Category: Human

Human

Fresh starts

Jeff Foley

The new year! The new decade! Moments like these are always an opportunity to take a step back, to count your joys, to look at what’s not going well, and to decide what to do about it.

Let me preempt your argument about whether the decade starts on Jan 1 2020 or 2021 by telling you I’ve arbitrarily decided the first decade runs from 1 BC to 9 AD, because I want to reconcile the endpoints of decades with being able to say the 80’s, the 90’s, the 20’s. But I’ll take it a step further. Why should these fresh-start moments come around only once a year? They can come on your birthday or an anniversary. On the start of the school year, or a new job. Or to celebrate finally cleaning off your desk. Or to mark an otherwise boring Wednesday in the dead of winter.

We control the frame of reference. We decide when it’s time to mark the scorecard, turn the page, step up to the next tee, or whatever wipe-the-slate-clean metaphor helps convince ourselves that we are the ones in charge here.

Whatever frame of reference you choose, I wish you a joyous start.

Human

Fall in love with your life

Jeff Foley

Came across this phenomenal advice from Edie Freeman, who among other things was the creative director that came up with the idea of using various animals on the cover of the O’Reilly series of highly technical programming manuals.

My current advice to everyone is this: fall in love with your life. Pursue the things that bring you joy. Let go of things that don’t. Know the difference.

Make it intentional. Make it your goal. Make it your reality.

I certainly subscribe to this philosophy.  It’s plainly stated, yet full of depth.  And each sentence is a challenge – pursuing joy, letting go, recognizing what belongs on each list, and not accepting the default.

 

Father, Human, Husband

With and without family

Jeff Foley

For a good part of the next two weeks or so, I’ll get to spend a lot of time with my immediate family.

There were times before, and there will be times after, when I do not get to see my wife and kids nearly as much. Sacrifices from other commitments – job, friends, hobbies – take away from that time.

Many of those sacrifices, however, make the time with family possible. All of them make the time with family that much sweeter… with or without the cotton candy.

ferris-wheel-family.png

Friend, Human, Marketer

Small world

Jeff Foley

The world is smaller than you think.

Even with billions of people on the Earth, our paths are constantly crossing with people we know in unexpected places.  It’s because of the many trails we leave: past friends from living in previous cities, former colleagues at old jobs, buddies from school, or activity groups.  We run our lives in smaller universes than we realize.  The LinkedIn / Kevin Bacon / degrees of separation game is very real.

It can be dangerous, if you forget to treat people well. More than one job applicant has been denied a position because word got around of his low performance three jobs ago, or because she made enemies who then found the ear of her hiring manager.  Of course the solution to that is pretty straightforward: do a good job and don’t step on people on the way.

It can also be delightful, when coincidences lead to chance meetings.  For example, my wife and I were up in Maine, hours away from home, celebrating our 17th anniversary.  While huddled around a firepit making s’mores, another guest peering over the flames said to me, “Are you Jeff?  Jeff Foley?”  It was my former coworker Victor, whom I hadn’t seen in almost two decades.  My wife burst out, “You took the very first picture of us as a couple!  We framed it and had it on our piano for years!”  It was true: one of the last times we saw Victor was on what was probably our third date, a going-away cruise marking an important transition for our company as it was acquired by a competitor.

These stories are always remarkable.  The guy whose new boyfriend turns out to be the neighbor’s best friend.  The dinner invite turned down that a couple realizes, a decade later, would have caused them to meet two years earlier than they did.  The Facebook “wait, how do you two know each other?” moment in which you learn a best friend from kindergarten went to grad school with a trusted coworker.  All because the world is smaller than you think.

We re-live our impact on others again and again.  (Just in case any of you needed more motivation not to be an asshole.)

Human, Leadership

Recognizing an Inflection Point

Jeff Foley

There are these great moments that are easy to spot in hindsight — moments where everything around you changes irrevocably.  At work, it could be a new boss or new CEO, or an acquisition or sale. World news such as an election, an attack, or a crime can alter the course of history. Major personal events such as a marriage or birth or death leave an obvious, indelible mark on the trajectory of our lives and others.

Those are obvious inflection points – points on the timeline that you can use to end one chapter and start another in the story of your own life. But what about the less obvious ones?

That moment when you realize you’re not going to stay in your job and it’s time to figure out what’s next. The first time a teen calls you “sir.” The day you realize a new way to approach a familiar task, or that you start a habit that stays with you.

Those inflection points are great to look back upon and acknowledge when you are reflecting on your path traveled.

It’s even greater when you spot one as it’s happening and see in real time how it’s changing you.

But the greatest is when you can actively turn a moment into a inflection point and say now. Right now. This is happening, I’m turning the page, I’m declaring a new chapter, and I am going to make this work.

We have that power.

Human, Leadership

Sadvocates

Jeff Foley

In any tough situation, you can choose to look for joy.  To find the brighter side.  To not get discouraged by the setback.  To put yourself in the other person’s shoes.  To think slower, not faster and suppress your lizard brain reactions. To shape your own reality.

Or you can choose to look for sadness. To interpret cynically.  To believe the worst of others. To mourn the past, or damn the future.  To point out what’s going wrong, not what’s going right.  To be Eeyore.

Acceptance is a dynamic act.  You’ll find both joy and sadness if you look for them.  Unless you’re battling a mental illness like depression – you get to choose.  And your choice doesn’t just affect your reality.  It influences the reality of those around you.  So, which will you advocate for?  Joy or sadness?

We humans like to flock together.  We naturally give into peer pressure to fit in, like in the famous Candid Camera elevator experiment.  So it’s very easy to follow along with the sadvocates.  To nod your head as they tell you why your jobs all suck, or why the old way was better, or why this will never work.

Don’t.