Mixing it up

As my business has matured, I find myself a little too tethered to my desk sometimes, dealing with internal and administrative matters (this person has money coming in, that one has money going out, etc.)  I am not getting out in the streets and seeing more people and things as often as I would like to. First and foremost I know that this means I need to be sure we upgrade and upskill someone to whom I can delegate more of this stuff. Such is life.

It nets out that I am not being exposed to as diverse a stream of new people as would be ideal, which in some ways deprives me of the social, intellectual and -- dare I say it -- spiritual oxygen that comes from encountering and engaging with new souls and situations. Even as I write this I recognize that the challenge this presents me with is to learn to draw more strength and interest from those I know and deepening my engagement with them. For example, the client with whom I went to a Smart Recovery meeting the other night (essentially this is AA for people who don't cotton to the idea of a Higher Power, powerlessness, etc.).

A particular challenge here is that I am doing this as I am also making a conscious effort to fly and even drive less, for carbon reasons, so I'm not getting as much geographic diversity.

It also means that I am increasingly dependent on the things I read, listen to, watch, etc, to mix it up. So that if I am captive to the recommendation engines of Amazon, Netflix, etc, there will be a natural narrowing process. Particularly if I keep getting suckered into watching the best goals of Messi, Zlatan, etc., on YouTube.

At least yesterday I did talk on the phone for 15 minutes to a new Board member, and I started watching Eddy Murphy's Dolemite is My Name on Netflix, which is pretty good. And I am grinding to the end of the Deng Xiaopeng bio I've been intermittently reading for months now, and just finished listening to Kai Fu Lee's AI Superpowers in the car, a very intelligent and thoughtful book about the AI arms race between US and China, the disappearance of work as everything gets automated, and how humanity should manage that transition. There were surprises. I'm also enjoying Marcus Aurelius and Charlie Munger in the mornings.