Steve Rio, Founder of the Nature of Work is our guest today. Today, we’re talking about work and recovery and what affects the recovery process. In a quest to live our best lives, we want Steve to share his take on how we can optimize our lives and live in a way that fulfills us.
Steve is a futurist, technologist and researcher born in Vancouver BC, Canada. Steve is founder and CEO of Briteweb, an international social impact agency delivering strategy, branding and digital, and the Founder of Nature of Work, helping people be more productive, creative and happy in their work and their lives.
Steve thrives at the intersection of social impact, culture and technology and is an expert in exponential organizations, remote and distributed teams and workforce wellness and performance. He has real world experience leading remote and distributed digital teams as well as implementing technology and systems for over a decade. It’s through the lens as a freelancer turned business owner and entrepreneur that he thinks about performance for modern workers.
Social media has invaded our daily lives and because we are engaging with technology in such a persuasive way, we now have one of the most addictive devices in our pockets at all times. It’s hard to separate ourselves from social media because we feel like it is a way to engage with our friends. However, we forget that social media platforms have been engineered to be addictive.
Steve founded Nature of Work out of his own need. He wanted a quiet space, close to nature, where he could do his deepest and best work. Despite his best efforts, he still could not calm his mind and focus in the way he expected.
Because many of us have complicated relationships with work and technology, we can’t just control our external environment to get a productive outcome – we have to look internally as well. Our time, attention and focus are pulled in a million directions each day, and the technology we use to accomplish our work, is also what causes us the biggest distractions and the lowest productivity.
We are in the information age, and our tools can be used across multiple platforms to accomplish various tasks. In previous times, the tools used for work could only accomplish the task we were working on – think about a shovel. You wouldn’t be able to check Facebook on a shovel, so you could have long periods of attention and focus in order to accomplish the task.
Steve advocates optimizing your work so that you can be more productive, but also so that you can have a higher quality of life and an increased level of fulfillment. We work ourselves to burnout level without taking into consideration the quality of our lives. When we get back to basics with our daily routines and practices, we can begin to see profound changes.
Our time and attention are the 2 greatest assets that we have. They are non-renewable and determine the quality of the experience of our life.
Resources:
Steve on Instagram
Steve’s Podcast – Now with Steve Rio