I am changing.

Just recently, I made a series of decisions that were radically different from those I would have made in the past, setting me on a new path.

While I can't trace this shift to one particular source, I believe that it's the result of attending conferences, reading books, having stimulating and challenging conversations, watching videos, and listening to podcasts—in short, encountering a constant stream of new ideas that are altering my mental landscape.

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It's been more than three years of intense work in The Marketing Seminar as both a student and a coach, and I'm still learning new things.

Part of it is because of the way the course is set up. With open-ended prompts, there are many directions in which the work can go and many ways for people to bring their own ideas to it. This creates infinite variation and endless opportunities for learning and going deeper, even if you are familiar with the material.

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I try to build my plan for each day based on a realistic expectation for what I’m going to accomplish.

Despite my good intentions, though, there are a lot of days when I have to, as David Allen calls it, “renegotiate my commitment” to myself. I have to accept that there are a bunch of tasks I’m not going to get done and shunt them all over to the next day or the next week.

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I lost some momentum in my life shortly after college.

I spent a few months volunteering full time, then came “home” to my parents’ house where I tried to figure out what was next. As the Beatles’ song goes, “Out of college, money spent/see no future, pay no rent.” It was summertime, and I had a job lined up for September—a job I was dreading—and nothing until then.

I was so used to being busy that I didn’t cope well with all of the free time. I tried to practice music and write songs, which I had always longed for more time to do, but it felt like dropping coins into a bottomless well.

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The lawn did not appear to be fully mown, unless the person who had mowed it intended, as a work of art or landscape design, to leave a rectangular patch of grass to continue to grow.

The lawnmower was nowhere in evidence. The rest of the yard appeared to be tidy.

When I walked by again, tomorrow, next week, or next month, would this patch of taller grass still be there? Would it be mown flat? Or would more of the lawn have become wild?

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