This Working Life

You’ve finally landed your dream job. You’re filled with excitement and optimism but after only a couple of months something doesn’t feel right. And you realise that this job is not so dreamy after all, and even becoming a nightmare. Welcome to Glossy Work. So what’s going on here and what can we do about it?

Why is Dungeons & Dragons good for the workplace? Since it came out in the 1970s, D&D has gone from geek subculture to the pop-culture mainstream. And now, it’s being recognised as a great way to develop skills for work. Yes, now you can finally say that your time spent playing games is actually upskilling. But it’s not just D&D - card games, board games and other fantasy games give us...

A new study has revealed that we trust management decisions made with AI involvement more than those made by humans alone. But what does the future of this digital co-worker look like? And how many of us actually trust the technology, and how does where we live change that level of trust?

“It’s not reasonable to ask people to function without daylight, sleep and proper food for weeks and months at a time” - Ruby, lawyer. There’s been a lot of talk lately about reasonable and unreasonable work hours, thanks to a certain high profile legal case. Research has found Australians are working some of the longest hours in the world. It’s costing us tens of billions of dollars in unpaid wag...

The weekends are easy to fill with a long list of things you want to get done. Chores, errands and, yes, even work make their way onto that list. Then all of a sudden it’s Sunday night and you feel like you haven’t rested at all, and another work week is right around the corner. So how can we better harness the power of the weekend for an energised and productive week ahead? The good news is that...

It’s being called “world’s best practice” and we’re being told to take it seriously. A new code of practice and regulation will be protecting your psychological health at work from April 1st. It explicitly addresses psychological harm and the psychosocial hazards at work that can cause things like burnout, depression and anxiety. So what are these hazards exactly, and how will the code work in pra...

Picture a capital T.  The vertical line is the Expertise line - your deep experience in your field. Then the horizontal bar is the Generalist line - your other interests and experiences that can combine with your expertise to strengthen it. This is called the T-shape - and it’s being recognised as a powerful tool for people and teams to innovate at work.  But what exactly we can put into the horiz...

Meaning, purpose, identity – all of these are wrapped up in our work and career. So it's no surprise that when we step away from work we can feel a bit unmoored. In the second half of our two-part special on the 'unretirement' movement, we look at what's underpinning this return to work in retirement years. It can come down to rediscovering purpose and meaning in both life and work. But how can we...

While you might be dreaming about the day you can clock off work forever — why are we instead seeing so many people leaving the green and re-opening the laptop? It's all part of a trend being dubbed the 'great unretirement', in which 40% of the nearly half a million people who entered the labour force in the last three years were over the age of 55. Which has led to Australian workers now retiring...

We’ve all had to work with ‘that’ difficult person that we just clash with. It’s tense. It’s stressful. And it’s exhausting. So, do we have to get along to do our best work? Or is it in our best interests to make peace and move on? And how can we best do that? The solutions might surprise you.

We’ve seen the Great Resignation, Lying Flat in China and Quiet Quitting. And now we’re hearing murmurings of another movement that some are calling ‘Anti-Striving’. So what exactly is it? And what will making peace with feeling less ambitious bring us in the long-term?

How inclusive are workplaces for the rainbow community? What is working and what needs improving? We hear how small things like conversation starters can help LGBTIQ+ people feel more welcome and safe at work, and how larger things like equitable design in physical and virtual spaces can improve belonging and job satisfaction.

Our image and expectation of a good leader is changing, and increasingly we’re needing them to use both their head and their heart in making decisions. Dr Kirstin Ferguson argues that the art of this type of leadership is knowing what is needed when. So what does this balancing act really look like? 

Saying "yes" too often can leave you feeling overwhelmed and perhaps a bit resentful. You might hear yourself saying "yes of course I can" when your inner voice is screaming "no!" So here's how you can say "no" more often at work, without feeling rude. 

We've learned about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, and how they can influence each other. But if we go deeper into the heart of motivation, we find its kernel: engagement. So how can we be truly engaged in our work?

Forget what you think you know about motivation. We’ve done the work for you and found some science-based motivation hacks, so you can get the job done and actually enjoy it. We bust some myths and find out what really motivates us - from incentives, to mindsets and increased empathy.

Resolutions don't work. Set goals the right way. For us to really commit to a goal and achieve it, we should ensure we’re making a ‘worthy’ goal. That’s according to author Michael Bungay Stanier who, in his new book How To Begin: Start Doing Something That Matters, gives us nine steps to help us find our worthy goal, commit to it and just begin.

We all know the impact of stress on our minds and bodies. But it turns out that it’s not the stress itself that’s impacting our health - it’s how we think about it. We hear from people about their experiences of work-related stress and how it impacts them, and our expert panel tell us how to change our stress mindsets so we can harness its power to work and live better.

Mindfulness…being mindful,  meditating, you know it’s good for you, but it just never feels like there’s enough time.  Using meditation to create mindfulness is an ancient practice, and the science backing it has been piling in for years now. But how can we be motivated to make meditation part of our essential routine? How will it actually help our working lives? 

If we confront our regrets and use them as signals, they're a powerful force for working smarter and living better. That’s according to New York Times best-selling author Daniel Pink. He’s collected the regrets of thousands of people around the world and discovered what connects us in our regrets, and how we can use them to live and work better. So let go of any shame around your regrets, and lear...

Many of us are enjoying the flexibility of working from home - being able to organise our work time to suit our circadian rhythms, family responsibilities and health. But with this flexibility and freedom, has there been an erosion of the concept of a “work day”?  What boundaries should there be - in law or in your employment agreement?

Feeling a bit brain fried? Fatigued from the year… over stimulated from all that screen time? Maybe you need to head outside...We look at how getting out into the natural world can help you function better in your day to day work life. What’s going on here with our brains, what’s the science behind it?

Taking very small doses of magic mushrooms or LSD every few days in a bid to boost productivity, creativity, focus and mental health has become perhaps surprisingly popular in Australia and around the globe. People are experimenting with tiny doses of illegal psychedelic drugs to help them perform better at work. But why take this risk, and does it even work? Scientific studies on microdosing are ...

Premortems - How to practise hindsight in advance, by looking at what went wrong before it does. And on the flip side, imagining success and how you got there, with a previctorem.

When is an interaction an interruption? Why do we now feel the need to ask if it’s OK to interrupt a colleague, in the middle of a work day? And hybrid work has made managing communication even more nuanced, yet crucial. Our guests explore the benefits of talking, and what we lose when we stick to typing.