“Don’t let the good life pass you by.”
– Lyric from “The Good Life,” by Blackberry Smoke
As we begin to shift away from masks and mandatory work-from-home and Zoom / Teams / WebEx / Video Conference to sitting down together to solve problems, one question came in as the early leader in the clubhouse.
“What if things have changed and I haven’t?”
Macro trends try to trick us into thinking that big change occurs all at once. It’s the classic case of the 20-year-overnight-success.
Yes, our world changed “overnight” about 15 months ago – but it pays to look at that change from multiple angles, through multiple filters.
Two of The Three were making good money Door Dashing before things shut down. One might think that their volume would go through the roof when everyone started eating at home. So, too, did a tremendous number of people become Dashers, watering down the pool of available delivery runs. They went from “Dad! $120 tonight,” to “Dad, it was SO slow tonight…” Overnight. Sort of. Over a period of a few weeks.
What about those of us in white-collar pursuits? Endless dopey meetings in person got replaced almost immediately with even worse meetings, more frequently, over video conferencing. How bad did it get? Zoom’s CEO, Eric Yuan — the person who’s seen Zoom’s stock price rise 367% during the crisis, while profits increased elevenfold — recently said he has “Zoom fatigue.”
Even if I just grabbed four or five more examples, this could become a really long post pretty quickly. Instead, I’ll try to cut to the chase:
If we’re worried that things have changed and we haven’t, here are two thoughts for Difference Makers…
- They probably didn’t, and we probably have.
- Even if they did, it’s never too late.
My Friday Morning Gathering of Dudes is starting a book titled Switch On Your Brain: The Key to Peak Happiness, Thinking and Health by Dr. Caroline Leaf.
It’s too early for me to say I like the book. I’m through the introduction and part of chapter one. I’m not a fan of Dr. Leaf’s writing style so far. That said, it’s too late for me to say I disagree with Dr. Leaf’s hypothesis, because Dr. Leaf is 100% spot on with her hypothesis, and she uses science and Scripture to back it up.
We don’t control much. But we do control the way we respond to whatever happens. What we do next will determine whether we lead the way, or get (temporarily) left behind.
PS – I’ll combine your input with great bands this week, in a return, of sorts, of Lyric Month. Blackberry Smoke is a pretty good place to begin… Just sayin’…
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