The stuff that doesn't really look like work

I went to an event recently about patents in the advertising world. Incredible topic, really interesting conversation and something that impacts pretty much everyone in the industry, whether you are a parent or not. Shout out to Charlotte Coughlan smashed it.

The audience was, disappointingly, mostly women, which one of the male panellists called out- and said was inexcusable the absence of men (thats another post for another day).

The bit that I want to focus on is what happened when it ended.

This is the bit that I have been grappling with. Talk done, and then everyone abruptly left. People filed out, anxiously checking their phones, conversations half started with the caveat I have 2mins and then I have to go, rushing back to their day jobs.

This is not to slag anyone off as I have been that person, so many times. But as I've sat with it over the last couple of weeks, I wonder if thats actually part of the problem.

I have been incredibly guilty of equating being good at my job with physically doing my job. Being at my desk, delivering, getting through the list, making sure Im producing something.

Yet, when I think about the things that have changed the trajectory of my career, so many of them have happened in the bits around the work. The coffee afterwards, the person I happened to sit next to and got chatting to and stayed chatting to after the event. The conversation that ran over. Or the best one, the introduction that went nowhere at the time and came back six months later, that turned into the biggest project still to date.

The stuff that doesn't really look like work. I wonder whether women in particular have been taught to undervalue this, or even more simply, not taught the deep value in this. We've been so focused on proving ourselves by doing a really f*cking good job that we haven't always carved out enough space for the serendipitous encounters that can change our careers.

Obviously there are very real reasons for this too. Caring responsibilities, school pick-ups, the general load of life, and the fact that just stay for another hour isnt equally available to everyone. I am not diminishing any of this, but certainly for me, some of it has been mindset.

I've treated this stuff as something I can do when the actual work is finished, despite the fact that the actual work is never, ever actually finished. I don't have a nicely packaged neat solution, or some kind of holier than thou statement, other than to say that this stuff, the stuff away from your desk is so, so important and please anyone going to a networking event allow a buffer, deliberately build it in, go with the intention of creating space and moments of serendipity.