Hi reader,
It's been a little calmer around these parts over the past couple of days, so I'm once again scanning the TOA calendar and looking for an opportunity to schedule my pointless little post, sitting in its sorry limbo since Sunday night. Appropriately, the topic for the post is reopening, so wait and see feels like the best approach. And who knows, maybe next week is the best time, doesn't TOA seem like a good fit in Phase 2, alongside hotels, sidewalk brunch, and my personal favorite - non-contact practices for adult recreational sports leagues. We ain't playing games in Massachusetts, folks. Do you think Governor Baker consulted Allen Iverson?
The official word will come on Saturday, pending the progress of certain key virus metrics. The easy story, perhaps headlining the Right Things To Say segment, is whether the large gatherings from the past week will cause a surge in cases. There is logic behind that thinking, but let's remember that our knowledge of the virus remains limited, and in such cases intuition can often lead us astray. Unless every protester gets sick, let's try to remember that there are plenty of other plausible explanations for a new surge, and that we are playing a game despite having never practiced. In any event, the metrics are the metrics, so if the infections go up then that's pretty much the end of the story, at least in the narrow context of whether we move to Phase 2 next Monday.
For now we remain in Phase 1 for a couple of more days, which means a few more days of planning for reopening. My first experiment will be some very short posts - under 150 words, ideally a bit lower. I didn't pick this number by accident. The consensus seems to be that most adults read between 200 and 300 words per minute, so if you account for the time it takes to open the email, load the data, and do the reading, a 150 word post is about a minute of work. I'm wary of publishing too many long posts because people may become tired, literally tired, of reading TOA, but I trust my readers have the energy for a minute of hard work. In my wildest dreams, I hope the short posts are just enough to whet the appetite, perhaps a form of practice for the big game, so that I can keep everyone's attention when my loyal subscribers open the next post and see that little scroll bar shrink, shrink, shrink until it's no taller than the line I'm crossing now with my verbosity.
It gets to a larger idea that's driven my managerial work over the past few months. The big change in how I've approached my current role is my new priority on energy. By this, I mean really understanding the difference between the work that energizes my team with the tasks that we complete because we are professionals drawing a paycheck. Part of this is a reflection of my self-education, with certain books and observations from the past four years bringing me fresh insights that I've applied to my work. But a significant influence is my personal experience from the same period. I've simply seen the difference for myself. There is a gulf between the work that creates and replenishes energy with the work that drains and eliminates it, particularly in fields where there is no such thing as practice, and often it takes nothing more than time to reveal the chasm. It's worth finding the difference as early as possible so you set the right course at the outset and position yourself to make the continuous, incremental effort, every single day, that leads to lasting, permanent change.
Phase 1 will become Phase 2, maybe on Monday, maybe not. But it will happen, and bring with it a new opportunity. Some will finally get back to work, others will feel better as things start to look more normal. Some have discovered entirely new causes that make pre-pandemic life a quaint distraction from the work of redefining tomorrow. Some have turned thirty-three, and will be considered old for the next few months. All of us will need energy, and the more energy we have the better. In what might be the last few quiet weeks before the pace of life picks up again, I can hardly think of a better task than thinking about what creates energy for us, and making the necessary adjustments so that our world is forever renewable. When it comes to preparing for the game of our lives, a game that will resume soon enough, I can think of no better way to practice.
