I realized recently that WFH has got me stuck in “coffee mode,” where my focus is too much on near-term gains / being a machine, but this unbalanced approach has counterintuitively thrown off my productivity. “Beer mode” is a theme that has come up again and again
… the Bezos quote that “Wandering is an essential counter-balance to efficiency. You need to employ both. The outsized discoveries – the “non-linear” ones – are highly likely to require wandering.”
The missing small things are impactful: listening to a podcast during a commute, walking to a food truck with peers, talking to someone in the kitchen, grabbing a drink to talk about whatever, or just doing something during work hours that isn’t “efficient” but is human.
How do we replace that “beer mode” inspiration?
Nose to the
grindstone productivity is essential, but so is taking time to wander.
“Sometimes (often actually) in business, you do know where you’re going, and when you do, you can be efficient. Put in place a plan and execute. In contrast, wandering in business is not efficient … but it’s also not random. It’s guided – by hunch, gut, intuition, curiosity, and powered by a deep conviction that the prize for customers is big enough that it’s worth being a little messy and tangential to find our way there. Wandering is an essential counter-balance to efficiency. You need to employ both. The outsized discoveries – the “non-linear” ones – are highly likely to require wandering.” — Jeff Bezos, Amazon
H/T David Perrell Beer Mode and Coffee
Mode