New working asana slogan: the more you f*ck around, you’ll find out.

When it comes to project management software, they’re so similar, the only true difference is your taste.

• They each have a high level of invitation, tailoring to tons of habits-both good and not so good.
• Work routines are sussed out almost at an unconscious level with how seamless each platform’s features are.

At that point, the system is just purring. You or your team don’t even have to think about what to do next, it’s all automagically going to guide you. These software sell routine straight from the assembly line.

✌️ Experience experiences

I came across a word that, for me, is the type that rocks in Scramble while simultaneously scrambles my brain. (Like when my wife said two routes were probably equidistant…an MBA way of saying the same distance.)

Metacognition. My definition: f*cking around with intention.

Like thinking about thinking and knowing about knowing. It’s just being aware. Lately, I’ve been more and more aware of the limitations of auotmations. While they should exist, platforms still need the touch, intentionality and consciousness of you and me.

They’re less lines of code and more sand boxes. We need to get in there and f*ck around a little bit more to truly get the most out of ‘em.

☠️ Routines are just average habits

In Michael Norton’s latest release, The Ritual Effect, he says:

Rituals are also providing more meaningful ways for people to step away from technology’s drive toward optimization…

You can’t optimize energy and consciousness. The things we’re optimizing are just the average of our good and bad habits. Why are we so slow to question how it was so easy to optimize that task, that project, that task.

Anything being optimized was probably a less conscious, less focused version of itself. Maybe, optimization is just a fixer for the ways we kinda stink at what we do.

💪 You can’t spell routine without roi

The missing piece to go from routine to ritual is connecting our actions to a reward. But sometimes this isn’t always super clear in the software we use or the reports we run.

Insert: consciousness.

Going about our workdays with a little more intentionality rarely fails. That word can be hard to chew for many of us. It has a connotation of carving out even more time when we have less and less of it.

But what if you’re thinking of it all wrong. Being intentional is as simple as taking a minute to f*ck around, and really see what your software (and you) are really capable of.