OODA LOOPS

PhotoCredit: Around and Around

The OODA Loop is possibly my most favorite framework. It's inherently squiggly and it helps decode what I think might be the hardest thing about squiggling. Or doing anything new. Which is...where to start.

Starting is hard. Let's face it, getting out of bed is hard. So the notion of both getting out of bed AND doing something radical and new - well that can seem like complex calculus. And I don't know about you but I find basic calculus impossible.

I discovered the OODA Loop quite by accident in this blog. It's worth a read but, you know I love you, so here goes the summary. OODA Loops suggest that the best strategy evolves through a cycle of steps: Observe, Orient, Decide and Act. It allows for iteration in the process of strategy, so we don't necessarily need to have a full battle plan. All we need is to cultivate agility in our pursuit of our vision or goal.

There is a little bit more to it than just this, but frankly I would be happy if your takeaway was "maybe I don't need to know how I am going to get there, I just need to figure out what to do today." I mean, after you have decided what's for breakfast of course.

This becomes very permissive. Big visions can be terrifying and overwhelming. And planning can be distractive busywork. The OODA Loop encourages us to stop thinking about what might happen and instead get really clear about what is happening.

The framework evolved from air combat. At it's core is the observation (that's basically an OODA joke, I'm laughing) that most strategy emphasizes planning over uncertainty. There is some quantum mechanic/mind-bending stuff going on but fundamentally the point is that we don't know today what "the enemy" will do tomorrow. Taken further, we can't plan today for a market that might be completely different tomorrow. 

If the past 18+ months of the pandemic have taught us anything, they have taught us this. Tomorrow could radically change the landscape. Tomorrow anything could happen. So do you want to spend today thinking about maybe's or get down to business with what's really going on? 

TRADE OFF

PhotoCredit: NeverSleep

When I moved to New York I learned the lesson of the trade off. You can have a view, if you live In the cultural dead-zone. You can be in the heart of everything awesome, if you don't mind a closet for an apartment. You can live close to the museums with no (decent) supermarkets, or in the gallery district with distant subway access (and no supermarkets).

Trade Offs. Sigh. I had to choose. Perfect didn't exist. It became about what was most important to me.

I ultimately chose culture and quiet with some good restaurants over view, subway and supermarkets. In case you were wondering.

"Life is like a box of chocolates." Well, maybe. I think life is a series of trade offs. We need to choose what we want the most, and focus on that, dispensing with the false premise that we can have it all.

And I say this not from a place of deprivation but from the perspective of deciding where I will place my energy and focus. There are only so many things we can achieve well. As Cal Newport (I think it was him) says "If you can't say no, you need a bigger yes."

What is your BIG yes?

Maybe this week you can have a look at that master to-do list, or your goals for the year, or your personal wish list - and remove a few things. Be brave even and cut it in half? 

It's helpful to take a few things off the list. Even if just for the next six months. Give yourself a break, allow yourself to focus. Make the trade off.

AUTOMATE

PhotoCredit: BoredPanda

I fell in love with robots in 1986. Conjuring feelings that would lay dormant till WALL-E; I remember the exact moment. A moment of complete movie schmaltz. We thought all hope was lost. Our tears turn to joy. We are reunited with the possibly sentient hunk-of-junk that we thought was a goner. Number 5 is ALIVE people. Number 5 is alive!

My relationship with robots has since become a little more complicated. I grow tired of waiting for Rosie to relieve me of all my household chores. My relationship with my robo-vac(s!) has led to deep disillusionment that even the simple tasks in my life might be robo-sourced. The list of things that the 80's failed to deliver on grows ever longer. We expected flying cars, (working) hoverboards and robot friends. All we got were streets littered with scooters and iPhones. Though to be fair, one of the two I can't live without. 

Rumors of their (robot) death is greatly exaggerated. They are alive and kicking inside fancy warehouses in Boston (click that link, the video is short and amazing) and anywhere Amazon has acquired real-estate. It's just we - mere peasants - can't afford them for laundry folding purposes. We can't afford that, no, but there are many ways we can use robots, AKA automation, in our life.

Yes, there was a point to this rant! Below are some of my favorite automated-ish (I took some liberties) shortcuts I use in my life. For those of you who are more advanced, please send me any I have missed. Or instead just go check out all the awesome robot drawings from the dude who drew the cover picture this week. He ROCKS.

GOOGLE: I use CHROME as my browser on all my devices and log-in to my google account on all of them. It allows many awesome features including copying on one device and pasting that copied text into another. A small feature that I use multiple times a day.
IPHONE: The Sleep|WakeUp feature allows you to set a morning alarm that then tells you what time to go to sleep to get your desired sleep quantity. Plus, the morning alarm options are epic and don't feel like someone has just slapped you across the face. I use "birdsong" for my happy morning greeting.
BOOKMARKS BAR: When I first discovered bookmarks I bookmarked everything. And of course never went back to any of the sites. I now only use the bookmarks bar for the top 10 things I need at my fingertips. I probably have links to 6-7 practical tabs and then 3 or so that I would categorize as "frivolous but necessary". It changes as I find something new and cool I want to enjoy. Right now I am enjoying CFDA.com and worldometers.info.
LASTPASS: Lastpass.com. It saves all my passwords. SecureAF.  
INSTAPAPER: I think I have mentioned this before. I save all the articles I want to read here and then, as I want to keep them, log them in folders of areas of interest. It's like a new and improved way of bookmarks and has saved me a number of times when I have forgotten my source.
SUBSCRIBE AND SAVE: Coffee, Pet Food, Post It notes. Anything I need a regular supply, I hit the subscribe and save button. Sure, you can tell yourself you are making smart financial decisions but, even better, the stuff you can't live without turns up on your doorstep like magic. And always just before you run out.
TRELLO: I run my life in this. Any tool works, the point is to have one place where you store anything and everything you need to do in your life. It's bursting with power-ups too. Most I don't use but I love to know they are there for me. The kanban-ish board system is especially brilliant as you can have a series of lists and one immediate "to do this week" list. Helps guard against drowning in overwhelm!
GRAMMARLY.COM: I personally do not use this but many of my peeps love it. I much prefer to use spell check and make up my own grammar. Stop being polite, we all know this is the truth. 
GOOGLE SHEETS: Mark resisted this recommendation for the first 10 years of our marriage. We are coming up on 13 years of marriage this month AND he's a solid couple of years into his love affair with google sheets. I think both relationships will be lasting. I might edge out google sheets, but only just. Other than being cloud based and easy to update from any device, it's collaboration/sharing feature is enough to make me swoon. 
EXPENSES: Actually, I would love your POV on expense software. I used to use expensify but it wasn't as "smart" as it led me to believe. I now use Tiller which is excellent (syncs all banking and credit cards into one spreadsheet) and is super powerful. That's great for bookkeeping but I really want something to track my receipts that is designed for consumers.

Please do send me your favorite power-ups that automate your life. I would like to learn as, as I get enough, I will do a follow-up to this post. WIth more robot pictures.

SIDE STEP

PhotoCredit: Lait

I somehow managed to delete all my google chrome profiles yesterday. I thought I was doing some smart computer maintenance. I ended up wiping all my shortcuts. While recoverable in the long term, I was seeing hours of work ahead of me. Nothing like creating a project for yourself!

Thankfully a meeting was pushed out 30 minutes and I had time to work through my crisis. That, and, I had a moment of clarity where I realized how I could restore it.

Not all messes can be so swiftly cleaned up. I reflected on the day when our building manager fell though our kitchen ceiling mid-pandemic. My kitchen bathed in 100 year-old distgustingness. That drama took hours to clean up. 

We are regularly confronted by variations on the spilled milk theme. Years ago I developed a three-step "don't panic" system that I deploy in such occasions.

Step One: Name what happened. I find that it helps me a lot if I zoom out of the problem. Step back and name the issue. Categorize it as a tech issue, or a deep clean, or a "I have to get someone to the emergency room" situation. Hopefully it's not the latter. When we go to emotion first we diminish our ability to cope because we are compounding the issue with our feelings. Leave that for later, preferably over a glass of wine. 

Step Two: Calmly acknowledge that you are pissed-the-F-off about the situation. While we don't want to get bundled up in our emotions we also don't want to pretend they don't exist. So I usually give myself a moment to quietly exclaim to myself that this was not in my plans for the day and then I take a deep breath. The reality is that stuff goes wrong from time to time. It's part of the making of the cake of life that we need to break some eggs. If it's happening daily then you might need to do a bigger assessment of what's happening in your life. That will need to be a bigger/longer blog. Step Two is designed to acknowledge the feels but not drown in them.

Step Three: Step away for a moment. My meeting being delayed 30 minutes gave me the time to do the most critical step in the process. By literally removing yourself from the situation you give yourself space for your brain to connect a few dots. We tend to get entangled in the problem and, frankly, we end up making a bigger mess. When I stepped away yesterday I realized I could check my chrome settings on my ipad and copy them over to my laptop. Instantly I solved the issue. My kitchen clean up on the other hand took a lot more work BUT in my stepping away from that I saw the opportunity to do a deep clean of my kitchen. When I viewed the issue through that lens I ended up feeling satisfied at the end of the process rather than angry or hard-done-by.

Obviously, if the issue is of the "drive someone to emergency" variety you want to move through these steps quite quickly but you do still want to do them. Acknowledging your inevitable fear and anxiety, taking a breath, and then step away for a nanosecond to assess the practicalities of the situation. Rushing out the door without your phone and charger, a warm sweater or your wallet is likely going to make your issue worse not better. 

When a crisis hits, big or small, panic is not your friend. Perspective is.  

MEETHEAD

PhotoCredit: Attention

One of the hot topics of the pandemic has been the possible watershed moment for remote working. In many respects this is self-evident, the clear result of necessity being a wonderful catalyst for invention. In other respects it's a solid maybe. The global economy cannot seemingly decide: is remote work; flexible work; or the compromise of a 4-day work week inevitable, or are we all in on a "return" to work? It's all great fodder for click-tastic-bait headlines and something everyone seems to be right about!

Meanwhile, awash in a sea of burnout, we seem to be skipping over the topic of our inefficient work environment. The collision of the modern workplace with a rampant virus has only amplified the productivity issues that existed. That may or may not mean we need to think differently about where we work. It is, however, imperative that we improve how we work. We need to call time-out on the presenteeism practices that dominate the corporate world.

There are so many things that fall in this category. I will endeavor to talk to a few over the coming weeks. First off the rank: meetings.

We are all guilty of agenda-less meetings where people turn up un-prepared and immediately disengage. Don't hate the player: most meetings are likely 50% longer and 50% more inefficient than they need to be. In a universe where skilled talent is scarce and expensive, every minute of productive brain power should be spent on-task or up-skilling.

The rally-cry is to reframe what has become one of the biggest sources of waste in the modern economy. We can all own our part in this. Start with this HBR article to think about meetings you host. Even better, start a conversation with your team about where your meetings could be improved. And best, see if you can cancel one meeting a week and cut meeting time in half. I'm personally a huge fan of the 15 minute meeting.  

Time in person, whether on a zoom or IRL, is invaluable when done correctly and intentionally. Most meetings are neither of these. When in doubt, please, just don't.

REMIX

PhotoCredit: Animal!

Husband and I have a tradition of communicating via YouTube when I am traveling. Attempting to fit in calls between meetings often leaves us rather zombie-like on calls, so we let music video's do the talking. The modern love note perhaps?

Yesterday he sent me this epic classic of the incomparable Shirley Bassey with the Propellerheads: watch it here. Or I guess it's technically the Propellerheads with Shirley Bassey?

Other than attempting to delight you with a great song, the best way to start your day IMHO, I love the creative permission it coaxes. It's the ultimate mash-up of old meets new. Neither artist compromising on what makes them magical, allowing the combination of talent to take them to a new level.

Which gets me thinking, where can I do this in my life? Where can I partner with other greatness to deliver something with outsized results in a fresh, new way? This is the essence of true collaboration.

So where are you doing this in your life? Be honest. So often we treat collaboration as a positional or transactional endeavor. To make magic happen, we need to see the essence of the talent of our partners first. Dare I say, at work and at home!

COMPLETELY CLUELESS

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If any one of the myriad camera’s in my house could talk (or more if google could analyze the data fast enough) the world would have seen me in full curiosity mode last week. I was hunched over my laptop, squinting at the shared zoom-screen, focussing so hard I literally induced a migraine. A girlfriend and I were attempting to figure out astrological charts. Both of us as clueless as each other but both equally motivated to learn.

Forgive the example, it could have just as easily been quantum mechanics (for reals - and who's to say they are not just all just the same thing?) Think on that!

Once the migraine passed, screen fatigue is a real thing people, I reflected on how much more I knew I didn’t know about astrology. What we know we don't know - as odd as it sounds - is a forward step on the learning path. Astrology is a bit of a passing fancy to me but I find it fascinating and had always felt rather a passive observer.  So I wanted to learn.

There are so many things in our life like this. Things we lump into the “other people are experts” bucket or the “I’m interested but the path to knowledge seems too steep" bucket. Topics may include finance, marketing, getting good at social media, data analytics, blockchain, mastering excel, mastering anything!

We often blame time as the enemy of learning but the real barrier is our protective ego. It’s really f-ing frustrating to have no clue what you are doing. Once you get to a certain point in your career-slash-life you get kinda used to knowing the answers. It’s hard and frustrating (and mostly non-satisfying) being in the clueless realm. Unless you are Cher in my favorite movie of all time, but even she got frustrated in the end.

A really smart friend once explained to me that the cycle we go through when we learn something new is unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence to unconscious competence, conscious competence and then PLAY. Play is when you get to just start inventing recipes once you have learned the basics. NOT what I did last night making a not-so-delicious fish-pie. I attempted play before I trialled a couple of recipes which is my usual process.

Our ego likes to think we are in conscious competence all the time. So it either suggests that we avoid things entirely OR that we should riff creatively well before we are ready. The result is sadly a resistance to learning. Which means a resistance to growing. Not good for fish pie making and truly not good for organizations (or people).

Doing something new is always a good idea. It's an even better idea if you grab a friend. Just maybe not the best idea when you are throwing a dinner party (don't worry I wasn't!). When we understand that the goal is to be clueless, we can succeed at being beginners. That might just be enough to satisfy our ego. Successfully clueless, who knew that was a worthy ambition?

READ LIKE YOU'RE RETIRED

PhotoCredit: FeetUp

Lately one of my favorite questions to ask people is where they get their news. Or - more specifically - what they subscribe to. If it's in my inbox I will read it so I subscribe to a collection of newsletters and roundups from an intentionally broad range of writers, collators, thinkers and editors. In this instance, I don't mind a little inbox clutter.

I thought I would share my favorites, some of which I have been reading for years. See what resonates and maybe try something new. Brain expansion is a wonderful thing.

Brain Pickings by Maria Popova: philosophy meets poetry in a creativity mash up of life changing proportion. If you read anything, please read this.

FS: I discovered Farnham Street listening to a podcast about mental models. I instantly connected to this newsletter which describes itself aptly as "wisdom you can use."

James Clear's 3, 2, 1: I love James Clear and this weekly email is one of the fastest and most inspiring reads I get each week.

Morning Brew: easy bite sized news. The fastest way to keep up with the big happenings.

Stratechery: deeply thoughtful assessment of key shifts in the tech industry. Not a casual read by any stretch but well worth your attention.

Benedict Evans: a great roundup of the key tech news each week.

FutureCrunch: their words say it best "We help organizations understand what’s coming next. We seek out and tell stories of progress. We give people hope for the future.”

Rowan Simpson’s Top Three: startup analysis and brilliance with just enough sports sprinkled in.

No Mercy No Malice: prof Scott Galloway’s weekly rant on all that’s wrong with the world.

Stocked: because stocking your pantry well can both satisfy your hunger and your financial wellbeing.

Unsnackable: Including this just for fun because it is fun. "A small tantrum about obscure and limited edition snacks, beverages and fast food from around the world that I want but cannot have."

And then, the more familiar, just for completeness:
TechCrunch
The Economist
Wall St Journal
New York Times

YA KNOW

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The book How to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie is almost 100 years old. Ok, that’s slightly over-stated as it was first published in 1936 but that might as well be 100 years ago. If it was a pair of Levi’s it would for sure be considered vintage. 

It appears highly ranked in many top 100 all time great non-fiction books type lists. That’s a fun rabbit hole to go down on the internet…this was my favorite of the lists but I also liked the Good Reads top 100 list.

I've been thinking about influencing lately. True influence is an art form. It's not manipulation, it's not about seeking capitulation and it's certainly not about determination. Influence is much more about discovery and open-ness and less 'what part of my plan is the right plan don’t you understand?'. 

So why do we approach projects like we are going into war? Full military style 'rally the troops and go do battle.’ With an everyone-must-fall-into-place orientation? When the reality is we want to execute in a sneaky, crafty, they-didn’t-see-that-coming style. Execution that requires all brains on deck - permission to speak freely with maximum creativity and deftness.

Conversation is the key to excellent strategic execution. Through conversation we seek to more deeply understand our colleagues diverging views and, from that place of understanding, the organization absorbs knowledge and becomes smarter. Smarter wins the war.

In the only battle I care about, the battle for disruptive thinking in organizations, we need to think less about chain of command and more about elevating ideas. And for me nothing is more powerful than conversation: a work of art with more than one creator.

So this week as you find yourself doing battle, ask yourself what you can learn from those fighting on your side. Instead of insisting you are right, seek information. You might not just win friends and influence people - you might just also look smarter in the process.

THE GAME IS AFOOT

PhotoCredit: Flamin 

I have often likened squiggling to trying to piece together a jigsaw puzzle - without the picture on the box and with all the pieces turned upside down. Possibly slightly dramatic but many days feel this way: overwhelmed by where to start let alone clear where you are going.

I recently dabbled in the world of dissectology. That is a sentence I never imagined writing. Puzzlers are evidently also called dissectologists as the origins of jigsaw puzzles were dissected maps. A girlfriend of mine had a 1,000 piece puzzle freshly out of the box and I couldn’t help myself. Immediately, what seemed relatively simple became hard. All the pieces blurred into one. In seconds it seemed impossible. “How do I tackle this?,” I thought to myself - somewhat curious and amused that a puzzle of dog breeds was making me feel overwhelmed. 

According to the internet, the broader term for a puzzler is enigmatologist. This includes solvers of other non-jigsaw puzzles and other math and logic head-scratchers. For your complete education it seems these words are often used interchangeably. Who knew? Well, now you do.

Anything with the root word “enigma” sounds seriously cool. And what is this thing we call life if not an enigma: “a person or thing that is mysterious or difficult to understand.” There is great joy on the other side of a puzzle. Mystery, jigsaw or otherwise - enigmatologists and dissecologists approach a problem with delight in the challenge. They are not overwhelmed by the deep hole of the difficulty or the thousand pieces laying in front of them. 

Finding the joy in the challenge is the real game. The joy comes from tackling something because it’s hard. Perverse, maybe, but this is where resilience is born. When we know something is difficult, we know it will stretch us, and we go for it anyway. We go for it knowing there is a possibility we could fail. We go for it despite the fear lurking, dismissing the little-loud voice that tells us we can’t.

With my jigsaw puzzle encounter, I realised I just needed to find a place to start. I found one part of the puzzle that looked approachable and collected all the pieces for that element. Through much trial and error I finally got there. It was only 5% completed but the small victory gave me great confidence I could tackle the rest. Overwhelm begone. A winning formula for puzzles, mysteries and life.

The story would be a lot cleaner if I finished the puzzle but it wasn’t actually mine to finish. So, I left the rest for my friend. If only we could do that with all of life’s complexity...but where would the joy be in that?

NOWHERE TO GO

PhotoCredit: Macaron 

There were a few occasions during peak-pandemic that Mark and I decided to get dressed up despite our mandated seclusion. It felt important at the time - and I am glad we did it - but it smacked more of defeat than victory. All dressed up and nowhere to go just never feels right.

In much the same way, ummmmm major segue alert, our goals are completely useless if we don’t have practices, rituals, and actions to move us towards them. Great ambitions, alone, are as hopeless as a ballgown in a pandemic.

I wrote last time about reviewing your goals for 2021. Now we are midway through the year this is a great time to get focussed on what is truly critical. You might even want to eliminate some goals and get real about what is possible.

The next step is to create daily and weekly actions and practices that will support your goal achievement. Maybe only one muffin-day a week versus every day being muffin-day? Remember, I love you. Maybe reading for 30 minutes a day to get some brain enhancement. Maybe a little more sleep or a few more days of exercise. Maybe?

This video from Farnam Street notes that habits are algorithms operating in the background to power our lives. Bingo. Your job is to design and execute the algorithms. I could talk about OKR’s here but I will refrain. All I will say is that you want to monitor the habits/actions you put in place to ensure they are taking you towards achieving your goals.

Remember also that less is more when it comes to habits and actions. One of my favorite thinkers in this area is James Clear, author of Atomic Habits: Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results. Big changes can feel impossible. Make them small and unavoidable. Compound interest doesn’t just work in your bank account [insert nerdy comment about depressed interest rates here].

And do it today. Think fast. Just start. Momentum is everything. Change will create room for more change.

TRASH

PhotoCredit: Grouch

Of all my systems, the one I come back to without fail is Keep, Throw, Maybe. It started with a reality show...Clean Sweep...which I watched like a puppy watches his food being scooped into his bowl. Clean Sweep was Marie Kondo before she folded her first t-shirt.

I wrote about the Keep, Throw, Maybe system in the early days of squiggly.com. “The genius of Keep, Throw, Maybe is it’s simplicity. Any overwhelming pile can be organized with a quick categorization of each item as: a definite keep; a definite throw; and a decide-later maybe pile. The trick is to categorize lightning fast, speeding up the process but also to get out of your conscious “I can justify anything” mind.”

I use this system for everything: from cleaning out my cupboards, to my to-do list, to my life. I especially love it for life. Keep - what’s working for me at the moment? Throw - what is one hundred percent NOT working for me at the moment? Maybe - what do I need to think about a little more…

It’s the ‘maybe’ that I like the most, it gives me permission to create a list of things I should think about. There are many things I am trying to figure my way through, practices and habits I am not sure are serving me but which I really enjoy. Practices and habits that a nerdy and uptight, stick-to-the-rules-type, might suggest are verboten. TV is a great example of this. I go through phases of, let’s call it aggressive binging. As a result of that I swing to not watching TV. Straight to the “throw” pile. If I instead put it on the “maybe” pile, I create space to think about what really works for me. 

The answer to TV is the same for me as the answer to alcohol - every now and then it’s awesome. Everyday, no bueno.

I like to Keep, Throw, Maybe my life each month. I do it on the full moon - for no especially good reason but I like the 'reflective' quality of that. If that’s not your jam, the end of the month is a great time to do this AND it just so happens that we are entering the middle of the year. So….good time for you to look at your goals for the year and assess what is supporting you towards those goals, what is NOT supporting you and...what you need to ponder. 

BANANAS

PhotoCredit: Yasmeen

Last week's writing reminded a friend of the book Stuck by Oliver Jeffers. Apparently I am not the only one who has metaphorically (and literally it seems) had the "what goes up might get stuck in a tree" issue. I deeply respect the solution of young Floyd who commences throwing other things, seemingly anything, up in the tree in the hope he will free his kite. I may or may not have done the same...

The reference to the book Stuck was an excellent excuse for me to share the work of Yasmeen Ismail, an Irish-born writer/illustrator. She had me at "No, I won't eat a banana" but I fell instantly head over heels for the adorably grumpy Gorilla on the cover. 

With major green eggs and ham references, Ismail's book was a sneaky reminder of our human propensity to close ourselves off to options. To shut ourselves down like three year old's earning their independence. The broken record of "I'm too busy", "too old", "too tired", "too serious" to do something that will likely be massively supportive of our growth. It's the grown up version of refusing to eat vegetables.

Sometimes we don't even have good excuses. We just don't. Fullstop. 

Cool, I get it. No matter how expansive we are there is the thing on your list that you categorically do not do. "No, I won't eat a banana." "I do not like green eggs and ham." Maybe for you it's "I am not a morning person." Or "I don't like exercise." For most of us there is at least one story we continue to tell ourselves. A story about who we are and who we are not. A story that ultimately creates a limitation on how great we can be.

What if you did get up early and work out? What if you did become a numbers person? What if you did quit sugar? What if you did leave your job and start that business?

Have a think this week about your stories. What are you telling yourself you are not? I'm not suggesting you make a change, not right now. I am suggesting you think about what restrictions you are placing on yourself. What are you telling yourself you are not? What might it look like if you were?

DETOUR

PhotoCredit: WrongWay

A big part of squiggling is having the confidence that you are on the right path. That you are making progress and moving forward, even when it feels like you are not. Especially when you feel that you are not.

Life doesn’t progress in neat straight lines. We expect it to. We like to think we can chart our goals and our progress to the day and date. “This will be the million dollar month for our business”, “I will lose xx weight by the awards dinner”, “We will have babies before I am 35.” 

We learn straight lines as kids. Everything we do is brain-expanding and feels (mostly) easeful. We are constantly reading, having new experiences, playing, creating and dreaming. Growth is fast, non-complex and rather linear. 

As adults, it gets complex. Growth is slow and reserved for moments when we are not “busy with grown-up duties.” Maybe we read a book. We dream in very rare, inspired, moments. Creating is seldom and play is unlikely.

We don’t make much time for growth but we expect it. We expect to be smarter, fitter, thinner, promoted, funded, respected...and all as the result of doing the same stuff we did yesterday. The same formula, the same inputs, the same exchanges. We are doing the same stuff...and expecting different results. Someone once called this the definition of insanity.

The linear game is a fool's game. Your revenues will fluctuate, you will have good weeks and bad weeks and sometimes what goes up will get stuck in a tree and will not come down. These are the results of the linear.

Sometimes you have to do the opposite of what you think you should do. Sometimes you have to go left to go right. Take a detour. Take a day off. Cancel your meetings for a week. Block out a month of mornings as reading time. Ask yourself “what are three other ways I could tackle this problem?” Experiment. Try a different approach.

So often we think our destination lies dead-ahead and that the straight and narrow will get us there. We can’t see that the road curving off will eventually bring us to our destination. We are speeding down the highway so fast we miss the exit that will get us there faster. 

Commit to your destination but don’t be rigid about the navigation. Have a look at your day-to-day and ask yourself if there are any side-streets you should explore? 

HOURS AND HOURS

PhotoCredit: WakeUp

In a future gazing moment the other day I asked Mark if he thought Tom Hanks will run for President? I had just read an article about the most beloved one that felt like political positioning. 

“President?” Mark replied. “Maybe Senator, but don’t you think that job would completely bore him? It’s hardly the most exciting job in the world.” 

Once upon a time, being a movie star seemed so much fun. Mark and I then reminisced about #theonetime we both were on sets. Mark, as always, has the cooler story. He worked on RoboCop 2. I was part of a crowd on a commercial.

Once upon a time, I thought being a singer would be amazingly fun. Being up late and performing for crowds seemed like the coolest of cool. Now being in bed at 9pm with a good book is my idea of a life well lived. As for crowds <shudder>.

Hours and hours of doing the same thing. Talking, singing, walking (we also determined modelling was not as fabulous as it might otherwise appear). Gosh, what terribly repetitive jobs. How lucky am I that I get to do what I do...which is...hours and hours of doing the same thing.

Much of what I do would bore most people senseless. Mark had the same reflection. He once spent three full days, like eight hour days, sanding a bench smooth. I mean, it was SMOOTH. I mean, talk about boring.

The easy conclusion is that when you love what you do “you’ll never work a day in your life.” The more finessed conclusion is that in the pursuit of mastery, work is elevated beyond notions of exertion. There is no way I would spend three days sanding a piece of wood. There is no way most people could sit in a board meeting for an entire day. Let alone do that three days straight as I sometimes do.

In the pursuit of excellence, the monotonous becomes our craft. The repetition becomes a teacher. Doing the same thing over and over again makes us smarter and stronger. Slowly, but surely, we work towards mastery. And the work continues.

ADVENTURE

PhotoCredit: OnTheRoad

For 12 years I had a sidekick. A golden retriever named Rugby, who I dare say a number of you knew. He was a very special dog who gave a lot of love to a lot of people. I miss him every day. 

When we were told he was sick, “bad sick”, it felt surreal. I remember thinking it made no sense that pets couldn’t live forever. It seemed very unfair. A grand injustice with my name on it.

These moments seem the perfect opportunity to fall apart. To remove ourselves from the world and wallow. To curl up in a ball of self-pity and die a little. But something else grabbed me. A different energy took hold. I decided we needed to have adventures. So I booked weekly Friday excursions and started planning weekend getaways.

Friday’s were just for Rugby and me. We would just go do something fun and new. We explored LA, we made ordinary chores fun and we made time for things I hadn’t made time for before.

On weekends we would pack up the car with a million Rugby-things and drive somewhere not too far. Rugby never liked long car rides. We would find new coffee shops, pizza joints and - most importantly - pet stores. 

We turned trauma into life. It felt powerful at the time and it’s beyond meaningful now. His final months are a blur of happy memories.

There are lots of moments in life that feel traumatic. A collection of unwanted inconveniences that seem more than we can handle or more than we want to handle. We can find ways to numb ourselves to the world or we can find ways to pump life into those moments.

Look at your problem through the lens of what you have, not what you want. We all have an abundance of resources, the trick is to look harder at the solution than the problem. When we find the adventure in whatever life throws at us, we discover positivity, optimism, resilience and strength. We also find life.

STRETCH GOALS

PhotoCredit: StretchGoals

I had the most awesome response to my note on the 1927 Solvay Conference. A very dear friend of mine replied that his great grandfather attended that conference. As the story goes, he was uninvited from the group photo due to his radical views on alignment "not being linear." A man after my own non-linear heart.

It gets so much cooler. Apparently he and Einstein "Allie" were drinking buddies. To think of Einstein kicking back with anyone, let alone someone related to someone I know, just makes me happy. I am possibly clutching at vicarious straws here.

As the story was told, Max Plank evidently always teased Marie Curie for the rhyming of her name. I guess that's all Plank had to give her grief about. Of course, Curie didn't take that lying down with the comeback “At least people will easily remember it. Especially when it comes to the Nobel selection committee.” You go girl!

My favorite part of the story, aided by a journal entry, is that just before the group photo was snapped, Plank leaned to Marie Curie and whispered that he thought she thought “too big” and “somewhat bold”. She winked at him and said, “Go big, brave, and bold, or go home.”

While we are all still in the throws of being at home, there is still so much scope for being big, brave and bold. We can still be magnificent, even in our sweats. Stretch goals are a favorite tool of mine to test whether I am pushing myself to my maximum. Goals are often what we know we can achieve. Unreasonable goals supercharge our potential.

Calibrate your ambitions this week. Are you being brave and bold. Are your ambitions outsized? Or are the sweatpants an enabler to play it safe. WWMCD? What would Marie Curie do?

MANIC AT THE DISCO

PhotoCredit: JustBe

Slowly but surely LA is returning to a degree of normalcy. The lead indicator of this is that driving in LA now sucks again. That was fun while it lasted. Restaurants are open (social-distance style), museums are starting to emerge from their dormancy and I have even heard rumors of dance parties. I have not been invited to said dance parties. I am clearly not part of that crowd (nor am I ready) but it's nice to hear the cool kids have somewhere to do their cool things.

Enthusiastically, I booked tickets for LACMA today. I should be there now. I am instead happily at home, hermit-like, writing to you and listening to some new music. I had my own dance party, table for one please.

Apparently, I am not ready to return to normal. Not yet ready to race around in traffic, leaping from this obligation to that, filling my days with offerings from the outside world. The pandemic dealt some harsh blows but permission to be a little less manic was not one of them. I am still enjoying the solitude, the quiet, having just a little less to do and a little more time to be.

It's easy to add. It's easy to feel the weight of a million obligations and re-energize the FOMO fueled existence we had #before. It's harder to stay still and listen.

I'm just suggesting we bury ourselves in an insular existence by any means. I had our boys over last night, avec new girlfriend, and I had forgotten how much I missed our fun gatherings of food, maybe a few drinks and always an episode of South Park. It fueled me and filled me with joy. That's my new filter: will it make me burst with happiness? FOMO is not a good filter.

My encouragement to you this week is to look at your calendar through that same lens. If the activity doesn't make you want to dance with joy, you are better off staying at home and cranking up the music. Or having a nap. I won't tell.

SHOW UP

PhotoCredit: BestDressed

Most people are surprised when I explain that I am an introvert. I do a very good job of being extraverted, when required, but I get energy from 1:1 interactions. Or being on my own for very long lengths of time. Preferably in my pajamas with endless cups of coffee.

Sometimes that even extends to writing this newsletter. I always feel like I am speaking directly to all of you. I love that and I love the emails I get back from all of you. But every now and then the introvert in me shows up. I want to hide in my little Cancer shell and do only Claudia-things. These might include replying to email, tidying my kitchen cupboards, organizing my endless to-do list and always includes reading.

So today, when I had an introvert-moment I said to Mark "I don't want to" and he said "but you need to". And he was right.

There are so many moments where we don't want to show up. We might even tell ourselves we can't show up. And those are such important moments. It's the moments where we do the thing we really don't feel we can that deliver game-changing reward. We don't have to be aggressive about it. Just determined and open to the invitation of changing that habit of reluctance. Stepping into power instead of disappearing into a comfortable old habit.

I'm already feeling more energized from writing. What felt a little difficult ended up being empowering. So next time you feel the need to step out, hide out, and be quiet - challenge yourself. Show up! The world needs you. Don't tell yourself otherwise.

CHOCOLATE FOR BREAKFAST

PhotoCredit: CherryOnTop

When the pandemic hit I was one of the original 7.9 Billion people on the planet that decided to bake their way through it. I rapidly mastered chocolate biscotti, cheese scones (or biscuits as we confusingly call them in the US) and various sourdough delights. It was cathartic, well except for doing the dishes.

Then Keto entered my life.

For this "any carb is a good carb" gal, Keto was a shock. I quickly loved the energy it gave me. I constantly struggled with how limiting it felt. Cooking stopped being fun as I felt restricted by "getting my macro's" which often lead to incredibly unimaginative meals.

Well I don't do unimaginative so, over time, I have discovered-slash-invented some epic keto meals. My most recent discovery is that life-changing I had to share it.

From a squiggly perspective, I look at diet as something that helps me achieve peak performance. I am also a big fan of fasting and I toggle both based on what is happening in my life. The busier and more intense my life, the stricter I get with Keto and fasting.

So, chocolate for breakfast? There are some phenomenal chocolates out there that are sugar free and delicious. I don't love them to snack on but cooked into this most-delicious chocolate loaf, they are magic. To make this I use coconut sugar and coconut oil, I use raw cacao instead of cocoa (try 1/4 of a cup as the raw cacao is much richer), and almond milk. I'm also obsessed with heilala vanilla from New Zealand so I replace vanilla extract for quantities of this.

The loaf freezes brilliantly. Cut it up, freeze it and pull out a piece in the morning. By the time I have finished fasting it's always defrosted. I have it with some blueberries, raspberries, hemp hearts, yoghurt, and whatever nuts I have around. It's the most delicious thing ever, it makes me insanely happy and it's incredibly filling.

Chocolate: the squiggly breakfast of champions.