Welcome to Ideothetic Flow, my newsletter sharing my reflections on finding balance, sufficiency, and security.
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Hi!
The last few weeks have felt pretty crazy. I had Wavemaker's AGM, an annual week long company event including an offsite trip to Jakarta, while juggling some intense projects in the background. After getting back home, i rushed to get the rest of my work in order before our 2 week family trip to Korea. I'm currently writing this post from the very beautiful town of Jeonju.
The challenge of a 2 week holiday is that things don't normally wait so long, so it was inevitable that I would have to handle some work on the move. But, with 2 kids, quiet time is rare, and I also felt like I want to be able to enjoy my holiday.
In between all those, I had the annual Wing Tsun weekend, where our seniors from Hong Kong come to visit, train with us, and hold a grading session. I'm proud to say that I've obtained my certificate as a 5th grade practitioner in the Wing Tsun system.
A common theme in my rreflections these few weeks is that of collaboration.
I was flipping a magazine and came across an article about infants in the ICU in Gaza. With access to energy and supplies cut off, their chances of survival are slim. Nurses struggled just to keep them warm.
While I've kept myself relatively detached from the political issues of the war, thinking of these babies and the fight to keep them alive makes my eyes water.
Perhaps it tugs at a particular fear as a parent, that I will be powerless to help my own children when they are suffering.
Regardless of how much I work on personal development, gaining skills, or accumulating resources, the hard truth is that a lone human is rather powerless.
Almost anything we want to do is reliant on a complex web that keeps the world running. We need power grids and utilities, transport networks, supply chains, and people running all these things with their various skillsets.
As that situation in the Gaza hospital shows. It doesnt take much damage to the web for something as basic as heat to become a scarce resource.
The fascinating thing is that this infrastructure that keeps the world running can only be built when people collaborate. No person alone can build roads and dams, and wire up electricity. All of this is too complex and needs a mix of skillsets, equipment, and manpower. It also needs the pooling of common interests and costs.
(To an extent there's a competing view that all this is only possible because there's an ability to exploit a certain demographic, but it's beyond my thoughts here.)
Collaboration isn't just our best state, it is a necessary state, or we can't even progress past an animalistic existence.
Coming back to my Wing tsun grading. It looks very much like an individual achievement. I improved myself, learnt a skill, and passed a challenge. But that is far from the truth. The achievement is the result of collaboration. Its only possible with others to teach me, to train with me, to watch my kids while I train.
Yet, collaborating with others is something I've always been nervous about. At work I like being a sole contributor, try to do everything myself, and avoid as much team-building type activity as possible.
At a recent office personality test, my working type is defined as “Producer”. I focus on delivering output, but have less preference on trying to unify or stabilise the organisation.
Even in games, I only like working together when there's certainty. I avoid playing with strangers or stick to single player games.
Collaborating is hard and uncomfortable. It's not easy to coordinate actions and find overlapping interests with others. It's difficult to get alignment and have everyone move together. Worse of all, conflict, confrontation, and friction are a given. Its not nice to have to deal with that. Even worse when sometimes I'm the one who makes a mistake or in the wrong and have to own it.
I won't fight my base nature and suddenly feel I need to be a leader of people to get things done. But, I recognise, if I want to have more impact, I can't shy away from collaborating and working with others, and should embrace it. It could be small things. Agreeing to drill with someone at the gym. Asking for more help on projects. Simply admitting that, I can't solve everything myself, as much as I'd like to.
This has also got me thinking about my own philosophy of practising law. As I'm getting more senior in this field, I feel less like I can rely on simply following directions from managers, and need to have my own key principles to add value. I often rant about how lawyers are pedantic and destructive to real productivity. However, I also realise law as a system is the foundation of our ability to work together. As long as people interact, there must be some kind of guiding rules so that interactions can be productive. I am a part of that system, and its up to me to use and run it in a way that enables positive human interactions.
Other things…
We're all busy enough that someday often means never.
I used to keep a “someday” list of things I might want to do or try. I've observed that nothing on that list ever gets done. The world moves too fast.
It's the same for work. All the things we say we will do later keep getting pushed back by newer priorities that appear.
If I want something done, I find I have to set it to be done right away. Even spotting a new interesting restaurant to try, I try and make a plan to go that weekend, before the idea is lost in the ether.
What did I wish I had yesterday that would have made my life easier?
One of the questions I think about when I find some quiet time for thinking in the morning. For example, maybe I wished I had a template email on hand instead of having to write something, and I'll set an intention to make that template first thing that day.
One concept in my mind is on being a fire marshal rather than a firefighter. The fire marshal isint celebrated, but their role in setting up things in place so fires don't happen is more important than the firefighter. The firefighter is the hero who puts out fires. Its glorious and difficult, and it can be addictive to the point we forget about preventing fires in the first place.
However, in the flurry of each day, moving from one problem to another, there's no real chance to add those necessary improvements to prevent fires.
So, conscious of not getting addicted to firefighting (especially as a “producer” type) , I try to keep this question in mind whenever there's periods of calm, so I'm also thinking of how to improve the world around me and prevent fires in the first place.
For tarot based reflections and journal prompts, check out @thecenterline_ on IG
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Take care and have a good week!
James