Tagged with: entry and exit • mindful • patterns • rhythm • time markers • transitions • y2k
Twelve years ago some of my colleagues celebrated New Years Eve in the office. The world of IT was braising itself for The Millennium Bug.
I was partying like it was 1999. Actually it was. I spent half of the first hour of 2000 stuck in an elevator. Not because of a software bug, but because 8 friends and me were in an elevator that had a capacity of four.
When we switched from 1999 to 2000 we really expected a change. There was going to be a difference. There was a reason we had to do things before January 1st. You know. The big “division by zero” scare. When computers would use 00 as the year, it would have a devastating effect. This deadline wasn’t just an arbitrary line in the sand. It was real.
At least, we thought it was.
“Oh. Grandpa. Please tell more about the old days of the previous century.” Yeah. Yeah. I’ll shut up for now.
In Projectistan (land of the projects, home of the deadline – a term coined by Jon Whitty) January 1st is a magical date. It’s not that something is really happening between the last day of December and the first day of January. Things are the same. Heck. Most people aren’t even in the office. It’s artificial time. Someone drew a line in the sand. For accounting purposes.
But somehow it has effected the natural rhythms of the inhabitants of Projectistan. The excitement of new beginnings. Big Adventures are coming! Epic Journeys are at the horizon!
Regardless of the actual starting date of the work, new years day marks an exit and an entry.
Perhaps more so in our mind and bodies than on our to-do lists.
As projects are about time and rhythms, it makes sense to me to be more conscious about our relationships with them. Conscious about entry and exit. Conscious about moving from one thing to another. Conscious about transitions.
Havi Brooks has a nice exercise to enhance your awareness about markers in time. Providing them names. The idea is that you use moons (full moons or new moons) as markers of natural time. To become aware of our more natural rhythms instead of artificial time.
But, as hamsters in our treadmills running from one reporting period to another, we might start out with calender months. And provide it with names of episodes from our Big Adventure.
That will be weird enough.
This could go like this:
January: Embarking The Beagle.
This blog is my Beagle in the journey to discover how temporary tribes operate. And this month I’m getting ready. Again 
Or you might like these:
The Prologue.
Courtship.
“I Ate So Much, It’s Time For Action.”
If you had to provide a name for the coming episode in your work or personal life, what would it be?
Oh yeah. Happy New Year!
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Stay open to discovery. Maybe it will result in a mechanism to explain the process. Maybe it’s the same mechanism the Darwin found. Natural selection should result in better ways for temporary tribes to operate. The more successful variations will be copied.
Hey Ray! The cooperation here on this blog to explore how temporary tribes work, is a great example of how temporary tribes work
Always stay open to discovery!
Great, Bas
How about someone like me who moved into 2012 without noticing. “Transition Time” had no effect on me.
But, it might make differences. Somebody born on Dec. 31 is one year older than a guy who was born first minute on Jan. 1st. The older guy may benefit or lose from this as he falls in a different age group. I would call it The Calendar Effect
The clock is ticking to finish the comment
Happy new year to all Project Shrink Readers
Hey Ali! Happy new year! Yes, I guess everybody has different transition borders
The effect you describe reminds me of the book Freakonomics in which the effects of “cut off dates” for school classes and child sport team are described: if you are bigger and stronger than the other children, you have an advantage. So you appear to be better which causes special treatment. Which enlargers your advantage etc.
Happy new year! I recall reading about that same effect in one of Malcom Gladwell’s books. Outliers, I think it was. Of course, if you come from a really short family like mine, then which month you’re born in appears to make relatively little difference in the sports arena.
I’m going to keep an ear open and listen for the name of the next phase of my work life…
Hey Lori, Happy New Year too. I think I was wrong … I read it too in one of Gladwell’s books.
I like the idea of a naming “ritual” to put some idea of focus where a deadline or other milestone seems more arbitrary. One question, do you advocate creating these deadline ideas for yourself, or is it better to make it more team oriented?
For me it is a ritual for myself. Although I plan to try this out in a team in the future.