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Monday, October 13, 2014

525600 minutes

[Note: Have you watched Rent, the Musical? That's where the title of this blogpost comes from.]

I returned to work this week. At one of our meetings, we discussed how we would measure the impact of our work and how we would report it. Traditionally, we think about impact in terms of productivity, time spent (number of consultations!), the importance of the project, and response to the effort. A whole field is devoted to systematically researching how we assess and measure employee productivity-- human resource development and/or management, so I need not belabor this point.

In part, due to recent events in my life, I've thought a lot about the measure of one's life. It got me thinking about this song below.

Seasons of Love

Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes,
Five hundred twenty-five thousand moments so dear.
Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure, measure a year?

In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights
In cups of coffee
In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife.

In five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure a year in the life?

How about love? Measure in love

[snip]

Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
Five hundred twenty-five thousand journeys to plan
Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure the life of a woman or a man?

In truths that she learned
Or in times that he cried
In bridges he burned
Or the way that she died ...



Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvyHuse6buY

So how about using love as a measure?

But Yin, what does that look like in the workplace? 

Love shows up at work, as ...

Passion. Creativity. Quality.

Sharing and Giving. Learning.

Lyrically, over "cups of coffee," "in laughter, in strife."

But Yin, these are all very abstract. 

Apparently, there is Unmistakable Evidence. Inc magazine had a writeup about 15 revealing signs you genuinely love what you do.

How many of their statements do you agree with or not?

#1 Yup, so many things I want to do!
#2 is the reason why I'm back even though my physician says I should stay away!
#7 Depends on the type of meeting, :)

So love for your work will show!

2 comments:

Tom said...

The Gross National Happiness Index has always interested me. I have real questions about the ability to do research/data gathering about much of anything that really matters and has deep substance and nuance. Most of what I've seen is either fairly trivial or reflective of practice devoid of sophistication and measured in simple ways.

Yin Wah Kreher said...

IMHO, the more complex/deceptively simple the concept, the more bloated the measurement instrument tends to be. The Gross National Happiness Index has multiple domains and 33 cluster indicators. Research is at once intriguing and frustrating when we attempt to "operationalize" and "measure" them. Social science research more so than others. :-). Less is at stake regarding love for one's work. I don't know that I care about measuring the capacity of one's happiness or the degree of one's "love" towards one's work. (Of course, the King of Bhutan thinks otherwise.) The influence of such mental states towards making a difference for good on self and others are what I consider to be more significant.