Laid low by something yesterday.

Hopefully tomorrow will bring a little more clarity and coherence.

Strategies are only worth something when they’re put into action.

Scouting the river is good and worthwhile, but, sooner or later, it’s time to jump in.

Riding the rapids is always different from looking at the rapids — but it’s often the quickest and most exhilarating way to get downstream.

And who knows where the river will take you?

***

HT: Sarah

The beginning of the year is as good a time as any to audit your systems and processes.

Are they really working for you?

Where do you need to get more organized?

And, above all, what’s the point of whatever systems or processes you are or aren’t running?

(What if you did manage to save some hours each week? How would you invest them?)

Like a non-decision or non-action, a non-system is in fact a system (and a decision). And, until you audit and experiment with it, it’s likely to go on managing you.

Last week, Khe Hy wrote succinctly about the dangers of the “when-then trap.”

We’ve all been there:

When I have X dollars, then I’ll be happy.

When it’s less busy, then I’ll hit the gym.

And and old bugaboo of mine:

When my work is totally on track, then I’ll make time for life.

Of course, at $X, we want $X+Y. It never gets less busy. The more on-track work looks, the further down the track I’m determined to drive.

Even though the premise is obviously flawed — the purpose of moving ahead is more motion, not stasis — this trap is extremely difficult to avoid. After a strong start to the season on my old skis, I’m mostly fantasizing about what kind of skier I’ll be on new boards.

Reflecting on this trap, I finally made the connection to my journey out of school. After spending the majority of my first three decades being good at school, it’s easy to see all the when-thens I accepted: when I get to college, then I can be me. When I get a little professional experience, then I can get a master’s. When I get another degree, then …

The point isn’t that school is the only or even the primary source of this myth. Rather, it’s that this myth comes from somewhere, and it makes sense that such a widely shared idea is something we’re exposed to from an early age.

This year, I’m planning to double down on turning pro rather than getting another degree. But, in the spirit of Steve Pressfield, here’s a little note to self:

The purpose of turning pro is to turn ever more professional, not to simply transfer the when-then fallacy from school to work.

My first book of 2020 is Lewis Hyde’s classic The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World.

Only a few chapters in, it has already made me think deeply about many issues, such as:

• The nature of capitalism, which is to take wealth out of circulation. Hence the self-fulfilling law of scarcity that serves as the foundation of economics texts.
• The propriety of capitalizing that which we receive as gift. Many of the gift cultures Hyde writes about have strong injunctions against this, and even today it’s not possible to capitalize, say, a mountain sunset (if we have eyes to see it). We probably fail to capitalize on many gifts without price, and there might be a good case for investing at least some capital gifts in the culture we have.
• The essential importance of life — of people, communities, goods, and nature — beyond the reach of the market. Ours is not the first culture to fall too much under the illusion of an all-encompassing, all-knowing market. And, as Hyde demonstrates, extremes don’t last forever.

Most of all, the book has opened my mind to a new question for 2020: how might I simultaneously build confidence in my ability to live and work within the market-based “real world” and the enormous abundance that exists within and beyond the market?

I don’t think it’s possible to live entirely beyond the reach of markets (Hyde doesn’t, and that’s not what he’s arguing), but I also don’t think the point of coming to know our talents is merely to monetize them.

The beginning of the year is a good time to make some predictions.

Of course, such exercises have a dismal record of actually proving correct, but that’s not the real point. The idea isn’t so much to see the future as it is to learn something about how I make predictions — and especially how to make better ones if possible.

Here we go.

U.S. Politics: I expect the president will be acquitted in the Senate, and I expect he’ll get a second term, too. This is mostly based on how our politics work: as of now, I see no reason to expect Senate Republicans to get off the merry-go-round, and I expect a combination of cultural appeal, business support, structural advantages, and Democratic own-goals will produce a narrow (possibly minority) and highly divisive outcome. Over the medium to long term, I expect this will do enormous damage to the republic.

EU Politics: I expect the UK to complete its exit. At crunch time, the EU27 will cut a generous deal cloaked in forward-looking rhetoric, while the UK will commit another act of self-harm.

Culture: Around the world, people will wrestle as never before with climate change and the political-economic-social contract. The U.S. political cycle will be a bitter proxy battle over the deal people are getting versus the deal they’re wanting.

Political Economy: In the face of a collapsing (and largely captured) public sector, business leaders will continue stepping cautiously, haltingly into the breach. This might have short-term benefits, but of course the real test will come when the economy softens. In the best case, business and society will begin hammering out a new relationship both sides can live with. In the worst case, a shock, downturn, or profiteer will put the lie to ideas about corporate responsibility and citizenship. Success is likeliest at small scale and amidst continued growth. The big players won’t be able to easily walk back from the language of stakeholder responsibilities, but there’s a real risk of that language being cynically debased.

***

Those are all macro trends, and with significant home bias. There’s a good chance that the biggest stories of the year will have to do with topics far beyond this list — or the ways in which these predictions might turn out to be wrong. (I certainly hope I’m wrong on at least one of these.)

One thing seems certain: a year from now, we’ll all be shaking our heads in wonder at another wild ride around the sun.

Cheers to another year.

If this year is about seeking controlled chaos and focusing on processes, then it makes good sense to begin the work by choosing fewer and better projects to take on.

Being the busiest or most distracted probably isn’t a competition worth winning, and it’s surely not a competition worth losing.

It all comes down, as Peter Drucker would say, to “doing the right things well.”

Leaping at every distraction simply isn’t an effective way forward.

Professionals focus on processes.

They practice making the best possible decisions, then accepting the outcomes.

Amateurs, meanwhile, make elaborate, seat-of-the-pants bets on how little preparation or process can still yield an acceptable outcome.

The shift comes when the only outcome you’ll accept is the result — good or bad — of an acceptable process.

About a year ago, I read Sara Kalick’s article on “Prototyping a New OS for 2019.”

One of her organizing images has stuck with me since: a journey from chaos to control and finally into controlled chaos.

Though it wasn’t always so tidy, a chaotic 2019 showed me that I’d been too hooked on a sense of control. Chaos — or the feeling of chaos — was the result of untested certainties falling away and a newfound mode of leaping into novelty after novelty.

No surprise, then, my 2020 desire for controlled chaos: I like the excitement of the new, but it’s frankly exhausting and inefficient to approach each day as if it’s totally new. (It is a new day, of course, but you don’t have to schedule or decide to make breakfast. Routines and structures have their uses. Some problems can stay solved.)

So, this year, I’ll be looking for simpler solutions to everyday problems (control) in order to leave some time and energy available for new challenges (chaos). Clearly distinguishing between things that have to work and those that might not — and budgeting intelligently for both — is critical.

Perfection won’t be possible in a year. (That’s the old desire for control again.) But, after a year of prototyping, it might be possible to implement an operating system that’s able to make sense of the routine and make space for the non-routine.

The second batch of learnings and reflections from a year unlike any other.

(6) Small is beautiful.
I’m increasingly convinced that small, local, and connected is the way forward. Reared on globalism in the height and heart of globalism, that’s hard for me to accept: I’m trained to look for visionary leaders moving the whole world forward. But that model is deeply flawed and vulnerable to exploitation. When the world seems to be careening off course, communities need to create oases of sanity.

(7) Idealism needs a dose of realism.
As Michael Bungay Stanier says, “If you want to do some good in this world, you have got to get your shit together around how you’re going to fund it.” If you don’t get it together, it’s very hard to be of service. This was another way in which I felt unprepared for this year: until now, I never really bothered to include my own viability as a metric for success. In some ways, that’s the ultimate privilege; in others, it’s terrible preparation for what most people call “real life.” There’s a lot more to life than earning, but failing to get organized around how to make a living is an unfulfilling and precious form of self-imposed obscurity and thrashing.

(8) Tradeoffs, priorities, and cognitive dissonance are real.
Would I like the stock market to go up (and my retirement with it)? Absolutely. And do I want to live and retire well in a livable world? Also absolutely. Now that I’m managing more of my life — and conscious of moving into the early middle of it, when it seems to count more dearly — I’m much, much more aware of all the priorities I’m trying to balance. The part of me that feels behind in my IRA wants 25 percent growth year in and year out. The part of me that’s terrified of geological and geopolitical catastrophes is curious about zero growth.

(9) Great art is both everywhere and achingly precious.
The world doesn’t need more crap — or “content.” We’re already drowning in it. Real effort, great writing, music that makes life livable … all these are both precious because relatively rare and more widely accessible than ever. I’m inspired by the ways in which the “creative economy” seems to be taking a page from the food movement and helping people develop both the taste and desire to find who and what is precious right nearby.

(10) Initiative is there for the taking.
At the end of the day, there’s no substitute for starting. Sooner or later, it’s time to get up and get going — to try making something interesting and seeing what happens. Action compounds.

***

In many ways, I’m glad 2019 is in the books. Who knows what 2020 will hold, but cheers to a fun and fulfilling year.