Six months ago today, I finished the altMBA.

From application through the program and into the alumni community, we talk a lot about leveling up, turning pro, and getting out of our own way. We talk about the work that matters. We talk about making things better.

The obvious question is what all those metaphors really mean in lived experience. And while I can’t speak to everyone’s experience, perhaps my own can be a bit of a guide.

I like learning, and I’ve had a pattern of sticking around school after graduation. But that consciously wasn’t the point of the altMBA: I was looking to learn applicable concepts and above all to put them into action during and following that monthlong sprint.

On commencement day, I didn’t have the answers to everything. However, I did feel better prepared to organize myself around an emerging goal to ratchet my life and work forward.

Some of that has been practical: I’ve continued to work on taking control of my budget and finances, I’ve taken a much more experimental approach to finding new opportunities, and I’ve gotten clearer and clearer about how I want to organize my life in general.

But the internal transformation has been most striking, and I expect its compound value will turn out to be the greatest. For the altMBA is not really about learning how to make or manage a buck: it’s about learning to work mindfully and lead bravely in the face of “this might not work.”

Since “this might not work” is the basic condition of so much of life, it’s essential to learn to recognize the ambiguity, manage it as best you can, and act anyway.

Six months later, the ambiguity hasn’t lessened, but the fear and paralysis have. And I can’t begin to say how much that feels like a level-up of my experience.

The beginning of a big networking push can feel like going in circles and circles.

Search here, apply there, hope to rekindle a connection with your high-school best friend’s dog-walker’s second cousin.

That’s the dip. And the reward for pushing through it is momentum through circles and circles — as one connection leads to another and another and eventually to the one you needed but couldn’t have expected at the start of the process.

We absolutely judge books by their covers.

And we judge text by its format, even before reading a word.

Giant block paragraphs tell one story about what’s coming. Clipped sentences another. And micro-paragraphs, bullets, and numbered lists still others.

And all that’s before we get into typeface and formatting.

Getting the right words on the page is important. Structuring the page so that the right words will be read helps show that the words are in fact worth reading.

Where’s the tipping point between learning and leading? Between getting ready and swinging into action?

When is it time to shift from learning the ropes to leading the crew?

It varies from person to person and project to project, but ready-enough is almost always closer than it appears.

You want to get ready, you want to be steady … but what you really want (and where everything changes) is to go.

A little design thinking goes a very long way.

Who’s it for?

What’s it for?

How might we … ?

Whatever you’re beginning (or beginning again), take a moment to consider the design.

I finally picked up a copy of One Long River of Song: Notes on Wonder, the definitive collection of the late great Brian Doyle’s headlong nonfiction.

BD’s friend and fellow writer David James Duncan did a masterful job (along with others) corralling and editing and introducing the contents.

And the contents! Where else can you find an entire section of a book under the heading, “We Can Take Off Our Masks, or, If We Can’t Do That, We Can Squawk Through the Holes in Them. A Squawk Is Better Than Nothing”?

Or, better still, a concluding section entitled, “I Walked Out So Full of Hope I’m Sure I Spilled Some by the Door.” Which is exactly what Brian did in his writing and his speaking and his teaching.

He walked out the door far too soon. But what he left on this side of the door is miraculous.

It’s easy to think that all our society needs is more reason, logic, and facts.

But the fact is, facts are only so persuasive. There is wisdom in crowds, but the individual pursuit of reason is difficult — and reasoning as a group is all the more so. (Just try making a decision by committee.)

We can try to logic our way out of this mess.

Or maybe, just maybe, we can try to get a little quieter and a little more curious instead of trying to shout each other down.

It might not be the easy way, but might it turn out to be easier than shouting after all?

The two laws of the latern:

(1) Don’t hide it under a bushel.

(2) An empty lantern gives little light.

No matter how bright, how confident, how flickering — we need your light.

And, because we need your light, we need you to keep your lantern full. Very, very rarely in this life do we actually go out in a blaze of glory, let alone in a sensible way.

A well-supplied lantern can show a lot more of the path than a bonfire.

***

HT to Brent, Vince, and the altMBA coaches’ community for rule 2

That’s how the future is built: just like Johnny Cash sang, “one piece at a time.”

And even if the result is a “’56, ’57, ’58, ’59, ’60, ’61, ’62 … automobile,” it’ll still get you where you’re trying to go.

One little phrase, at least two different meanings.

There’s the shocked-inquisitive sense of expectations unfulfilled: “This is it?“

And then there’s the sense of satisfaction, of understanding gradually or suddenly that, in some important way or another, you’ve arrived: “This is it.“

How we spend our days, it’s said, is how we spend our lives — and that’s true. That’s it.

How’s it feel?