What do you do in the cracks between meetings and tasks? My instinct is you do what I do - you fill it.

This is a good way to remain efficient. But, the more important question is to look at what we fill it with.

It is an employer's legal right to deny workers the flexibility to work from home. It is an employer's legal right to demand a worker to work five days a week at the pre-pandemic place of work (lets call it the office). So, when Comm Bank, NAB, ANZ, Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Apple all ask their workforces to work at the office at least 50% of the time (or 3 days a week) this is a reasonable request.

Every August our good-old news agencies down the road fills up with next year's diaries, calendars, and yearly planners. If you're lucky the local fire station will be raising money for a good cause selling their sexy-boy calendars in the local shopping centre 💪.

Our recent trip from Rome to Singapore included 13 hours in the air and just under six hours in transit (including a two hour delay due to rain storms in Istanbul). These sorts of flights are never fun, but the beautiful thing about flying is that within 24 hours you are transported from one world to another.

I have a theory about performance - it can be bought.

I propose there are three ways you can buy performance…

When I had the opportunity to meet up with one of my best mates (Simon) to play a few rounds of golf in Scotland I jumped at the chance. It is like a pilgrimage - to go to the place where the game was invented. For Aussies and Americans we have our version of the game, and everything wonderful we bring to it, but Scotland - its 'god's country' as the locals call it. There is a spiritual element to it.

It is 32 degrees Celsius with not a cloud in the sky. I am visiting the village my wife Jana grew up in, Lakšárska Nová Ves (or Lakšáre for short). It is Saturday afternoon and the whole village in one place – the local football match. We stroll down there with Jana’s sister Dana and our two nieces.

What should I do?

- I have followed up with a client twice to schedule our next meeting without a response.

- I strained my calf muscle the other day and it feels like it is getting worse.

- I keep getting mal-ware pop ups on my laptop that are becoming more frequent. They are annoying but possibly dangerous.

What do you think would be easier?

A. Hitting a cricket ball bowled at you with the speed of 130km/h, or
B. Hitting a golf ball sitting on the ground

In recent conversations it seems people are being hit at pace with many difficult and unpredictable challenges. And, our response seems to make things worse with unintended consequences, errors, and misunderstandings.

I can't think of anything more personal.

How I see or do my work is completely mine. My body, mind, and life force is unique to me (and my time) and no matter how much shared experience we may have, others will never fully understand the way I see the world.

I recently had a game changing opportunity present itself to me in my work. A chance to work with a dream client in an exclusive sector I could have only ever dreamt of. I went through an array of emotions from ecstasy to panic and almost everything in between.

Dan Collins, the Australian ex-Olympian multiple medalist famously says, "Front load your effort".

He is speaking of the idea of committing high levels of effort and resource to a project at the very beginning. This helps us gain momentum so the 'meat' of a project can be nailed and overcome with ease rather than with struggle.

Recently my wife and I babysat our niece for a day. We took her to the kiddies cinema to watch an animated movie called Argonuts: Mission Olympus.

It was your typical against-the-odds-adventure with typical humour and fun characters along the way. I loved how the Greek Gods are depicted as a petulant, egotistical and childish family. But, when the hero's of our story are facing their villains in the big struggle towards the end of the film…

In my last customer facing leadership role (back in London in the naughties) I had an assistant manager (lets call her Beth) that had control of the team roster, stocktake, and cash procedures when I arrived on the scene. She had a long tenure and had a reputation as being accomplished. In my first year I noticed all sorts of issues in the business like in-fighting and disgruntlement in the team. I sat back and observed for a few months as I learnt the lie of the land and didn't do much. Unknowingly it was a good move as it helped me set the tone for changes I would make in the future. However, the reality is I was mostly too frightened to speak up or create more tension on top of what already existed.

No matter the stage you are at in your Job Life Cycle overcoming challenges by implementing change projects (even in the smallest of small contexts) is high value to any organisation.

Depending on the model you subscribe to there are anywhere from 4 to 12 steps of a job life cycle. These sorts of models are taught to most HR professionals detailing the journey we go through in any generic job. From Recruitment to Onboarding to Development to Retention and eventual Separation. To translate this into practical language I feel we mostly go through the following stages:

I was living in Cambridge in the early 2000's and had just finished my cricket contract with no intention to go back - that part of my life was over. As a fully qualified clinical Naturopath I had little job opportunity and with no idea where or what I would be doing from month to month so I never intended to invest in starting up my own practice as I had done in Aldgate back home in the Adelaide Hills.

It is amazing how often people say the same thing about how they got into what they do now.

"It wasn't the normal way people do it, but I..."

It seems we have this ideal of how careers form. Leave school, go to University/TAFE, get our first professional job and rise through the ranks. However, it seems this happens more rarely than we think. Dave Grohl, drummer from Nirvana and leader of The Foo Fighters talks about his rise to fame and fortune as a musician in his biography, The Storyteller.

It doesn't happen often, but a cricketer can be sent off the field of play. In soccer (or football) there is a yellow card (warning) and red card (send off) system. Rugby and many other sports have such systems, but cricket is a non-contact sport and there is not much need for such things. Yet, I was almost sent off a few times in my cricketing career in the UK.