“No” has become such a bad word that some people and organizations don’t even allow the word to be uttered. It is not just mean, it’s forbidden. In their world, there has to be another option. I have watched engineer and project leaders twist themselves into uncomfortable shapes to avoid saying “No”. I have met and worked with leaders who refused to even hear the word. If there was any indication that the answer was “No”, they would shut down.
In some extreme cases, organizations and leaders have even allowed the impression to propagate that “No” means you are bad at your job, lazy, or incompetent. The perception that has grown in these situations is that there is always an answer. Obviously you have not looked hard enough. Just look closer, be smarter, try harder and you can solve anything.
These three examples are not the only ones I have experienced, but they are indicative of the way “No” is treated. You may have your own examples to share and at this point you may be saying I’m not being fair. I have not given appropriate consideration to the context of these situations. I am using these as extreme examples, but the problem with “No” starts innocently enough, until an entire organization cannot imagine saying “No”. The reality is that “No” is a very important word that we need to bring back. Here are a few examples of why.
“No” is real. Sometimes it “is” the answer. Of course there are other options, but in some cases the time, cost, or capability boundarys set have eliminated them. The people who know have taken the options, weighed them, and the answer actually is “No”. It is never easy for them to say “No”. They know there will be disappointment associated with it. However it is the honest answer and it has to be considered. It does not mean never. In fact, “No” can open the door to what needs to happen to those constraints to get to “Maybe”, or even “Yes”. To remove “No” from our vocabulary entirely requires people to lie to each other. Not being able to say “No” ends conversation and problem solving. Taking away “No” stops collaboration.
Regrettably, we, people, don’t prioritize well. How do I know this? What is my evidence? Years of experience helping people figure out how to get the most important work done. Numerous best selling books that talk about how to organize your work to get things done. Several people making large amounts of money talking to people about managing their time. These are all signs that we are challenged with prioritizing. “No” turns out to be a great tool for solving this challenge. It forces the conversation because it instantly requires a choice. If the queue is already full, and we need to add something to the queue, the answer is “No” unless something is removed from the queue. This is true no matter the system you are looking at. By the way, whether you actually say “No” or not, the outcome of adding something to the queue will be the same. Only the most important things will get done. “No” helps to make the state of the system transparent. “No” highlights the required trade-offs that must be made. “No” actually helps those doing the work to remove some of the emotional irritation that comes from not being able to tell the truth.
Perhaps you reacted earlier when I wrote that not saying “No” causes people to lie, or when I highlighted people are not telling the truth. We don’t like to be told when we are being dishonest, but people are lying every day to avoid conflict or preserve feelings. The problem with these gentle lies is that they destroy trust. By being honest about what you can and cannot do, you create reliability. Amazingly, when people can count on your word, they trust you. “No” builds trust.
A system (don’t forget that a person can be considered a system) must be reliable to be sustainable. In order for something to be repeatable, you must know its limits. You must know what can be done (Yes) and what cannot be done (No). You as an individual have limits. If you are always pushing those limits, forcing yourself to work beyond what you know you can do, lying to everyone about what is possible, you are not working in a sustainable way.
I can hear the argument already. You say, “People have to push their limits to grow.” That is a valid argument. Of course people and systems have to push their boundaries. However, even as we argue this point, you know that there is a limit to how long a system and a person can maintain operation at maximum capacity. Allow the system to push its boundary and grow beyond it. But, once it has reached that new level of capability, it must be allowed to work at that level until it stabilizes and can maintain it. In some cases it will not be able to sustain, and will fall back to the previous level. Systems(people) pushed to their maximum capacity with no chance to rest or relax will burn out. Challenge yourself to grow. Work to sustain that level of capability. This is a healthy system that advances. Continuous pressure breaks the system.
Bring “No” back to your conversations. It is okay to say “No”. It will spark discussion of what can be true. It will create priority. It will increase trust. It will create the sustainable pace and life you need. Learn to say “No” when the queue is full.
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I’m sure that you are thinking I am loosing my mind when my post has a title like Sustainability and the Duck, but I have a reason for sharing this with you. In my time working with people and organizations, I have had the opportunity to observe a lot of their characteristics. It is because of this experience that I write about and promote Individual Sustainability. A system that is not operating in a sustainable way cannot be predicted. It cannot be measured. Because it cannot be measured or predicted, it cannot be improved. Until the system is stabilized and operating in a way that can be repeated indefinitely, the system will never improve. I see lots of people and organizations trying to normalize their systems while everyone within the system is being the Duck. You know this one. A person is like a duck when they are placid on the surface and yet underneath the surface their paddles are going ninety miles an hour. The funny fact about this anecdote is that it can be both a compliment and an insult. The way I want to look at it however is through a lens of sustainability, because not even the duck sustains that kind of effort indefinitely.
So, what does it mean to be like a duck, in this context? Let’s start with transparency. If you are like a duck, you are not showing or sharing what is really going on. In many organizations, this is the encouraged state. In fact, we often like to describe our leaders this way. We like for our leaders to be “In Control”. Leaders who are in control don’t show emotion. Good leaders shield us from conflict and problems. At the same time, we complain when information is not shared from the top down. We hate surprises that come from leadership. Yet, we want our leaders to be like ducks. We cannot have transparent organizations where decisions are shared when everyone is like the duck, maintaining an even strain, so to speak.
Beneath that calm exterior, the duck is working really hard. Often times, individuals described this way are considered heroes. They always seem to get so much done without involving or interrupting others. Because they are working so hard and not involving others, they may be solving problems no one knows exists. They may even be solving problems that don’t need to be solved.
Both of these characteristics have some impacts on our environment and our Individual Sustainability.
We seem to think the best state for people at work is an absence of emotion. I will admit, I have seen situations where emotion in the work place has been destructive. Equally however, I have observed the situation where trying to eliminate emotion at work is debilitating and destructive. The reality is that we need working environments where each person feels that their emotions and how the current situation makes them feel is considered and respected. If we create places where vulnerability is embraced and people can be honest about their opinions and feelings, we can actually eliminate the negatives caused by both ends of the spectrum. A team must have the psychological safety (trust) that allows them to share their opinions without fear of suffering. This creates the space where they can be successful. This looks different for every team and within every organization.
Hidden information in a team and in an organization has very negative effects. Every time I talk about transparency, I have someone tell me how some things can’t be shared in an organization. I always ask them why. Often I get the trade secret and financial security answer, and I sometimes get the chance, if they are in the right place, to ask what does this say about trust within the organization. I know, where I live there are unicorns too, but I do think organizations need to share more internally. I know that teams need transparency to be successful and that includes transparency within the team, outside to others, and from others (including leaders). Simply put, lack of transparency stops others from knowing something is wrong. By keeping these secrets we are actively stopping people from helping when there is something wrong. To be a sustainable organization, which makes it possible to improve, we need to maximize the appropriate (sustainable) utilization of every person and resource (yes, they are two different things). Keeping responsibility, difficulty, and challenge hidden, we limit what options exist to only what those “in the know” can do. Because the duck-like individual has only themselves to count on, they must put in more effort to solve the problems. Many backs make for easy lifting. By sharing the problems with others, the solution can be shared across multiple people. One person, keeping everything on their back is not sustainable.
Working quietly in the shadows and solving problems without help or transparency makes the time required to complete the solution invisible. We often do this because it makes us look like miracle workers. We like to look like miracle workers, it feeds our reward center in our brain. However, this also has a negative outcome. If the work required to complete a task is obscured, the perception of the work starts to lose value. This is a common problem today. People (you and me) are so used to just walking up and purchasing completed goods with no real understanding of the work required to make them. We are so separated from the manufacturing process that is seems like it just happens and as such it should be cheap to buy. Artisans who hand make products struggle with this perception because the perceived effort is not matched with the real effort. It has little value.
When I learned to facilitate team discovery and problem solving using LEGO Serious Play(R), we actually introduce a different duck metaphor. Initially it is to help create a no-judgment space where every model is accepted because it tells the individual’s story. To show that there are lots of different ways to make ducks we give each person the exact same set of bricks and ask them to make a duck. You would be surprised at the outcome. Once we have these ducks, we use another discovery exercise to start digging into the transparency of the team and creating honest sharing (vulnerability). We ask each person to place their duck on a map of a pond that has been divided into four quadrants
Each person must decide which quadrant they are in on this team and place their duck in that quadrant. This early ice-breaker exercise can be very enlightening. When the team is honest, and they often are because of the way the session is built, team members can start to see places where they can help one another. The team members who are in the shallow water can help those in the deep water. Everyone can find ways to help the swamp dwellers get to a safe place. By being honest with each other and not hiding the fact that we are paddling furiously and fixing unseen problems, everyone starts to see opportunities to make their organization more sustainable.
If we are being secretive and keeping information from those we work with, we are not working in a sustainable way. We are stopping our organization from being a sustainable organization. If a person or an organization are not working in a sustainable way, they will not be able to improve, because they cannot yet measure their real productivity. Rather than being the placid hero duck, I would prefer that we all be the vulnerable ducks who share where we are in the pond so we can start to get to sustainable individuals and ultimately sustainable organizations.
]]>Independent of your opinion about how the human brain formed, there are some things we accept about how it functions. We seem to agree, at least in the fields associated with interacting with users and customers, that there are some primitive reaction networks in the brain that are engaged when things are different or out of place. If this does not cause an actual acute stress response1 or as I will refer to it throughout this post and acute stress reaction, it does at least cause people to take note and start to wonder what is different. This is the beginning of the acute stress reaction. As the situation develops it can either end when the person realizes the reason for the change and that it is not a threat, or escalate as the reason for the change or difference becomes more acute and potentially threatening. My point and the point I have seen demonstrated over and over when dealing with people is, as the level of threat (perceived or actual) increases the ability (or perhaps desire) to logically process information is reduced2. I use a Math Anxiety reference here because it is something I can point to in my own life. I can’t explain why I get the cold sweats and my heart starts to race when someone says Algebra or worse Calculus. What I have come to realize over time is that my reaction is an acute stress reaction and is based on a perceived threat. So whether you subscribe to the Triune-Brain3 model or not, it is still accepted that some activity in the brain occurs when a threat is perceived and that activity reduces higher brain function causing the individual to rely on their Fight-or-Flight or instinctive reaction.
I have delved so deeply into such a gray matter within neuroscience (forgive the pun), because I know it is being used to help improve education and drive compliance. What do I mean? As a trainer I have been taught how to understand these mental interactions, or Brain Science, and use them to create a better training experience for the student4. Having experienced the outcome, I can say that I do at least have anecdotal evidence of their efficacy. But, after taking the course on Training From the Back of The Room and seeing the brain science applied, it also made me pay more attention to how brain science is being used every day to cause specific reactions.
There is a new fear that has emerged over the past few years. I can’t say that it didn’t exist before but it has been exposed because of its impact on social interaction and within social media environments; The Fear of Missing Out. This fear is:
Believe it or not, this fear or the perception that you are missing out can and is being used to manipulate you into making emotional decisions6. Marketers and others are using this and other techniques to cause you to react to a situation instead of thinking through the results and making sure you know what outcome you want or need to accomplish. It is not limited to that one fear and it is not limited to marketers. The other term for this is propaganda when used in the socio-political arena and it is very effective. Simply look at the posters and flyers used throughout the world during World War II. But if you think the use of propaganda ended in World War II, I can assure you it is used by every side of a disagreement every day. Look at how often the ad hominem use of associating someone with Nazism today occurs. You can find propaganda anywhere and it is specifically designed to get you to turn off the logical part of your brain and react to the situation emotionally. And, most often, it is happening without you realizing it, because of brain science and your own acute stress response.
At its most extreme level acute stress reaction leads to an actual fight reaction. This is when fear is elevated to the level of anger. Remember this is a natural reaction to a threat that is designed to help you survive1. That is why it is so hard to defend against. This is exactly how you are usually supposed to react to a threat stimulus. What I want you to understand is that it may not be a real threat and you need the ability to pull yourself back from the Fight-or-Flight reaction and logically think through the threat. Is it an actual threat? Is there another explanation? This is done by engaging the logical networks of the brain, but it requires you to overcome the initial reaction. It requires you to create space to think and respond instead of react7. This requires mindfulness and a connection with where you actually are.
When I was training for my Stress and Rescue certification in SCUBA, I learned that the human mind can reach a breaking point where logical and even trained responses are overcome and panic is the result. The evolution to this point is caused by a continuous growth of natural and often very small stress events. Each stress event does not, by itself, cause an acute stress reaction, but as the person continues to add “stressors” they become less and less able to respond to the situation they are in. When the acute stress occurs such as an emergency under water, an otherwise well trained individual will react8 instead of responding with trained and logical actions. This is where the Rescue portion of my training always kicked in, because the automatic stress reaction in this instance was most likely to be fatal. This is a very dynamic example of what I am talking about, and that is intentional.
Although the reactions you may apply after having multiple “stressors” stack up on you over a period of time are not likely to be fatal, they can be dangerous to your career or damage relationships. That is why it is important to remember that you can manage the “stressors” and keep control of your life by working to maintain your Individual Sustainability. A constant focus on sustainability is an active defense against reacting instead of responding. That is what I mean when I say Sustainability as a Shield. If you focus on making sure you have a balanced demand on your time, if you add techniques that help you create sustainability like I have discussed in other posts, you can create an active defense or shield against acute stress reactions and the potential downfalls associated with such reactions. By supporting or developing your Individual Sustainability you can create the mental focus and ability to hear the fear motivators and propaganda and instead of descending into a reaction you can decode the purpose behind the actions and determine what outcome you want to create. Then you can follow those actions instead of the actions they wanted from you.
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1 Cherry, Kendra. “How the Fight-or-Flight Response Works.” verywellmind. Aug 18, 2019. https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-the-fight-or-flight-response-2795194
2 Sparks, Sarah D. “Researchers Probe Causes of Math Anxiety.” Education Week. May 18, 2011. https://www.edweek.org/leadership/researchers-probe-causes-of-math-anxiety/2011/05
3 SoP, “The Triune Brain.” Science of Psychotherapy. Sep 23, 2018. https://www.thescienceofpsychotherapy.com/glossary/triune-brain/
4 Bowman, Sharon “Using Brain Science to Make Training Stick.” (Bowperson Publishing, 2019), 23-30
5 Scott MS, Elizabeth. “How to Deal With FOMO in Your Life.” verywellmind. April 25, 2021. https://www.verywellmind.com/how-to-cope-with-fomo-4174664
6 Rosenthal, Robert. “5 Psychological Tactics Marketers Use to Influence Consumer Behavior.” Fast Company. July 7, 2014. https://www.fastcompany.com/3032675/5-psychological-tactics-marketers-use-to-influence-consumer-behavior
7 Becker-Phelps Ph.D., Leslie. “Don’t Just React: Choose Your Response.” Psychology Today. July 23, 2013. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/making-change/201307/dont-just-react-choose-your-response
8 Eisler, Melissa. “Respond Vs. React: How to Keep Your Cool in Time of Stress.” Melissa Eisler. July 13, 2018. https://melissaeisler.com/respond-vs-react-how-to-keep-your-cool-in-times-of-stress/
Image by Bernhard Stärck from Pixabay
]]>In the introduction to this section, I listed couples interaction as a ritual. Date Night is only one of the couples interactions that help create and support Individual Sustainability. In fact, Date Night is actually a type of ritual that is about more than just couples. It includes families and more. When I describe couples interaction as a ritual what I really am talking about is making specific and ritualistic time in your schedule for the other half of the work-life balance equation.
For something to be a ritual, it must be something repeated on a cadence with some specific characteristics. That doesn’t mean that the activity is static or boring. What we do in a ritual could be different each time. What makes it a ritual in this case are the people, the time, and the type of activity.
In my discussions and observations of Date Night with friends, I have discovered a key theme. Create time for the partners to be together within their normally challenging schedule. The actual outcomes or benefits of this ritual vary. Some couples like to create a time and place where they can be together, alone, without the kids or anyone else for a little while. For other couples it is more about being together, even if others are along. I have even seen entire collections of friends go somewhere together, to be able to reconnect as a group while getting that needed time as couples.
The key element of Date Night to these couples is creating a regularly repeating commitment to each other. It is about setting a time that is inviolate and holding themselves and their work lives to that commitment. Obviously there are always exceptions that cannot be avoided, but the couples agree that the time together is important. The critical component of this ritual and the understanding is the commitment to be there and make an effort to protect what is important. The benefits for each person are different, and as long as every person is clear on the importance of the ritual it can be a very rewarding ritual.
As you can see in the examples I listed above, this ritual does not have to be restricted to two people. It can be entire groups that get together regularly. Other examples I often see of this same ritual are Movie and Game Night with the family (or friends). When my career was taking up a larger portion of my life than I expected, I had a regular movie night with friends. Together, we used the time to burn off the stresses of work, talk about things we wanted to do and didn’t want to do, plan dreams, build futures in both business and social life. In another time of my life I also had a Game Night that fulfilled a critical need I had to be creative and have fun when my career was in a lull and I was not feeling I had a creative outlet. I also had a Date Night ritual for a while with my wife when the diffusion of responsibilities were creating an absence of time for just us. I have used all three of these applications of Date Night rituals to create sustainability in my life.
Each person involved in these rituals can have similar needs and receive similar benefits. Each person can also have completely different needs and get completely different benefits. Be cautions of the negative implementation of this ritual where one person involved is getting a benefit and the other or others feel that it is another chore to be completed. Be sensitive to the fact that this dynamic can exist and that you need to work out the benefits for each person for this to be successful and create sustainability for everyone.
Sustainability through Ritual is achieved when the ritual creates a benefit to you and provides a break from the stresses of work or whatever you are trying to balance. The most common benefit of the Date Night ritual, no matter the specific implementation, is created by people creating a regular opportunity to isolate themselves from distraction and other stresses to be together and share their lives and experiences. If you are able to create that space and shared experience with someone or even a group of people, it can be a stabilizing ritual that balances work and life better. Through this stabilization you and everyone involved can have or improve their Individual Sustainability.
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Notes:
1Many of the ideas expressed here come loosely from Deepak Chopra and his book Golf for Enlightenment. No specific quotations are used, but I wanted to cite my source on this topic.
This is not an exhaustive list, but I expect you may be scratching your head at some of these. You can expect I will take a look at each of these and share my knowledge and experience for why I think each is supportive of a person’s individual sustainability.
My point in all of this is that people create ritual around things they do every day. They may not realize one of the advantages of rituals that they are following. Most often, they won’t even think about their rituals until something (work or emergency) suddenly stops them from performing their ritual. Some people may go for a long time before they suddenly realize they have stopped a ritual. They most often capture the moment by telling someone, “I really miss ...”
Ritual creates a sameness that people crave. It creates a safety that makes them comfortable when things are chaotic or disrupted. People feel calm and at peace when they can complete their rituals. They feel like things are going according to plan or everything is on track. It is this peacefulness or sameness that helps create sustainability for individuals. One can keep going even in challenging situations if they have something reliable to come home to and that gives them a sense of peace.
Over the next few posts I will share some rituals I have experienced, some very mainstream, some less so, that give people a sense of stability that allows them to face their work.
---- References
]]>1Frazer Consultants, ‘What Are Rituals, and Why Do We Need Them?’, Publishing Organisation or Name of Website, Frazer Consultants, LLC, July 13, 2016, https://frazerconsultants.com/2016/07/what-are-rituals-and-why-do-we-need-them/
Most people I know, who have worked in a corporate or even private business setting for any time, struggle with the idea of rest. Many of us don’t realize it. We think we rest when we go home at night or stop working for the day, but up until the head hits the pillow most of us are still working: Checking emails, reading/writing texts, taking calls, etc. When I was a child we had a word for this, Workaholic. Someone was a workaholic when they were so addicted to work that they never stopped working even if it meant missing meals or special events. It was seen as an addiction that was just as bad as any drug addiction because it broke up families and destroyed people’s health.
As I grew up in the corporate work environment this tendency to focus on the job over personal needs led to a term, work-life balance. Even as the term became popular, there were those who questioned if it was a real thing. Should we be striving for this balance or is the reality that each person must define what that means. The “happiness” of the individual was selected as the defining measurement. If you are not managing you own balance, it is your fault.
Having worked with some workaholics and struggled to manage a work-life balance, I have discovered something. All of my friends who never took those needed breaks knew but could never admit they were unhappy. Until that day came when something happened forcing them to pause for their health or their marriage, they could never admit how unhappy they were. So, to say it is about the person and their happiness is somewhat disingenuous. I happen to know, as someone who worked beyond the hours that made me happy to meet objectives that were unreachable or undefined, that when it came to work I often “took one for the team”, “went the extra mile”, or just “sucked it up” because I felt it was what was expected and necessary. I wonder why I thought that. That’s right, I was told so. Through the words and actions of others at the time, I knew what was expected.
Now I’m going to tell you a secret about this. In my experience, and with most people I knew, they had complete control of this. That’s right we are in control of it. There were very few times in my career (one very specific time at the beginning of my career) when continuous and persistent attendance to the job was required. Many times we allow ourselves to believe that everything will fall apart without us. It is rarely true. Even in the few times that I remember being the critical path, I had been informed that I could “take whatever time I needed” to recharge. What stopped me? Why did I not listen? It is an interesting question and I expect if you asked yourself you know the answer. Doubt, distrust, fear all play into it, but in most cases it is just that we never put ourselves ahead in the priorities. We are always willing to give more than we have. The second part of the secret is, we would be better at our job if we would take the time.
We own and are responsible for our own sustainability. In my first job out of college my manager told me, openly on the first day we worked together, to take time whenever I needed it to recharge, and yet I didn’t. I have had vacation time at every job that I have struggled to take. In order to establish a sustainable pace in your work, you must accept the responsibility for your sustainability.
Whatever you do, you must build rest in. Daily rest is necessary to let your mind and body recharge. When you leave work, whether that means leaving the office or walking away from the desk at home, leave it. Create boundaries where you don’t check e-mails, texts, or phone calls. They will be there when you get back, I promise. If you have to, make these times transparent to those you work with so they know what to expect. If they look at you oddly, remind them that you are responsible for your own sustainability, and this is how you are managing it. If your environment requires full-time coverage, create that with backups and coverage schedules (I know this can be hard, but you must take control of your Sustainability).
I worked with someone once who loved to run. It was a passion of theirs. They would find themselves in the middle of the day with time available and they would chose to take that time to go for a run. This break from the daily cycle of meeting with clients whenever she could get it helped her recharge. I know she sometimes listened to audio books that were related to what she did or thought about work while she ran, but even that change in pace can be relaxing and restful. In future posts I am going to look at several ways we can build sustainability into our lives, but find ways to get your mind and body to rest. Turn off work for a little while.
Even as I write this, I know how hard it can be. When I met my wife I had to introduce her to the voice in the back of my head. I am a perfectionist, and I have a monitor in my head that keeps me straight. As I grew up in the cold war, the image I see when I think of uncompromising is an East German scientist. This is what confronts me when I am slacking off or falling short. When I try to create these breaks, he often shows up, tapping his clipboard, pushing me to do something productive. Over time, as I have learned to deal with his uncompromising focus on work, he has changed to a more cartoon-like version of himself, but he still causes me problems as I work on my own balance.
As I started to focus on running my own business, I decided that all of the people I knew running their own businesses talked about how it is an unending job. It is not 9-5. I understand that, but I had to create some boundaries or I would fall into that cultural norm I grew up with, the workaholic. In order to create space for me to be successful, I have established a working agreement that I will take a day every week, a sabbath, to rest and recharge so that I can be better prepared to accomplish my goals. I will not focus on work during this time. I will recharge and rest. My friends in my previous role as an agile coach will understand that this is putting outcomes or throughput ahead of 100% utilization. In order to be an effective system, we must allow rest to occur.
Rest, a sabbath, is critical to maintaining a sustainable system. You may not be ready to accept the idea that you can be more productive if you set aside a whole day in the week. I understand that, but try an experiment with me now. Set aside some time each day to recharge, without e-mail, phone calls, or chats. See if the next time you go back to the desk you are not recharged and able to do more. If that works at that scale, give a day a try. What can happen? Who knows, maybe you can figure out a balance that works for you. Don’t let that voice in your head (whatever yours looks like) push you back into the grind. Aim for a balance that creates your optimum throughput. Isn’t that what you want anyway? Isn’t it better when you can do whatever you need to because you have the energy? That is what we mean by Sustainability.
]]>You cannot be sustainable if you are afraid of what is going to happen. The first step to controlling that fear is to lean what you need to know to survive or handle the disruption. To do that you have to brainstorm the possible disruptions or problems. This will be harder if the uncertainty cannot even be defined, but the brainstorming exercise may help bring up new ideas.
Once you have the ideas or possibilities of your situation (disaster, unknown change in the market, etc.) you will want to start discovering what tools or supplies you might need to face it. Again the act of thinking through this will spur new ideas and cause more discovery. Let it, and be ready to iterate through this cycle numerous times. The exercise is more valuable than the defined output you create.
With the tools and supplies somewhat defined, pull back the curtain of the situation and discover what makes you afraid, what is a stress factor for you in the situation. Follow the happy path and create a general plan for dealing with the stress factor. Again the thinking process is more valuable than the output, but capturing the plan helps you then discover what support you need to fight those fears and keep yourself calm when the disruption occurs. Circle back to all of the other paths as you work through the plan.
Take your plan as it is, look at each of the stress factors you identified. Figure out how you can enact and practice the plan. As you practice each area, you will discover new unknowns to take back through this process. Partner with someone who shares your concern with the defined situation. Help them work through their stress factors. Let them help you practice yours. Together you will learn and discover.
In each of these steps you are discovering new bits of information that defines the unknown, changing it in the process to the understood or at least considered. You may not fully understand it, but you will know more about the things you may need, things you may need to do, what may be missing right now, and how you can feel ready for that unknown. You can never completely prepare for the unknown situation. You can however build up your tools, sharpen your sword, and reduce your fear of the unknown. Then, repeat the process to learn more. Readiness is a mindset created by continuous discovery, understanding, and practice. Sustainability is easier to maintain if you are ready for a situation, even if it is an unknown. Build your readiness for what you can understand and discover now and the unknown is a little less difficult to deal with.
When dealing with a disruption, remember some advice beyond this that may help you maintain your sustainability. Keep your mind present where you are. Thinking about things beyond what you have to deal with right now can be debilitating. Rely on your planning and apply it here and now. If you have to think beyond now, remember;
Spending a lot of time of what may happen can paralyze you. Deal with the most critical issues in front of you right now or the most likely things to stop your progress toward a solution. If the plan is not working, don’t be afraid to abandon the plan and come up with a new one. Your practice up to this point has prepared you for changing and coming up with new plans. Pivot as soon as you know you need to.
Thanks for coming along on this series. I am going to be releasing more posts each week on Individual Sustainability. Next week I plan to share a one shot post about the importance of a sabbath to your Individual Sustainability. Come see what I mean next week, right here.
We will start with familiarity. The pattern for dealing with fear that I suggest the most is practice. Take the plan you have already started and look at the areas you identified as possible stress factors. If you already have an idea how to deal with the situation in your plan, establish a time when you will practice this one part of your plan. An example of this from our emergency scenario may be collecting water. In your plan you may indicate that getting water if you have none is a stress factor. In your plan you may have included a list of ways you can collect water in case you have no water. You should select each way you identified in your plan and practice it. Try one at a time if you feel uncomfortable. Practice it until you are so familiar with it that you no longer fear it. You may also identify ideas in your plan that just don’t work or you cannot accomplish. This is what practice is for, familiarization and verification.
Now, a warning about practicing. You may feel awkward practicing these things. You may worry what your neighbor may think. I leave that worry up to you, but are you willing to risk your safety or even your life on it? If you don’t practice the things that make you afraid you can never eliminate the fear. It will not go away on its own.
If you do not have a defined way for handling a situation in your plan, circle back with it. Identify ways for handling each one. Then return to practice to become familiar with each technique.
I feel practice is the best pattern for handling fear and becoming comfortable. In addition to practice, consider finding a like minded person to share your fear with, or what I call partnering. Much like we did with practice, take your plan or partial plan and find someone who wants to overcome their own fears. Share your ideas with them. You may even share your practice with them. This will give you two types of reassurance. First, it will give you the reassurance that you are not alone in your fears. Second, it will give you reassurance that you have a solution when they see and potentially help you change your plan of action.
With partnering, be careful that you don’t skip practice. Even if you partner with someone and you start to feel better that you have a plan, you still need to practice. Even if you have a backup stove in your kit and your partner agrees that it is a good choice, not knowing how to use it makes it useless to both of you in an emergency.
If you can apply these two patterns, practicing and partnering, you will move your comfort with uncertainty and your plan for handling it forward. An added benefit of both patterns is that you will discover things you didn’t think about. This will help improve you plan. It will potentially change your plan. If it does, simply add those items to your plan and go back through this process again with those changes. No plan is ever perfect. Planning never ends. You will always be improving and changing your level of readiness.
One final warning. You will have failures in your practice. Do not let those stumbles get you down. If you are able to partner with someone else, they can help you learn from those failures. That is what failures are for. If it were easy, you would not have marked it as a stress factor. Let yourself discover in your practice and lean on your partner to help you learn through your and their failures.
Familiarity with each area of your plan will give you the comfort that you know how to handle uncertainty. Also, having practiced your solutions for these areas may give you tools to apply in other similar situations. Build your muscles through practice so that you are ready for the uncertainty.
]]>The problem with uncertainty, is you never really know how it is going to impact you. For the duration of this series I have been talking about how to prepare for the unexpected. I have been using disasters as the example because we have a recent one to look back to, but it could be any uncertain situation that you are facing. The uncertainty of the situation all by itself is the first fear you have to identify. It exists. It may even be why you have followed this thread thus far. So, mark that one down as the first thing that makes you afraid of the situation. In the next post I will detail what to do to mitigate the fears we identify. In this post, I want to focus on being meticulous about discovering what it is that makes you afraid of the uncertain situations you may face. But, why?
As I started out, fear is natural. Fear can motivate action and give you the desire to resolve a problem. However, fear allowed to fester and ramble in you imagination will grow into panic. Everyone deals with panic differently. Some people shut down. This is my most common way of dealing with overwhelming fear or panic. It has been the most common outcome when I have allowed fear to progress to the highest level or I have continued to try to function after my stress factors have overcome my ability to function. To avoid panic, to avoid letting stress factors stack up and overwhelm me, I try to rationally think through what could happen.
If you take any emergency or disaster situation and I asked you what your initial fear is, you will probably say that you are afraid of death. Although death can be a result of emergencies and disasters, the reason this is the most common fear we identify is because it is the worst case scenario, and it is the easiest fear to manifest. In truth, there are numerous other stress factors underneath this one catch all fear. This is an example of how over generalization of a situation can lead to an overwhelming fear and a feeling that there is nothing to be done. I want to move beyond this generalization. I want you to get specific about what actually scares you about a situation. I want you to dissect the situation to create a list of everything within the situation that scares you. To do this, I want to use a tool that most people understand even if they don’t know how to do it. I want to make a plan.
This process of thinking through what could happen or planning is exactly what Dwight Eisenhower in particular meant when he said “In planning for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” He was not alone in this opinion, and that is what I have tried to make clear so far. There is no perfect plan for uncertain events, particularly disaster or emergency situations. I don’t want you to think the plan is the ultimate objective, because it isn’t. In fact, I don’t even want you to make it very detailed yet. Consider it a high level draft. This very act of planning introduces you to the unknowns or the unconsidered. Until you pull back the veil of the unknown, there is too much uncertainty for your mind to handle. In many cases this manifests as that initial fear or that worst case scenario. That initial fear can be so overwhelming on its own that many people simply decide to stop thinking about it. They experience a micro-panic when considering all of the possible outcomes, and they freeze or shut down and never go back to it. They replace a lot of small fears with one overwhelming, unapproachable fear of the worst possible outcome.
When I was starting to train teams to break their work down so they could create small testable parts and deliver faster to their customers, I often told them to focus on the “happy path” first. The happy path is the path in which everything goes right or follows the expected flow exactly. In uncertain situations— when you are trying to plan for them— take this same approach. First identify what the happy path looks like for your emergency. This does not mean the path without the emergency. It is the path that goes 100% as planned in the emergency. Write that plan down. Remember, keep it high level. As you write each step or situation and how you successfully handle the situation, identify the things at each step that make you afraid. Highlight them in that section of your plan. If it starts to become overwhelming, walk away and come back later. Give yourself a break. Trying to push through will shut you down because the stress factors that will continue to weigh on you until you can’t think anymore. Come back later, after you have walked away and done something pleasant. It is not always an unpleasant exercise, but for some who have never tried it or others who are going deeper, it can be difficult. Allow yourself to stop when it gets hard. If you don’t you may never finish the exercise.
With that skeleton completed you are ready to move to the next steps. You could, and should move forward with the “happy path” through the steps outlined in the next post because there is value in getting even that small slice of the plan fully defined and coming back to go deeper. Don’t forget to come back though, it is not enough to focus on the “happy path” and moving on can make you think you are done. No plan ever goes exactly the way we think it should. No plan is ever complete. If all we ever do is consider one option, we will be surprised or unprepared when it doesn’t work. As we iterate through the next steps we will identify things we missed or didn’t think about. Roll those findings into your next iteration.
Once you complete the cycle with one plan, come back and think through each step or each new step. Ask yourself what might go wrong in that step. For each thing that can go wrong, write a similar draft plan adaptation for that failure. How might your plan change to solve that failure? Each of these possible failure points may increase your stress over that particular step. That stress will manifest as a possible fear. If this is an area you are afraid of highlight it on your plan. Take each of these on through the next step as well, completely developing each one on its own. You can have steps that are so well understood or have such a low risk factor that they don’t act as a stress factor. They are not a source of fear you need to manage.
The reason I want you to take one of these deviations at a time, all the way through to the end, is two fold. With each iteration I want your plan to get better. I also want to limit your exposure to overwhelming stress factors. Just like we addressed one area at a time before, continue to limit how much you take on at once. Multiple stress factors acting on you at the same time will increase the possibility of overload and panic. I want you to take this a little at a time and complete each one so that you accomplish your goal of learning how to be sustainable in uncertainty.
In the next post I want to take your draft plan and discover how to deal with each of the noted points that cause you stress or fear. It is not enough to have a plan. In the next post we will look at using your plan to manage your fears and get to sustainability in uncertainty.
]]>Readiness is a word I have not used a lot. Some may consider it a term associated with being prepared, but I think readiness goes deeper than just being prepared. Now, this is my opinion, but I see readiness as a state a person attains through practice. One can be prepared without practice, but to be ready one must practice. That is what I meant when I said, once you know what you need to know, you have to practice. Any tool or supplies you discover you need to survive with, you will need to practice with. In martial arts you cannot progress without practicing new techniques. I can show you how to block, you can study a new stance, or we can understand the positions of a weapon kata or form, but until you actually practice the technique you will not know how it feels to actually execute it. Whatever tools you choose to incorporate into your preparations, make sure you practice with them to become proficient in their use.
In my personal kit, which I carry with me every day, I have some items that I consider critical. I consider them critical enough that I have them with me every where I go. For the years that I traveled every week for work, I carried them then as well. In fact, I had to carefully prepare my kit for traveling to make sure I could have what I needed no matter where I went. My core kit always contains:
When I traveled I usually included a compass in my kit as well. I don’t carry a compass in my day-to-day kit though.
If you compare the items in this list to some common suggested lists (you can find them if you look for things like The Ten Essentials or essential survival items) you will find that most of these show up. Since the day my father gave me my first pocket knife I have carried something like this with me. My reason for these items is that most of them help to provide the bottom tier of Maslow’s pyramid of needs; those things we all need to survive; water, warmth, shelter, and food. The others help provide safety and security (the second tier).
I share my list to help you start to think about what you should consider having with you. When I consider what I must have with me, I balance the ability to maintain the items with their usefulness. I also think about what level I am focusing my preparedness on (See the previous post for more on this).
On most days and even when I traveled every week, I didn’t carry food with me in my EDC(Every Day Carry) kit, at least not full meals. I often carried jerky of some sort as a snack, but never full meals. My primary reason was space and maintenance required over likely use. This was a trade-off that I felt was important.
Something I didn’t include in the list above was the type of clothing I have with me. On most days and when I traveled away from home every week, I always made sure the clothes I took with me, wore as I traveled, and kept close to me were rugged and capable of helping me get home. For example:
My reasons for this choice was based on the possibility that I may have to sustain myself over a long duration walk. This was my choice. You will have to ask yourself what you want to have with you based entirely on what conditions you think you could face. I did not make these decisions out of fear of what might happen. In a later section we will talk more about fear, but everything you do to prepare yourself to be sustainable in uncertainty is designed to remove fear, not surrender to it. Readiness is not about being afraid, it is about knowing you are capable of handing something that makes you afraid.
There are many other things you can list that might need to be in your kit. I consider the items I have listed as essential. There are some things you may consider essential that I don’t list. You may disagree with my list of essentials. My list is created from years of reviewing other peoples lists, evaluations about what I have used versus what has been dead weight in my kit, and practical applications day to day, but it is my list. I continue to adjust my list, and you will too. My suggestion to you is that you take what you know so far about your level of focus and your daily situation, then ask yourself what do you need with you daily in case something happens. What will help me if I had to rely only on what I have with me. Write it down. Acquire it. Then practice using it, as often as you can. It is not enough to have the tool with you, you must know how to use it.
Once you have your basic kit, ask yourself if it needs something else during a different season. For example, I have friends who live in a hurricane prone area. Certain times of the year their kit may include items that are specific to that type of weather. People who live in areas with a lot of water around their roads may consider adding a glass breaker to their kit.
This covers your personal kit and what you may want to consider having with you all the time. There are other kits to consider as well; kits for your car, house, office, etc. Each one will require a similar approach. Many of them can be found in the same books and web sites I have already discussed. Remember, the kit is useless without two things: The mindset to understand why you need it and the readiness (practiced knowledge) to use it.
I focused most of my energy on the kit because I think it is more important than supplies, but I will not ignore the need to have some basics essentials on hand. My reason for this perspective is the amount of time I spent away from my home. I could never carry with me enough supplies on a weekly travel schedule to different places. In one instance I was able to stabilize my travel for a few months. During that time I was able to put together a bag that would help me get home.
This bag was a survival bag that was designed to get me home if I had to walk back from my assigned station. Obviously, I could never carry enough food, water, and fuel to get that far. The pack contained the tools I could carry or ship to me and the supplies I could use to get myself to a safe location where I could start to hunt for food to sustain my travel. This was my choice to handle the specific situation. Please consider it a guide for your thinking, not a recommended load out. You must prepare your own list of supplies based on what you think you will need for your perceived or specific situation. In addition, you must practice with these supplies to determine if they meet your needs.
The supplies I chose to carry for that purpose, understanding that they were a limited emergency supply and had to be replaced were:
Obviously, the supplies I carried required some additional tools. In fact, the kit list grew larger than the supplies list. I had to consider what I needed to find food, make fire, build shelter, because I was looking to sustain myself over a longer duration. This had to move out of the survival mode. I’m not going to go deeper in this post about the specifics of the kit because I want to focus on what you should consider to prepare yourself for emergencies. What supplies should you have on hand. From the list I compiled above, you should consider the areas I focused on.
I made sure I had a way to supply myself with clean, drinkable water. This is not supplies necessarily, but without it, you may not be able to get water. Because water is so critical, I maintain several tools to allow me to acquire clean water. The water is the consumable supply, but I could not overlook the need to store and clean it.
I want to have a supply of food on hand that is shelf stable so I can focus on other critical items. This does not mean I don’t have to think about food, but having some on hand makes it possible to use energy on other things, like...
Several of the supply items I suggest you have on hand are safety supplies. Any medications you must have, normal OTC medications you use, basic first aid supplies, and key trauma supplies should be considered important parts of your safety supplies.
The challenges with supplies is keeping them stable and replenishing them over time. Supplies have a shelf life. Some have very long shelf lives, some not as long. Either way, a major challenge to keeping supplies on hand for emergencies is keeping them within their usable age. If you choose to keep these items on hand, you will need to establish a rotation schedule to keep them ready for use. You have to decide if this is important enough for you that you want to put this type of effort in. That is a personal choice based on the level of focus you are putting into your readiness. The other challenge is keeping them stable, and that means storage. Where and how you store these items is important. For example, if you chose to use MREs as your food backup, storing them in the trunk of your car is not advisable. The temperature profile of the trunk does not provide safe storage for that type of backup food. That is an example and every consumable item you chose to keep on hand will have its own requirements.
Based on the situation you may face, you need to decide how much food, water, and supporting consumables you need on hand. Once you have the total list of what you must have on hand, you will know what type of replenishment or rotation cycle you will need to create. Do not overlook the maintenance required on your supplies. You never know when you will need these supplies to help you.
Use this as a guide to help you think about what you need with you or ready. Your list will be different than mine. Practice using everything. Build up your readiness through practice. Be aware that letting fear drive your practice will bias your learning. You must learn to deal with those fears and make this clinical. I will share more about that in the next post.
A friend reached out to me as so many people were dealing with the weather this winter and asked for my opinion about a kit for surviving during an emergency. I practice many skills to help me be sustainable and some of them align with survival and self-reliance. I consider what I do “being prepared” because I was taught to be prepared my whole life. I was taught a mindset. Her question inspired me to write this post. She reminded me that, at the foundation of my ability to sustain myself were all of these skills and tools, but girding these tools was that mindset of fundamental readiness.
As I have said before, Individual Sustainability is about how we prepare ourselves mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. When I started thinking about her situation, I decided to approach it in two ways. First, I wanted to actually review the items she asked about to give her the peace of mind if appropriate, or the right guidance if needed. But, I also wanted to remind her that being able to deal with a disruption to our normal life takes more than a supply of food, water, and basic essentials. In fact, it is very hard to have everything you need for every possible event. There are too many unknowns. It is better to have a core set of tools and a mental readiness to accept that change is occurring and knowing how to deal with that change.
Everyone is different. Everyone must discover for themselves what they need to feel ready for change. I am more comfortable adapting to change as it comes with a core preparedness that applies generally to most situations. Others may not feel as prepared with that level of uncertainty. Find the level of risk you are comfortable with and then plan to mitigate those risks as best you can. If you need more supplies to feel sustainable, then get them, but understand the cost associated with that. Maintaining that supply requires attention, time, and money. If you choose instead to accept that there are a set of tools that you need to help you acquire the supplies as the disruption occurs, remember there is a level of understanding of how to use those tools required. Either way, there is effort required. When you have put the effort into creating the support system you need, you will feel prepared. That confidence in your planning should not make you arrogant thinking you have it all figured out, but it will give you a feeling that you can deal with the worst of the disruption, and can adapt when the changes don’t follow the plan.
To reach a level of Individual Sustainability in a survival situation;
Once you have these areas addressed, focus a little of your time on accomplishing some items in each section. As you do, you will start to feel less like you have no control and more prepared to face uncertainty. Your personal plan will never be perfect, and if you try to make it handle every possible situation, you will create an unachievable challenge for yourself. Focus on creating the minimum list of needs and build on that. Realize all plans must be able to change or they will collapse under their own weight.
As with all things, there is a balance to be struck. You are the only one who knows your balance. Find it, and you will be able to sustain yourself in uncertainty.
Welcome to this five part series on Sustainability. Check back weekly for the next installment as we look at each of the areas called out above. Next week: Learn What You Need to Know to Survive.
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Over time I have come to understand the idea of sustainability, from the work I’ve done within the professional environment. I have learned and taught organizations to focus on creating sustainability to create higher performing teams. The basic idea is that the pace we work at, study at, live at must be sustainable in order for success. As I continued to study this idea, it became clear that sustainability was about more than just pace. It was about having everything that is needed to “live”, to sustain. In a survival sense it is about having the tools, supplies, and ability to live at a certain level. A person cannot “live” in survival mode, they have to move into sustainable mode. What we at Twin Cedars have observed is that most people are not “living”, they are surviving.
I’m sure that sounds like a broad statement, and many people may say they are living a sustainable life. To them, I say congratulations, and I want to help you stay that way. One common problem with sustainability, however, is complacency. We think we are “living”, but things have changed while we weren’t paying attention. This is what happened to us. We had to ask ourselves, are we still “living”? Each person owns their answer to that question. What we discovered was that we were not.
We realized that over the years, as technology had advanced and information was coming to us in a steady stream, that we had grown dependent on the stream and had stopped thinking. The information feeds became smaller because it was easier to process small snippets quickly. Then, they began to interpret the information instead of inform. At the end, we found ourselves incapable of processing information and frustrated when a topic went too deep or took too long. The ability to read a long article was lost to us. Why does this matter? Each individual needs to process information and decide for themselves what it means, rather than just be told what to think. We had abandoned that for the simple feed and surrendered our own logic to the logic of the writer. We had stopped thinking. This was a shocking revelation. We could no longer sustain ourselves as we had in the past because we could no longer think beyond the short sound bites and snippets we were being fed.
As we were becoming more aware of the mental sustainability, we also started paying attention to the things we depended on. It seemed that so much of what we bought was only meant to last a very short time. We became aware that electronics were disposable, but even more had become that way. We soon realized that clothing, shoes, household appliances, automobiles, and a plethora of other things were being designed to wear out. All of this was being done for many reasons, all of which were reactions to the less sustainable and faster pace we were not “living” at. Some of this even appears in the ideas of environmental sustainability concepts. I will pause to say that I believe we as people should take out responsibility for ourselves and our world seriously and look at sustainability logically. Read and understand what is being said don’t just accept what you are told. Then, apply action to what makes sense. But, making products to last a year and be replaced is no way to be sustainable. Twin Cedars approaches this by building sustainable products to last and learning or remembering and teaching how to take care of them so they will.
Beneath or within all of this is a personal connection to the power that makes it all work. We are not here to tell you to believe in any specific faith. We are not here to tell you to believe in anything at all. We will continue to tell the world that there is an energy that permeates all living things. It makes connections and causes things to happen. Some see it as coincidence or luck, others put more belief behind it. Either way, we, as humans have a need to be part of that connection, either to each other or to something more universal. To sustain yourself, at a minimum, there is a need for hope. Hope comes from the Rugged or Individual Sustainability that I am describing:
Each person has within themselves the ability to sustain themselves. We all use different tools and techniques to maintain this ability. We all struggle with maintaining our sustainability in this world and at this time. It is our vision at Twin Cedars to support and enable each person’s Individual, Rugged Sustainability through the tools, tales, and information that we provide.
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