The naming of this presentation initially put me off, as it seemed somewhat outside of the nature of the conference. However, How to Survive the Zombie Apocalypse ended up being a useful forewarning & guide on how to manage oneself throughout your career, and how to help others with this.
The majority of the presentation seemed common sense, however these were the points which are not always focused on and unless you begin to think about them, are not clear - you can struggle to see where you can help yourself if you aren’t looking from outside an isolated perspective of yourself..
People don’t like the unknown - it fosters their worst fears. Andy brought up a great anectdote about the Jaws film, in how a malfunctioning mechanical shark and a limited time to shoot brought about some of the best film-making of the century. Forced to film the majority of the film without the shark, this led to many low lying shots over the water, with intimidating music adding suspense; this allowed the audience to build their own fears - what lied beneath!?
This is the same for meetings - if you set up a meeting with little context, particularly with people you manage, such as “can I grab you for five minutes later”, they are likely to worry about what the meeting is for, even if you know it is just to talk about them getting a promotion or taking on a new project.
People crave consistency. It allows them to understand what is happening and allows for management of stress. A monthly report should be predictable, so people should not be chasing you for input the day before.
Putting people into scenarios they are not expecting also removes predictability and can increase stress, even if for a good reason - a CEO going to talk to a graduate will cause the grad to worry about why they is being talked to until he is told he is here to reward their good work.
Maintaining focus is hard. Particulary with the number of distractions available to us all the time! You only have to look around your work desk to see mobile phones beeping, desk phones ringing, skype messages flashing, email notifications appearing, people looming with questions
How are you meant to focus with all of this going on around you!? Andy describes the state of FLOW, where you are so involved with your task that you do not notice the distractions around you, and race through work like a young Linford Christie! This Flow is easily lost when someone / something interrupts you, as it brings about the dreaded context switching. It can take up to twenty minutes to context switch, meaning you could be doing less than three meaningful things every hour.
A few simple rules for meetings were also mentioned
Don’t take your laptop. What value are you adding if you mind is elsewhere. It would be better to spend your time doing something useful outside the meeting, as your input in the meeting is likely to be low value.
Don’t go to meetings with more than 8 people. Nothing ever gets done or decided. (This was backed up by a paper written by a colleague recently, who’s study showed that the optimal amount of meeting participants is <8, as they can reach a decision in the given time frame).
Leave time inbetween meetings. If you don’t have time to process / contextualise the meeting, you won’t learn anything from it, or get to write follow ups, or keep to actions.
Limit your priority list. It’s difficult to remember a huge list of important things to finish in a day. It’s even harder when other outside influences are causing you stress and you are having to context switch regularly. Limiting priorities to 3 things, put everything else on the backlog, but BE AWARE OF YOUR BACKLOG. If you are aware, it makes it possible to re-prioritise if needed, and allows you to pick up easy wins if they present themselves.
Finally, he mentioned the importance of prioritisation and focus in the sense of not being concerned with what has past, unless it is to change the future.
If a major incident has occurred, you can’t worry about how you got there, you need to focus on the problem you have now, and how you are going to solve it. History can teach us important lessons on how to prevent things going wrong, but is less helpful in the moment of it going wrong (unless it has gone wrong similarly before and you still haven’t fixed it 😆)