Monday memo #1
The 80/20 rule.
Hi everyone,
I’m continuing to reflect on what worked well this past year and how to make next year even better. Today I want to share a new addition to our weekly cadence, the Monday Memo.
If there were one thing that has accelerated the whole School of the Possible project this year, hands-down the answer would be our weekly campfire Zoom calls. These are open space, agenda-free conversations for connecting and sharing ideas, projects and inspiration. I always leave feeling energized.
You’re welcome to join any Friday (instructions here), and if you want a personal invite to keep it front and center on your calendar, just send me a note with your preferred email and I’ll add you to the calendar invite.
Part of what has made these calls so meaningful is that they are establishing a weekly rhythm. You tend to make better progress on things when you can establish a rhythm: over time, your daily, weekly, monthly habits become a natural part of your life. For example, I have a daily habit of writing and drawing in my journal every morning and evening. Making space for daily creativity and reflection produces a lot of material that ends up in courses, blog posts, and emails like this one.
I have been thinking about how to build on the weekly rhythm of these Friday calls. The next step I want to try is a Monday Memo. This is the first. Since I’m just introducing the idea today, this is a bit longer than I expect they will be in the future.
My intention is to share a brief note every Monday that introduces an idea to think about, along with a simple activity, exercise or experiment that you can conduct during the week to expand your adjacent possible. Along with the Friday call, the Monday Memo will form brackets — beginning and end points — for a weekly possibility habit. A spark, provocation or hypothesis every Monday, followed by an opportunity to share insights and reflections around the “campfire” on Friday.
My inspiration here is a researcher named James J. Gibson, a psychologist whose research focused on human perception and is perhaps most famous for coining the term affordance. Every year, at Cornell, he would host a “perception seminar” that met weekly and was known for stimulating exciting discussion and debate. In preparation for the seminar he would send out weekly memos as provocations to stimulate thinking. These memos became known as “purple perils” because they were printed mimeograph machines (I am old enough to remember these from my grade school days!). You can read more about Gibson’s purple perils, and even read them, here.
Monday Memo
So now for the fun part: here’s your Monday Memo for today.
Hypothesis: Free time creates optionality and increases impact.
Exercise: Consider the 80/20 rule. Think about which 20 percent of your effort creates 80 percent of the value. This week, observe how you spend your time. Which efforts create the most value?
Look at your calendar. How much of your time is scheduled vs open-ended?
Could you create more “free time” by reducing the number of activities that cost you effort but create little to no value?
If you could create more free time, could you spend more time on activities that create real value and impact?
Membership
The Monday Memo will go out to School members every Monday, and every Friday we will have a chance to talk about our observations and experiments on the Friday campfire call, which is open to everyone. Members will also receive recordings and AI summaries of the Friday campfire call, as well as invitations to join our private mastermind mutual support group and monthly webinars.
If you’re not already a member, you can upgrade your subscription by clicking the button below.
Since it’s the holidays I should remind you that you can purchase a gift subscription for someone you think might enjoy it. Here’s the link for that:
Stay tuned for future emails, as I have more thoughts I will share between now and the new year. I hope you are enjoying these last days of the year, and I’m always happy to hear from you. What are your thoughts? You can send me a note simply by replying to this email.
Until next time,
