Ahead

I’m writing a draft of this piece just for the newsletter this morning. Happy Thanksgiving. Try the Pinot — it’s excellent. Sorry about the typos.

January 1st is a reset. What was late in the year — cold and dark December — transforms into a fresh new beginning in January.

Resolutions, to-do lists, affirmations. January is full of good intentions, but February is full of regret. It’s when the regular patterns of life start to gain weight and take over. Your aggressive 6:00a wake-up becomes 6:15a, then 6:30a, and finally back to that deflating 8:00a question: why am I still in bed?

Articles that describe this one show up in February because we’re collectively disappointed in ourselves. Why can’t I hold to this program? This is why I’m writing this piece in November.

Over on the Rands Leadership Slack, there’s an #ask-rands-anything channel where folks can ask me whatever. I giggle each time it lights up because it’s fun to get asked random questions. Some are repeats, some are one-word answers, some are, “Well, just read this article.” This Thanksgiving morning, a member asked me how I maintain such a myriad of projects: job, weblog, newsletter, cycling, podcast, forest management, family, etc. It’s a long list.

The answer is the reason I’m writing our New Year’s resolution regret post at the end of November. Each ongoing project on my list shares an attribute that is the reason it’s been a project not for days, nor months, nor years, but decades.

Return on investment.

Boring and obvious. I know. But I’d argue that the majority of your New Year’s resolutions will claim to have a return on investment — most will be obvious returns — and not the return that will actually get you coming back. Each of my projects has a critical feedback loop that keeps me returning.

Here are a couple of answers specific to my projects:

Exercise: I bike quite a bit. It used to be hockey, but now it’s cycling. The obvious ROI is: exercise is healthy — and it’s that ROI you’re considering after your fourth glass of Pinot on New Year’s. Yes, exercise is healthy, but that’s not the return on investment; that’s not the feedback loop I seek. The loop is a mental space to wander.

If I’m not on the Pro Leisure Circuit, my days are full. Packed. There are discussions, decisions, and fire drills. It’s often hard to breathe. Cycle-to-from-work rides and weekend rides are precious times when my brain just wanders. I unintentionally tackle some of my hardest problems — without prompting — on rides. I say this a lot and I mean it every time: “I do most of my important work on a bike.” You’d think the health benefits would be the loop, and I’m delighted I still get them, but they are not what motivate me.

Writing: I write every day. Since I was 14. The obvious ROI is recognition: I want to be seen and heard. Again, a fine motivation, but the vast majority of my writing is never seen. The first two decades of my writing sit silent in black notebooks stacked in the garage. They exist on floppy disks and then on FireWire drives. Most of the writing was never seen, but I wrote all the time.

I do enjoy the benefits of being a published author, but the feedback loop is, again, mental. My brain is curious; I like to solve puzzles, and the joy in writing is when I take something messy in my head and turn it into approachable, structured words. Write a lot, and you’ll know when this happens because you’ll stare at the screen and honestly ask, “Where the hell did that come from?”

Trees: This is a new project in the last three years. I became obsessed with trees — specifically, the ones in my backyard. I’m staring at one right now as I bang out this Thanksgiving piece, listening to the background sounds of pie-making and the Thanksgiving Day Parade. It’s a Coast Live Oak. She’s probably 50 years old. I recently had her pruned. You’ve probably seen Coast Live Oaks at some point in your life — they’re the dominant oak in Northern California — but you have not lived a proper tree life™ until you’ve seen a well-groomed oak.

What’s the tree feedback loop? Similar to the ride, it’s carved-off time to think, except unlike cycling, the project is focused on the forest in front of me. I’ve had multiple crews out to help shape trees and remove dead ones. Two years ago, I started planting other kinds of oaks on the property. The most common feedback I receive when I show off these baby trees is, “You’re not going to be able to appreciate these trees. They grow so slowly.”

This short-sighted feedback is paradoxically the return on investment I seek. Much of the work I do has been focused on the now — the people in front of me or the project imminently due. The trees and my forest project are an ambitious investment in the future, mostly for someone else. We need more of that in our lives. Projects bigger than ourselves. Projects that don’t just motivate us for years but grow to motivate everyone.

Start now. At Thanksgiving, think about both your big projects and why they will motivate you. The feedback loop is more important than the project.

Happy Holidays.