Choose when to Recharge our Personal Energy
E35: R&R 5 - "Step into the void—where all things that never existed are created." Ozan Varol
Welcome and welcome back, Tilt community, to Edition 35.
We have a tradition of taking the equivalent of a 7th-inning stretch. It breaks the publishing cycle, offers a reset, and an opportunity for you to catch up on editions you may have missed. You get to tell me what material was most useful in your journey, what phrases or ideas stood out, and which essays got you thinking “Uh?” (in a good way). In this edition:
Why Energy Management?
Compendium - review of the issues in this cycle, and what they say as a body of work
Meet a member - Karena de Souza
We welcome ten new members to our Tilt community bringing our number to 118. For the first time I see email addresses I do not recognize, so I thought it would be a good moment to re-introduce myself to you in this edition. Click on the links to see how this newsletter has evolved in response to your comments and suggestions.
See you again next week.
Karena
Rest message 5: Managing our personal energy
I cannot say it better than this visual that Prashant graciously allowed me to use. Choose when you recharge. Or you will be forced to.
I nearly suffered from burnout in my career because I did not understand the need and value of recuperation. There was always one more urgent project at work, one more report to write, and one more … I would jump straight into the next big project right after giving 120% at work and 280% at home. Doable. But not sustainable. When the tank was empty my body would retaliate in response and I’d go down with the flu or a migraine. “Recharge”, it seemed to say, “I beg you.”
Read more about my philosophy on recovery and why I picked every 7th edition in the “rest” editions:
- 7 Learning to Pace Ourselves,
- 14 In the quiet week,
- 21 Slack Time and
- 28 The Space to Breathe.
Your continued interest in the topic encourages me to keep sharing this message about the importance of rest to support our overall well-being (one of the core pillars in my work).
I believe this life skill will be crucially important for all generations to learn. The number of projects and channels vying for our attention increases exponentially. When I grew up I had a choice of three TV channels broadcasting in the evening hours with adult-only content after 9 pm. Today’s impressionable preteen has 24/7 access to 1000s of channels across a variety of platforms filled with other people’s ideas. We need to show them the value in switching-down.
Since starting these rest editions, I’ve also noticed how many other thought leaders are also advocating for healthy energy management as a way of improving real productivity as opposed to ‘look busy’.
Today I am linking to an article by Ozan Varol. I highly recommend his book “Think like a rocket scientist”. Meantime enjoy this snippet from his current blog post titled “The lie about productivity”
Phrases that stuck out for me:
If you slow down, you won’t get left behind. You’ll use less energy, you’ll go faster, and you’ll go deeper. The pedal-to-the metal mentality is the enemy of original thought. Creativity isn’t produced—it’s discovered.
You’ll find that taking your foot off the pedal can be the best way to accelerate.
Digest of the past few issues:
In the FUTURE OF WORK (FoW) and 21st-century skills section:
Outlier - Cluster - Trend: Get in the habit of looking for leading indicators so that we are able to pick up on cyclical patterns and new trends. Futures literacy offers a young person the ability to quickly reset and incorporate new information into their perspective.
Celebrating Community - Using the power of community to accelerate and sustain our learning journey.
PARENTING:
Another in a long line of firsts: A proud parent moment as our son dropped his first single. But it is also a reminder that I am one of us - still very much in this journey of learning how to evolve effectively as a parent from caregiver to advisor.
CLIMATE:
Inviting Gen C into the Climate Conversation: How to offer the youngest among us the tools and language to participate in the climate conversation with hope and possibility. Includes the link to a free book created by The Carbon Almanac that little humans can read with and to their trusted adults.
“The BTS angle feels like the most Karena post ever. Quirky, culturally relevant, with a side of hope + justice. Love it!” commented back Kathleen Martin (Canadian SeaTurtle Network)
OK. So there were also those two BTS picture-essays. Yes. That BTS - the Korean-pop boy-band. Where could these possibly fit into a newsletter that talks about parenting, FoW and Climate? On the face of it, they do not belong. But wait …
I struggle with expressing big ideas visually. During this past cycle of seven, I was influenced by Terri Lonier’s class titled Authority by Design which introduced me to frameworks. Suddenly I’m discovering different ways to express the jumble in my head. Only you can tell me if it was effective:
Sticky to Stickier - How the BTS funnel trapped me: From a FoW perspective, I wanted to understand how today’s algorithms manage and manipulate our behaviour. Was it curiosity about my son’s passion for music production that suddenly put BTS on my radar in a big way? Or was it watching Squid Game? Either way - as always - it started with pulling on a thread that my kids had left hanging.
Hunting for Hope - This is where my interest in BTS intersected with my consistent advocacy of the 17 UNSDG - United Nations Sustainable Development Goals - which include climate and community care. Because of their global cross-generational reach, BTS were selected as Global Ambassadors for this important set of … “17 Goals that we need to meet together. We are today’s generation as well as the future generations, we still have many days left to live. Therefore the SDGs strike a balance between today’s generation and tomorrow’s generation in order to achieve equal benefits for all. Since we are part of today’s generation and tomorrow’s generation, we understand the importance of the SDGs and we feel a great responsibility.” (BTS member Kim Nam-Joon aka RM in an interview at the UN)
Are you ARMY? If so, expect more BTS content. Because I think they are a great metaphor for the way our society is evolving and embracing the new shape of work - from the way they navigate mental wellness, create community, parent each other and create new income streams.
Meet a member: Karena de Souza
I am a strategist. I am a parent. I am a global citizen. Hi - I’m Karena. Like so many of us humans, I am a complex fusion of interests and actions.
These two UNSDG goals encapsulate my interests:
This newsletter, Tilt the Future, was launched to bring more positive headlines onto your radar. I want us to share stories about the opportunities we can find, the possibility for change and the imperative to do it. As you can see from the digest above, you will find an odd intersection of topics around the Future of Work, the Climate Conversation and Parenting.
On the surface, this might seem like an odd combo. It is a little like ordering a Hawaiian pizza: ham and pineapple (it’s a Canadian thing!) and asking for anchovies on it too. But what can I tell you? After turning up my nose at it for many years, I find that this unusual blend of savoury, sweet and salty wakes up parts of my brain.
Future of Work - We are entering a significant change in the way we work that started with technology, but that will ripple through all levels of the way we live. Life in the decades ahead will be unrecognizable. How do we give ourselves and our families the ability to recognize opportunity and the 21st-century skills to thrive in the new tomorrow?
Climate - is a big issue facing us and future generations. We desperately need solutions. Solutions come from hope. And the best idea can come from anyone, anywhere, at any time. I bring encouraging climate conversations to your attention.
Parenting - this is the one job we will do with the most prolonged ROI. The impact will be felt for generations. Yet our child does not show up with an operations manual. We struggle to set our kids up for success, in a world as alien to us as the surface of Mars. But know that we do have enough within us to offer our children the tools to make this transition. Many of us in this Tilt community are parents and therefore a great resource to other parents-in-action & in-planning.
Would you like me to create a presentation for your community? Contact me. I share the message of possibility and perspective around the Future of Work. I talk to students, parents, educators and employers.
What else do you want to know about me? I am a proud Mother of Dragons with 2.75 having flown the nest. I’ve published a decision guide: “Contours of Courageous Parenting - Tilting Towards Better Decisions”. I embrace the ! to the disappointment of many - it’s just the way I roll!
And I would rather see the glass as refillable than half empty.
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That battery recharge is good! I've been recharging this weekend: binge watched Ted Lasso :)