I am in the process of writing an involved post.

Kent and I have been talking about how companies prefer to focus on down-funnel development activities – the very kind we provide via The Change Laboratory – without first caring for fundamentals. You know, things like living wages, healthcare benefits, and work environments that don’t contribute to the mental health crisis.

So that’s what I’m writing about.

But the post, which I anticipate will go viral 😉, is just not ready.

And we’re on a cruise ship sailing across the North Pacific.

Somewhere in the North Pacific. Photo Credit: No Vacation Required

Too much of a good thing.

We are fortunate that we can work from anywhere in the world that has decent internet. It’s how we designed our life; freedom of movement is a fundamental aspect of our No Vacation Required philosophy. So we get to do work we love while, in this case, cutting a frothy white line between Hawaii and the Pacific Northwest.

For over 15 years, we’ve balanced enjoying travel experiences – like too-good-to-pass-up-even-though-cruising-is-conflicting repositioning cruises – with our desire (and need) to make a living doing work we love.

Well, balanced may be pushing it. We’re very ambitious guys with a lot of passion for our work.

And travel.
And giving back.
And fitness.
And professional development.
And so many other worthwhile things.

So, despite our best efforts, since we kicked off this life-design experiment, we hven’t always achieved balance. Instead, we’ve pushed ourselves – checking off bucket list items and accomplishing like we had mere weeks left to live. We called it “living like we’re dying.”

“Living like we’re dying” nearly killed us.

We slowed down.

It has not been easy for us to slow down. We’ve never had a problem with a “positive no” when something just didn’t resonate. In fact, much of our success can be attributed to saying no to the right things. But, historically, we struggled to say no to things we wanted in order to make more time and space for things we wanted more. It wasn’t FOMO. It was more like, “the Universe is saying yes, who are we to say no?”

But we figured it out.

We narrowed our professional focus. We prioritized our physical and mental health. We cut back on travel and exploration to a level that most people would still consider ‘aspirational’ but to us feels just right.

And we’re much better for it.

Ambition still creeps in.

Sitting in the ship’s Martini Bar, which has a “mid-century modern meets Arrakis” decor that only makes sense on a cruise ship, I shared with Kent that I had to cut our happy hour short. I needed to finish the amazing, certain-to-go-viral post on workplace fundamentals. I told him that I was stressing because the post was going to take more time to complete than I anticipated.

Holding a lemon drop like it was 1998, he said: “Don’t do it now. Do something tomorrow that feels more authentic to the moment. Or don’t do anything at all.”

”Sometimes, the best thing to do is to do the least.”

Off the coast of Kona, HI. Photo Credit: No Vacation Required

Doing the least

The moment he said it I knew he was right.

I stopped stressing about the Substack post (which, like so many things that cause stress, sounds ridiculous when you say it out loud). I’ll work on that when the timing is more appropriate.

The post will be better for it.

Instead, I found flow with the moment and wrote this post, which didn’t feel stressful at all. And then I got right back to things that I can only do right now. Like enjoying the experience of sipping a martini in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

The transformational power of “awe”

I think the depth and expansiveness of the ocean – the awe of it all – enabled me to glimpse and grasp what the moment called for. To say, “Of course 🤦🏻‍♂️” when Kent said, “Do the least.”

Heck, it’s likely what prompted Kent to say, “do the least.”

And let’s be honest. The above message is not revolutionary. It’s essentially what we communicate to our coaching and consulting clients on the daily.

We urge them to focus on only what matters.
We urge them to prioritize.
We urge them to eliminate and downsize.
We urge them to follow the flow of energy that’s showing up at any given moment.

Because awe is always all around us. But you need to remove the mental clutter and stress to glimpse it – to grasp it.

Onward & Upward,