Get Away from your Desk to Analyse your Work
Jinfo Blog

By Robin Neidorf

Abstract

Robin Neidorf shares six lessons learnt from taking time away from day-to-day work to take part in the Cycling for Libraries conference.

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Every busy professional knows the difficulty of seeing the forest for the trees. In the hectic workflow of day-to-day efforts to keep everything moving, it's nearly impossible to step back and analyse if you are putting your time -- your most precious resource -- into the right activities.

Cycling for Libraries proved to be an ideal opportunity to do some hard thinking about what activities are most valuable to my work, our business and our customers, while absorbing inspiration on the role of information services in improving business outcomes.

These were the variables that made this a refreshing and productive development experience:

• Extended time away: At first a 10-day conference seems an impossible ask, but with good planning and good support (thank you, Team FreePint!), it can be done. The extended period away from the desk and the screen gave me the perspective I needed to better evaluate what's really essential and what's merely noise. 
  
  
• Hours of "unplugged": Attend any "regular" conference session these days, and 75% of the participants are staring at their laps because that's where their mobile devices are. When you can't check email every two minutes, you have a chance to clear your head of other people's demands and prioritise your own goals and objectives.
  
  
• Diverse colleagues: Cycling for Libraries included participants from 20 countries, all working in environments very different to mine. Getting out of the "echo chamber" comprised of my usual colleagues challenged my thinking about what I consider to be business-as-usual and consider solutions that would otherwise never cross my mind. 
  
  
• Site visits: I've written before about the power of the site visit - the best learning does not happen in a conference session. A single site visit gives you a different perspective; a dozen or more site visits enable you to see a wide range of approaches and solutions so that you can adapt the best ideas to your own environment.
  
  
• Physical challenge: For me, the incorporation of some very challenging days of cycling made an enormous difference in clearing my head and giving me time to think. Long stretches on the road, looking at the horizon and concentrating on the rhythm of my legs, gave me extended time to meditate on thorny work problems and come up with new solutions. 
  
  
• Putting ideas to work: The conclusion of the trip in Denmark offered me the immediate opportunity for on-site work with a customer in Copenhagen. Some of my new ideas I was able to test right away with this delightful information team, get their feedback, and add to my notes about interpreting what I'd seen on the road for inclusion in FreePint's future research and editorial efforts.

If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always got. Over the years I've got better at making the most of professional development events. Cycling for Libraries was in a class by itself.

My thinking space for working on thorny work problems.

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