Remaining fluid and adaptive

[00:00:00] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Well hello, this is The Daily Five with Aurooba. That's me. Where we reflect on creating our best lives a little bit every day. Here we go.

[00:00:15] Today has been a day. I'm not recording this in the morning. Priorities shifted today. However, this is still important to me. A contract with myself and a contract with you. So here I am, butt in chair, speaking into a microphone. I've spent most of today battling an app that I think will be a game changer for my workflow.

[00:00:41] It's an app I use every single day, but not in this particular way. If I do get it working the way I want, it'll cut the production process for some of my other work by at least a third, which would mean easier production and more of it, in less time. It's worth the battle right now, if it helps in the end.

[00:01:00] But let me tell you, figuring out a new way to do something is such a slog. It's hard, it's annoying, and Even when it might save us time in the long run, we become so acutely aware of how much we're losing in the short term that we hate it, and then sometimes we don't do it. And that is how people, systems, workflows, and organizations become stagnant and laggy.\

[00:01:25] When you get a piece of clay out for a project, it's usually pretty hard. It's been sitting somewhere, it's cool to the touch, and You know, hard to work with. In order to get it workable, you need to start pushing against it, generating heat, warming the clay up, until it's malleable and you can work it and shape it in any way you want.

[00:01:45] Once you have the shape you want, You have to let it sit safely somewhere to dry and harden. There's a few more steps there to get a piece of pottery finished, but that's not the point I'm trying to make. The point is, we as people, and our systems and workflows, do best when they're up against some regular friction.

[00:02:04] It keeps us flexible and adaptive. Leave us, our workflows, and systems alone for a little while, and they start to harden. And do you know what happens to things that harden? They get brittle. And brittle things break. Quite easily, in fact.

[00:02:21] There is a trick to it, of course. Get the clay too soft and warm, and you won't be able to shape it into anything. It'll just keep falling apart like a hot mess. We are like that too, and so are our systems and workflows. When we introduce too much friction and too much change all at once, we fall apart.

[00:02:40] So, keep changing, but don't change too much all at once. Keep being productive, but don't sacrifice long term effectiveness for short term efficiency.

[00:02:51] I know, that's tough, no doubt about it. And yet, that is what life is, my friend. Day in and day out.

[00:02:59] I think, as adults, we sometimes forget that as children, we dealt with new things constantly. I don't remember feeling tired or zapped or brain dead as a kid. I remember feeling happy, curious, adventurous, and challenged.

[00:03:17] There were hard days, and great days, and okay days. Today, I had to learn about subjects and predicates. The next day, our gym teacher introduced us to flag football. The day after that, mom made something green and said I had to eat it before leaving the dinner table. Dad brought home some new thing called a PlayStation, and the controls are nothing like my computer keyboard, and I don't know what button is what, and I'm so confused, but I'm gonna keep trying.

[00:03:42] Sometimes, I think it's not that we have less energy as we grow up, and that's why we can't learn as much. It's that we don't learn as much, and that's why we have less energy.

[00:03:54] My whole career, I have seen fluid and malleable teams and more rigid teams that have a tough time changing. And, What I keep learning from that is if I want to make progress and keep creating a better life every day, the balance must always be tipping towards fluidity rather than the rigid.

[00:04:15] That I must consistently evaluate the effectiveness of what I'm doing and take steps to improve it even if in the moment it is less efficient. Which is what I've been doing today. Working and fighting an app that feels confusing and weird right now. But from everything I've read and all of my research, I know that if I can get this figured out in the long term, I will be far more effective.

[00:04:42] So here is to remaining fluid and adaptive. Thanks for listening. Same time tomorrow?