At Home At Work

2: What’s new?

I remember the first time I sat down to listen to music. I was six years old. My uncle placed some very large headphones on my very small head and dropped the needle onto Strawberry Fields by The Beatles.

I can still vividly recall being sat in the back of the taxi on my first trip from the airport into downtown Shanghai. Staring wide-eyed at the neon lights and spaghetti junctions and feeling as though I was driving into the future.

Or equally, one lunch time at The Boathouse at Blackwattle Bay, eating smoked tomatoes for the first time. I hardly expected something so familiar to taste, well, so unfamiliar, and so new.

I don’t know why I remember these first-time experiences and not others. Why they jolted my senses and lodged themselves in my memories. But there they are, never far from the surface, every time they’re triggered by life and the world around me.

They recall a distinct feeling.

A feeling that I’d been rewarded with some new knowledge or insight.?

It’s a feeling that seems rarer as you get older, having settled into your life’s mould. And it’s a feeling that has grown even rarer still now that living in lockdown has made our moulds just that little bit stiffer, albeit cushioned by a life of creature comforts within our own four walls and five kilometres.

I was reminded of that feeling again last weekend – and reminded of the reward that comes with experiencing something new for the very first time.

Our family of five regularly go out walking for some physical and mental relief. We had been sticking to our tried and tested trails until last weekend we ventured somewhere new. As we reached what seemed to be the top of the trail, not sure of where it led or what we might find, a small gap in the greenery suggested a path beyond what ordinarily looked like a dead end after a perfectly pleasant walk.

We slid between the bushes, one by one, stumbled onto a rock ledge and a mesmerising one hundred and eighty degree view across the Tasman Sea.

A simple novelty but a new experience nonetheless.

(Perhaps the novelty was amplified by the temporary escape from lockdown?)

As often happens when you experience something new, I felt switched-on. Rewarded, refreshed, even renewed.

In that moment, reflecting on the feeling of it all, my mind began to wander. Inevitably, I reflected on what I do for work.

New clients, new projects, new briefs.

In my work, doing something new often necessitates taking a new path to lead you there.

That path is rarely well-trodden, that process is more than likely a break from the routine.

If you’re in banking, look at beauty. You could learn a thing or two about people’s hopes and dreams for themselves.

If you’re in healthcare, look at homewares. You too could learn something new about the kinds of devices that people like to have in their homes.

Look past your own role. Outside your own organisation. Beyond your own sector even.?

Take a new path.

It might lead you somewhere unfamiliar, it might make you feel uncomfortable. That’s to be expected.

But remember, you’re not lost. You’ve just found yourself somewhere new.

Enjoy the view.