by tashmcgill | Aug 28, 2017 | Strategy
I have always cared about helping people change the way they think. It’s like a scientist setting off a chemical reaction – the beauty of what emerges is both planned and organic. At best, changing the way you think is a chain reaction that enables you to see and engage with the world differently, to wrestle and live differently and to find your way to a more authentic self. Living into that authentic self matters, because the world needs you and I, to be our fullest expression. We each have something to offer the world and each other.
Often it is through pain or unexpected circumstances, transition and brokenness that we find the path to growth. These are the moments we become resilient as much as learn resilience. There are plenty of tools to help through that process, that I have used myself in the quest for wisdom. Books, therapists, mentors, guides. Exercise and meditation.
But it’s the moments when I find myself needing to take a deep breath that I need something small, digestible but hopeful and pragmatic to center me again. Just to help me re-engage my mind and be thoughtful for a minute. But it has to be gritty and real. There’s no room for trite in my life and probably not in yours. We’ve seen and experienced too much, right?
And that’s where this project was born. I was looking for something that I could read for 2 minutes in the morning or in a coffee break that would help me continue to keep growing but that really spoke to me.
A long time ago, I was a minister. That was my job, curating experiences and opportunities for people to engage spiritually, intellectually and emotionally with the world around them. While it’s no longer my job, it is still my vocation – to care for people, the whole of them. The all of your messy, chaotic and beautiful self.
So here’s my offering – a short journey for 30 days into Thoughtful, from September 1 – September 30th, 2017.
I’ll send you an email with a reflection from my private journals, this blog and lessons I’ve learned from wise advisors and mentors on the way. And if it helps you, then share it. You can read more about Thoughtful here or subscribe below.
Please share this with others who may also be encouraged or find it useful.
by tashmcgill | Aug 20, 2017 | Strategy
This post was commissioned by The Human in the Machine project, a year-long collaborative blogging project on the subject of productivity. I’m republishing here and extending it for my Life By Design series.
As a kid, I loved Tetris. Lining the blocks up and seeing them fit perfectly into place gave my strategist mind a thrill. It was the rhythm I loved so much, the tappity-tap-tap of keys and buttons, the sensory meditation of my fingers moving in pace with my eyes to see those blocks fall perfectly into place. Seeing it, feeling it, doing it.
Rhythm is everything. Layers of rhythm over the hours, days, weeks and years. Maintaining, feeding, adjusting and enjoying those rhythms are the keys to my productivity and my rest.
I work as a strategist and with almost every client, there is a moment of clarity when they begin to understand their rhythm.
Rhythms of learning, creating, reflecting, listening, purging and so on.
[Addition]
For organisations, this is largely about understanding the productivity of teams but it also applies to families. Understanding your rhythm is about understanding your short-term and long-term capacity and your constraints. To learn how long your team needs to understand a problem before it can begin to solve a problem is helpful for designing projects. To know how long it takes your family to pack the car for vacation is an invaluable rhythm to understand.
I thrive when I am learning. About every March, I find a new subject that intrigues me or is useful to my work and I’ll spend the next year reading and applying what I learn. Usually as March rolls around, I naturally get drawn to another topic and so the rhythm begins again. Research, read, apply, re-think, share what I’ve learned.
This is just one of the rhythms that fuel me. I have learned them over years of studying my own patterns and failing to conform to others. Self-awareness is critical to unlocking your real productivity potential. Understanding how you process and output information, how you fuel your mind, body and soul all factor in to how you make, how you think, how you create. Try as you may, this rhythm or that rhythm belonging to another may work for a while or fit you quite well. But nothing will unleash you like understanding your own unique rhythms.
My simplest rhythm is how I like to wake in the morning. I like to sleep with the curtains open so I get a wash of serotonin over brain on waking. Then I rise, make coffee and breakfast and before my mind gets too busy with structured thought, I write three pages of stream of consciousness prose. Whatever is top of mind, I put it to paper. I connect back through my mind to my body and back to my mind until I am a cohesive whole.
I think about it in these themes; physical, intellectual, spiritual input and output.
The clarity of the morning output fine-tunes my brain and my morning hours are my most productive for thinking, strategizing and outputs. After lunch, I tend to slide out of productive output and into productive input. Instead of fighting against myself, I lean into these rhythms. After lunch is the perfect time to either input with reading or research and I often exercise either at the beginning or the end of the day.
My days form the pattern of my week. And those weeks, a year. I have come to know my project cycles, where I can undertake significant long-term work which is invaluable in how I structure my working life. And I know how frequently I need to play and to laugh.
What am I producing after all? I’m not on a factory floor. The work that I do for is not what I am actually producing. I am producing a life. I am designing as I go, a life of rich experiences, adventure, meaning and relationships. That is the key to productivity – how do I live in a rhythm that sustains these things?
A wise teacher once said “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”
The unforced rhythms of grace that allow us to live freely and lightly are the key to productivity. The way of being our true selves. Our truest selves are the most fully alive and the most productive. If you are living in your best rhythm, it only makes sense that you will thrive in your activities. You will come to understand the signals your life gives you when you need to rest or when you need to re-engage your childhood play.
Even in the workplace, structured and locked down, there are ways to allow your natural rhythms to maximise your productivity. You might choose to use lunch breaks for exercise, mindfulness practices or to nurture social, emotional connections. You might organise your schedule to never meet before 10am or to close up email no matter what by 6pm.
Wherever you can let your rhythms work for you, you must. You’ll find it easier to dance that way.
[Addition]
This is particularly true for families and people-pleasers. Using rhythm to understand and manage your capacity will give you freedom from over-commitment (although perhaps not the guilt of not being able to do all things). It gives you common language to build a family rhythm from as you manage the highs, lows, constraints and capacity of a family whether in juggling chores and transportation or organising Christmas vacation.
If the rhythm of your life feels heavy or burdensome, if you don’t feel light on your feet then you’ve found a great place to start in your life by design.
Here are some good questions to ask to help identify those rhythms:
- What time of day do you wake up feeling most refreshed if you let yourself wake naturally?
- How often do you change or take up a new hobby?
- When in the calendar year is it easiest for you to start a new project or habit?
- How frequently do you get bored with something you are working on?
- Do you like to solve problems as you go or wait til you can give them attention?
- When do you feel most creatively inspired or productive?
- What kind of environment do you need to relax?
- How often do you need have physical input or output?
- How often do you need have intellectual input or output?
- How often do you need have spiritual input or output?
Enjoy discovering your rhythms of grace. Remember, as you look back on your life to date – things like project life-cycles and rhythms of rest, relaxation and play will appear as the times things finished or happened just at the right time and you were able to move easily into the next rhythm.
If this has been helpful to you or you have questions, I’d love to hear from you.
by tashmcgill | Jun 24, 2017 | Strategy
Storytelling was the original design practice. Through oral histories, fables and proverbs we told stories that met human needs for learning, remembering and envisioning the future – the ‘what might be’ and ‘how might we’ that has been the essence of innovation and design from the beginning.
Here’s the TLDR:
- Storytelling inspires ideas and creates a vision for the future that requires design
- Design is the process of making outcomes and as that outcome changes the human experience (or the story) more designs are required generating momentum
- Momentum is what powers growth and change but we require ways of harnessing that momentum into meaningful direction, this is called navigation
- Navigation gives you the ability to harness your momentum towards meaningful direction but that direction is decided by the biggest picture outcome – focusing energy and momentum towards an idea of the future. I call this strategy
- Strategy is best conveyed through storytelling, conveying outcomes from measurable data into meaningful insights allowing for our original stories to change and adapt as we solve the ‘beyond the beyond’
From storytelling we begin designing. If stories generate ideas, it’s design that brings them to life – functional and meaningful existence. Our design outcomes generate momentum. New stories and design outcomes emerging as one innovation leads to another .. I call this the ‘beyond the beyond’.
As sailors we learn the practical skills of navigation and harnessing momentum before we head out of the harbour. It’s the uniquely hireable and desirable ability to ‘get it done’. It’s when we leave the harbour we need the ability to read the stars and the currents to find our way to new shores or familiar places.
Momentum creates a new need; for navigation. The ability to harness and steer your momentum in the best possible direction. But to be truly powerful, the skills of navigation require a compass point. As sailors we learn the practical skills of navigation and harnessing momentum before we head out of the harbour. It’s the uniquely hireable and desirable ability to ‘get it done’. It’s when we leave the harbour we need the ability to read the stars and the currents to find our way to new shores or familiar places.
The navigator, the helmsman or sailor who can get you around the course is not always the tactician. From navigation we come back around to strategy, how we plan or agree our destination on the map. This brings us back to storytelling as a design exercise.
…the story is both the outcome and the strategy to get to the outcome.
When I work with people in strategic planning, marketing strategies, product roadmaps and content design – I use principles of storytelling and design to get us to a functioning, future-focused roadmap to the future. What stories from the past can we grasp hold of and use to inform our future innovations? What new quadrants are there to be explored but what resource do we have to get there? What might we discover and what might we learn as we go?
So we arrive back at the beginning of the process – designing outcomes through storytelling, where the story is both the outcome and the strategy to get to the outcome. Coming up with a plan is never enough, you need a compelling story that engages and helps steer the momentum whether you are telling the story of your organisation, product or your own life.
Storytelling > design > momentum > navigation > strategy > storytelling.
by tashmcgill | Mar 27, 2017 | Culture & Ideas
My whole life, I have thrived in front of an audience. I am a communicator. I have delivered my best work in front of a microphone, in front of an audience and on the published page.
Ask me to write or speak to a room of thousands and I cannot hide the sparkle in my eye. But there is truth in what a wise person once told me – that we craft the skills to communicate well long before we have anything to say. So I spent the last twenty years learning how to say it.
And now I think I have something to say, at last. Several somethings, actually.
Early in life I was labelled a ‘bossy girl’. My mother tells the story of a family friend dragging me home from a playdate exclaiming ‘I will not be told what to do by a five year old!’.
For most of my teens and twenties, I made a reputation for myself as opinionated. I wanted to change the way people think (still do) and therefore think and live differently. The world has a way of disqualifying the young from being able to lead thought revolution. I think it has to do with the idea you have to earn your stripes and pay your dues, both of which really just mean ‘do the time’. Actually I knew who I wanted to be – a person of insight and wisdom and I was practicing my voice, learning how to say what I thought.
Experience ≠ Wisdom
Experience and the sheer passing of time may lead to observational wisdom, the accrual of shared wisdom, but wisdom and insight stands alone. I set out at a young age, inspired by the ancient thinker Solomon, to pursue wisdom. The ability to perceive and understand situations differently. Thinking differently will always lead to living differently.
Being opinionated has led me to broken-ish relationships, getting fired and lots of meetings where I was expected to apologise. Sometimes I did. Sometimes I did not.
My strength has also been one of my greatest insecurities – a fear that if I speak my mind or say the ‘wrong’ thing, I will inevitably push people away or lose those I love. It has terrible implications for my most precious interpersonal relationships when I want to be vulnerable.
But it has also led me to the greatest learning of my life and some of my very best ‘being’.
Being a person who can tell the truth in love when no one wants to hear it. One who sticks it out on the side of the miserable. The one who tackles tough subjects, suggests alternative perspectives and facilitates conversation, not just lectures. And occasionally still the one who digs her heels in to get her way. I have learned when not to say I told you so and when to say it with grace.
The toughness of it – the sheer bloody hard work of this ‘think differently’ life has taught me to be a better communicator, a better writer and a better thinker. You have to learn over and over again how to say what you think and how to think better and better.*
A good friend of mine recently offered some words of encouragement, in her blunt and direct way. “You’re a bit of a powerhouse of opinion. You have insight.”
She also reassured me that giving thoughtful opinion and insight delivered with love isn’t the same as the bossy, stroppy twenty-something girl I fear being known as.
There’s no need to worry so much about whether my opinion or insight is right or wrong, or whether it’s ready to be said. I need to trust my gut more often and listen to my body. Perhaps it is more important that I say it in such a way, my love is unmistakable regardless of whether I’m talking to my friends, my readers or my clients.
In my opinion, with love.
*I am incredibly blessed to have worked with some of the best thinkers I’ve encountered, who have taught me to refine and practice the art of thinking in a variety of contexts. I’m forever grateful and will continue to learn and practice.
by tashmcgill | Feb 15, 2017 | Strategy
I’m sweating. My breath is more ragged than normal, blood thumping through my body. Pink and flushed, head back against the wall and eyes closed, counting my breath back under control and realigning the pull of muscles against my spine. This is me, engaged in the deeply spiritual practice of Nudging.
{nudging}
verb
in order to attract attention
touch or push gently or gradually
coax or gently encourage
(in Nordic nugga, nyggja ‘to push, rub’.)
It’s also me, returning to the boxing gym after 6 weeks away, 3 weeks of medication and surgery. My body is usually stronger than this but normal slips away quickly if you don’t keep your rhythms. So I’m nudging because returning to the same place I was isn’t enough. I want to see how much further I can go. A little more sweat, a little more stretch, a few more rounds. Nudging: to see how far you can go. Nudging to see what more you can wring out of your body, your mind. In the gym, it looks messy. At higher reps my form gets untidy as I get tired, my cheeks impossibly pink.
And my trainer says, ‘C’mon Tash, we’re giving it a nudge.’
What exactly is a Nudge?
Picture a pile at the precipice of a cliff and you’re standing behind it. Looks like it might fall but how do you know? You give it a little nudge. A gentle push, a little coax in the right direction. When you give something a nudge, you look to see whether there is an opportunity for movement. In the animal kingdom, this pattern is external – one elephant nudges the smaller elephant in the right direction.
Sailors look for the ripple of the right wind on the surface of the ocean and watch the currents the birds drift on. When you see a glimmer of wind that might take you in the right direction, you nudge the pilot’s wheel in the direction of the wind and see whether you can catch some speed.
Our approach to our own transformation might be better described as ‘discovery’.
nb: nudging is not nudge theory, a human behaviour theory about decision-making that is sometimes used for political and social manipulation, but there is certainly some truth in the observations of how we might cognitively improve the outcomes we seek.
I have practiced Nudging for a long time now. Expending a small amount of energy to see where there is opportunity for growth and movement.
You will might oscillate a dozen times in your life between striving for change or avoiding it, but transformation is the only way to grow. We don’t change completely overnight but in a series of small, incremental steps. I watch my 7 month old niece and her transformations, each so small and easily overlooked, seem a wonder to me. But in my mirror, I want to see broad, sweeping changes. We’ve embraced the glamour of grand reveals and 180 degree changes as the right kind of story.
But our neural wiring simply can’t keep up with the reprogramming when we try to change too much, too fast. Whether our habits, our thought processes, our rhythms of the day – it’s easy to overwhelm our physical and neural systems. We need to think big but step small so we don’t work against our True Selves in the work of transforming.
“Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you. Before you tell your life what truths and values you have decided to live up to, let your life tell you what truths you embody, what values you represent.” – Parker J Palmer
Parker Palmer speaks to this disconnect between how we see our autonomy in the process of transformation. Nudging is a beautiful way of giving intent to your transformational desires and goals, but allowing the rhythm of your life to work with you. Nudging gives you a chance to see where the wind and movement of your life is leading you and work with it, not against it.
Our ideas about transformation are often too concrete – we do not enter into the process of transformation without an end goal or expectation of what transformation will look like. But the pumpkin looks nothing like the seed from which it comes. Nor the fruit of the apple tree resemble the seed or the tree.
Our approach to our own transformation might be better described as ‘discovery’. Much like sailing into the wind to see what happens, we listen to our life and begin the process of transformation to see what might happen. What might our tender, wondrous little changes result in? What wonder might our small lives contain if we allow the change to happen?
We need to think big, but step small.
So how do you Nudge?
First, nudging is about giving attention. Sometimes there are aspects of my physical, intellectual, emotional or spiritual self that need some movement. Attention creates space. Like #100days of simply paying attention to what was in front of me each day, an opportunity for creative intervention.
Sometimes nudging is about pushing gently and gradually. This month, I am pushing a bit harder, giving more than what I usually give in the gym to reach a new pinnacle of strength and flexibility. I’m giving it a nudge literally, to shift the dial on strength, energy and output from my physical self. When I push, I push first in the direction of what I know is already working in my life.
And sometimes a nudge is about wooing, coaxing and encouraging myself and others to new movement. I’m trying to read a philosophy or ideological work each month that is useful for me and others. It’s just a nudge for my spiritual and communal self to embrace new ideas. I engage with my desire for transformation and my frustration through embracing new ideas and ways of thinking about what’s in front of me.
When I am nudging, things get sharper. New ideas nudge old habits and both get clearer. My spiritual practices don’t get overhauled, they become fine-tuned. My horizons and understanding expands, given permission to explore and discover.
Slowly and gently pay attention to your life. There is something to learn in every aspect of it. Don’t be afraid to enter into transformation with just a nudge to see what may become of your willing self. Nudge and discover what might come.
Want to join me in a Nudging journey? Let me know the space you want to nudge in and we can journey together.
