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June is Pride Month in many countries, including Ireland, and on Saturday, I attended the Pride parade in Dublin. As in previous years, I loved the good vibes and the joyful and inclusive atmosphere one can feel on these occasions, where everyone is welcome to show up exactly as they are.

Afterwards, at home, I was chatting with my daughters about the multitude of identities included in the LGBTQ+ compound (apologies, I´m probably missing more letters), and I came to think about this thing people love to stick onto themselves, and to others: labels.

(Sign seen on a disabled toilet door in Ikea Dublin. My guess is that it´s a neutral gender toilet, but I haven´t been able to confirm this. To me, it looks like a person carrying two Ikea boxes...)

The topic of labels is quite complex; I can see how one could argue for or against them. But before we get deeper into this topic, it´s good to remember that our brain is not designed to help us be happy, but to help us survive. And in order to ensure this crucial mission is accomplished, it has evolved to optimise its functions, developing patterns that allow it to make decisions very fast with while keeping energy consumption low.

This ability to quickly interpret and "classify" situations (and people) has been tremendously helpful to us humans across many generations; at the end of the day, we are alive today because all of our ancestors managed to survive at least enough to reproduce, that is, on multiple occasions, they were able to identify potential problems and move away from them. And that included evaluating each person they found as "friend" or "enemy", as "one of us", or "one of the others".

Another positive side of all these patterns and mehchanisms is that they help us to understand the world around us; we could say they arrange to put together a model, a set of stories, that give us a highly simplified but very understandable version of a reality that can be very, very complex. And that makes us feel good.

The problem is that the exact same mechanisms get us into trouble sometimes, for several reasons. First, because, in order to simplify, our brain needs to necessarily alter and reduce the information, through generalisations, distortions and omissions, which may not matter much in certain contexts, but in others, it does, paving the way for prejudice, stereotypes and misunderstandings to appear (in a future article, I´ll get into more details on cognitive biases, a very meaty topic!)

Second: following this logic of trying to increase the chances of survival, our brain benefits from not being too trusting: if I bump into someone I don´t know, and I mistakenly classify them as an "enemy" when they´re not, that´s OK, I will survive regardless, but if I mistakenly identify them as a "friend" and it turns out not to be... The consequences can be terrible.

And a third point that´s also related is that humans are tribal beings, it´s in our blood. In terms of evolution, belonging to the group, to the clan, provided you with protection, this way increasing the chances of survival. And we have inherited that tribalism, seeking to fit in with the group, judging how others fit in or not, highlighting our similarities with "our people" and accentuating our differences from "the others".

After explaining all this, let´s get back to the topic of labels. I hope the reasons why we use them so much are a bit easier to see now: simply put, we are wired to do so.

But the fact that we´re programmed to do it doesn´t mean we do it well; today´s world is a lot more complex and sophisticated than that of our ancestors, so we need more sophisticated thinking tools, as well as learning to know when to get out of autopilot mode because the occasion requires more attention and intention from our side.

That´s why investing in our own personal development and growth is really important, so that we can make more conscious decisions that bring us better results in any aspect of life (or rather, in all of them).

And as we make progress in our path of self-discovery, we will find words and concepts that will help us understand ourselves better, adding nuances and explanations to our identity. The concepts included in LGBTQ+ may be some of those labels, as are the personality profiles described by the Enneagram, and so many other things...

Giving things a name helps us understand and accept them, and from that point of view, labels can be really positive at certain points in time. But the important thing is not to cling to our labels too tightly, not to identify with them too much, because then they stop being a point of reference to become a limitation, and in many cases, an excuse.

What do you think of this? Are you in the process of putting any labels on or off?

Quarterly planning

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Once again, we reach that moment when, in the Norther hemisphere, we enjoy the longest day and the shortest night of the year: it´s the summer solstice. And once again, we got lucky with the weather, like last year: it´s been a gorgeous day here in Ireland.

Now that I think about it, all season changes have something special,, don´t they? Very often they´re moments of change also within us, or at a minimum, a great opportunity to take a step back and assess how we´re doing.

(Photo taken at Malahide beach, exactly one year ago)

In previous years, I wrote about small rituals you can perform on days like this, like, for example, during Saint John´s Eve. This time, however, I´m afraid my proposal sounds considerably less glamorous and more bureaucratic, though I hope you will find it equally inspiring, and above all, useful: doing quarterly planning.

This is something that, in many companies, including where I work (at least in the technology-oriented areas), is a well-established process, and, coincidentally, our team is due to do it this coming week, although we´ve already been preparing for a couple of weeks. The basic steps we follow and the questions we ask ourselves can be used for all kinds of projects, big and small, personal and professional:

The first thing we have to do is clarify priorities:

  • What would we like our main focus to be in this coming quarter?
  • When the quarter is over, what would we like to have achieved?
  • What else would we like to at least make some progress on?

Let´s remember some basic rules when it comes to prioritising anything: if everything is equally important, then nothing is, which makes the word "priority" lose its meaning, rendering the whole system completely useless. What definitely works is estabilshing an order of priorities,, ranking them so that no positions are shared. So, to ensure the first priority is actually the first one on the list, the rest of tasks, projects or goals have to necessarily be placed underneath.

A technique that can really help here is distinguishing between tasks, projects or goals that absolutely need to be in the plan for whatever reason (also called "must-have"), and the ones that it would be nice to get included, but that are not indispensable as such (also called "nice to have"). This distinction can clarify a lot for us, making the rest of the process a lot more straightforward.

By the way, I want to say that I´m generalising a lot here; when I refer to "tasks, projects or goals", it can be literally anything that´s important to us and that we want to give time, energy and attention to. For this summer quarter, for example, one of the top priorities may very well be to rest and go on vacation, which is absolutely necessary in order to maintain a sustainable pace later on.

Once priorities are clear, and knowing the reason why the top priorities are at the top, we move on to define the work:

  • How much work is involved in each of these priorities?
  • What is the work? What needs to be done (roughly)?
  • What resources do we need to do that work? Do we already have them, or are we dependent on others to get them?

The idea here is to understand the scope of each task, project or goal, getting to a level of detail that allows us to roughly estimate the effort. We should also have a good understanding of whether we depend on others, or others depend on us, to successfully complete it.

Now that we have a relatively clear idea of the work, we can move to calculate capacity:

  • How much work can we tackle this trimester? (taking into account other factors as well)
  • Does everything we were hoping to fit in, fit in?
  • How can we adjust the plan so that we maximise the results?

And here is where the rubber meets the road: evaluating capacity against workload. We all have a limited amount of hours in a day, and in the majority of cases, other tasks and obligations to attend to, so this step is fundamental: how realistic is to try and cover everything we´re including in the plan?

Finding the answer to this question can be a little tricky sometimes, and it may require negotiation with others or with ourselves if, after doing all the sums, it doesn´t all "fit in". But that´s exactly why doing this exercise is so fundamental; to be able to, on the one hand, adjust and optimize the plan as required, and on the other hand, manage expectations (those from others, and also our own). All this is what is going to allow us to increase our chances of success.

What do you think of this process? Do you see yourself doing this for your personal life, or maybe a creative or professional project? I have a few things I want to move forward this summer, so that I can start strong in September.

What about you? What´s your plan?

Premeditatio malorum

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Today´s article begins with these words in Latin: premeditatio malorum, which we could translate as "pre-studying future evils".

And even though it sounds like a joke (to Spanish-speaking people, at least), like those fake Latin phrases we used to read in Asterix comic books, it turns out it´s a real thing, an expression from centuries ago. It´s a technique used by the ancient Stoic philosophers; I learned it in a Stoicism training course by Autognosis (thanks, Luis!)

(Flowers drawn by Eva, the artist in our family, on our kitchen whiteboard.)

This week, a few things happened around me that threw me off in a rather big way; things that made me consider situations I wouldn´t even have thought of until recently. And thinking about them, without noticing, I saw myself in the worst-case scenario. Which is exactly what this exercise is about: allowing ourselves a certain amount of time to recreate that situation we´re scared to see happening.

But not in a masochistic way, with the intention of suffering more, but, paradoxically, in order to suffer less. When we become worried about the future, we know only too well that just telling our mind not to worry doesn´t work at all; we´re going to worry anyway. So, what this technique proposes is not to run away from that thought, or to try and cover it, but to give it a chance to surface. This way, by visualising and imagining the worst-case scenario as if it were actually happening, we let ourselves integrate it, process it, and accept more peacefully the possibility (even if remote) of it happening.

Moreover, this technique can also help us to be better prepared for whatever may happen, or even to reduce the probability of it happening, if there are things in our power to try and avoid it. This is what I did as well, without noticing: I went what would I do in this situation? How would I manage? What resources would I have? And from there, I made a number of hypothetical decisions that provided me with a clearer picture of that imaginary future, which no longer looked that terrible.

At the end of the day, it´s all about "decatrastophizing" that future threat by bringing it down to earth, giving it a shape and coming up with an action plan that puts our mind at ease, as we position ourselves at the helm as opposed to staying adrift.

For best results, ideally, this exercise should be done in writing, reserving a reasonable amount of time (not too long) to get yourself in the situation, imagine all the details and observe the thoughts and emotions that start bubbling up. What options do you have?

You can write it all in three separate colunns:

  • Situation: your fear, the worst possible scenario.
  • Prevention: what is under your control to prevent this issue from happening?
  • Management: if it ends up happening, what is under your control to solve or mitigate the issue?

This way, by facing the threat and reflecting on it, anxiety paradoxically decreases instead of increasing. Because we go from being preoccupied about the problem to being occupied with building the solution. And on top of that, as it´s all written down, once the exercise is over, our mind can free itself up from this topic and focus again on other things.

As a final note, let´s all remember that we are stronger than we think. And as Marcus Aurelius, one of the great Stoic philosophers, once said:

Do not worry about the future.
You will face it with the same weapons
with which you face the present.

Awareness to Action: Enneagram Strategies

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Today, we´re continuing with the basic concepts of the Awareness to Action model (also called ATA), by Mario Sikora, a methodology based on the Enneagram of Personality that provides powerful and practical tools for personal and professional development.

The other day, we looked at one of the dimensions of this model, the three instinctual biases, and today we´re going to focus on the other one, the nine strategies. Each dimension describes a different aspect of the way we are, and when we combine them, we get 27 personality profiles, which, even though they don´t explain everything about people (not even close!), they do provide plenty of information regarding patterns of thought, emotion and behaviour that are habitual and characteristic of each profile.

You may be wondering, what´s the use of all this? Well, apart from allowing us to understand people better (starting with ourselves), it allows us to recognise when those non-conscious patterns (our good old autopilot, heavily influenced by the elephant) are causing us trouble instead of helping us, so that we can take control and choose a more adaptive option depending on the circumstances, achieving better results, and with less suffering along the way.

In other words, have you ever heard that humans are the only animals to ever trip over the same stone twice? Well, working with the Enneagram helps us to discover those stones we keep tripping over again and again, and to figure out what to do to in order to come to terms with them.

(Symbol of the Enneagram: nine points placed around a circle, represented by numbers from 1 to 9, and with lines linking each point with another two points it relates to.)

So, let´s dive into the strategies. First of all, I want to clarify that when we say "strategy" in this context, we´re not referring to something conscious and deliberate coming from your rational mind, like when we talk about a market strategy, or a military strategy. Here, once again, we´re referring to non- conscious patterns; in this case, the specific way in which our brain has learned to face day-to-day problems and situations.

The other day we spoke about how the instinctual biases show us the needs that each of us considers most important (the ones related to preserving, navigating or transmitting, depending on the case). Well, the nine strategies show us the ways in which we tend to try and satisfy those needs. Each of us uses one of the nine strategies more than the other eight, and that´s what determines our Enneagram type.

The definitions of each ennea-type slightly vary depending on the approach to the Enneagram being used, and needless to say, they´re only the tip of the iceberg; there´s so much depth to explore underneath. In ATA, each strategy is defined by our striving to feel a certain way, and that way we want to feel becomes our deepest motivation, as well as the filter through which we perceive life and interact with it.

  • Ennea-type 1 is striving to feel perfect.
  • Ennea-type 2 is striving to feel connected.
  • Ennea-type 3 is striving to feel outstanding.
  • Ennea-type 4 is striving to feel unique.
  • Ennea-type 5 is striving to feel detached.
  • Ennea-type 6 is striving to feel secure.
  • Ennea-type 7 is striving to feel excited.
  • Ennea-type 8 is striving to feel powerful.
  • Ennea-type 9 is striving to feel peaceful.

These "ways of feeling" determine the "default mode" in which we operate most of the time, and, as you can see, they go way beyond behaviour: in reality, they are nine totally different ways to understand the world.

I like the way Alberto Peña Chavarino explains this: it´s as if we were all wearing glasses with tinted lenses of a specific colour, perhaps pink, or green, or blue, and therefore we see life as if filtered through that colour, while other people see it in a different colour because the tint in their glasses is different. I would dare say that the majority of problems, frustrations and misunderstandings we have in life are due to not realizing, first, that we´re wearing the glasses, and second, that others are wearing other glasses that are not like ours.

This depth is precisely what distinguishes the Enneagram from other personality models: we´re not focusing on behavious here, as one same behaviour can come from very different motivations. We focus on what lies behind, what ultimately causes that behaviour (or that way of thinking or feeling). That´s why we have to be very careful with the words used, and go beyond them, to the intention, to the why.

For example, when somebody tells us that they´re a "perfectionist", we can fall into the trap of immediately thinking they´re Enneagram type 1, the one striving to feel perfect. But what exactly do we mean by perfectionism, and what´s the motivation behind those behaviours? It could indeed be a type 1 trying to be morally correct and adhere to the established rules, but it could also be a type 3 looking to show excellence, and therefore be outstanding, or a type 6 looking to avoid risks that could jeopardise their job.

In a similar way, the same perception of "wanting others to be happy" may originate from several different motivations: do I want to help you to feel good, so that I feel connected to you and valued, like a 2 would do? Do I want you to be happy so that you don´t bring me down, and I can be happy and excited, like a 7 would do? Or do I want to minimise my needs so that I´m not in your way and we get to keep the peace, like a 9 would do? As you can see, a single behaviour doesn´t confirm anything, though it is an observable data point that we can gather together with other data points, until a hypothesis starts to take form.

And once our hypothesis makes sense and we see consistency in the way we interact with life, we can start applying it to our personal and professional development work.

Let´s remember that the key to all this is NOT to identify as an ennea-type and simply accept it as what we are (or even worse, use it as an excuse to justify yourself and neglect to change). The idea is to realise that what we do habitually (how we think, how we feel, how we behave) so that we can make the most of it, and make it flexible whenever suits.

What do you think of all this? Do you see yourself reflected in one of the nine strategies? You may see yourself in more than one, and that´s also normal. Later on, we´ll talk about the connections between points in the Enneagram symbol, and how we can leverage them to our advantage.

Ma ka hana ka ʻike

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This week, I´m bringing you a proverb from Hawaii, no less (thanks, Ryan!): Ma ka hana ka ʻike, which could be translated as "in doing, one learns", or in other words: true knowledge is acquired through practice.

Photo of a white sheet of paper with line drawings in black pen - multiple sections with different types of lines and patterns

This is a picture of a draft I made a couple of years ago using line drawing techniques, something I learnt from a work colleague (thanks, Valerie!) and that I really enjoyed, despite being terrible at it.

Now, why was I terrible at it? Well, because drawing is not something I would have practiced much (or at all, to be honest). At some point towards the end of my childhood, I remember looking at one of my drawings and coming to the conclusion that, given that I wasn´t any good at it, it was better to give it up.

And now, looking back, I realize I did the same with many other activities: try it once, be mediocre or bad at it, and immediately consider it a lost cause. Sports, arts and crafts, and even cooking for a good few years, all fell into this category. Anything creative and/or spontaneous requiring skills I didn´t have.

What never crossed my mind back then was that I didn´t have those skills yet, but I could cultivate them. Back at that time, there was no mention of, or at least I never heard about growth mindset .

The good news is that nowadays we do know skills can be cultivated and improved. But what´s the best way to do that?

The clue could be in a learning model that´s one of the most widely used by companies: the 70/20/10 rule, which originated in a study from the nineties, and postulates that, in a workplace environment, 90% of the learning is not of a formal nature, but informal:

  • 70% of learning is experiential: it comes from on-the-job experiences, performing tasks, facing new situations, making decisions, and above all, living new and challenging experiences.
  • 20% is social learning: it happens through discussions, information sharing with colleagues, collaboration in pairs or groups, work with a coach or mentor, etc.
  • Only 10% is formal learning, including training courses, masterclassess, books, articles, videos...

As you can see, this rule agrees with the Hawaiian proverb: the best way to cultivate skills is to practice them. Ideally, we would start to practice after having learned a bit about that particular skill, and we would be part of a group that can support us in that learning.

So this article is dedicated to all of those who, like me, are or once were an "eternal pupil", so that we finally stop: once you have the knowledge foundations and find a community that can support you in your growth, it´s time to take the plunge and start practising NOW. Not "when you are ready", because that´s never going to happen if you don´t get started.

So, what about you? What are you going to practise this week?

Untranslatable expressions: sueño atrasado

/ binarybea / 2 Comments

This weekend we´ve taken it easy, the girls and I; I think we all needed to rest. And it did us a lot of good, though I´m not sure it was enough for the level of accumulated tiredness we all had (and it´s only been a month since school started!).

Photo of a dark grey sofa with chaise long, in a well lit living room.

(Photo of our old sofa, which we said goodbye to a couple of months ago. I´ve enjoyed so many naps on that sofa...)

The other day, just by coincidence, or I should say, thanks to Google´s algorithms, I found an article suggesting that nowadays, we live in the burnout society. It explained that many of us live in a situation of chronic tiredness, and the worst part is that we have normalized it. Our society values constant activity, so that´s what we do: we fill up our calendars to the brim in order to take in more, to achieve more, as a way to motivate ourselves and be happier. We don´t need anybody to exploit us; we exploit ourselves. And somehow, we perceive rest as a waste of time, something we cannot afford.

The result? We are exhausted, individually and also collectively.

But in reality, what we cannot afford is not to rest. And if we don´t learn this the easy way, we will learn it the hard way.

Today´s "untranslatable expression" is tener sueño atrasado, which is our way to express in Spanish that we´re sleep deprived, that we got less sleep than we should have, either during the previous night or over a longer period of time (I´ve even heard someone jokingly say they suffered lack of sleep since their first Holy Communion...)

I like this way of expressing it because it conveys the idea that there´s a certain debt, a time debt in this case, that has to be "repaid" in order to catch up and bring things back to normal. And it´s precisely this concept of "catching up" that´s conveyed by the closest expression I found in English: having to catch up on sleep.

Unfortunately, what the experts say is that we can never make up for lost sleep. It´s not as easy as oversleeping one day to compensate for the day you underslept.

But then, what can we do? I can think of a few things:

What do you think of these suggestions? Oh, and I saved the best for last...

One thing that helps me immensely is considering rest and self-care as part of my job; if I don´t take care of myself and I don´t rest well, my physical and mental abilities will not be the same, and I won´t be able to give my all as a mother, an analyst or a coach.

I acknowledge that I'm saying all this as I type this post in the middle of the night, so as you can see, I still have a way to go towards fully following my own advice. But what I can tell you for sure is that, nowadays, I'm dedicating a lot more attention to rest than I did a few years ago, and more importantly, I no longer feel guilty for resting, sleeping and "wasting time" every once in a while.

MITs

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Do you have a list of pending tasks that´s longer than your arm? Do you get up every morning with the intention of doing a number of things, and finish your day exhausted, stressed out and unable to finish them all? If so, welcome to the club 🙂

Photo of a notebook page with the words "To do..." written at the top left corner, space to write the date at the top right corner, multiple lines with chckboxes for writing tasks, and a box labelled "Priorities"

(Photo of one of the pages in my «things to do» notepad. By the way, "a list as long as your arm" is a very Irish thing to say; in Spanish it sounds a bit weird, but in any case, I love it, I think it´s very visual.)

Something that works really well for me on days when the list of "I have to´s" is overwhelming, is asking myself what the most important task of the day is. It´s what Leo Babauta from Zen Habits calls the MIT, the Most Important Task).

Babauta suggests listing every morning up to three priority tasks (or MITs), with at least one of them being directly linked to one of our goals. Then, the key is to do those tasks as early as possible, so that, regardless of how the rest of the day goes, we will have made progress already. That way, we will go to bed every night feeling successful, instead of feeling like a failure.

A list with three tasks seems a lot more manageable than a list as long as your arm, right?

But we can even take it another step further, which is what I do sometimes. We can reduce the list to ONE single task, THE most important thing that needs to be done (or rather, that you choose to do) on that day.

And each day will be different: sometimes the most important task will be work-related, sometimes it will be more related to your personal or family life. Sometimes it will involve motivating yourself and finally tackling that thing you´ve been postponing for so long, and sometimes it will make you go back to basics and get some rest, go for a walk, meet a friend or simply go to sleep, just. because you need it, so that will become the priority.

The key is to recognise that it´s not humanly possible to complete each and every task we burden ourselves with, and to prioritise the time and energy that we do have in a way that makes us feel good and allows us to keep making progress.

What about you? What´s the most important thing you have to do today? Pick one single thing, and go for it!

Urgent, or important?

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I´ve wanted to write a blog post about this topic for a while, as I believe it´s important. But, because it´s not urgent, I´ve been pushing it out... Which is exactly the crux of the matter.

This is what´s called Eisenhower matrix, and if you´ve been into personal development stuff for some time, I´m sure you´ll be familiar with it already. It is featured in many books and articles on "time management" (which, in reality, should be called "priority management", because we can´t manage time as such; what we can manage is what we use time for).

It´s a simple proposal: first, acknowledge that we´re always going to have more things to do than time to do them; and therefore we need to prioritize. And second, evaluate the level of urgency and importance of each task, and based on that, decide what to do first, what to do next and what not to do.

  1. Tasks that are urgent and important require immediate action, so it makes sense that they´re the highest priority. This is a type of work we could categorize as "putting out fires": we must do it as soon as possible so that it can be finished on time, because if it´s not, there are clear negative consequences.
  2. The Important and not urgent tasks get us closer to our goals without having a specific deadline. This is related to strategic work, and the key here is to plan for it: schedule time on the calendar and dedicate time intentionally; otherwise, there´s a risk of postponing it for too long or never getting around to it.
  3. The urgent and not important ones are tasks that keep us busy but don´t give us much value in the sense that they don´t help us achieve our goals; they actually tend to get us off track. Paperwork, interruptions, requests from others... Ideally, we want to delegate or automate these as much as possible to avoid them being too time-consuming.
  4. And lastly, the not urgent and not important tasks are all those distractions we often fall in and get no value out of; they´re true "time sinks", and the best we can do is eliminate them. (Note: here, I´m referring to a million different ways we humans procrastinate and look for a hollow and superficial escape from reality. Not to be confused with taking time to truly rest, practice hobbies, connect with ourselves, look after our relationships, etc., which would fall into category number 2.)

What do you think of this system? If you´ve never used it, or if you haven´t used it for a while, I encourage you to find out how much time you typically spend in each of these quadrants, especially if you´re watching the days and months go by and you´re not making progress towards where you want to be. Do you spend all day putting out fires? Or performing tasks for others when they could be handled differently? Or maybe wasting time with distractions that don´t truly fulfil you?

I myself am currently in the process of adjusting a few things; I badly need it...