The Nature and Science of Work podcast: Recent Episodes
Robert Levin
A nature walk through the world of work! The Nature and Science of Work podcast is the audio version of The Nature and Science of Work newsletter on Substack!
natureandscienceofwork.substack.com
Welcome to the Nature and Science of Work podcast. This is a podcast in our “Nature Guides Work” series. Thank you for joining us!
Is this podcast, we again join Aldo Leopold, and his explorations of work in nature, this time a remote and ancient mountain river, and what its work and workers mean to all of us. And singer-songwriter, and “Nature Guides Work” contributor, Tom Sebok, has created an original contribution, pairing natural river sounds from the western US with his own musical interpretation of Aldo Leopold’s prose song.
Is this podcast, we again join Aldo Leopold and his explorations of work in nature. In our first “Nature Guides Work” podcast we visited Leopold, a noted 20th century conservationist, researcher, and author of the classic A Sand County Almanac, at his refuge, The Shack, in a poor sand county in Wisconsin.
There he observed nature working around him: flights of geese into a frozen lake; calling of summer birds on their workday schedules.
Into his observations he wove acid and accurate comments on those he lived around and worked with at a prominent university.
Here we bring together three interpretations, through another passage of Leopold’s, of a wilderness river in northern Mexico, the Gavilan.
Two interpretations are from the present. You’ll first hear an interpretation of the context producing this beautiful and arresting excerpt from Leopold’s chapter about the river.
And you’ll hear Tom Sebok’s musical interpretation, who brings his work as a musician, sound engineer, songwriter—and conflict resolution specialist. Tom recorded river sounds, in Garfield County in western Colorado in the US—the waters of the Roaring Fork and Colorado Rivers—then paired those with his musical interpretation and composition, to create the original song, “River Sounds.”
Aldo Leopold’s interpretation of the river Gavilan, from which I’ll read excerpts, draws on many times and places in his life. He takes his time on the wild Rio Gavilan, and see it through his time and work as an academic research scientist. He also draws a beautiful picture of the ancient human on the Gavilan before him and how they worked.
Acknowledgements
In this podcast, you heard excerpts from “The River Gavilan,” in A Sand County Almanac, by Aldo Leopold. Originally published in 1940 by Oxford University Press, available in a current edition by the Library of America.
And you have heard “River Song,” composed and recorded by Tom Sebok in 2023, together with Tom’s recording of sound from Colorado river waters.
For the Nature and Science of Work podcast and the “Nature Guides Work” series—thank you for listening!
Keep seeing nature in work, and work in nature.
Get full access to The Nature and Science of Work at natureandscienceofwork.substack.com/subscribe
Welcome to The Nature and Science of Work podcast. I’m Robert Levin. Thank you for joining us!
In this podcast, we dig deeper from our recent inaugural piece, in our “Nature Guides Work” series, on “Schedules and Scheduling in Nature,” by exploring the perspectives of Aldo Leopold, on that topic, in his writings.
In the first half of the twentieth century, Aldo Leopold was a pioneering forester, fire fighter, conservationist, and ecologist, a pragmatist, and a professor—terms that don’t often go together. His writings on these topics came together in the form of A Sand County Almanac, in its time a classic of a conservation ethic, and later considered a founding statement of environmentalism. But Aldo Leopold predated that movement—the word doesn’t appear in A Sand County Almanac.
What does appear is beautiful writing about nature, and how it works, written from the perspective of time spent, during the Great Depression, on an abandoned farm with poor soil, “a sand farm,” in a poor county in Wisconsin, a “sand county,” but with a rich life of nature for someone who understood how nature works.
Here are three selections from A Sand County Almanac. Each about the work of birds and their schedules—and much more.
The first, selected from an entry titled, “July: Great Possessions,” describes among the birds on the sand county farm, an entire intricate schedule of work and song at daybreak, of what we would now call an ecosystem, or here, an ergosystem, and its broader effects.
The second selection, from the beginning of the entry titled, “March: The Geese Return,” describes a more singular worker and schedule—a lone goose flying into the narrow seam between winter and spring, through the snows of Wisconsin, executing high-risk operations strategy known as “minimizing time to completion,” in the dead of night, starting in the dead of winter. Is Leopold’s reference to a prophet and bridges a reference to his own work career, going from forester, to lab administrator, to a professor of game management at a prestigious university that may not have liked game management? Possibly.
The last passage is also about geese—but only in part. It immediately follows the passage about the lone goose. It hints at who in that passage may have been the prophet who has burned his bridges. Aldo Leopold started his career as a firefighter and forester in the early United States Forest Service. He left the Southwestern US behind to become associate director of a US Department of Agriculture forest products lab in the more rarified university city of Madison, Wisconsin. He then crossed a bridge, accepting an appointment onto the university faculty.
This passage, and others in A Sand County Almanac, provides more than a hint of conflict between Aldo Leopold’s love of nature, practicality, and pragmatism and the “refined” academic community around him. Some of whom, one can imagine from this passage, may have found it an affront that a “Professor of Game Management”—the first in the United States—was in their exalted midst, let alone one of the belief that knowledge of his subject could be valuable to such highly educated people.
Three passages from A Sand County Almanac. Three examples of how Aldo Leopold found schedules and the work of nature in the world of nature around him in the Sand County place he liked to call home.
Acknowledgements: The three selections are excerpts from copyrighted material in A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There, by Aldo Leopold, originally published in 1940 by the Oxford University Press. A current edition is published by the Library of America. The brief excerpts used are connected to original commentary and criticism in this Nature and Science of Work podcast.
The bird sounds and songs accompanying the excerpt from “Great Possessions” were recorded for The Nature and Science of Work in May, 2023, at the Lincoln Farms, Maine.
For The Nature and Science of Work podcast—and the “Nature Guides Work” project, I’m Robert Levin.
Keep seeing nature in work and work in nature.
Thank you for listening!
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In our last podcast, the example of extreme weather causing operational disruption at Southwest Airlines showed us that disruption does not by itself lead to conflict—and, if you are caught in a disruption, you can act to reduce the risk of conflict or the conflict itself.
In this podcast—what about the opposite? Does conflict lead to disruption at work?
Conflict is a part of work, but need not be destructive. The point is not whether conflict creates disruption, but how and to whom.
We can think of upstream disruption and downstream disruption. Disruption “upstream” may set conflict in motion.
Who gets disrupted by a conflict—and how—is downstream disruption. There is primary disruption—the disruption between the two (or more) “combatants”—and secondary disruption, a number of disruptions flowing from the primary disruption, in turn creating a disruptive cascade that courses through a workplace, and beyond.
Who and what do these secondary disruptions disrupt?
. . *
As a rule of thumb, conflict that creates a disruptive cascade will affect coworkers, customers, and the company. Coworkers are disrupted at the least by something similar to rubbernecking a freeway accident. Conflict among combatants at work is impossible to look away from. When the conflict is about getting something done, then that thing (like putting out a newspaper) becomes disrupted downstream. When that happens, more disruptions flow downstream. People recognize that their work, their working conditions, their livelihoods, their jobs are all affected—in ways that can cause them to leave or to retaliate.
The disruptive cascade affects family members. They may be taking time to listen to accounts of the disruption; be asked to provide advice; provide advice when not asked; be worried about job loss or job change—or be in direct conflict with a worker in the family about what to do or not do.
So, faced with conflict in your vicinity creating downstream disruption and a disruptive cascade, what do you do? Remember this:
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Upstream disruption can cause conflict (but not always).
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Conflict can cause downstream disruption (but not always).
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Downstream disruptions frequently create a larger disruptive cascade.
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Disruptive cascades affect people inside and outside of an organization—coworkers, customers, the company, and family members.
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Tackling the conflict breaks the flow of disruption.
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Downstream disruption can provide a reason for tackling the conflict: “We’ve got to tackle this. The paper didn’t come out yesterday.”
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If you’re not in a position to tackle the conflict, tackle the downstream disruptions. Stem the disruptive cascade. That helps.
Actions have consequences. Disruptions are a part of life, and work. So is conflict. When conflict causes disruption, your efforts to stand apart from the combat, to stem the disruptions and their impact, help you, your family members, and coworkers, customers and company.
. . *
Keep seeing nature in work and work in nature.
. . *
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Recent massive flight disruptions at one of the largest US airlines, Southwest, got me thinking about the relationships between disruption at work and conflict at work—which was the subject of an interview (and transcript) here in December. Does disruption produce conflict? Does conflict produce disruption? The answers to those two questions are not the same. There’s something to be learned from each.
We tackle the first question, and gain six takeaways, in this Nature and Science of Work podcast
. . *
Here’s one takeaway: Every system has specific protections against and vulnerabilities to disruptions. Knowing this, you can identify and reduce the vulnerabilities and disruptions--but not eliminate them. You can prioritize reducing disruptions that lead to conflict. In the heat of the moment, keep your eye solely on what's making the disruption worse.
How to prevent disruption at work from developing into conflict? What can you do in the heat of the moment?
Here’s another takeaway: Use some of the helpful practices provided by Tom Sebok in his interview (and transcript), especially including:
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Remember: Conflict is a part of work, and life, but it’s not inevitably destructive.
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Listen: In the heat of the moment, listen. Listen respectfully. In the heat of the moment, you’re far more likely to want to talk, or shout, so listening respectfully will gain you a double bonus.
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Think: What can I do to increase the likelihood that others in the midst of this disruption will cooperate with me? What will decrease the likelihood that others will cooperate with me? That thinking runs contrary to what any of us do in the heat of the moment—so it’s especially effective.
Disruption doesn’t always lead to conflict. The practices and takeaways can help you when you see disruption in your workplace or another one.
The next question is: Does conflict lead to disruption? And what can you do? That’s next time.
Until then, keep seeing nature in work and work in nature.
. . *
Read All the Newsletters!
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Welcome to a special interview edition of the Explore feature for The Nature and Science of Work, for December, 2022.In this interview, we’ll talk about conflict and work with Tom Sebok, a professional conflict management expert and an ombuds, known throughout the United States for training his colleagues in effective approaches to conflict management.
We’ll ask Tom about two crucial practical questions about conflict and work that he’s spent years answering: When you are trying to resolve conflict—What makes things better? What makes things worse?
Our guide in this interview is Tom Sebok, expert in conflict management. Tom’s professional roles have included working as an ombuds, a counselor, a singer-songwriter, and a sound engineer.
If you have questions for Tom, or questions from this interview, please email them to us at natureandscienceofwork@substack.com! You’ll get an individual reply, and your question may contribute to a future Nature and Science of Work feature.
If you liked this interview and found it beneficial, please email a link to your friends and your colleagues. If you’d like, the Share buttons in this newsletter, will copy a link for you or create a draft email with the link included.
Interviewer: Robert Levin
Keep seeing nature in work, and work in nature.
. . *
Read All the Newsletters!
If you liked this interview, you’ll want to read The Nature and Science of Work newsletters. Each edition brings unique, refreshing, useful perspectives, on the world of your daily work and on the worlds of work around us in nature.
Unique—you’ll find these perspectives nowhere else
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The podcast editions of every The Nature and Science of Work feature are available at The Nature and Science of Workarchive; on the Substack app; and on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, PocketCasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and your favorite podcast provider.
Subscribe to The Nature and Science of Work: Read and Listen to All the Newsletters, All the Podcasts, and the Entire Archive!!
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Earlier this fall, I emailed my friend Tom, who is an expert in conflict management and a musician. I was advocating for “LOUD quitting,” as the alternative to “quiet quitting,” which has been in the news even though it’s existed for a couple thousand years. I got back this reply: “Excellent! If ‘loud quitting’ needs a theme song, I vote for ‘Take This Job and Shove It’!”
In an instant, Tom’s reply and that song title recalled a place, a time, and a job.
The ranger station was a few miles outside of the small logging town where I lived. Most mornings, I drove there with the fire crew foreman and sometimes with other members of our fire crew. You could hear the morning drive program on the AM car radio from the local country station or the rock station in a more distant city. Either way, every morning (at least it seemed like it), somewhere between the apartment above the Rexall Drug and the ranger station lost halfway between the town and the logging, that song title and first line were going to come blasting out of the car radio: “Take this job and shove it! I ain’t workin’ here no more.”
That’ll get your attention on the way to work. Nothing quiet about it.
But what about the song itself—and its loud quitting? If you ask a musician about a song, you’re going to learn about the lyrics and the structure. In this case, I learned that the structure of the song is unusual. Whether you read the lyrics online or watch the two main recording artists of the song perform, special things stand out described in this podcast.
The singer also says something surprising, given the song’s title and opening line:
“I’d give the shirt right off my back / If I had the guts to say // Take this job and shove it / I ain’t working here no more.”
The singer isn’t actually quitting, but saying how he would quit if he could.
Is he…quiet quitting? No, he’s not. Even hamstrung by supervisory idiots, he’s given it his all for 15 years. He knows more than the supervisors do about what needs to get done in that factory.
So what is happening? And is it useful?
The podcast explores three ways that the singer’s approach is indeed useful.
When I’d heard the kind of story also told in the song, I had no way of knowing what had really happened. “I told them ‘Take this job and shove it’” is also something to say to buddies, friends, and family when you’ve lost your job—whether for good reason or for no reason at all.
Whether as a way of coping, departing, or covering, “Take This Job and Shove It” captures intensely the difficulty of day-to-day work, not only for 15 minutes on a shift, but “for nigh on 15 years.”
. . *
Acknowledgements
Tom Sebok, a professional conflict management expert, ombuds, singer-songwriter, and sound engineer, provided the connection with the song and detailed commentary on it. An interview with Tom on conflict and the workplace will be featured in December.
Lesley Reeder, author of the recent arresting Explore feature “What You Need to Know About Losing a Job”, provided commentary on quiet and loud quitting.
The song “Take This Job and Shove It” was written by David Allen Coe. Short portions have been quoted here; complete lyrics and recordings of the song are available on the web.
. . *
Keep seeing nature in work and work in nature.
. . *
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What to Know About Losing a Job, Before You Do
Guest Podcast Author: Lesley Reeder
People build careers for different reasons and in different ways. Looking back, you might realize that you have a career, rather than just a series of jobs. You probably chose to work in a particular industry—in healthcare, for example—or focused on a single skill set—like management—but across different industries. There’s a deliberateness to a career. Once you acknowledge you want a career instead of just a job, the stakes become higher. The focus becomes growing your skill set and potentially elevating your position. You start to think of how to build on what you have.
In the course of a career, job changes happen. Understanding that grounded me and provided perspective during a challenging career event, which helped me to think about my favorite jobs and translate that into finding a job that was better aligned with my goals and skill set.
Keep seeing nature in work, and work in nature.
Guest authorLesley Reeder is dedicated to improving the healthcare delivery system and has 20+ years of experience succeeding and failing in that task. LinkedIn profile: linkedin.com/in/lesleyreeder
Podcast narrator: Robert Levin
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Two weeks ago, in Part 1 of The Nature and Science of Work’s anniversary month, we brought together the three Explore podcasts and three Integrate podcasts over the last year with the most listener interest. What emerges?
Listening to the six podcasts, and examining the fundamentals of The Nature and Science of Work, a crucial foundation emerges, from work on Earth, human work over time, and our contemporary remote and in-person work: Work is rooted.
Keep seeing nature in work and work in nature.
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The first year of The Nature and Science of Work is in the books. Thanks to all of our readers and all who have helped! October is therefore Anniversary Month! In this podcast, we’ll bring together the Explore and Integrate podcasts generating the most surprise and impact over the first year—as measured by listener interest.
In the next issue, in two weeks, we will create a mosaic connecting some of these pieces—focusing on what can create surprise and impact in your own work and your view of the worlds of work around you, over the coming year.
Take the time as you’d like to explore these podcasts. Please feel free to send your comments, reactions, and ideas about the connections between these to natureandscienceofwork@substack.com.
The links below are to the original podcasts These may be found either (a) in the link below, or (b) with other podcasts, in The Nature and Science of Work archive, with the titles provided here, each preceded by “PODCAST.”
Links to the podcasts referred to in this podcast:
Explore
Learning to Decide From a Fly’s Surprise
Don’t Just Do It
Triple Productivity Peaks—Slippery Slopes?
Integrate
Information and Surprise in Your Everyday Work
Using the Four Outcomes of Work Decisions
In a Groove. Plus, Gary Snyder and The Real Work
Happy Anniversary!
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Our time on Mars, in our most recent podcast, also helps this week’s thought experiment, in this podcast. In thinking about other worlds, it is natural, but hazardous, to think in terms of humans—either thinking what it would be like when humans reach a different world, or thinking about a world’s inhabitants and their work as being human-like.
But this thought experiment is how work gets done on other other worlds. From this experiment, we’ll initially exclude human work on other worlds. We can now leave them behind, like the Voyager spacecraft heading for other solar systems and ask, again, “How does work get done there?” (We will, though, return to Earth sooner and more forcefully than expected. Certainly sooner than I expected. Experiments are like that.)
The physical work and physiological work that humans have done for eons remains central even as so-called “cognitive work” has arisen. This continuity of work through transitions is crucial. For the reality of this transition is different from its surface appearance. Cognitive work has always been part of so-called physical work, among humans, among animals, and among creatures more generally. All such “physical” work requires aims and skills to be carried out moment by moment, and all of these are done by cognitive work (or by something that looks just like it, in organisms that work wonders without a brain).
All cognitive work that we know of is carried out by physical processes and physical work, both internal and external. And these forms of physical work are tied directly to the nonliving work on this planet or any other. The “thinking” you do for work is pointless, worthless, and not work at all until it is instantiated in action, deeds, and products, even thought products. This work always requires physical work, whether that is typing on a keyboard, viewing a screen, listening to and recording sounds. Each of these requires use of products made with extensive physical work. Each of these requires physical work: the keyboard you use is designed for your physical work, and your motor learning, anatomy, physiology, and neurons have learned and adapted to that keyboard. The internal and external physical, physiological, and neurophysiological work performed is extensive and intensive, even if its familiarity makes it seem negligible and invisible.
The hazard in our own thinking about human work lies not in the stars, but in the idealizations that human work is now limitless and effortless, that our minds can create anything–without cost. Motivational strategies often convey this fallacy. So do breathless nuggets that new work is like nothing that has ever been. Quiet quitting, working remotely, quitting remotely, working quietly. The forces and rhythms of work that matter have done their work since the Universe began and do it every moment of every day, every working moment of your own work. Humans work not apart from that.
Keep seeing nature in work and work in nature.
The Nature and Science of Work does not receive income from external links.
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How does work get done on other worlds?
In this podcast, Part 1 of 2, that other world is Mars. The work now is getting done by humans. When we think about work in far more distant worlds, assuming that work is being done like humans do it on Earth stunts our imagination, leading us astray. But on Mars today, we can see the fruits of imagination and human work. What can we learn from human work on Mars?
We will explore work in truly distant worlds, and what we can learn from it, in Part 2 of this podcast, in two weeks.
Keep seeing nature in work, and work in nature.
The Nature and Science of Work does not receive income from external links.
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In Part I of “In a Groove,” we saw how, a century apart, two authorities on work, present-day interdisciplinary geographer Vaclav Smil and early twentieth-century mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, viewed the hazards created by professionals and service sector workers becoming disconnected from physical work, the physical foundations of work, and the work of making physical products.
Here, we will see the broader impacts of these hazards: to the biosphere, in Smil’s case, and to how work gets done, both in the mind and in our society, in Whitehead’s.
The grooves described in the podcast twin Whitehead’s prescient alarm with Smil’s current catastrophe. Seeing instead—through both Whitehead and Smil—the physical and biological reality underneath each moment of your daily work, each moment of each work process, frees you, allows you, allows each of us, to focus on seeing and doing the real work, of working each day in ways that provide tomorrows to work in, for ourselves and for our living coworkers on Earth.
Gary Snyder and “The Real Work”
The podcast concludes with a living tribute to firefighter, seaman, logger, worker, poet, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Gary Snyder, whose phrase “the real work” permeats the “In a Groove” pieces, and who has been writing about the real work he has done since 1948. He was honored this week, at age 92, with an online tribute on the occasion of the publication of his Collected Poems, which speak in clear, straightforward language about work: in the woods, on fires, on the seas, and at home.
Keep seeing nature in work, and work in nature.
Programming Note
The Nature and Science of Work will next publish on Tuesday, September 13 (newsletter) and Wednesday, September 14 (podcast).
Read the complete program notesandnewsletter edition for this podcast—and listen to more Nature and Science of Work podcasts—at natureandscienceofwork.substack.com or on the Substack app. Or listen with your favorite podcast provider.
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Keep seeing nature in work, and work in nature.
In two weeks, in Part 2, we will follow Whitehead and Smil out of the grooves to questions of how to work in the world and biosphere today.
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The benefits claimed for both four-day work weeks (June Nature and Science of Work Explore article and podcast) and triple productivity peaks (May Explore article and podcast; May Integrate article and podcast) include increased satisfaction and increased productivity. Perhaps this happy state of affairs exists somewhere.
Not in Oz, though. None of the four “team members” were ever really satisfied. Or productive. Unless they were on a road trip. Otherwise, just a lot of drama. Then it turned out that the guy who wasn’t on the team, and who got to WFH, had been spending all his time creating backgrounds rather than doing real work. And by the end of the project, the Tin Man was constantly carrying around a giant watch. Likely developed a productivity obsession.
Given all the goings on in Oz, to understand the satisfaction/productivity mess, it may be more useful to imagine a lost chapter and land of Jonathan Swift. This one is set not in Lilliput, nor Brobdingnag–but in “Satisprod.”
(In Satisprod, all the residents work 32 hours and their satisfaction is monitored each second, both by app and microchip, to make sure everyone’s satisfaction is (to borrow a phrase) above average. And is–always–increasing.)
In this podcast, we’ll leave behind the Utopias of satisfaction and productivity coexisting by the beneficence of organizations. Instead, we’ll focus on ways you can increase autonomy and control yourself, even when the decks are stacked against you—they’re the house’s decks in the first place!!
Plus, we’ll use these perspectives to explore such gambits as free food at work, “Bring Your Pet to Work Day,” and workplace fitness.
Join us for this Integrate edition of the Nature and Science of Work podcast!
Keep seeing nature in work and work in nature.
The Nature and Science of Work does not receive income from external links.
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Program Notes for this Nature and Science of Work podcast edition of the June 9, 2022 Explore feature:
The beginning of the “largest ever” trial of four-day work weeks was in the news this week, together with the planned effort to evaluate outcomes. This came on the heels of news of Microsoft’s research into triple productivity peaks (the subject of May’s Nature and Science of Work Explore article and podcast and Integrate article and podcast).
Both have their proponents. Not surprisingly, the benefits of each are said to include increased satisfaction and increased productivity. But do they? What do we know?
In this Nature and Science of Work podcast, we’ll explore six crucial real-world features of how satisfaction and productivity connect and conflict in work.
When you are faced with any issue, change, or potential innovation, what’s most important in your own work and your own organization is to ask yourself the same crucial questions, over and over again: “What is performance?” and “How will performance be affected?” Performance does not mean, and should never mean, the ratings on a performance evaluation. It should mean how you, and others, contribute to the most important outcomes for your organization.
Keep seeing nature in work and work in nature.
In two weeks, we will explore how to integrate the aims of four-day weeks and triple productivity peaks into your own work life and personal life—regardless of the ways you and your organization schedule work.
The Nature and Science of Work does not receive income from external links.
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In this Nature and Science of Work Integrate podcast:
This month’s Nature and Science of Work Explore feature and podcast focused on a “triple peak” workplace activity pattern that has emerged since 2020, among about one-third of workers studied. The pattern appears in studies measuring keyboard events (or keystrokes) of workers using such systems as Microsoft Teams.
Does this triple peak pattern of activity reflect a triple peak of work? In the Explore feature, we said keyboard events are a reasonable proxy for work. Saying these are actual work requires distinguishing between activity, performance, and productivity.
Which we’ll do in this podcast!
Listen to more podcasts, and read the newsletter edition and program notes for this podcast, at natureandscienceofwork.substack.com, on the Substack app, or with your favorite podcast provider.
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Have the myriad pandemic-related adaptations in remote work changed—or even improved—our home lives? Microsoft researchers recently reported one intriguing development.
A work pattern has emerged over the past two years, among about one-third of workers studied: more work activity in the evening, less in the middle of the day. The researchers described this as a “triple peak” workday pattern and observed a triple peak in productivity.
In this podcast, we’ll use these findings to think about peaks and productivity—for organizations’ work and for individuals’ work in their personal lives—which is at the heart of the emergence of the triple peak.
(You can find links to two recent articles about the triple peak findings in this month’s Nature and Science of Work newsletter Explore feature, on the Nature and Science of Work website and Substack app.)
In the podcast, we discuss how to turn productivity “on its head” to understand whether the triple peak pattern benefits workers, and how. Ultimately, the value of the triple peak lies in whether these create productivity peaks for work—and for workers in their own lives.
Keep seeing nature in work, and work in nature.
The Nature and Science of Work does not receive income from external links.
Listen to more podcasts, and read the newsletter edition and program notes for this podcast, at natureandscienceofwork.substack.com, on the Substack app, or with your favorite podcast provider.
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Why care about connections between seasons and work? Work still tethers to seasons. Recognizing this helps us appreciate how work is a part of, not apart from, the natural world.
Listen to how these tethers and connections appear every day in your work, on this podcast.
Keep seeing nature in work and work in nature.
This is the podcast edition of The Nature and Science of Work Integrate feature for April 21, 2022. Read the program notes and newsletter edition!
Listen to more podcasts, and read the newsletter editions and program notes for podcasts, on the Substack app, your favorite podcast provider, or at natureandscienceofwork.substack.com.
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The poet Carl Sandburg wrote vividly about work, in many settings, including in his 1916 poem, “Skyscraper,” which connects a building, the work of building it, and the work done in the building—through the living biology of builders, building, and workers. The poem illustrates the topic of this month’s Nature and Science of Work Explore feature and podcast, “The Seasons of Work and the ‘Built Environment’.” Sandburg captures the living, biological aspect of modern work, and the connections between the seasons of work and the built environment.
Especially notable is what Sandburg captures about work, and the similarity of work as he described it in 1916—in the language, practices, and beliefs of his time—and work as it exists now. Some similarities—such as three in the poem, at the end of stanzas and of the entire poem—about the interconnections of information technology, work, and humans—are uncanny.
The entire poem can be found online, including at many poetry sites, as well as in The Library of America edition, Carl Sandburg:Selected Poems.
Heard in this podcast are passages selected from “Skyscraper,” telling us that modern technologically based work, remote work, and work that Sandburg described all have a direct, living, and very human connection, across more than a century.
Keep seeing nature in work, and work in nature.
Acknowledgements and thanks to Julia Hobsbawm, for recommending “Skyscraper.”
The Nature and Science of Work does not receive income from external links.
Read the newsletter edition and program notes for this podcast, including the selections from “Skyscraper.”
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The coming of spring reminds us: work has seasons. In a modern work environment, they are easy to miss. Listen to these seasons on this podcast.
This is the podcast edition of The Nature and Science of Work Explore feature for April 7, 2022.
Keep seeing nature in work and work in nature.
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“When your athlete becomes better than you are—and that had better be your goal as a coach—then as a coach, you become two things. The first is…”
This is the podcast edition of the Nature and Science of Work Integrate feature for March 24, 2022. Read the content notes and newsletter version of this podcast!
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This is the podcast of The Nature and Science of Work’s March Explore feature, “Olympic Performance Remade—Learning, Practice, and Innovation.” Thank you for listening!
It can be startling to observe a highly skilled athlete after a gap of four years and recognize that their skills have vastly improved and changed—well beyond those that won them an earlier Olympic gold medal or multiple World Championships. What does this kind of extensive change tell us about learning and performance?
Join us for the upcoming Nature and Science of Work March Integrate feature and podcast on bringing Olympic performance remodeling to your own work and your work with others.
Keep seeing nature in work and work in nature.
Read the accompanying Explore newsletter article and program notes for this week’s podcast.
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This is the podcast of The Nature and Science of Work’s February Integrate feature, “Tackling Disruption and Change at Work.” Thank you for listening!
Read the accompanying Integrate newsletter article and program notes for this Integrate podcast.
Note on the satellite photo: The USGS describes the photo of massive terrestrial disruption and change this way: “Rising unexpectedly from the heart of the Namib Desert in northern Namibia, the Brandberg Massif” towers abruptly 1800 meters, or almost 6000 feet, above the surrounding desert.
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This is the podcast of our February Explore feature, “Working When Work Is Disrupted.” Thank you for listening!
Read the accompanying Explore newsletter article and program notes for this week’s podcast.
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In our companion Integrate feature, on Thursday, February 17, we will integrate two key questions from this Explore feature to use when work is disrupted in your own work and life.
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The January Explore article and podcast, “Goals and Performance…Don’t Just Do It,” emphasized creating your own performance dimensions regardless of those set by the organization. Doing so places you in control of your performance. You can do a better job than your organization can of selecting what performance matters most. Controlling your own performance is healthy and effective—especially in situations in which you don’t have control, some or most of the time, over what work you do or which outcomes matter.
This is the podcast edition of the January 20, 2022 article and program notes.
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The start of 2022 finds most of us pursuing work goals—of our own design or imposed on us—for the first month, first quarter, and full year. Exhortations to achieve those goals can drown out and ignore the questions of whether these are the right goals to pursue and how to pursue them. Should we all “just do it”? In this Explore podcast and article, we ask: Or is there a better way?
This Week’s Podcast Program Notes and Newsletter Article
Read the accompanying program notes and Explore newsletter article for this week’s podcast.
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All work—in humans and in nature—is built on three foundations of energy, information, and change. This week’s podcast explores ways that you can gain fresh perspective on your own work through questions for yourself about your work—and energy, information, and change.
This is the podcast edition of this week’s Integrate newsletter article and podcast program notes, which include the written version of all of the questions in this podcast.
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All work—anywhere in the universe—is built on three foundations: Energy, Information, and Change. We can make these foundations useful by using them to explore different ways that work gets done. In this podcast, we’ll discover how Energy, Information, and Change shape work—in the work of tides, the work of fish, and the work of fishing crews.
(Link to The Nature and Science of Work newsletter and program notes for this podcast.)
Next week’s podcast: Using the Three Foundations to discover fresh perspectives on your own work!!
Until then, keep seeing nature in work and work in nature.
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Integrating the four possible outcomes of every decision helps you make them better, with fewer errors—such as excluding qualified applicants during a hiring shortage! Includes Wall Street Journal reporting of computerized hiring’s effects on worker shortages.
Podcast of the November 11, 2021, Integrate article (and show notes) at The Nature and Science of Work on Substack.
When any organism makes a decision, there are four possible outcomes, which are the same whether the decision is made by a human, an artificial intelligence, a snail, or a bacterium. Brains are not required.
Let’s consider in this podcast how to apply these to everyday decisions in human work.
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All organisms make decisions using limited information and resources. Human work decisions get better when we do that, too.
Podcast of the November 4, 2021, Explore article (and show notes) at The Nature and Science of Work.
Work and surprise collide at decisions. Information, we have learned, is surprise. Surprise is part of decisions. Decisions are part of work and, moment by moment, work is made up of decisions.
Hear more on this Nature and Science of Work podcast!
On the next The Nature and Science of Work podcast:
Using the Four Outcomes of Work Decisions
How your outcomes go right—and wrong
Integrating the four possible outcomes of every decision (in nature and humans) helps you make decisions better, with fewer errors—such as excluding qualified applicants during a hiring shortage! Includes Wall Street Journal reporting of computerized hiring’s effects on worker shortages.
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How do we use limited, scarce information to make crucial decisions at work? In this podcast, we integrate knowledge about information—and surprise—with practical workplace decisions.
The podcast edition of the The Nature and Science of Work October 14, 2021 Integrate article (and show notes).
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All living beings do their work in continually flowing pathways of information. They are always working with information, at great expense.
This is the podcast edition of the The Nature and Science of Work October 7, 2021 Explore article (and show notes).
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