I had a very noisy day today. Distractions? No. When I have momentum, I notice if distractions are getting too much attention, and I’m often pretty good about putting distractions where they belong. Today’s noise was different. It was interruption after interruption that simply could not be avoided. And it was happening on a day when I had a lot of things to all needed immediate attention.
“Signal to noise ratio is a measurement of the relationship between the stuff you want to hear and the stuff you don’t.”
– Seth Godin
Sometimes we have to work hard to put distractions aside. Cut out the clutter and the noise, and we can find the signal. And sometimes, we have to find the signal, amidst all of the noise.
My dearest Alejandra — I spent most of the day working with you by my side. And I loved every minute of your incessant singing, bantering and screaming at the top of your lungs. You are quite possibly one of the loudest things created on the face of this planet, and I can’t wait for more of it — I love watching you find your voice. We’ll work on the volume thing.
“You can be right, or you can be connected.”
– Carrie Contey
I don’t want to be right. I want to be connected. What’s the story inside all of this noise? How can we connect with that story? I’m slowing down for a moment, to listen for it.
It’s another Tuesday night — Rusty and I are meeting for BFD. We’re still hard at work on our 3 critical paths. With so much noise, I hope we can dial in, and find some signal. I promised some announcements in my blog reawaken last week. Yes yes yes… stay tuned. We’ll get to that very soon. Right now, we need to knuckle down with our little window of Tuesday night time.
(Pro Tip: This seems like an appropriate post to highly recommend Steven Pressfield’s the War of Art)