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Out Of Office Network cross-posted a post from Broken Growth

Alice KatterOct 2 · Out Of Office Network

It was great speaking to Mathilda, and reflecting on my current season of work/life as I emerge out of maternity leave and am re-thinking what successful growth looks like for me in my next chapter. Hope you enjoy!

Growing a life-first approach to work with Alice Katter from Out of Office

Rejecting a linear approach to work and life and prioritising your creativity.

Matilda Lucy and Alice Katter

Oct 2

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Hello! You’re reading Growing XYZ, an interview series from Broken Growth spotlighting founders and makers building brands, businesses and lives beyond capitalist, patriarchal blueprints.

This week I spoke to the amazing Alice Katter from Out of Office Network. Alice and I first connected when she was living in London a couple of years ago. I’d read her booklet Reimagining the Nature of Work and instantly loved Alice’s rejection of linear work models and her life-first approach.

It was special to speak to Alice as she emerges out of maternity leave and is thinking about what successful growth looks like for her next chapter. I found it a really inspiring conversation — hope you enjoy.

Matilda

Hello! Please give us an intro into you and your work.

Hi, I’m Alice — a creative work/life coach, and founder of Out of Office. I help fellow creatives design a way of living and working that feels inspiring, energising, and true to who they are.

My days are a blend of creating tools and workshops for creative teams and companies, running coaching cohorts, and building resources to support individuals who want to live and work more intentionally.

I’m originally from Austria, but I’ve made a home in cities like Vienna, London, and New York — and have spent traveling and studying life with chapters in places like Mexico, California, Italy, and Barcelona.

In 2019, while moving to NYC and experiencing how diversifying my day makes me feel alive, I launched Out of Office Network to bring together curious people who want to reimagine how we live and work in our modern world. In 2023, I published a booklet, Reimagining the Nature of Work, as a handbook for how to build a more inspiring and energising way of working.

Outside of work, you’ll often find me strolling through neighbourhoods, admiring plants and architecture, exploring a new coffee shop to sit down and write from, traveling somewhere new, visiting museums, in a yoga or pilates studio, on a hike, or connecting with other creatives and founders and most recently, going on a lot of walks with my baby. My world is rooted in flexibility, beauty, and building a vibrant life — and I love helping others do the same. 🌱💛

What does successful growth look like to you in 2025 and beyond?

For me, successful growth right now means being able to lean more into my power of helping people imagine and build a way of working and living that feel more energising and inspiring for them, and find a way to integrate work and motherhood.

Just coming out of maternity leave, this season of life has definitely taught me a lot and made me think about growth in new ways. Especially during my pregnancy, I felt this incredible focus and power. Just before my baby was born, I participated in a coaching program run by the amazing Megan Dolce , called “Own Your Power” and it really helped me to feel confident leaning into what I love doing most, and feel 100% ready to openly put my cards on the table, and use all the skills and knowledge I gained working in tech and the creative industries, to build Out of Office out as a platform to help people navigate their own work journey, find clarity, and design a rhythm that brings vitality into their work & life. Over the last months, I’ve re-learned (and am still relearning) how I can put my energy back into the world — but in a different way than before.

I don’t want to come from a place of rushing, of having to proof or produce more and more (which I’m very good at, but also, often is leading to the fact that I almost put too much out there, so ended up spreading myself very thin, not making the impact I could), but from a deeper place of clarity. From listening instead of hustling. From a grounded centre instead of scattered striving.

This season has also taught me that slowing down is not the absence of growth — it’s what allows us to really tune in. I believe that we need to have time to slow down and pause to recreate our inner compass. To build strong roots, with clarity in where we want to go. Which helps us not to lose ourselves in the often hectic world. Where it’s so easy to get distracted from what we actually really care about and want to do in work and life. So I’m carrying that forward with me: more trust in slowness, more presence in the everyday, and more courage to create from who I truly am.

The term ‘lifestyle business’ divides opinions. How does it resonate with your work, if at all?

To me, a lifestyle business means that rather than shaping my life around work, I shape my work around my lifestyle. Life stays at the centre — and work is built around it.

I feel lucky to have found work I truly love, whether that’s collaborating with companies and creative teams from Dropbox to Adobe, or creating content, coaching programs (as the one I’m running in October), and new tools and products for Out of Office. I’ve built projects through my passions, and through that, draw in like-minded people I can collaborate with. Together, over the past year, that led to building products/work that sustains my living while staying rooted in what excites me.

How do you see the relationship between play and growth?

In my work, I think a lot about how we can set the right conditions for work to make us feel creative, energised and inspired.

The challenge with work culture is that the pace of work, back-to-back meetings, as well as the pressure to be productive all the time, are sucking out our creativity, by not making enough time and space for rest, exploration and play.

With Out of Office, I promote rest, exploration, and play as key components in life and in work, because I believe that we can only find our best ideas, and grow as humans as well as in our businesses if we view these components as part of our work and life.

If you think about work and the creative process, there’s convergent and divergent thinking. When you need creativity or new ideas, it means you need to broaden your horizon to get new ideas. Which is what you can do by filling your well with novelty, giving your mind space to think and ponder. That might be a Field Trip – where you’re going to a museum to explore a topic you or your team are currently working on, or take a guided museum tour, or work from a cafe, or a place where you might strike up a new conversation.

And once you had that strike of inspiration, you might go down into convergent thinking.

So “play” and experimentation are key components of getting to new ideas. It is also key for having time to listen to ourselves and what we really want to build and focus on. That is where I believe we plant the seeds for growth – personally as well as professionally.

In your booklet, Reimagining the Nature of Work, you talk about regenerative and degenerative work. Please tell us more!

Yes, so to sum it up: 🪫 Degenerative vs. 🔋regenerative work - Degenerative work is work that burns you out, uninspires you, and becomes the centre of your life, whereas regenerative work is where work aligned with your values and allows space for different parts of you to shine. It’s designed to nourish and bring new vitality and inspiration.

The seasons are turning from summer to autumn. How does seasonality impact your approach to work?

Our lives are not supposed to be linear. That goes for our creative careers as well as for our lives in general. The creative process is not linear, it’s different times of expansion and narrowing down, widening our horizon and going all in. And the same goes for us as humans. Like flowers, or in a garden, there are different phases and seasons, a time to plant the seeds, grow, water, sprout, blossom, tend to the soil, rest...

So I try to apply the same concept to my work and encourage the people I work with to think about their different seasons. Right now for instance, as I gave birth to our daughter earlier this year, i know it’s a season of nurturing, picking up new signals for how I want to rethink my work-set up moving forward, and tuning into myself.

For me, summers are often a time when I want to have more time for slowness, exploration and play, and not having to think too much about work. I love to take some time off completely, and then take some intentional time to ground myself again and reassess which direction I want to go and what I’m working towards.

Slowing down gives me an opportunity to remember what matters to me. I believe if we’re always focussing on growing and pushing things foward it’s easy to inherit other people’s goals, as we’re not able to listen to what really drives us deep down. I believe we need to be grounded and put down roots to then grow into flourishing phases of our lives and work again. Otherwise, it’s easy to fall into a mode of constantly pushing further, without being too clear about the direction that we’re heading into.

This is for instance how I planned my seasons for 2025 at the end of last year, the year I gave birth to my daughter:

If Alice’s work resonates, doors are open to her Creative Ways of Living course which I definitely recommend checking out if you’re feeling the urge to build work around life and not the other way around.

“Find clarity, imagine what’s possible, and build a work/life that makes you feel alive!”

📨 Broken Growth is an almost weekly newsletter written by me, strategist Matilda Lucy, interrogating the meaning of successful growth and exploring ways get there that don’t fuck up people or planet.

I’m an independent brand and growth strategist and consultant working with brands who want to grow well for the long run. Feel free to reach out for a chat if you want to find out more :)