The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 330 - Pete’s Solo Off-Site #2

Transcript:

Pete: Hello, Jen.

Jen: Hello, Pete.

Pete: I feel like I had a slight English accent there, but here we go. I have just returned from my new annual tradition. And I say "new annual tradition" because I've now done it twice.

Jen: The second annual...

Pete: They're one year apart, so it is my annual tradition now of having a solo off-site. I don't know if you remember, about fifty-two weeks ago, I told you that I did a solo off-site, and we had an episode about it. And I've just returned from my second one, and I thought maybe there was a learning or insight or an idea that I could share that may or may not be helpful.

Jen: I am still so obsessed with the notion, just even the thought of a solo off-site lights me up. I can't wait to hear about the second annual solo off-site. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Pete: So I don't even have like a compiled list of, "These are the exact things I want to share, based on my solo off-site."I tried to think about a couple of learnings that I had, which I'll definitely get to. But maybe, I guess, is it useful to give some context? Or do you have any specific questions about my solo endeavor to have this off-site?

Jen: Why don't you give us the context?

Pete: Alright. So twelve months ago (I guess earlier than that because I planned it for a while), one of the realizations I had was, I spend a bunch of time working with leaders and executives and teams and often facilitating off-sites for others, because of the value that that time away from B.A.U. (business as usual), time away from your desk (literal or metaphorical), to get out of the weeds and think about things other than the day-to-day is super beneficial to these teams. And there was this really obvious realization / thought I had. I think Bill Gates calls it a Think Week, by the way, which is sort of another version of this that I sort of incorporated. But ultimately, it's, what does it look like to take time out of your day-to-day, to spend some time strategically thinking about your business? And one of the realizations I had was, "Oh, I do this for others. Do I do it for myself? No. And what would it look like to do it for myself?" So again, twelve months ago, I did my first off-site, which was two full days. I wrote an agenda. We talked about it in the episode, which I'll put in the Box O' Goodies. I tried to do things that you do when you go on a corporate off-site, which is like, you go out for dinner, and you have some time out to do some exercise, you have an agenda, you follow the agenda, all these things. And so this year, I went round again and did a very similar structure. I had two full days. I wrote myself an agenda. I took myself actually away from home, which I was very lucky to be able to do. And I have my wife to thank, to be able to support me in doing that. And she looked after Ollie, and everything else that's required for a house to function. And I had essentially a self-facilitated two days of reflection, question asking, learning, thinking, and trying to ultimately zoom out from what is really easy to get stuck in, which is the weeds of the day-to-day.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: That's the context.

Jen: That is so amazing. I remember being completely enchanted when you described last year's off-site. Did you do anything different this year, now that you've had a year to figure out what you need?

Pete: Yeah. I did some very environmental things, and then some changes in the agenda. So, environmental. One of the reflections I had last year, I went to a place that was, you know, only an hour or so down the road. It was near a beach. It was lovely. It was stunning because I got to swim at the beach, and that was great in my break. But it was just an Airbnb I booked. It was a pretty uninspiring Airbnb. Like, it was just a little unit where I stared at, essentially, a brick wall with my notepad. And one of the things I thought was, "Huh. I feel like it would be cool to have a room where there's a bit of a view, like some sort of glass window that you could look at or get inspired by nature in some way." So a very tactical environmental change I made was I booked an Airbnb an hour in the opposite direction, essentially in the forest (in the bush, as we call it here in Australia). And I had this incredible, I mean, this ridiculous view of mountains, rainforests, and nothing but nature, which was awesome. So awesome.

Jen: Mmm.

Pete: For some reason, it changed the reflections that I had, I think, for sure.

Jen: Ooh, that's so cool.

Pete: So, environment changed. And then, just some changes in how I structured the day itself. In the previous year, I ended up doing one day of zoomed out reflection, and then the second day kind of became, "What have I got coming up, and can I make a head start on it?" So, I kind of ended up just doing normal work.

Jen: Ah, got it.

Pete: Whereas this day, I was super tempted to do that but I forced myself to not, which got really hard towards the endbecause I was like, "How much time can you spend zoomed out? I feel like I'm so zoomed out that I'm zoomed out fatigued."

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: So, they were the changes I made. The other thing I did actually, which is, I've got my notes here. The first page, I did this because I was thinking about the first section of an off-site that I might facilitate for others is essentially, "What does success look like for this off-site? What are the ground rules we agree that we'll follow for the next two days?" And I kind of did that for myself. So, I wrote four questions on a page. One was: What am I hoping to achieve? Two was: What does success look like? (Very similar question.) Three was: How do I want to feel during this off-site? And then: What are my guiding principles? (That was the fourth question.)

Jen: Mmm.

Pete: And so like, "How I want to feel," was helpful because I kind of suspected a few things would happen based on my experience last year, and so I wanted to capture it, to make sure that I could remind myself that that was the point. Because I wrote down, "How I want to feel - thrashy, challenged, hopeful, inspired, expansive, grateful, grounded." But yeah, the "challenged", the "thrashy", those kind of words I wanted to capture as like, that's the point.

Jen: Right.

Pete: Because I knew, at some point in this process, it's not all staring at a stunning vista and feeling inspired. It's actually like so stuck in your head and so frustrated at your inability to think, and thrashing through that. And so, to me, it was like, "I have to remind myself, at the start, that that's the point."

Jen: Yeah. I love those questions. Can you say them again?

Pete: Oh, yeah.

Jen: Because you just like sort of casually tossed them out like everybody would ask themselves these questions, but no.

Pete: "What am I hoping to achieve?"

Jen: Mmm-hmm.

Pete: "What does success look like?" They're similar, but I think they're different.

Jen: They are different.

Pete: "How do I want to feel during this off-site?" And then, "What are my guiding principles?" So for example, my guiding principles here, I had, "Make time to move and get in nature. Make the time count. And adopt a can / if mindset," was sort of the other one. So it's like just reminding myself for how I want to show up.

Jen: Mmm.

Pete: Guiding principles, yeah.

Jen: Those are excellent, truly excellent. Okay, Pete, and now I'm going to interview you.

Pete: Please, please, please.

Jen: Was there anything that surprised you about taking yourself through these two days?

Pete: Yes. Probably the biggest thing was, I mean I would summarize this by saying, writing can lead you to discover things that are right in front of you.

Jen: Mmm.

Pete: Like, so in front of you that it's ridiculous that you can't see it. I was thinking about it as...do you know what I mean when I say a Magic Eye?

Jen: Magic Eye?

Pete: Yeah. By the puzzled look on your face. I'm gathering not.

Jen: The letter "I" or the organ inside your face?

Pete: The organ eye. The Magic Eye...oh geeze, I hope I'm getting this right...in Australia, is essentially these like puzzles which are like a fuzzy square,

Jen: Yes, okay.

Pete: Right. You know what I'm talking about?

Jen: Yes.

Pete: And they're like, on the surface, they're just a fuzzy square. But if you stare at it for long enough, this other image like is pulled out of it, out of thin air.

Jen: Yes, I know exactly what you're talking about.

Pete: Okay. So that metaphor, I feel like, is the aha I had around doing some writing and some reflection. Because essentially what I did...I mean, I could show you...is, in my agenda, I had a series of questions for each section, and I just wrote answers to the questions as much as I could. Like, I basically spent two days writing and prompting myself, and it's like trying to coach myself. And as I would write...I mean, again, this is so annoyingly obvious. Because we've said this before, that writing is thinking, and it helps you clarify what's already in your head.

Jen: Yep.

Pete: Turns out, when you actually do it, Pete, you're reminded of that again. And I would write these things, and I would realize, "Oh. That program that you delivered late last year, that was actually super energizing. And if you thought about delivering a similar program to another group of executives, that would be super energizing too. So, what does it look like to spend more time on that?" And it's like all of these things are swimming around somewhere in my head, in the periphery, but until I actually sat down and wrote them, I couldn't crystallize them or see them as clearly as I could as if I stared at them by writing them. So again, one of the things that surprised me was, yeah, the power of just writing and responding to prompts and questions.

Jen: Yeah. It's interesting that you're saying this right now. Just yesterday, I took a group of people through a script analysis of one of the famous scenes from the musical Wicked, which is now this blockbuster movie. And anyone who does musicals (that's my world), they all know this scene so well. But what we had to do was go through and write down what we actually thought was happening in the scene. And it didn't take that long, and they were frustrated as they were doing it, because it's like, "I should just be able to, you know, rattle this off. But I actually have to think about it, and then I have to name the action, and then I have to put it on the page." But at the end, it was like, "Oh my gosh, this makes so much more sense. Now, I can see things here that I did not previously see, even though they were right there in front of me the entire time."

Pete: That's it. That is the exact feeling. Yes, absolutely.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: I also thought of that as, almost a build off that, which was aha moments can come in small packages.

Jen: Yes.

Pete: I feel like there's this tendency (certainly in my head) to go, "An aha moment must be this earth-shattering, life-changing, dynamic reframe of how you see the world." But actually, aha moments can be really small packages that come about because you sat down and you wrote down, "What does the actual scene in Wicked look like," or, "What are the things that you enjoyed doing last year, and what does it look like to package them up and do this some more?" And I had this moment of like, "Is that an aha moment? It feels kind of little for an aha moment, but I think it's an aha moment."

Jen: Yes. That's meta, that your aha moment is about aha moments.

Pete: Oh dear, yeah. Yeah.

Jen: Well, that goes back to like just the power of the Five Minute Journal.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: Writing for five minutes, very specific answers to very specific simple prompts can be really transformational.

Pete: Exactly. Yeah.

Jen: Okay. Now, Pete, maybe we talked about this after your first off-site, I can't remember. (I have to go back and listen to that episode, which you are going to drop in the Box O' Goodies for anyone else who wants to listen.) Something that I've noticed when I have facilitated off-sites for people is that in the moment, everything feels so good, and so connected, and like we are in it and we're making progress. And then the off-site ends, and you go back to work. And the challenge is, how do you bring all of that stuff that you discovered in this other environment, the connections you've made, the ahas that you've had, and bring the new stuff into the old context? How do you do that?

Pete: I love this question so much, because it's the thing that I experience the most with working with other leaders. It's like, "We're so excited about this learning that we just had in this great workshop." And then, you see them a month later and you're like, "How have you gone with those learnings?" They're like, "What did we learn again? What did we say we were going to commit to?"

Jen: Hmm.

Pete: So the way I've thought about this is borrowed (stolen like an artist) completely from Shane Parrish, who is coming up a lot in the last few episodes, who wrote Clear Thinking. And one of the things he talks about in his book, Clear Thinking, is setting rules for creating behavioral change. And so the last question that I pondered, literally the last question, was, "What rules will help you get where you're going?"

Jen: Mmm.

Pete: So, I had fourteen pages or something of thinking and excited noodles and ideas. And then, I got to the point of like, "Okay, and so what rules are you going to follow or put into place that will align with everything you've talked about?" So that, I think the myth is, "I'm going to feel that way, the same way as I did in my off-site, every single day." I don't think that's true.

Jen: Right.

Pete: And I know that. So it's like, "What is the small behavior, the small rule that I can set that will ladder up to creating the conditions for that aha, or that insight, or that direction that I wanted to go?" So I came up with like, you know, things like a very specific amount of reach outs that I want to do a week, a very specific amount of business development activities and focus areas. I want to focus on a minimum engagement fee, in terms of revenue amount that I'm willing to do some work for. So like, there's some very clear rules that I don't necessarily look at and go, "I feel inspired and excited and amazed and motivated," but I know they come from the place of when I did feel that way and I identified, "These are the things that will enable me to hopefully end up in this lovely utopian world that I've cast for myself."

Jen: I think this is a really juicy insight. This is a crunchy noodle at this moment, but very often when choices are presented to us and we have not done the kind of work that you're talking about, we will make a choice from a scarcity mindset or out of fear or like urgency. And I like the idea that these rules represent decisions that you made when you were at your most inspired, motivated, and optimistic about the future of your business, as opposed to burnt out, pessimistic, and just feeling sort of blah.

Pete: Right. Yeah. So one of the activities I forced myself to do...I haven't worked out a great way to articulate this. I've tried so many times in so many episodes, and I always feel like I don't nail it. And we talk about it so often, how like outcomes aren't guaranteed. So, we need to focus on a process that increases the likelihood of getting an outcome but doesn't guarantee it. And so, the outcomes I thought of...and I think we've done an episode called Pre-Parades. I spent a bunch of time on, "What are the pre-parades? What are the most amazing, compelling, exciting outcomes that you could dream up? First, dream them up. Then, acknowledge none of them are guaranteed. But if you were to set some rules that would increase the likelihood of you getting there, what would those rules be?" So it was like starting with that amazing inspiring vision, and then, going, "What's the equation, the elements, the recipe," mixing metaphors, "that will enable the outcome, or this possibility of some outcome?" So it's almost like, "What are the possibilities? None of them are guaranteed. So, what's the process that you're willing to follow that will hopefully enable them?"

Jen: I love that. And I guess the flip side of that is, "If you don't follow these processes, the outcomes actually are a little more guaranteed, in that you won't have any of the things that you're dreaming of because you haven't done anything to move toward them."

Pete: Right. The other piece to this, which I'm realizing I forgot to mention, that I just was so taken by this year, is this blog post by Mark Manson. I'll put it in the Box O' Goodies. It's called The Most Important Question Of Your Life. And I'll paraphrase the whole thing and probably butcher it...I encourage you to read the article. But it's essentially, not what success looks like or what's the goal, but actually, what pain are you willing to endure in order to get there?

Jen: Ooh.

Pete: And so, I was thinking about this as I was thinking about my process. Like, I came up with a bunch of different possible pre-parades and exciting visions that, "Whoa, would that be cool if that came true. And that'd be cool if that came true. And that'd be cool if that came true." But then, in looking at what are the rules that you want to put in place, what you quickly discover is, "Oh, actually, that's not a rule I want to follow. So I actually don't want that outcome, necessarily, because I'm not willing to do that." So for example, I could focus on delivering x-number of workshops in a week, but I like taking my Mondays off to spend with Ollie, so I'm not willing to go through the pain of not having that day with Ollie to get that outcome. So I let go of that pre-parade and go, "Okay, cool. So what am I going to do instead?"

Jen: I love that. That is so powerful.

Pete: Yeah. It's confronting. But it's good.

Jen: Wow. Well, Pete, as always, I'm a little jelly of your solo off-site. (That's "jealous" in fifteen-year-old lingo, by the way.)

Pete: I mean, I also have to say that I feel like we've covered the highlights package. It's also, there's just, there's so much thrashing and mundane staring at a notepad that takes place over two days. So much time in your own head, maybe too much. Just beating yourself up, picking yourself back up, beating yourself back up again. Like, it's a whole journey. But I'm happy to share some of the highlights.

Jen: But let us not forget that lowlights abound.

Pete: And that is The Long and The Short Of It.