We can see it in the numbers.
Every year, around this time, Provocation readers begin to disappear into airports, beaches, hill walks, family logistics, novels, naps, and the healthy practice of not opening email.
Good.
We all need holidays. Teams need time away from the constant hum of decisions. So, yes, fewer people may read this over the next few weeks.
We’re writing anyway, because writing has become a habit.
A few years ago, I wrote a Provocation called “Forget big changes. Start tiny.” I’d noticed that if the team and I had set out to write a short book of 30,000 meaningful words, we’d probably still be arguing about the font.
But writing one email, on one thing, once a week, made the seemingly impossible feel ordinary.
We wrote that “the act of writing is the act of thinking, out loud.”
That is still why we do it.
Some weeks, the thinking may be useful to others. Some weeks, perhaps less so. But the habit is useful to us, and that benefits everyone who works with us. It forces a fuzzy thought to take shape. It gives curiosity a deadline. It makes us practise what we often ask schools to do: make thinking visible before pretending it is finished.
Shane Parrish is a little more blunt about why writing, even when you’re on holiday, is a good habit to have:
When someone’s habits don’t match their ambitions, trust the habits.
Ouch.
Most of us are quite good at ambition.
We want to be more creative, collaborate better, make time for deep thinking, maybe some more reading.
We want to listen more carefully, to create the kind of school or team where people feel clear, trusted and stretched.
That’s lovely.
Now look at the habits behind all of that.
What gets protected in the calendar (and what gets cancelled first)?
Who gets heard? Who isn’t even invited into the meeting? Who have you left hanging on the end of an unanswered email, call or request?
Where does thinking happen before the decision is made, and where did you run into a decision in the interests of speed, rather than quality?
Habits are where the truth tends to live. Your habits are more your strategy than the thing written down in a grid somewhere.
Most success does not come from one grand gesture. It comes from fifty small things moving in the same direction. Tiny things are not trivial. They are the machinery.
So, as you head towards a beach, a hill, a sofa, an airport queue, or just a few days where nobody asks you to approve anything, here is one question to take with you:
Do your own habits match your ambitions?
The answer probably will not require a big reset. It may need one small thing, repeated often enough to become true.
Enjoy the holiday, when it comes.
We’ll still be here next week.