Strategy

Several times over the past few years, the Tuesday Reading has focused on biases:

… Let it go.

Several years ago, Mary Jordan posted an essay, Be Still, and Be a Better Leader,¹ on the Linkage Leadership Blog and it caught my attention. At that time, she was a Principle Consultant and Co-Leader of the Linkage Change and Transition Leadership Practice.
 

Most, dare I say all, of us, don’t do and haven’t done, much thinking about thinking. In fact, we may have never stopped to think about our thinking.
 
So, what is thinking anyway?
 

Ever have the fear that someone is always watching you, just waiting for you to foul-up?
 

… “A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” 
     –  Lao Tzu, Chinese philosopher from the 6^th century B.C.E.

All journeys, whether they are physical journeys by foot, by car, train, or plane, or journeys of the mind where you work small step by small step to solve a problem, resolve an issue, or explore some new idea, begin from where you are, from the current step you are taking.
 

Today’s Tuesday Reading is an essay by Amanda Winegarden, a Security Risk Analyst in the University Information Security Group at the University of Minnesota. She is a new alumna from the recently graduated MOR Lead From Where You Are Program at the University of Minnesota. Her essay first appeared as a program reflection earlier this year. [Amanda may be reached at <mandy@umn.edu>.] 
 
 

For the past two weeks, I’ve been writing about pro-crastination,^1,2 “willingly deferring something though you expect the delay to make you worse off.”³ Pre-crastination is intentionally completing tasks quickly just to get them done sooner, or to get them done so that you no longer have to remember to get them done. Edward Wasserman calls this the “fierce urgency of now.”⁴
 

As I wrote in last week’s Tuesday Reading, “Procrastinators Anonymous: Yes, both I and you are most likely members of this club,”¹ procrastination is “willingly deferring something though you expect the delay to make you worse off.”² I like this definition as it explicitly calls to our minds the fact that procrastination requires a decision to procrastinate and that a cost is always incurred.

… Yes, both I and you are most likely members of this club