Writing with Prompts & Learning Out Loud

I recently subscribed to some writing prompts from Rands. This week, the second prompt spoke to me the most:

A small habit that you’ve built that pays incredible dividends.

Rands Writing Prompts #2

I thought, “Wow, I wish I had a small habit that payed incredible dividends.” Then I started to wonder… do I…?

My biggest little habit is to learn out loud #LearnOutLoud. I tell people what I’m trying to do, and I invite them to join me in doing it. For example, a couple years ago, I made a New Year’s resolution to improve my writing. I needed something catchy to remind me to do this, so I adopted the hashtag #WSD (#WriteSh*tDown, or for a more SFW version: #WriteStuffDown).

I told everyone I could about this hashtag and the practice that it was meant to remind me to do. If a great idea came up in conversation, #WSD. If someone said they needed my help with something, #WSD. If my mom called and asked me to give her a ride to the eye doctor, #WSD. (Yes, calendar entries included!)

For me, it didn’t matter where I wrote stuff down, as long as I did it. I wrote things down in notebooks, on sticky notes, on my whiteboard, on an internal blog, on the back of envelopes, on the front of envelopes, and even on the bathroom mirror. (I eventually ran into a conundrum where I had approximately 4,325 sticky notes and bits of paper on my desk, but that is a problem for another prompt.) And the best part of this practice was the practice. The more I wrote stuff down, the better I got at it. And the more I did it, and found value in it, the more I told people about it. I was learning out loud (sometimes, very loudly 😉 ).

“Gosh, I feel like Kristen right now… have we written this down anywhere?”

an unsuspecting coworker

Telling others about what I was doing, how I was experiencing it, and making it obvious when I was writing stuff down right in front of them, seemed to rub off. I was often the person dropping notes from conversation in the chat for virtual meetings, and then one day, someone else in a meeting start typing notes in the chat. They said, “You were actively talking, so I decided to write stuff down this time.” Someone else told me that they found themselves saying, “Gosh, I feel like Kristen right now… have we written this down anywhere?” And the fact that I was not only learning by doing, but also telling people about it, and then doing it where they could see it happening, I think that made all the difference.

Now, the people I work with most make sure that we check in on who is #WSD for a particular conversation. We more actively share where we have already #WSD when we start to collaborate. I’m still getting better at #WSD, and at writing in general. As I continue to #LearnOutLoud, I also get better at learning, and I find myself doing it more, and more easily. I love the practice of learning out loud, and the impact that I’ve seen it have on my teammates and clients has really been astonishing. I guess I should write that sh*t down somewhere.

So what have you been learning lately? Do you have an opportunity to tell someone about it? Feel free to reach out. I’d love to hear about it and learn something new!

Graciously Accepting Feedback

Have you ever had someone tell you something about your work or your behavior that felt like a straight gut punch? And in feeling those words, whether in your stomach, your heart, or deep in your soul, did you want to actually punch that person back? Or at least verbally?

The struggle is real

The feedback struggle is real. In truth, not as many of us are practiced in giving useful feedback as we’d like to think. But the focus here is not on giving, but on receiving. I’ve found that in practicing the way you receive feedback, you can both improve your work and your behaviors as well as the way that you give constructive feedback to others.

All feedback, whether praise or criticism, should be constructive. If it’s not, it’s just someone’s opinion. And while we’re all entitled to having an opinion, sharing it without any actionable recommendation isn’t useful. When you receive feedback, it may be gifted to you more in the form of a hunk of rock than a beautiful gemstone. When this happens (and it often does), you’ll need to chip away at the outer layers to find what’s hidden beneath.

Can I get a gift receipt?

Take a step back and think about that for a second. I just handed you a rock and told you it was a ruby. Your initial reaction might be to throw the stupid rock back at me. Another option would be to say thank you and discreetly drop it on the ground behind you. Still a third choice would be to take the rock home and throw it in the tumbler to see if there was indeed a ruby inside.

Let’s examine that third choice. This separates receiving feedback from processing and responding to it. When you receive the rock (rough feedback), your first reaction may be to look at it and realize that at face value, it’s not very useful to you. I’ve been told that “feedback is a gift,” and I’ve even said that to others to invite them to share feedback! So no matter how rough, I typically take the approach of accepting it like you’d accept any other gift (even that hideous sweater vest your Aunt Hilda got you for your last birthday): I say, “Thank you.”

Finding hidden gems

Yes, saying thank you may be more generous than you think this hunk of rubble is worth, so if you can’t muster up that much self-assurance, then you can at least say, “Okay,” or, “All right.” From here, you can take the feedback, put it in your backpack until you get home (or until you get back to work the next day), and then unpack it later. To help you process the feedback, you can ask these questions that can help you tumble that rock into a ruby:

  • What are the exact words in this feedback? (This is not derived meaning – we’ll get to that – what we want to start with are the exact words. It’s helpful if you’ve got it written down, preferably from the person who gave it to you.)
  • What do those words mean to me?
  • What do I think is the intention of the person who gave me the feedback?
  • What do they think their intention is?
  • If I were to take on their perspective (“put myself in their shoes”), and I thought I was being (helpful, truthful, productive, etc. — whatever their intention is), then what would I really be trying to say here?
  • Given this reframing from a place of trying to be (helpful, truthful, productive, etc.), what does this feedback mean to me now?
  • Is this feedback actually meaningful to me, when I receive it this way?
  • Now that I know this, what would I like to do about it, if anything?

And here’s a great secret: feedback is just information. You get to make a choice to take action!

Now, sometimes you roll that stuff around in your mind and you realize, it’s a dud. It’s just a hunk of turquoise, and that doesn’t really do you any good, because you were looking for rubies. That’s ok! The process of processing your feedback, empathizing with the well-meaning person who gave you this opaque piece of hydrous phosphate, can help you inspect your own gifts of feedback.

An experiment for you to try!

The next time you receive “feedback,” consider giving this collaborative experiment a go with the contributor of said feedback. I’d love to hear about what you notice when you try this out:

  1. Graciously accept. The next time someone hands you an amorphous blob of feedback, first, say thank you!
  2. Gain clarity. If you have found this feedback immediately actionable, confirm your understanding. For example, “Ok, I hear you saying that you appreciate my slides that have fewer words. Is that right?”

    If you do not see the action that would make a difference, probe for more: “Can you say more about what you’re thinking?” or more directly, “Would you suggest I do something differently?”
  3. Gauge impact. What is the difference that acting on this feedback would make? In the verbose slides example, you could gauge impact by asking, “Is that because it improves readability? Or is it that it helps you focus more on what I’m saying? Or both? Something else?”

    If you’re not seeing the intended impact, simply ask, “What impact does this have for you?” or “How would making this change impact you / your understanding / others / their understanding / etc?”
  4. Give it a try (or not). After you’ve collaboratively explored the feedback, make a choice. Will you act on this feedback? Or won’t you? You don’t need to share that choice with your feedback contributor, but you can decide if you’d like to. Again, it’s your adventure – you choose!

All feedback, whether praise or criticism, should be constructive.

If it’s not, it’s just someone’s opinion.

Want more feedback?

The next time you want to give feedback (this includes a “great job,” folks!), run yourself through the questions above, as if you were the recipient. Does your feedback actually offer helpful and actionable insights? Or is it just your opinion?

Let’s raise the bar for “feedback,” shall we? By sharing more meaningful & actionable feedback, we can short-circuit the tumble time for the recipient, truly gift our gems of wisdom, and improve the human experience all around.

Here are a few posts that I’ve continued to refer to when working on how to frame my feedback. Enjoy!

Finding Your Sense of Urgency

New Year, New You? I’ve had a few conversations lately that tied into not only goal setting, but also the procrastination of those non-urgent-yet-still-important parts of daily life. So let’s explore finding your own internal sense of urgency, and tap into some family movie lessons along the way.

Hold the phone. “Urgency?” You want me to get stressed?

First, not all stress is bad stress. And secondly, no. That’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that it takes intentionality to make things happen, in work and in our lives. Sometimes, we need to intentionally STOP doing something so that we can succeed. Other times, we need to stop starting a million and twelve things, and start finishing the work we already have in progress. And still other times, we need to reimagine what we’re doing with our goal in mind, and start doing something completely different.

For me, I wanted motivation to actually do the things that were most important to me, and get them done. This way, I’d stop having that bad, disappointed-in-myself feeling at the end of the day when I realized I hadn’t done anything meaningful in my previous waking hours. This is why I did it. Now let’s explore how.

Cultivating that sense of urgency

When you’ve got an external deadline, like getting a project done or hosting a workshop, urgency comes naturally. In fact, sometimes it’s in boundless supply, and can lead to undue stress and anxiety. But when the impetus for your wanting to do something is more personally motivated, like starting your business or writing your first novel, it can be harder to cultivate. There’s no external force setting milestones or driving an end date. We can get into a state of qué será será and let these goals linger. When we notice that’s happening, what can we do to “snap out of it”? Arbitrary deadlines probably aren’t great motivation for most people—I know they’re not for me, and they definitely don’t encourage sustainable achievement. So what’s a budding author or entrepreneur or mom of 4 to do?

This seems so simple as I type it out, but it’s really the hardest part. To cultivate that internal sense of urgency, to help you get going and do something, the first step is to start doing it. Wow. Not exciting. I know. The worst part with “just get started” is that very well might seem insurmountable.1 What I’ve noticed for me is that I tend to view my work (both employment and things around the house) in large “chunks.” Sometimes I envision them to be so large that even thinking about having to think about doing them is daunting. It’s just so much, and seems like such a big lift.

When I consciously observe that I’m biggering, as they’d say in The Lorax, then I can take a pause and make a mindset shift. I ask myself, “What is the simplest thing that I could possibly do next?” This forces me to break the work down into more manageable, consumable chunks. It also allows for options. Then, I write down these ideas, these options, and I can choose which one makes the most sense for me to tackle right now. And even better, I can learn something from doing that one little thing!

It’s like that old adage about eating an elephant one bite at a time… but let’s rather think about eating dessert, shall we? We deserve a little treat after noticing what was happening, writing things down, and then holding space for ourselves to discover what emerged. 🍰

What is the simplest thing that I could possibly do next?

Stop biggering. Give your self manageable options. Write things down. Make a choice.

My struggle is real

Let me share a very real example – this blog (not the post you’re reading, but the whole thing). I wrote my first post almost a month before it was published. Why didn’t I publish sooner? Well, there were reasons… First I needed a computer because I wrote it on my phone, and I wanted to make sure it “worked right” before I hit that big blue Publish button. Secondly, I needed to update a link, which was not hard once I started looking for the source. And third, well, let’s be honest: I procrastinated on those first two, and so I forgot that my draft existed until after the holidays… but you know what, once I figured out those three steps (computer check, link update, and publish), it wasn’t as daunting a task. And I did it! I hit the buttons, and beep boop beep, it got here! So even though the struggle is real, the little wins are real, too.

Sustaining your sense of urgency

So far, I’m finding that I can cultivate my sense of urgency just by doing something and getting it done, even if it’s a little thing. That little win feels good. It releases the chemicals to my brain that make me want to keep feeling that way. And to sustain this sense of urgency, without finding myself in constant overwhelm again, or urgency overload, I am leading with intentionality. To me, this means knowing what it is I want to do and why. If I can “explain it to myself” (even if I don’t have to explain it to anyone else), then that’s the reminder I need to maintain my sense of self, and with it, my sense of urgency.

This urgency and intentionality takes work. It’s not just a wish, or a hope, or a New Year’s resolution; it’s a clinic. And it’s for yourself. Like General Mattias shares with Anna in Frozen 2, you have to do the next right thing.

What’s your next right thing?

What could you do today that would be progress on a larger goal? Or maybe it’s that excruciating last step in finishing a project, or cleaning up a room, or hitting send on that carefully crafted email (or publish on that blog post, ahem)? Brainstorm & write down your list of something, anything, that’s a step in the right direction. Whether you’re getting started, or you’re getting finished, I’m sure you’ve got some options to explore. (And you know, we’ll talk more about stop starting and start finishing some other time.)

Could your next right thing be… procrastination?

I’m not saying never procrastinate. We’re humans, and procrastination is a thing we do, a stress response, like having chocolate or going for a run. So like your favorite sweet or your greatest workout, let’s savor that procrastination—just for a moment—be intentional about it, and then, friends, just do the thing. You’ll be happy when that right-next-step task is out of your head and into the world. And who knows, it might be easier or better or clearer than you thought, once you start doing it. And even better, we can all learn something from it!

You’ve got this. Cheers!

Looking for individual coaching?

If you’d like to explore more how to apply practices that are rooted in agility, like noticing, writing stuff down, and learning out loud into your own work/life, reach out. I’m currently open for individual coaching clients.

Note on Mental Health

1For folks who deal with mental illness like anxiety and depression, “just doing it” literally is insurmountable some days. I am not a certified mental health professional, so my sharing here is just what has worked for me. There are free resources for people looking to learn more about their own mental health or aid a loved one at https://www.cdc.gov/mentalhealth/tools-resources/individuals/

Reflections on Doomscrolling

I’m sitting here, next to my youngest daughter, on the couch. I finally decided to run a clean cycle on the oven, and the fan is blowing on high. That means that the show she’s watching on Netflix has the volume up to an audible volume (like 5 clicks higher than normal). And what am I doing?

You guessed it. Doomscrolling.

At first, I told myself that scrolling through LinkedIn was at least better than other social media sites—you know the ones. (And no, I’m not talking about MySpace.) I entertained thoughts like, “I’m building my professional network,” or, “I’m keeping up on the industry,” and even, “this is basically business research.”

And while all those things may have been my true, conscious intention at one point or another, I found that the behavior I was engaging in was incredibly similar to your standard doomscrolling, just with different content. I was inundating my mind with a million different things as my body was sitting there, stationary and sedentary, save the incessant scrolling.

Why? Why over-consume like this? Well, there’s likely some explanation for capitalism encouraging overconsumption. But besides that, I’ve found my doomscrolling is an escape hatch. It’s a procrastination strategy. I can dump time and energy and eyesight and brain cells into scrolling through social media, and though it seems to release some sort of endorphins or something in the moment, it’s really just an empty, time-wasting practice.

Now don’t get me wrong, some “procrastination” can truly be a good thing — it can preserve options and allow you to leverage the principle of Last Responsible Moment. But for me, I noticed I was procrastinating on a few fronts.

First, spending time with my daughter. She’s not going to be 4 forever, but man this show isn’t my jams. I really don’t want to watch it. My daughter doesn’t mind if I don’t watch it either. She just wants me to sit with her because she’s sick.

Secondly, actually furthering my business or myself. I can play at exploration for a while, but really, I need to be setting up accounts, determining offerings, looking for prospective clients, and more. I need to be writing things down (oh, hi, yes, like this blog post), and allowing myself to “be bored” so I can unlock some more creativity.

What I’m finding is that my boredom and escape remedies aren’t actually remedying anything. In fact, they’re taking me further away from my values of connection, growth, and sustainability. And equally as bad, these actions are stifling my creativity.

So to kick off 2023, (or really, anytime) give yourself the gift of presence and maybe also some real boredom. If you found this post by doing some doomscrolling, well, I gotta be honest, I’m glad you’re here 😊 but don’t feel the need to go scroll around more. Take a break. Take a breath. Set your phone down. Close your computer. Make yourself a cheerful beverage (and yes, water can be quite festive – dry January, anyone?!), and enjoy what’s actually important. Happy new year!