I am a fan of Cal Newport’s book Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout. In a world of overwhelm, doing less but doing it better must be our goal (or North Star 🌟, to use a more fashionable work-y term).

I asked Rebecca Robins how she prioritises, and keeps her diary manageable. She’s a consultant (see her in action above) on leadership, brand and culture, and has co-written a book — Five Generations At Work.

Rebecca told me: “My big question is interrogating the ‘why?’ — and ‘what changes as a result?’ It applies to everything from meetings and events to initiatives . . . the firmly polite art of ‘why’ is fundamental to creating space for maintaining focus on what matters.”

That’s simple and clarifies the purpose around every new project or encounter. Meanwhile, Keren Blackmore, a leadership and team coach, suggests starting with the question “in saying yes to this, what am I saying no to?” The often overlooked part about overscheduling is that our existing commitments may not get the attention they deserve. Keren’s version of the “why” that Rebecca Robins uses is: “to take a beat. Is the meeting a ‘hell yes’, maybe or a no 👎🏼? If it’s a no, or a maybe, you can decline in a way that works for you.”

And when you can’t or don’t want to say no? Deploy managing tactics: “Reduce the length of meetings you take and signal upfront you have a hard stop, then stick to it. Share what makes a meeting or briefing work for you in advance — is there a format you prefer, for example?”

One extremely efficient person I asked about this, uses what I would call a “feelings-based” checklist. They say “yes” to things in work and their personal life that spark joy (seeing friends, mentoring younger colleagues) and they also accept “intellectually intriguing” events and meetings, while blocking diary time for self-started ideas generation through reading widely and their own projects. Everything else gets a no.

I can’t let this go (for now) without mentioning my colleague Tim Harford’s 2015 article “The power of saying no”. Tim wrote:

“One trick is to ask, ‘If I had to do this today, would I agree to it?’ It’s not a bad rule of thumb, since any future commitment, no matter how far away it might be, will eventually become an imminent problem.”

Tim’s advice has stuck around (have a look at Google — it’s cited frequently). That’s because it works, both for your professional diary — and social events 😉.

Keen to hear your ideas on keeping commitments manageable while staying polite, sane and on track: [email protected].

Office Therapy

The problem: I haven’t started using AI — I am a bit terrified, to be honest. I don’t want to be caught out (I am in fundraising and in my 40s) when it’s suddenly imposed. How can I make a start? My employer has not mentioned it. We are a fairly small organisation.

Isabel’s advice: I have been having versions of this conversation with other people for the past six months, so you aren’t alone. I use Gemini at work — to give me suggestions to improve emails, for example — but here’s the truth about my personal progress, from Instagram.

First, check with your manager to see if there is an AI policy at work — you might start an important conversation, given your bosses haven’t mentioned it. (Staff “bringing their own AI to work” is a massive thing in workplaces right now, bubbling under the radar. It’s a topic that’s likely to boil over if things go unchecked.)

Then I asked Louise Ballard for her advice for you, me and everyone else who is confused about how and where to start. Louise’s Atheni.ai programme is aimed at getting people and teams from zero to expert on generative AI.

Louise told me: “Don’t worry about being left behind — most people haven’t started yet. This is a marathon, not a sprint 🏃🏻‍♂️. Generative AI isn’t just a tool, it’s a whole new way of working. Begin by subscribing to a paid version of Claude or ChatGPT (this keeps your data private) and then personalise it to understand your specific role and style — you can do this in settings.

“By doing that, you’ll avoid the very generic AI feel. Most people don’t realise that. Your AI is like a combine harvester for admin tasks, handling the first 80 per cent at speed so you can focus on adding the finishing touches. I like to think of AI as an eager intern: the more context you provide, the better its output.

“We find that the biggest limitation of AI is often what you can imagine it doing for you — so keep asking how it can help you. AI isn’t always right, but it offers a useful starting point and a fresh and well-researched perspective. You stay in control, decide what you want to use it for, but don’t think of it as a replacement for you, it’s not, it’s an amplification.”

Got a question for Office Therapy? We anonymise everything: [email protected]

Five top stories from the world of work

1. Graduates face an uphill battle to employment: Even graduates from top universities are struggling to get a first job. Michael Skapinker outlines the causes of the UK’s recruitment problems, and how young adults can make their CV stand out.

2. Who’s afraid of the big, bad sabbatical: Pilita Clark looks into the ultimate staff perk — a paid sabbatical — and finds that a surprising number of financial services companies offer these breaks — although some on reduced or no pay.

3. Age discrimination payouts are getting bigger: Emma Jacobs looks at how ageism claims are playing out in legal cases, including highly paid professionals fighting back against forced retirement.

4. Whatever happened to the great truck driver shortage?: Sarah O’Connor finds that despite skilled drivers initially got more cash, they’re again walking away from jobs where pay and conditions aren’t good enough.

5. ‘You know what? They quit.’ Resigning by proxy in Japan: Leo Lewis explores the agencies that, for a fee, resign on behalf of Japanese workers. It’s an insight into the entrenched hierarchies and etiquette in corporate culture — and young workers are fighting back.

One more thing . . . 

Walmart has a founding family-dominated history and ethos, and a brand new Apple-style campus in Bentonville, Arkansas. There’s a fascinating (but very long — make a coffee ☕️) profile of the world’s largest retailer, Walmart Wants to Be Something for Everyone in a Divided America (£) in Bloomberg Businessweek. Chief executive Doug McMillon has been at Walmart his whole career, starting off in a warehouse. Fun fact: he was voted “most attractive” in his graduating class at Bentonville High School.

US workplace insights: DEI latest

This week I asked Kevin Delaney, editor-in-chief of Charter, a US future-of-work media and research firm, to tell us what companies are doing about their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programmes in the wake of the Trump administration’s attacks.

Kevin confirms that many large companies are, at the very least, changing the way they’re talking about DEI. No surprises there (have a look at this FT story on rightward moves from tech companies, where there has been surprisingly little employee backlash).

But what I hadn’t heard before is that the HR leaders that Kevin has spoken to say they’re walking a fine line, as their employees will push back on any retreat from DEI. Will there be a talent drain from companies where the staff don’t like what the leadership are doing? Is tech exempt because of the particular make-up of its workforce?

Keen to hear your views: [email protected].

Before you log off . . . 

The Fence magazine is hard to categorise (it describes itself as “the UK’s only magazine” 👀). It captures offbeat and pleasingly random bits of London life but also does serious investigations: the standout is an account of the “legacy of deceit, fraud and suicide at the heart of the Church of England”, caused by a corrupt church employee. Sign up for the Off The Fence newsletter — and I recommend subscribing to the print edition.