I sit here with a hot coffee waiting for my 7 am train to pick me up from NYC to head back home…
It’s been an interesting couple of days. Thursday I woke up and headed to work to meet with the new North American Sales lead for our company. I took an Uber because I’d be taking this train ride home.
After I met with our new sales leader, I rode with him to Virginia to do lunch and a presentation with one of our global company’s heads of strategy. It was a good meeting. I had meant to leave by 3 pm but left at 3:30 for a very long Uber ride crossing all of DC at rush hour to end up in Annapolis to start our boat ride to NYC. I got there late, but reasonably so, and as soon as I did we untied the beautiful boat and headed sail up the Chesapeake Bay to Chesapeake City near the Delaware border.
We had dinner and tied up for the night there – and yesterday had a beautiful day navigating our way starting at 5 in the morning down the Delaware Bay, out through the Cape May canal into the big ocean and up the coast to head to NYC. We arrived in New York at 3 pm into a beautiful afternoon, and saw the Statue of Liberty as so many have before coming into the harbor. We found the marina, washed the boat and eventually headed to New York for a guy’s night out on the town. We got back around 1 in the morning, I woke up at 4:30 to help get them off on their way… and started my trek back south.
My friend, whose boat I was on is heading north for 2 week’s vacation with friends and family, I was just along for the ride… too often in my own mind, the story of my life. 😉 My original plan had been to head up north with him to his final destination and enjoy a day at the beach with him and the other friends and head home later on Sunday.
Early in the week, with my son being sick I had thought hard about skipping the trip.
Do I stay home and give the family time (I would have worked Friday), OR do I go on this trip and get home Sunday night. I had deliberated on this decision for days and days, not wanting to cancel on this trip as I saw it as a great opportunity to evolve this friendship, to enjoy an experience that doesn’t come around daily, and to just have a little chill and relax and be somewhere different doing something different.
Then, taking my own advice, I thought – I can do both. I can jump off the boat in NYC, be home early on Saturday and enjoy the best 1 day of a 2 day trip…
So, here I am eating my virtual cake and having it too!
So very often I find that ORs are unnecessary, and not just unnecessary but full of anxiety and compromise. If I do A, I can’t do B. I often look for the AB solution, and almost always find it. It has been a blessing in business and in life…
I THINK…
I take pride in my AND vs OR mentality. I know it serves us so very often in business, and I believe in life. And, sometimes I am not so sure.
Stay with me…
My friends who are A or B, don’t seem to rush as often, though most seem to have their share of disharmony in life. The A or B approach, in general, leaves more collateral damage I find.
But, it is my finding AB approaches that led me to work on Thursday in the first place, I was scheduled to be off, but I wanted to find a way to present to the strategy guy before taking off if possible, and by then working, it led me to inviting the sales lead because I was otherwise not going to have time to meet with him this week…
My AB approach often leads to “sprinting” between activities in order to fit more in. And, I want to sprint less in my life. It also has me too often in the moment, being very aware of the “transition”… Not worried mind you, but aware. I wasn’t sure how I was going to get back to DC… rent a car, uber to the train, take the train from Penn Station or Newark… if I ubered into the city I could also take the bus… 😉
One of the guys asked me yesterday, “will you fly home?” and I thought “HELL NO” which I found amusing because that was really clear but there were lots of options that I was still considering.
It is all working out… my train should be here soon… but do you see how my AB approach – find the AND solutions – fills my life more than if I simply decided, “I am off Thursday – won’t be taking any meetings”, and then either “I will take the trip and enjoy a long weekend of boating” OR “I will stay home and spend time with the family”. There would be less events to “transition” between… But, that doesn’t feel like me. If I hadn’t one on the trip, a big part of me would have been “wishing” I could have had that experience, and if I had gone on the trip I would have felt very guilty and “wished” I could have tried to spend time with the family…
I make life so complicated…
AND, the truth is we are, in addition to the family situation, having our annual strategic retreat for my company this week which I am leading and organizing AND I am also in a key point of a reorganization I am working on with the OTHER company that I am managing… AND I have to get everything done this week because I am trying to get to Peru the following week for the anniversary of my father’s passing and to see my mother which I have to fit into that week because the following week I have to be in meetings in Chicago for a software product we are launching and the following week we have an all hands meeting for the reorganization of this other company…
AND vs OR is one of the most powerful concepts I know in my life... and yet I am intrigued to rethink it...
Are you HEARING me? Do you see the liability of “AND” in my life?
I smile as I write… maybe you don’t see it (I suspect you do) but I sure do…
My living with AND instead of OR is deeply imbedded in who I am…
AND
Here is the IRONY in this whole conversation…
I am realizing that
My life needs to be LESS about
“and” OR “or”,
And needs to be more about
“and” AND “or”!!!
I have to take my AND thinking ONE step forward, AND INCLUDE “OR” in my mix…
I think, perhaps, our life and our contribution is defined most meaningfully by picking the ORs that matter, and then working the ands into the mix from there...
Perhaps, I need to be more mindful of the hierarchy of ORs... and look for AND in “solutions” for business and life, and more OR in scheduling or in prioritization...
In fact, I know there is a powerful truth in there somewhere...
...
Either I have completely lost my mind at this point,
OR
I have come across a major life insight based on how I am wired… and the power and liability of AND. There is also great power and liability in OR!
Truly fascinated as I think about this…
AND I consider whether I should squeeze in a short visit to my cousin who is at Johns Hopkins before taking an Uber home… that would get me home at probably 12 instead of 10:30, but I haven’t seen her since the day she arrived…
I know…
I know…
STOP for a moment…
SLOW DOWN…
Sometimes I realize, it’s not that I want more… I want it ALL… when it comes to experiences, friends, being present…
I am more ambitious than I realize…
Ambitious …
OR
ANDbitious 😉
I know…
I know…
STOP for a moment…
I gotta sprint to my train 😉
In harmony,