Recently I saw the movie “The Martian” starring Matt Damon. If you haven’t seen the film, I don’t think what I have to say will spoil much, but it also won’t make much sense. So I encourage you, even if you don’t want to follow this series of posts, check out the movie. It’s worth the time to watch.

The premise of the movie is a Martian storm causes an emergency evacuation of a team of astronauts on the planet. During the exit, Astronaut Mark Watney, is injured, lost and assumed dead. To save the rest of the team, the remaining astronauts blast off to the awaiting Hermes command ship for the return to Earth.

But Watney is alive and the remainder of the movie is about the challenges that arise and Mark’s creative response to each situation.

Last week I had a home accident that resulted in the tearing of the quadriceps tendons on both knees. I couldn’t stand or walk. On Friday, repair surgery was done. Because both knees are out at the same time, recovery and therapy can take from 10-12 weeks. That’s no travel and only in the later weeks will I be able to get around on anything other than a walker.

My role in IBM involves a lot of travel, customer meetings and speaking engagements. All of that has changed for the next 84 Earth SOLS (The term sol is used by planetary astronomers to refer to the duration of a solar day on Mars).

Since I will not be able to function like the rest of the IBM Worldwide team, I will have to learn how to “Get to Work” for the next 3 months using the tools I have.

In the slightly altered words of Mark Watney, “In the face of overwhelming odds I only have one option. I’m going to have to (social) the (crap) out of this.”

During the coming weeks, I will be posting my observations, challenges and experiences to this situation. I am extremely excited about how this is shaking up my viewpoint and how these new perspectives are going to generate new work experiments and ideas that can assist each of us work smarter.

As always, let me know your thoughts.