If your company’s vision, or motivation, or daily rhythm is built around needing a common enemy…
One of the best common enemies that can sustain that kind of pressure is the enemy of the deadline.
It’s another lesson from SNL. Everyone who’s been on the show has the shared enemy of 11pm on Saturday night. The deadline puts pressure on everyone, takes the blame for everything, inspires everyone and can handle every ounce of hatred and resentment of it…without taking it personally.
If there weren’t any problems what would the objective be?
Sometimes we get so bogged down in dealing with the problems of the day that it obscures the objective. And sometimes we get lulled into falling in love with those problems.
‘Hold on, why are we doing all of this?’ might be a good question.
If all Frodo ever does is look for another Orc to kill, the ring is never gonna get to Mount Doom.
We need more celebrations.
We need to throw a couple ourselves and show up to stuff we’re invited to even when we don’t really feel like it.
It’s easy to say we want community, but the work to actually build community scares most people into just saying they want community.
When we get together with one or two or ten people, we celebrate each other. We appreciate their presence and they get to feel the weight of our appreciation.
“Drink a glass of water first thing in the morning.”
If your response is, ‘but how big is the glass’…you’re missing the point.
Too often we get caught in decision making mode. Caught in asking endless questions under the guise of trying getting it right.
When we’re in a season of frustration it’s easy to think we need to dig into the details, slow down, research, make the perfect next step, be very careful.
And maybe that’s true.
But maybe just drink the water and get on with the day.
The week after Christmas. It’s easy to just wanna get to New Years as quickly as possible so we can get back into our normal schedule again.
The week between Christmas and New Years is still up for grabs. No one has capitalized on the weird in-between-ness of it. And maybe it’s better that way. Maybe we could fill each day with our own intentionality.
Here are some ideas to get your own going…
Cooking day
Eating out day
Dinner party day
Movie day
Writing letters day
Music listening day
Quiet day
Airing of grievances day
Phone call day
Model rocket building day
Dress up day
Wig day
Goal setting day
Cleaning day
Hotel day
Reading day
Coffee shop day
Driving around day
Volunteering day
Swimming day
You only need five or six to make this week a lot more fulfilling than it usually is.
I ordered a really good one, due to be delivered well before Christmas.
But a few days before Christmas I got a notice from the carrier that it wouldn’t arrive until the end of December.
I contacted the chocolate company. They overnighted another one at no extra charge so I’d have it in time.
You can’t give everyone free chocolate. But if you take care of customers, they’ll tell the story.