This is the Too Many Trees newsletter, where I share what I’ve been writing and reading in the realm of leadership and personal development. My coaching practice is centered around the idea that we are more effective in moving towards our goals when we become more conscious and intentional in focusing our time and attention, and learn how our unconscious patterns are holding us back. If you know somebody that could benefit from my perspective, please forward this to them or let them know they can set up a free intro chat with me.
I am currently stretched between supporting my family and my coaching business, let alone doing anything beyond that. I often tell my clients to match their commitments to their capacity, and to model that myself with my reduced capacity, I will not have a long thoughtful introduction to this edition. Instead, I will ship the minimal version to keep my biweekly schedule, and just link to my recent LinkedIn posts on personal growth and resource allocation, plus a few links I found interesting recently.
LinkedIn: These are ideas or questions that help my clients (or myself), and that I share via LinkedIn to help a wider audience.
Personal growth feels uncomfortable - Humans have a natural tendency to stick to what's comfortable because it's easier. And yet growth requires pushing our limits into an uncomfortable zone where failure is possible and even likely. What makes it worth it for you to lean into that discomfort?
How might you be slowing down your growth? A couple behaviors I have observed that slow down growth are being unwilling to admit one doesn’t know something, or being unwilling to risk failure in trying something new.
Pushing into the discomfort zone - Inverting the behaviors from the previous post show how to accelerate one’s growth by embracing the beginner’s mind of not knowing, and practicing new behaviors where you might fail.
What is the 15% more option? One way to practice extending into the zone of “productive distress” is to ask yourself what the 15% more option is before taking action. In other words, we have a limit of what feels comfortable to us, and if we ask ourselves what 15% more would look like, that’s extending into the discomfort zone while still feeling possible. Even if we don’t take that action, it expands our available options.
Moving from problem solving to resource allocation - I remember watching leadership meetings at Google and realizing that the question was rarely "what should we do about this problem?" but "who should we put on this problem?" In other words, the job of the leadership team was not to solve the problem themselves, but to put the people and resources in place to solve problems.
The most irreplaceable resource is time. If your job as a leader is resource allocation, one way to practice it is by consciously allocating your time your "time budget" each week. How much goes to work? To family or friends? To urgent short-term needs? To building the foundation for long-term success?
Articles and resources I’ve found valuable:
Rage is the only response left, according to a NYT op-ed by a Black man: “These killings are not continuing to happen due to a lack of exposure, but in spite of it. Our systems of law enforcement, criminal justice and communal consciousness have adjusted themselves to a banal barbarism. This has produced in me and many others an inextinguishable rage, a calcification of contempt.”
The Four Buddhist Mantras for Turning Fear into Love - these mantras from Thich Nhat Hanh are touching and wise e.g. “The most precious gift you can give to the one you love is your true presence. So the first mantra is very simple: “Dear one, I am here for you.” What I find valuable about these is they offer a path forward besides the rage offered by the op-ed above.
Bidenomics, explained - I appreciated this explanation of the potential paradigm shift from Reagonomics (tax cuts and trickle-down economics) to “Bidenomics, with its dual focus on research/investment/immigration and care jobs + cash benefits, is an attempt to boost both sectors of the economy at once — to make the export sector more productive while making the domestic sector better at spreading the wealth around.”
Thanks for reading. See you in a couple weeks.