I love working. I love doing my work. I like the idea of work. I like what we do with work. I love our audaciousness in flying aeroplanes and operating on hearts. I love our gritty planting of crops each season. I love the optimism of a youngster looking for her first job. I love the depth of knowledge of a person who has tended his craft for decade after decade.

I’ve made working my living. Not only do I put in the hours, as a work psychologist, that’s all I do. I think, live and breathe work.

This blog is not going to be organized. There is nothing in particular that I want to achieve. I am just going to blog useful tidbits that I find out about work from day-to-day. Or that I remember in response to something that I read, hear or do. I hope you find it useful. Use what you like. Give me a shout if anything is wrong. Offer a guest post if you have something to say.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

26 June 2008

I’ve been running this blog now for just over 7 months.  I am thinking now to focus it a little around a simple project

“what it means to train yourself as a positive psychologist to work in the 21st century with managers and organizations who developed in the 20th century”

• What are the challenges of the positive psychology?
• How do we do positive psychology at work?
• Is there a positive HR?
• Is there a positive management?
• What are the challenges of the 21st century?
• How is positive psychology influenced by these changes?
• How does positive psychology contribute to a positive 21st century?

I may re-jig this as I go and I would be happy for comments – on the blog and on the journey to become a positive work psychologists in the 21st century.

5 January 2009

I am looking at what I said 6 months ago and I think I have answered many of these questions.  I’ve been feeling for a long time that I need to organize my posts and my good friend and web solutions provider, Paul Imre, agrees.

In the last few weeks, I’ve got into the numbers game wanting to drive my hit rate up.  Oddly, at the same time I achieved a little more interest in my positive posts which have gradually overtaken ‘law of attraction’, ‘batman’, “am I good looking” [a lesson in SEO for me’ and the recession.  I’m pleased about that.  And I am pleased to be gettting a lot more comments.  Oddly my page rank has dropped though that might be because I cleaned up some old blogs.

So where to next? Ned, loyal writing coach, thinks I should concentrate on what ordinary people want from work.  He makes the point that ordinary people don’t associate positive with work.  Yes, that is why the positive movement in management and psychology is growing.  We like our work and we don’t see why you shouldn’t too.  In fact I am outraged that isn’t the case.  I believe it should be possible for everyone to carve out a career they love and any unhappines should both strictly temporary.   So maybe that is what I should write about.  The question will be whether I can shuck the habits of academic and bureaucratic writing.

There is also the question of the recession.  It seems that more and more people think it will be “deep”.  The jury is out on its length.  Probably only a minority believe that it really challenges the economic system as we know it.  They are outweighed right now by people who have faith in Obama’s ability to lead us to a fairer world order.  Navigating our way as individuals will  be very hard without a good grasp of what is going on and how it is reshaped the opportunities we had and offering new opportunities we had never imagined.

So maybe I am going with Ned.  Then, I will need a much better layout and even a forum.  Hmm, don’t want to abandon the page rank that I’ve got.

And should I remain anonymous?  I know that is frowned on but there were reasons at the beginning and really people should read for content!  But if I am am offering advice rather than hust sorting out my thoughts, then people should know who I am.

Nothing like writing to clarify ideas.  So decision made.  I am going with Ned. I probably need an elementary game plan.  It won’t be much, but it will be more than I had when I started 14 months ago.  And people who stop by, thanks. Today, first working day of 2009 was a record day for hits here.  Really, thanks.