Your attention drives your experience

1. Writing is how I make sense of my own thoughts. It's easy to think I understand something until I try to explain it in writing, at which point I realize I have no idea what I want to say at all. Writing is how my thinking becomes clear, how I develop a map (some would call it a mental model) that helps me navigate the world more effectively. But that doesn't fully explain why I publish my writing here or on my blog or on LinkedIn; it's partially to get feedback from others on where my thinking isn't clear or where I don't explain myself well, but it's more than that.
2. What Coates helped me realize is that it is because writing can drive action. By articulating what I see, by sharing my perspective, I can direct people's attention to what I think is important so that perhaps they might start cultivating and caring for the things I care about. That's why this newsletter occasionally extends beyond leadership into political subjects like equity and inclusion; by sharing what I'm learning on these topics, I hope that you start to see the world differently. Once I draw your attention to certain things, you may keep paying attention to them, and attention creates the possibility of new actions.

• If you primarily pay attention to what is missing in your life, you will live with a scarcity mindset where there is never enough. It may drive action and ambition, but it will rarely lead to happiness, because getting the thing you covet will only lead to being discontented until you get the next thing.
• If you spend time on social media or TV, you may be immersed in a world where everything looks amazing (with the implicit message that your life could look like that too if only you bought the right goods or services available in the next advertisement) or hopelessly awful (with the implicit message that all you can do is keep watching as you can't possibly change things).
• If you consume only one news perspective, you may wonder why the "other side" can think things that are so wrong-headed and stupid. You might then fall prey to the fundamental attribution error and dismiss them as being inherently stupid or evil, rather than people doing the best they can with what they know.
• If you have a gratitude practice (or celebrate Thanksgiving), you may appreciate what you already have. Many of the people reading this newsletter have lives of comfort and privilege relative to the vast majority of the world, and yet it's all too easy to only focus on what we are missing.

• I spend a lot of time thinking about what makes executives effective. If you'd like to apply that executive mindset to your career and goals for 2025, I'm hosting a free 30-minute "Lightning Lesson" webinar on December 10th at 9am Pacific to guide people through a process of designing their career portfolio. Sign up to attend live (or receive the recording) at https://maven.com/p/071d20/become-an-executive-in-2025
• I will be running another cohort of my Maven course, How to Become a More Effective Executive, in January and February, after the fall cohort got rave reviews from those who participated. As a special thank you to my newsletter readers, you can get a 22% discount by signing up with the discount code GRATITUDE.

• Be grateful for what you have, rather than focus on what you don't. We often forget to appreciate what we already have, as I illustrate with a story from a father-son camping trip. How could you invert your thinking to appreciate what you already have? Rather than cling to a scarcity mindset of "not enough", what could you share from a mindset of abundance?
• What drives your culture? A company's culture is made visible by the way decisions and tradeoffs are made between different priorities and stakeholders. I share my observations about who drives decisions at big tech companies like Google, Apple, Meta, Amazon and Microsoft.
• Take action and do one thing this week. When things go wrong, many people beat themselves up, thinking of different things they could have done, or start blaming others, wishing they would act differently. But thinking doesn't change anything. Action does. It's great to reflect on how you could have handled the situation differently, but then stop thinking, and take action.

• I had a surprisingly deep and touching conversation with sisters MaryAnn Means-Dufrene and Emily McAnelly on their Great Noticing podcast, which you can listen to here. It turned into an impromptu coaching session as our noticing led to uncovering their unstated needs so we could talk about them.
• I did a 10 minute presentation on crafting a career vision for John Pezoula's "Ready Set Exec" event, where I share some questions to ask yourself to set a career direction that's more meaningful than the next promotion or the next raise.

• Obligations 2, a poem by Layli Long Soldier that is a lovely exploration of different ways to relate to our experience.
• This Coaches Rising podcast interview with Boyd Varty. I first became aware of Varty through his interview with Tim Ferriss, and read his book, The Lion Tracker's Guide to Life, this summer (Goodreads review here). I really appreciated this interview relating the practice of tracking animals to the craft of coaching. "All transformation starts with not knowing" because "Losing the track is part of tracking". His observation on how our attention drives our experience: "We don't live in the world. We live in what we believe the world is." When we can let go of our preconceptions, and pay attention to the aliveness of our present experience, then we can find our path.
• Choose Good Quests, by Trae Stephens and Markie Wagner, which starts with this fiery take: "a good quest makes the future better than our world today, while a bad quest doesn't improve the world much at all, or even makes it worse. Today, we are in a crisis. Silicon Valley's best — our top operators, exited founders, and most powerful investors — are almost all on bad quests." They contrast the world-changing output of the Paypal Mafia with the disappointing lack of ambition of Facebook IPO alums. They conclude by observing that "The vast majority of quests, even during times of great progress, constitute what functionally amount to economic noise." But "History is the record of top players completing good quests. ...Therefore, there is a moral imperative for our best players to choose good, hard quests." What will your quest be?