This is NOT a Constraint
Level 4: Serious Player
Dear Future Guardian,
This one is embarrassing for me.
I feel like I should have known better. This is the kind of thing I write about, talk about, help other people with.
And yet,
It took being in the room with everyone else at Gray Wolf Summit, running through the practical exercise of uncovering our constraints1, to realize I'd gotten it all wrong for myself.
Well ... all wrong might be a little harsh.
But let me provide some context, and then explain my error. I think it might be useful for you in revealing your own constraints and your next best step.
Even when you know this stuff, it can still be as clear as gravy when looking at your own situation.
And so,
I entered Gray Wolf Summit thinking I was trying to solve a particular problem, all the while not even realizing I'd completely misread the problem to begin with.
I figure ...
My experience might be enlightening for you. Or maybe at least, if you experience the same thing, you can know you aren't alone.
Like many of you, I have a long term goal I am shooting for ...
It combines a particular set of numbers with a particular way of living life. Since the day I began following TGA principles2, I started slowly making adjustments and moves to get me closer to that life.
When I began this process, what I was doing did not appear to be compatible with the goals that I had set.
At the time, my work was fully focused around freelance copywriting. I'd spend my days doing outreach, pitching, and fulfilling on client work.
And while that work allowed me to continue my relative independence ...
Working for myself,
I was essentially still working a job. I still needed to trade my time for money, and in that particular role the amount of money and time ratio were not favorable for my end goals.
I share all that because THAT understanding is what ultimately led me down the path to being CMO of TGA.
It was a winding path,
With interesting twists and turns.
Now I am doing work which not only is exactly the kind of work I want to be doing ... but I'm in a position where the outcome/situation I've been working toward the past 3 years is finally possible.
I'm not there yet.
Which is fine.
(There's always an element of 'will never arrive', as my end goals and vision will constantly evolve as I step more along the path, but that's a conversation for another time)
One of the things I've become quite adept at is getting really comfortable with enough3.
I figure out exactly what is enough in order to move forward in my current situation and then I only take steps toward "more" (or what appears to be 'more' from the outside), when those steps align with making what I want more likely.
My big picture involves not just TGA. That's a piece of the puzzle.
But as I stepped into this role and this work I progressively unravelled remaining pieces from the past which did not serve moving forward to the future ... (in short, I ended client projects that no longer fit what I was doing).
And that has left me with some unknowns.
I have taken much of this year to slow down and cut out a number of things which haven't been working for me. At the same time I have taken microsteps toward testing what could be new pieces which I want to put into place.
We're talking about a situation where part of the long term picture has really become clear, but there are other pieces needing to come into place, and I couldn't clearly see what they were, or how they should come about.
As I said, I'm adept at getting to "enough" and then going forward from there, while slowing down and having restraint, but in the time that I have been stepping through this, I worked myself into a position where change started to become necessary ... a raising of the floor needed.
In discussing what I'm working through with Nic, he presented to me an interesting analogy - a story which was told to him.
A man spends many of his days carrying water from the river to his family.
One day someone comes along and says 'hey man, if you build a well, you won't need to spend all that time carrying water from the river.'
So, the man starts building a well.
He focuses so much on the well, that he forgets how much water his family needs.
And they end up dying of thirst.
Bleak story. But the obvious lesson is ... while you're building the well, don't forget to take trips to the river.
TGA is one of the wells I'm helping to build.
And in my slowing down and cutting, I ended up removing my trips to the river, and had not figured out how to replace them.
Some of you following along with what I'm doing in various places have seen me take some of those microsteps to test out various paths to the well. Different sorts of publishing, not just on The Guardian Academy and Man Bites Dog (R3 for Email4 over on MBD is a piece of the puzzle), but also my personal substack Growing Trees (and earlier in the year my private email list which I have closed off for the time being).
Each of these test have revealed new information,
And the way I've done them has limited my exposure toward taking too much of a trip down the wrong path.
So that's great.
One of the things I like about seeking "enough" is that it gives me a lot of leeway to make sure my steps are always going in the right direction.
I could, for example, head in a completely different direction and seek a lot (as a copywriter, I've flirted with financial publications before, and while that sort of work could be lucrative it would absolutely destroy my soul).
So to me, trips to the river must also support the walk on the path (unless I really AM dying of thirst, in which case all bets are off and I need to reset the baseline - but that's not what's happening here).
If all of that sounded somewhat ... confusing …
GOOD.
WELCOME TO MY HEAD.
That's exactly how I felt going into Gray Wolf Summit.
A feeling of 'what in the hell am I going to do' and 'how in the hell am I going to figure this out.'
A side note, you might think ... as the current primary author of this publication, and the CMO, that when I attend Gray Wolf Summit I'm doing so like an employee, where I'd just be observing from the sidelines.
You'd be wrong.
(And even further, if you thought that I of all people must know exactly what I'm doing, you're also wrong)
There's no end or limit to the benefit that anyone coming to GWS can attain if they come in with a blank slate and an open mind.
I engage fully,
And thus far have been able to experience astonishing realizations and new perspectives and understanding - yes even though I write about all this stuff day in and day out.
(That's just really a side note to you - observer - who probably does not ingest/digest and create around these very principles day in and day out - if I can get astonishing value from being in the room, there's no doubt you can too)
So when, on Day 1, it came time to take a few minutes and write out all of our immediate constraints we could think of ...
I stumped myself by writing this very note:
In case you can't read my chicken scratch (no doubt born out of writing mostly on a computer for 35 years), it says "Clarity/Certainty of path."
I was like,
Yea my constraint is that I just need to be sure about my next step.
That's my problem.
And within about 47 seconds I realized just how wrong that was. Then also I was astonished to realize I'd held onto that perspective for months. Not really consciously.
Part of the reason I was able to come to that conclusion so swiftly in THAT moment was ...
Proximity. Just being in THAT room and in those discussions for whatever reason makes it much easier to come to realization and understanding about myself. Maybe it's magic. Maybe it's the way our energy all comes together in the physical space to make the mirror5 more obvious. I don't know. But it works.
It conflicted with the relationship I believed I have cultivated with uncertainty.
The first part opened the door for me to realize the second and that caused it to all come tumbling down.
On Uncertainty
Uncertainty is naturally a difficult force to confront. Need I repeat the oft quoted quote? In the event you're new and haven't run into this yet ...
"People prefer the certainty of misery to the misery of uncertainty" - Virginia Satir
As we know, all the new stuff inevitably must be accompanied by uncertainty. So if you are going into something new, trying to figure out a problem, moving forward on your path, whatever it is ...
If it's a place you haven't been, then you can't avoid stepping into uncertainty.
(One of the reasons we use the rear-view mirror and repeat what is known if it solves the problem, because there’s little to no uncertainty in what is known)
So I have been doing the internal work to try to reframe my perspective and relationship with uncertainty. I want to have the reaction to uncertainty that this is where I want to be. Because I know that if I can embrace uncertainty and move forward in it, great new shit will happen.
I've written about this plenty ... here's an example:
So ....
There I was coming to this "conclusion" that my constraint was "solving" uncertainty. In other words I was avoiding uncertainty, seeking certainty, all the while having this other perspective that I really ought to be stepping into it.
And THEN I realized my other major mistake.
On Constraints
Uncertainty is not a constraint.
I mean,
That may be obvious to you, especially after what I just said on uncertainty, but not knowing what to do or what's going to happen is not a constraint towards doing a thing.
I told you this was embarrassing.
I feel like Nic is going to come around the corner and smack me with a ruler - "you thought uncertainty was a constraint? haven't you been listening?"
Of course, that would never happen.
We are never perfect as people. We never "arrive" to figuring it all out. We're always in evolution moving along the path and discovering and rediscovering.
The trick is raising the floor6 on improving and realizing these things, so we can move forward sooner.
What is a constraint then?
Another useful perspective, which I'm sure I had heard before, but which never fully clicked until we were in the room ...
A constraint is something you can do along the way to an outcome.
Not having enough conversations that lead to new business. That can be a constraint. Eating too many calories preventing you from losing weight. Not getting enough sleep preventing you from being well rested.
I can't just go "be rested," but I can go to bed earlier. I can't just "lose weight," but I can reduce the amount of calories I consume each day. I can't just "have more revenue," but I can go talk to people who are likely to provide that.
But then we dig deeper. Why is that happening? Why are conversations not happening? Why are too many calories being consumed? Why is there not enough sleep?
And we dig down until we find an action we can take as close to where we are right now, as possible.
Back to my story,
My "trip to the river" most likely revolves around some kind of email copywriting/strategy project, because when I rear-view-mirror, that's the kind of work I can do, I can do swiftly, I can do well, and for which I can get paid well.
(That work when done right can also serve building the well, incidentally - as opposed to say ... build someone's paid ads strategy, which I CAN do, but isn't the right main focus - yet again, a whole ‘nother conversation)
What I'd started to do, also based on a rear-view-mirror (but actually erroneously so ... again a sidebar for another conversation), was restart my cold prospecting strategy which I'd used in the past to max out my freelancing business.
However
I was ignoring a much shorter path to solve the problem.
Or possibly I was filling my time with that prospecting work because I felt like I needed to do something.
In the room it became easy.
Because I've got all of YOU
and you and you and you.
All around me here, and all around the room I was in ... but aside from taking on this work writing for TGA and becoming CMO ... I had not really tried to work with the people around me.
Sound dumb in retrospect?
Well,
I was uncertain. And I was blind to the fact that I was allowing that uncertainty to stop me.
See?
Embarrassing.
What did I do?
I turned around me, and talked. Before the end of the weekend, I'd solved my problem.
Not just because I recognized my blunder with uncertainty, but also because I really got clear on what my actual constraint was - just talking to the right people.
What can you make of this?
1 - Don't let yourself think that 'not knowing what to do' is a constraint. That uncertainty is a constraint.
You know what to do.
You may be uncertain that what to do is going to solve the problem you're trying to solve. But that's a different problem. Most of the time you are going to be uncertain. That's why we take microsteps forward and gather data. Because the more data we have, the more certain we can be that we are at least headed in the right direction.
And that's all you can ever really do.
2 - Your constraint is going to be around something you can take action with NOW.
You can't take action with not knowing. You can't be like "ok now I'm going to be not uncertain." And even if you could be, that would change nothing about your current situation, would give you no data, would give you back no resources.
You CAN take action with having conversations. You CAN take action by changing what you eat. You CAN take action by going to bed earlier.
And as a related note, don't mistake the end result as the constraint. The constraint is something along the path towards achieving that thing.
Hopefully my failure can be to your benefit.
And if you too would like to have such useful personal revelations ... well ... come to a future TGA event :)
Be Useful. Be Present. Love the Journey.
Joseph Robertson, CMO The Guardian Academy
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