Work requires us to engage with and apply a force upon the world. Work is active, stressful, and demands focus. You can’t be that way all the time. You need to stop, breathe, and contemplate.The actions I did today, who were they for? what were they for? Did my work make change happen? Was it the change those I seek to serve hoped for? What must I do tomorrow to serve more?Sleep. Wake.Apply force.

I know many people who ask ChatGPT to write and analyze things for them. Prompts that look like: “Write an email to my customers…”What if we pretended we were the customer? The one being served by our message. I started using prompts like: “I’m an attorney, I care about growing my business. I don’t know much about marketing, and I don’t want to spend time focusing on x, y, and z. I recently started with {insert business name here) to solve my marketing problems. What should I expect in my first meeting from them? How will I know they know what they’re talking about and looking after my investment?”It takes a bit more time. Then again, empathy of any kind takes time. Always worth the result.

My body told me to do it. Perhaps it was the crisp fall air hitting my face. Perhaps I had the energy to do it.Perhaps it’s because there was a nice long path that invited it. Great things can happen when environment meets desire.

I think I’m intellectually drained. Too many inputs this week; hard to keep it together. But I did. What helped?Closing my eyes for 15 seconds (my goal was 5 minutes) and breathing. I may not have made the most optimum decisions, but I successfully avoided bad ones.Pause, let life get ahead of you, breathe, take a step. Perfection is not a useful goal.Forward is.

She developed a long term strategy. She kept her head above the fray — stayed rational, stayed focus.She executed with precision.She won. Her outcome is a direct result of her actions. What’s her secret? Besides awesome brothers coaching her along… her secret is her ability to tame the impulses generated by fear, still the mind, and do what she needs to do: she spoke up and advocated for herself when the odds weren’t in her favor. Conventional wisdom would tell her to sit down, shut up, and don’t rock the apple cart. I’m so glad she didn’t listen. She is brave. I admire her for that.

If you want someone to respond to you, that’s a terrible way to get a response. Think about it.Now I, the respondent, must wonder when I’m available:I click to open the calendar;I think about the date;I think about what needs to NOT be a priority so that I can speak to you;I click to move my calendar around;I click back into my email to write you a reply (if I have that energy).If you are really serving others, make things easy for them. Consider, “I’ll call you tomorrow afternoon to review.” Now, I, the respondent, must:Look at tomorrow afternoon,Respond to you when I’d rather you call.In the latter option, I - the respondent, am thinking about when we’ll chat next versus if we’ll chat.Inspired by too many people asking me to tell them when I want to connect next.

Can we truly be original? Perhaps yes, and perhaps no. The ideas you and I have now are built on something — our past and how well we connect our past to our present. I might go further and say — what we think of “creative” may be our ability to connect things, filter them through our taste/perspective, and give what we notice a voice. What’s the filter? The filter is our perspective, taste, our lens by which we see the world. Your filter is shaped through your exposure to things. Listen to enough hard bop (a style of jazz) and you’ll develop a taste for assessing hard bop. Don’t stop there. That same filter can be used for assessing country music. If you read a ton of Seth Godin, you will develop a taste for direct marketing and product development. If you work in advertising, you’ll view your work through the lens and filter of someone who follows Seth Godin. If you believe college is the only path to a good carer, you will see education through that filter. The filter is shaped by our experience. The filter is how we look at and assess things. What’s the voice? The voice is the medium for transmitting an idea — carriage. The voice can take the form of spoken word, written word, images, music, dance, etc. Like your filter, the voice is shaped by your experience. Your voice and your filter work hand-in-hand. What’s noticing? Noticing is stilling your mind enough to see things without judgment. To experience the world around you and not judge. You notice an idea, you filter that idea, you give to your voice and others respond. What’s the response? The response is how your ideas is perceived by others. It’s someone else saying, “hey, that’s a real creative and original idea.” It’s not really creative and original, it’s just something an idea they noticed, they filtered, and they hope to give voice to.

“Real power is not in momentary desires, but in complete calmness.” - Leo Tolstoy, “A Calendar of Wisdom”Yes.

I need to get better at working with people that need permission to do work. I don’t want people to believe they have to come to me to ask permission to start or stop something. I want them to believe they can. There’s a manager out there that believes the same thing. That manager might think it’s their team that needs to be fixed. That manager would also do well that it might be them — the manager.I don’t pride myself as a great manager — I got to work on myself too. I try to speak and communicate in outcomes to my team: “here’s what I need you to accomplish.” What might help is establishing some guard rails — “here’s what you need to know about as you set yourself to accomplish the mission.” I’m going to work on it. And if you have any ideas, feel free to share them in the comments. This won’t be the last time I share more about how I am working on myself. Maybe your ideas might help!

Software development teams spend time defining what “done” means. Once they have that definition of “done” they can begin their work. The work ends when the definition of “done” is achieved.I’m oversimplifying the concept a bit, but I think it helps make my point.Begin your day by defining what “done” looks like. Learn to stop when “done” is achieved. HT to Dr. Mike for that idea.