13: Invisible Work
“Invisible work consists of a person’s personal, private thoughts that relate to their work and which, for many, are the most critical part of what they do and the reason they are paid. It is the heart of creativity and innovation.” - taken from Invisible Work by John Howkins.
Scroll down for @thecultured.life audio reading of this post, also available to download, if you prefer 🎧
Thanks to September Publishing for my review copy of this book!
🗣Office-workers, are you currently flexibly working from home or are you working a traditional location-based 9 - 5?
Whatever your current situation, it’s no doubt that the pandemic has accelerated a total change to your working life. But has it also changed the way you view your job?
Now I do love a good book on career development and productivity. The story of this book and I begins as I analyse my career as a marketer in a world where the concept of offices are fast disappearing, and how, as you may have it, almost 99% of my own work starts off as “invisible”.
All thoughts, ruminations and the beginnings of creative ideas, and all in my head. Can a person insure their brain?
The author of Invisible Work, John Howkins is an analyst whose books describe major changes in the way we think and work and has the common themes of creativity and innovation.
In the book, he discusses the concept of the knowledge economy as an “ideas business” and the nature of “thinking-as-work”. This kind of work is about what you know, how you phrase it and how you communicate it to others.
Invisible Work is a visionary exploration of the creative process in a changing world, throwing some really interesting insights around working from home and the rise of AI.
How can invisible work stand the test of AI? This is explored in the “Mindful Machines” chapter. And it turns out humans might be able to as we’re better at explaining. Howkins goes on to elaborate how we might be able to co-work with AI. True future-proofing.
Some of my favourite chapters from the book are listed below:
⚡️Chapter 2: Real Work. Describing the difference between work and a job. A manager as someone managing themselves.
⚡️Chapter 3: The eight forces reshaping work. A shift from education to learning. Encouraging you to stay in perpetual ‘beta-mode.’
⚡️Chapter 6: Go Visible. Practical tips on how to get thoughts from my head into your head. How meetings and email might hinder not help. Interesting stats around companies becoming smaller.
⚡️Chapter 8: Third spaces. Exploring working from home and the brain-as-office and the city as one big old meeting place.
The book finishes off with Ten Rules for Invisible Work to get you on your merry way. Spoiler alert- Rule 10: Write your own rules.
Needless to say, I’d recommend this book to anyone working in creative fields, across any industry, looking for a new model of work in this modern age.
It’s a dense read that you’d have to take a chapter at a time, a book packed full of insights into what might be the future of work. I really enjoyed how this book explored the idea of ‘work’ as a humanist endeavour “as much as an economic activity.”
The book provides an essential framework for what he calls life/work balance (rather than work/life balance).
I’m looking forward to reading The Creative Economy now, the book that John Howkins is most known for.
Would you read his new book Invisible Work?
Purchase Invisible Work by John Howkins here
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