“Psychogeography”

I was recently reading an article about a small community on the coast of Maine promoting sustainable farming. In the process, I came across this word, “psychogeography”.

I am intrigued by this new-to-me word. Psychogeography is about an individual’s feelings and behaviors related to a place, a geographical location. It may not be obvious, but we all have experience with this concept. Think about when you go to our favorite restaurant to meet up with friends and enjoy community filled with laughter, being seen, being heard, and creating connections. That restaurant often becomes one of our favorite places to go.

As humans we create connections to places and spaces through our feelings and behaviors and these connections become conduits for our sense of belonging.

Just as it’s true for places we “go to”, it’s also true in the spaces where we live and work. The human ability for “place making” is all around us. Expecting parents prepare their home for a new baby or “Bob” who works in the Southwest corner cubicle on the 3rd floor has given years to anchoring his “place” to finely hone and optimize his workspace. Both situations are about shaping the connections between the spaces, others, and themselves.

The next time you visit your favorite coffee shop to observe that same person sitting in the same favored spot for the third time that week or you face the wave of intense investment your kids seem to put into “redesigning” their bedroom… again, remember the power and importance of place making and the concept of psychogeography. It’s just people doing a very normal human thing. They are simply looking to create connection through feelings and behaviors in spaces that become meaningful access points to that things that are important.

Excel Is Not A Leadership Tool

One might think this would be obvious but yet somedays it seems this may not be the case. Microsoft Excel is not a leadership or communication tool. There, I said it, out loud.

 Ever since the advent of computing and the injection of business productivity application into the business office ecosystem, it has become both prolific and easy for organization and efficiency software to be conflated with leadership and communication behaviors.

 Why is this the case? The simple answer is that many business and cultural models are centered on productivity being the definition of success. But the truth is that getting the right things done at the right time is way more impactful and effective than getting a bunch of things done.

 Measures of business and organizational success are a much bigger can of worms to pop open but for now I’d like to recalibrate on a simple thought.

 Organizations, full of people, who are very different in a multitude of ways, can find productivity applications like Excel or others helpful as a tool to organize information and make sense of certain things, but truly impactful leadership and communication happens through relational vision, directional orientation, connection, and purposeful contribution. Avoid the risks inherent in planning boards and file folders alone.

 Don’t attempt to talk to people or lead them through rows and columns. Instead, look them in the eye and see each other, and apply that connection to what really needs to be accomplished for the organization through connecting and doing it together. Performance will leap forward in a way no pivot table will capture.

Mind Your Antennas

Loud and chaotic environments are full of energy. Kinetic stimulation and potential abound. This is frequently desired and created with intention in many circumstances. Sporting events, concerts, parties, and celebrations of all kinds.

The less obvious catch here is that as human beings we also need recovery cycles. You can think of them as companions to the party bus. Moments in times to quiet things down, rest, get your bearings, and reset yourselves for whatever comes next. It’s part energy management and part psychological and emotional reset.

Without recovery cycles you find fatigue gets too high, you suffer some crazy form of adrenal burnout, and over-absorption of all that positive energy can become a detriment to your own physical, mental, and emotional sustainability and performance.

When in high energy situations, you can sometimes refer to those circumstances as high-signal environments. Think of signals as external inbound information that is captured by your senses. Your senses act like environmental antennas.

Sometimes, when signals don’t stop, they can create a kind of signal fatigue that your internal signal processing center in your brain can find overwhelming and it translates into your body. Have you ever woken up form a dream that was intense, a bit Jackson Pollock in nature and full of random and colorful nonsense. That’s your brain working away at the end of each day to sort through all of it. The sounds, visuals, smells, touch, and all the rest. It’s quite remarkable and amazing that this experience occurs every day but not much attention is given to recognizing it and how it works for you.

Every individual person has their own unique wiring and capacitates related to the manner and speed at which they perceive and process all of the signals in a given day.  One person can be ready to keep the party going and another person can be looking for a nearby offramp to some quiet solitude. It’s all quite normal and variation should be expected if not celebrated.

In the end, we all have differences in our antenna sensitivity, tolerances, as well as processing and recovery practices. My hypothesis is that highly perceptive people expend large amounts of their reserve energies on filtering signals and formulation of responses. These are likely your insightful friends who may be better at listening than entertaining one-liner jokes but also compliment others you know who have a gift for simplification and spontaneity.

Sometimes we think we need to insist on and drive everyone to be the same but there is value in embracing the diversity. So slow down the tendency for comparison for sameness and explore the possibilities of deep insights while taking care to reenergize along the way.

The Speed of Pigeon

I was watching a move over the weekend that was set in New York City in 1924. The difference in the 100 years between then and now was fascinating and notable. Our contemporary reality is overstuffed with information with most of it designed to be full of attention grabbing noise. It’s not a shocker that so many of us suffer from various forms of cognitive and emotional fatigue in our day to day. 

One key observation: We have lost the context and luxury of “slow”. In 1924 key information related to major world and local sporting, news, and political events were transmitted via carrier pigeons to send very short updates from remote places back to a point of collection where the information was then relayed to the visor wearing telegraph guy. Yes, that guy who makes that tap, tap, tap sound to send morse code over physical wires. Sent messages were short, concise, dense, and world perception forming despite the smallness of the information package. 

Those small constraints of the information container and slow transmission practices allowed time for simply processing and gaining some sort of orientation to the subject at hand. Most of all, the entire process only allowed for the important and substantive content. Nobody was trying to sell you a lawnmower alongside the primary information. Imagine that! 

 To help us slow things down and improve communication in today’s thrashing sea of information, unlimited flavors of perspectives opinion, and targeted marketing, here are three core concepts that might help us when used as a guide when communicating. 

 Simplicity - Use a format that takes up the least amount of space and captures the most meaning possible. As if you could boil it down into three or four panels of a cartoon strip.

 Depth - Even if simple and brief, a complexity of emotions, characters, and themes can be folded into the narrative. 

 Consistency - Showing up the same way, leveraging pattern recognition over time creates a foundational shorthand for context and creating a trusted connection through building familiarity and predictability.

“I’m a Fighter Pilot”

In the recent movie, “Top Gun: Maverick”, the main character we all know as Capt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, seems to be having an identity crisis as he faces an international incident. He is trying to find his path, searching how to best apply himself to the situation at hand. 

As he speaks with his lifelong friend and previous arch nemesis, “Iceman”, Maverick exclaims, “I’m a fighter pilot. It’s not what I am, it’s who I am.”

It’s meant to be a dramatic moment, reflecting the inner struggle of Maverick on his path to clarity, purpose, and heroic action. To be honest, it kind of made me laugh as it can come off a bit cliche. But I also liked that line because I think it hits on something very true for most of us that don’t fly fighter jets at Mach 5 on a regular basis.

These two elements are two sides of the same identity coin.

What are you?

Who are you?

What you are is most often related to your context in community. What you do in the context of society such as a profession. This represents an exterior layer of identity. What others see and actions or behaviors tied to a role.

Who you are is personal and points to who you are as an individual person. This is the interior layer of identity. What we see or know of ourselves on the inside. It’s your sense and knowledge of self. 

It’s easy to conflate the two or interchange them but it is more helpful to understand that they are two distinct things that are hyper-connected.  

The intersection and integration of these two elements is foundational for having an anchor point in our personal and professional lives that provides us with our location telling us where we are. Together they also provide a compass that guides us in a direction we may need to move in, where we need to go.

Our clarity on these two things will sometimes be focused times and blurry at others, as we navigate and adjust to circumstance, experiences, growth, and change. Don’t let that throw you. Life is most often not as certain as a paint by numbers art project but a never-ending series of course corrections and adjustments. Capt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell found his way, so can you.

Check It!

Our lives move fast, and they are highly mobile, transitory, and complex. We live in a multi-directional and multi-platform world. It can be overwhelming. To help us manage it all we often use checklists for all things work and life such as shopping, weekend activities, work projects, hobbies, events, and commitments to friends and families. The “list” of lists goes on and on.

Why are checklists our go-to tool? They help us clear away noise, cognitive fatigue, and keep us focused on the important things. It keeps us functional so we checklist it. We checklist it ALL! It provides the control we need.

Checklists provide a skeletal structure to hang all the moving parts of our lives on. It tells us where the pieces belong and where we can find them.  Checklists orient us like a map. In a world of project plans, “10 Step to Greatness”, and an abundance of linear factory thinking they bring order to the chaos.

There are also things checklists do not offer us. Checklists do not provide the essence of our experiences. Checklists might help us organize an event, clarify communication, or arrange all the moving parts of something we are building. But they do not help us enjoy a sunset on the beach or the scents and flavors of our favorite foods. These experiences pulse with energy and meaning because of the beauty of the spaces we visit, the connections we build with others, and the experiences shared together.  

So, the takeaway is this. Leave some room to live part of life “off-checklist”. The unplanned, the creative, the impractical and non-linear. Go for a walk without a plan, agenda, or destination. Leave your phone at home (gasp!). Pick your head up and look around as you walk. Learn the art of noticing what is around you. It might turn out to be an experience you can’t put on a checklist and that just might make it the best thing ever. Here is to your improved and well-maintained mental health!

Misfit

Are you a misfit?

Maybe you don’t fit the status quo?

Are you sometimes “non-compliant” compared to those around you?

Do you see truth outside the system?

When you bear witness to truth outside the system, do you face resistance or get thrown out?

Have you experienced a system having an autoimmune response to your voicing an alternate truth?

You likely have something to say.

It my be unknown if any others need to hear it.

It is probably unclear if it has value to others.

Yet, your bones vibrate as if voice is required.

You don’t struggle with the choice to speak it… anymore.

You search to the find the fewest words.

You find truth can speak volumes

in service of healing and advocacy.

Yes, you are a misfit.

Celebrate!

Secret Mental Health Spot

I was in a conversation with a coach recently and I was briefly describing my favorite spot to grab a healthy salad. It turns out that, if I time it right, in the early afternoon most weekdays, things really slow down.

This allows me to hang out for a couple hours to work on my side projects, draft out some ideas I’ve been thinking through or just catch up on some reading and connect to the local community.

It’s a fantastic restorative space with a great atmosphere. Something about the space fosters the relaxation of life demands and tension. It’s my version of an afternoon at a spa but without the cucumber juice in my eyes.

It occurred to me that it’s become my own secret mental health spot and we all need one. Yes, you too!

Find a place to be still, shed the noise of the previous few days and let what matters most rise to the top.

A good mental health spot will lighten your load, help with clarity, and help you feel human in good ways. We all need a secret mental health spot to help us get there and maintain ourselves today so we can keep going and growing tomorrow.