Tuesday morning.
I range restlessly between my office and the kitchen, trying to conjure words in my head that will spark the engine of my mind into waking up and getting to work in a focused and determined manner.
Rinsed thin by the exertions of Christmas but doggedly pursuing the idea that the new Work Year has begun, I keep at it like a confused hamster in a vast, invisible lab experiment.
Opening my laptop, the bright, flat screen throws me into a keen discomfort: after days of family time, muddy boots and wet trees my nervous system can't handle 2D.
I abandon the desk and make for the front door, posing hopeful, coachy questions to my own mind:
- "What would be an extraordinary outcome this year?"
- "What is worth doing?"
- "How can I contribute to making this world exceptionally better?"...
Not long ago these questions would have fired me up, if only to think of a few more interesting questions... all with the glowing promise of a portal of focus at the end.
But within a minute and a half I have thrown in the towel and returned home, unwilling to let the rain soak into my cords.
I resolve instead to make some eggs and think about it all again after lunch.
Later I do a variety of important but intellectually menial tasks to avoid thinking about anything. Self worth salvaged from the slough of the AM, I feel better about achieving something but guilty I haven't used the time to rest or 'go deep'.
For a moment, I fantasise that I'm hatching the beginnings of a radical manifesto for the future, but it turns out there's only one principle: "no one should have to work on January 2nd".
That immediately fails my Kant / Sainsbury’s Test of Universal Applicability (as in, do I really want the shops to stay closed all this week?)
I remind myself that leaders need to think, that thinking is best done while horizontal, and that hunter-gatherers only worked 3 hours a day.
Hibernation starts to look like a vital part of my Q1 business strategy.
I resolve to spend the rest of the week in bed.
Things end on an upswing after I wade through the empty fields near my house shouting angrily into the wind, do a couple of pull ups on a tree and return home to find that my org tweaks and fixes have been a genuinely good use of time - the closest thing to mending the roof tiles or redoing the wattle and daub for winter.
But I’m still glad to check out when the day comes to an end.
So. Happy new year.
Whichever way it falls for you, I wish you the best of this and the many weeks to come: May you be blessed by focus and calm. May you enjoy balance. And may you invent something stupendously useful without even trying.
Onwards and upwards, friends.
Here comes 2024!