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So, Some S#!t Happened…

And I went dark…

No newsletters for over a week and practically nothing on LinkedIn for even longer. The s#!t that happened was stuff that happens to people every day. When you think about it in those sorts of broad terms, the event loses its impact.

The s#!t is a health event impacting an immediate family member (they very will likely be just fine). But even though this is an event that happens often and regularly, and the medical community is locked in relative to treating this condition, when it happens in your family, chaos and disruption are the only expected outcomes.

I was chaosed and distrupted, and I couldn’t carve out enough free mental space to think of anything worthwhile to say.

None of this is relevant to your lives - but I have been uncharacteristically quiet, and I thought y’all deserve to know why.

OK - Now Let’s Get Locked In, Shall We?

TBH, I love and hate that term - “locked in” - to me it feels like a trap. (I did love it when my son Luis used it in Agency Inner Circle #62 - Pader, I Gotta Lock In) The way that I think of “locked in” is more like a flow state, rather than an ascetic, monk-like state of rigorous discipline and denial.

I am thinking of this more like the Toronto Blue Jays 1st baseman, Vlad Guerrero hitting his 5th home run of this baseball post-season when he had in prior years not performed well at all. We all want that perfect time where everything comes together and high-performance is easy.

For lots of us entrepreneurs (especially the ones who are fellow ADHDers), there is so much on our plates that we are too scattered to ever get into a state where we have focus and fluidity in abundance.

So the flow state often dances just beyond our fingertips - teasing us with grace and ease while we have to deal with a miscalculated payroll check, a client fire, and some whacky algorithmic change that just has f*cked everything up.

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The Flow State Is There (Mostly) If You Know What Triggers It

A million years ago, while I was working at an agency, I was pitching Dell on a whacky thing. But it was my thing. I was the only person who had all of the details and the insight to make it work. I was in charge of making the pitch deck.

I had been traveling a bunch and hadn’t found the space and time to be able to make the deck into what I wanted. We were in crunch time - the meeting was in a few hours, and I had 3 bullet points scribbled on a piece of paper. It seemed like we were screwed.

I jumped into a conference room (this was when people went into offices) and opened my laptop. The pressure was mounting…time was ticking away and this was a HUGE opportunity. I was way behind and some folks on my team were pissed because I wasn’t ready.

One super deep breath, and I starting pounding on the keyboard…a few minutes later, I heard my boss outside the conference room saying, “Watch this…it’s gonna be a kind of magic.” Some people gathered around to watch my fat fingers smash some keys and for me to make all sorts of weird faces and sounds as the ideas came FLYING out of my head.

I was stressed out. But I knew that stress and time pressure are often the keys to unlocking my flow state. (Don’t ask me why…I have no clue.) In that moment I engineered a flow state.

I made a 30+ page deck in about 45 minutes. It had screenshots, diagrams & even some ROI math. The meeting was a home run. We eventually won the business. It was (and still is) the biggest deal that I ever closed.

Later, As I Grew As A Leader, The Stress Trigger Became Destructive

My teams could not work the way that I do. Stress created space for me. For them, it was crushing. Time pressure gave me the clarity of adrenaline. For them, time pressure sucked all of the oxygen out of the room.

But, I couldn’t figure out how to do it any other way.

I couldn’t lead the way I worked. I was cooked.

But after working with a coach (and a therapist), I understood better what was happening to my emotional state when I made a time pressure trap for myself. When I understood the state that I needed to be in - which was naturally triggered by time pressure - I started to experiment with other ways to get my ducks in a row so I could get my brain to do what I wanted it to do.

I started using voice notes - the fluidity of speaking far surpasses the clunkiness of my fingers on the keys (which is why I love WisprFlow so much).

I started using weekend mornings before 8 am - I am NOT a morning person, but the sleeping habits of my family make this a PERFECT time for there to be no noise - in the house or my head.

I started creating small rituals to trigger my own attention - it had been a full-body relaxation exercise, sometimes it is 5 jumping jacks, and there are a few pieces of music that get me productive. (If you are curious, Bruce Springsteen’s Born To Run, Come On Get Higher by Matt Nathanson, James Keelaghan’s Cold Missouri Waters & Mirror in the Bathroom by The English Beat. Don’t know why these songs exactly, but they are good triggers…)

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So Why Am I Telling You All This Stuff?

Mostly because over the last few weeks, because of the s#!t, I couldn’t find any triggers to get myself moving in the way I wanted. My family & I are in undiscovered country, and I couldn’t find a way to right my emotional ship well enough to get all the things done I wanted to…

For many in our industry, this has been a tough year. You might need to get into a state of clarity to navigate.

For many in our industry, Q4 is a HUGE stressor. You might need some space to be the leader your team needs.

For many in our industry, the rate of change in tech, platforms & client expectations can feel like you are trying to run uphill on a treadmill. You might need some ways to find your footing.

Take a few minutes to reflect in what your clarity triggers are?

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Clarity Takes Work

The gift of being “locked in” or in a state of flow isn’t free. (Or it never has been for me…) It takes relection and testing. You sort of have to A/B test yourself and find out which approaches bring you closer to your flow state.

There are a few minutes left before the the crush of DTC Q4 advertising starts & B2B is usually an end of the quarter frenzy…

Grab a few minutes and thing about what your clarity triggers are and how you can force them into reality. What can you do to engineer a flow/locked in state?

Your team and your clients need you to be locked in well enough to become the leader that they both need.

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