If “Life is 90% how you react,” how’s your reacting going?
Everyone has heard the “Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.” ― Charles R. Swindoll
Settling into my new normal, with my son home from college, working from my apartment, and living in the most densely populated region of the US. The coronavirus is pressure testing a range of things I believed were true. I find myself trying to focus on things I can control and “doing the next right thing.” (Just finished watching “Frozen II.” Sorry)
Here are some ideas that I’ve found helpful:
- The quick read to help you get ready for what’s next is from Morning Brew, a Guide to Living Your Best Quarantined Life
- Approach it the way you would any Good Strategy: diagnose the challenge, form a guiding policy, and map a set of coordinated actions
Because I’m not brilliant like many of my colleagues, I reach for the constraints of frameworks and mental model to point me in the right direction:
- Try this as a mental models jumping-off point from Gabriel Weinberg
- Really enjoy the super applicable Sprint from Jake Knapp
- I’ve been facilitating a number of strategy sprints with clients and just finished a course from AJ & Smart and looking for other programs
- Big fan of Strategyzer’s Business Model Canvas
And the “granddaddy of the all,” Systems Thinking. I’ve come to the conclusion that when you try to make these ideas operational for a real business, #systemsthinking is really at the core of most of these other ideas.
- The beginning is a very good place to start, with Peter Senge’s book The Fifth Discipline
- Here is a quick but nice overview by Miles MacFarlane
- And a nice reimagination of system thinking combined with a strategy sprint by Tom Wujec at Ted in First, Tell Me How To Make Toast
That should hold you for a bit on Monday.
Stay safe and let me know how you are reacting to what’s happened.
