Mental health for outdoor enthusiasts working inside

[CGW2]

Hi Gorge Windsurfers-

A friend of mine is doing some research on ways to improve the mental health of outdoor enthusiasts who have to work indoors. As windsurfers, I can imagine many of us have the same conundrum, especially during those 3.2, epic swell days from June through September! He's interested in feedback- here's more information, feel free to offer insight:

Just over a year ago, I gracefully bowed out of my position as web director for Big Winds to attend graduate school in interaction design. I'm currently working on a project where I'm attempting to design a system, interface or device that helps outdoor enthusiasts maintain a connection to the outdoors when they work inside for a living.

Does this sound familiar? Then I need your help! I'm curious to know what sort of environment you work in, and what aspects of if you find inspiring (or draining!) in regards to your passion for being outside.

I really appreciate any insight you can offer! I have a few questions to consider, but by no means should you feel obligated to respond to each one. Any level of input is valuable, even a single sentence, and can help me design a better solution. This project is a year-long independent undertaking, so your responses may help guide my efforts for the next six months!

Without further ado, here are some questions. Again, even answering one of these can be immensely helpful!

What kind of work do you do?

What is your office and workspace setup? Do you have an open floor plan? Are you in a cubicle? Are there windows? Is there music? Do the lights buzz and it drives you crazy?

Where do you spend the bulk of your workday? Are you at your desk all day? Do you typically find yourself in meetings? Do you move from place to place? Do you spend most of your time at the coffee shop because that's the only place you can be productive?

Can you see the outdoors from where you spend most of your day? Can you see it if you get up and walk around? Are you in an underground bunker? Are you in a completely glass enclosure somewhere in the Cascades, surrounded on all sides by forest?

What do you do right now to stay connected to the outdoors during your workday? Do you have photographs of favorite places around your workspace? Landscape calendars or other artwork? Are there websites you visit throughout the day?

Do you have any sort of creative arrangements that you use to stay connected to the outdoors? An elaborate system of mirrors so you can see out the window from your chair? An indoor/outdoor thermometer on your desk? Smoke breaks?

What is important to you, in regards to the outdoors? Do you care about the activities you do out there? Do you care about the weather? The changing of the seasons? The way it smells? The way the spray of the water feels as you slash some early morning swell at the Hatchery?

Thank you for any thoughts and ideas you can provide! As a passionate outdoor enthusiast who is currently land-locked in Indiana (and stuck inside studying all day), I truly want to improve the quality of life for people who love the outdoors, but ultimately work inside. With your help, I hope I can design an authentic solution that addresses this problem in an authentic, compassionate manner!

Thanks again!

Dane

[scottwerden]

Job: Product Manager in software co.

Work Environment: I have an office with large windows, it is nice on sunny days. It sucks in the winter but all of the NW does.

Workday: 30% in meetings. I like face-time, so I avoid the phone and run up and down the stairs when I need to talk to a co-worker on another floor. I work remote about 25% of the time - gorge, seattle, maui.

Outdoors: I see it. But usually I am too busy to really "see" it. It is background.

Connection: Hatchcam or the Maui cam. And endlessly checking wind speeds all over the W coast and HI. I used to have a Dale Cook orbital-launch as a screen saver; not sure what happened to that.

Importance: 25 years ago when I was more of a climber I would have said quiet, solitude, pristine wilderness & challenging vertical terrain. Now I think my answer is more about sun, blue skies, and warm water. But I still like the quiet and solitude and avoid crowds if possible in any outdoor activity.

[isobars]

I "stayed connected with the outdoors" by actually getting outdoors (way back when I felt compelled to work full time). If that won't improve their mental health, nothing will. Try these ideas. They were originally published under the title, "Windsday Sailing".

Five obstacles to Windsday Sailing are meetings, deadlines, the boss's attitude, knowing when to implement your escape plan, and getting vacation approval on short notice. All have partial solutions:

MEETINGS:
• Keep subordinates prepared to stand in. It develops their careers and your professional and personal flexibility. My subordinates were encouraged to handle every meeting and briefing they could, wind or no wind, for the benefit of them, me, and the future health of the organization.
• Schedule meetings for days you can't go sailing anyway -- such as days already committed to truly mandatory meetings.
• Hold meetings early in the day, then split. The boss will be impressed with your eagerness and devotion, everyone will be fresher -- and they don't need to know the wind holds off 'til afternoon anyway. (An alternative: the Delta often blows best in the morning, then tapers off by midday. Go to work with helmet hair. )
• Ask the participants of a small inescapable Windsday meeting if another day would suit them. Most people don’t care when a meeting is held.
• Admit it -- you are NOT indispensable at every meeting.
• Manage meetings more efficiently. I conducted my division staff meetings in 15 minutes, rather than the 2 hours my predecessor took to handle the same issues, and attendees said I did a better job. Meeting efficiency can be vastly improved, even if you’re just part of the audience, by helping the group stay focused.

DEADLINES:
Stay ahead of them, for many reasons. One firm rule enabled me to meet hundreds of deadlines and catch most Windsdays: Do First Whats Due First. Make it your mantra. Screw prioritization, screw estimates of how long tasks may take, screw most fancy schemes: just stack them in the order they're due and try to stay one day ahead of the nearest alligator. Determine how much time and effort the next item deserves, whip it out within that time, and grab the next task. Even though some take minutes and some take hours (if they take days, they should be subdivided into smaller subtasks), I found that I met every worthwhile deadline for many years. Good for the performance evaluations AND for Windsday sessions.

Corollary to “Do First What’s Due First”: “Waste Not”. Forget the old wives' tale that says, "Any job worth doing is worth doing right". That presumes that all tasks are of equal importance, which isn't realistic. You're paid to allocate your time intelligently, not rotely. If I did every task as well as possible, I should be fired for wasting company manpower and not doing my JOB, which includes allocating my time efficiently. Let certain superfluous, well-chosen deadlines slide, whether to catch some wind or just to save corporate manpower. As chief of a very large division, I was once tasked by our administration office with spending hours per month verifying the validity of long distance phone charges worth $20-30 collectively (our annual budget ran into 8 figures). I told them they’d get about two minutes of effort on the biggest two calls to fill their square.

If all that still leaves a deadline interfering with a Windsday, ask the person expecting the product if a day's delay will hold him up. Usually it won't, because he's swamped, too.

BOSS'S ATTITUDE:
Explain how special and how mind-refreshing a day of high-wind sailing is (don't tell her how thoroughly it trashes your body). Explain how your time management plan was conceived and how effective it has been in organizing your work, meeting deadlines, and developing subordinates. And offer to stand in for the boss on her perfect golf days, encouraging her to take those best days off because she's earned her vacation time. (Hint ... hint!)

WHEN TO ACT:
Learn to predict Windsdays well in advance so you can put in an extra burst of advance speed and planning. Learn to recognize when a Windsday worth taking has actually arrived. Computers and current data sources are indispensable in this.

QUICK LEAVE APPROVAL:
Check with the boss the day before a Windsday, and let your subordinates know you may be gone tomorrow. Prep your stand-in, and submit tomorrow's products today or arrange to delay them if possible. Leave your filled-in vacation application with someone in case you phone in tomorrow morning to say, "Surf's up; I'm outta here".

Other scenarios:
A doctor/lawyer whose career involves working with inescapable patients/clients might schedule patients/clients only between 8:00 and 1:00 PM M-F, or from 8-8 on MWF, saving afternoons or T & Th for solo work or for sailing. Ya gotta do the paperwork SOMETIME, and a block of time sans patients/clients is an efficient way to do paperwork -- or shred. Salaried workers might arrange to bank overtime in exchange for Windsday comp time. A huge corporation was GLAD to find a supply clerk who WANTED to work the graveyard shift, and he gets overtime wages for much of his 40 hours because it is graveyard.

If the obstacle is a spouse, get him/her into the sport and that problem's solved. If you chose a significant other who isn't interested in sports -- Jeez, what were you THINKING ... with?

Put in your 40 hours in four ten-hour days if possible. If you regularly work more than 40 hours a week -- that's your choice. I chose not to. Sure it hurt my career a little ... so what? That’s a whole ‘nuther topic.

If you own the company -- problem solved. Take your Windsdays, let your people take their golf and hang-gliding days, and everybody's happy. That's what YOUR vacation time or comp time is FOR. Give them slack when possible, and they'll bust their butts for you when necessary.

This isn't just theory. I used this approach while managing 150 people spending $40,000,000 annually on very urgent high tech research, and these ideas worked well for me.

Mike \m/

[thegreatsunra]

Hi all, Dane here. Thank you so much for your responses!

You've offered some tremendously valuable insights, here... connecting with other people face-to-face as an opportunity to move around (and also have some social interaction throughout the day), how one's own value of the outdoors can change over time, the importance of structuring your worklife around actually "getting outside" and maintaining that balance. Really, removing obstacles that prevent you from getting out as much as you'd like!

Again, thanks for sharing your thoughts! This is a tough nut to crack, and I sincerely want to come up with an honest solution that improves people's lives.

[dana_miller]

What kind of work do you do? Design, fabrication, carpentry, photography, writing, performance coaching, caretaking, ....

What is your office and workspace setup? My office is not exactly what you would consider an open floor plan. It's typically the cab of a Ford van. Windows yes. Music of course. Or NPR sometimes. If lights were buzzing, I would certainly be hating that. Florescent lights suck even if they are not buzzing. The workspace setup is a much longer answer depending on which job we are talking about.

Where do you spend the bulk of your workday? I'm way too ADD to do any one thing all day long. Sure we do lots of "meetings" when the crew is in town for the wind. And we chase it from Cape Mendicino to the Gorge. And sure, you have to love a jangly coffee shop for a good writing sesh. There's something about that kind of atmosphere that promotes a creative groove. The background noise, interesting people, the smell of good coffee ....

Can you see the outdoors from where you spend most of your day? Usually. And I'm never happier than when I can. Especially when finishing up the morning office sesh in my completely enclosed glass structure sitting in the parking lot at Cape Sebastian, low tide is in a couple hours and the wind is blowing the tops off that nineteen second south swell.

What do you do right now to stay connected to the outdoors during your work day? If I'm up at current the job site, I'm constantly calling the Gold Beach airport or checking in with the crew to see if it's filling in yet over the hill. The wallpaper on my laptop is currently a shot of Cape Sebastian totally going off. And sure, if I'm online but off the beach, it's all about the websites. I obsessively check the MM5 models, Stormsurf.com, the Beach telegraph, some of the blogs, the news groups, I windsurf, ....

Do you have any sort of creative arrangements that you use to stay connected to the outdoors? Yeah, well my entire life is a creative arrangement designed to keep me connected. It's a large part of why I have no house, no wife and no kids. Just getting a dog a couple years ago was pretty scary, but she definitely gets me to the beach on days I might not otherwise go. As for my arrangements, there's a fifteen knot clause in my contracts. And a "no net material possession gain" edict in place that means if I get something, I have to sell or give away something. This is not only about preserving simplicity in my life and minimizing my impact, but it serves large to help keep the van as light as possible.

What is important to you, in regards to the outdoors? I certainly take a lot of razzing from many of my friends that don't windsurf for being so driven and obsessed about being there when it blows. And for getting so depressed when I miss it or when I'm too long away from the ocean. They say stuff like it'll blow again and that there is more to life. Yeah well, at least my friends that sail get it.

I hope this helps, or at least entertains. With gratitude. -Dana

[isobars]

[jsampiero]

Dana, my friend,

I think you (and, most people would say, me) are probably excluded from offering any input to this conversation.

Thank goodness

[csr7]

New blog over at pistolrivershapes.weebly.com might end up stoking some up for a wavebashing this summer.