renew by letting the Compression out?
… working 140 hours a week… there are 168 total…
In one season I worked 140 hours a week for nearly 2 years. There are 168 hours in a week. It is just math. UnCompress those hours… 7 normal years, and I felt every one of them.
You have been running at that setting so long that you have forgotten what your own full signal sounds like. What did you turn down in order to fit, and has anybody heard the real thing since?
Ties, matching suspenders… never the jacket
My first job was at IBM – Blue Suits, White Shirts, normal ties. To fit corporate America I Compressed my own signal. I still found creative ways to stand out. Ties and matching suspenders, never wearing the jacket. Walking fast and talking fast, all of it squeezed down to something the room could take. And so were my creativity, fun, and empathy… Compression was my way of life until it was real…
What comes out of a Compressed signal sounds like noise from outside.
… they renew the record…
I thought Nirvana was a lot of noise. For years. It was not until the acoustic sessions that I could hear the composing talent, in the words and in the music. Same band. Same songs. Different setting on the dial.
In September 1993 Nirvana put out the record they made to answer all that polish, cut in 2 weeks with an engineer who refused royalties. In May, before it shipped, they had gone back into a studio in Seattle and let somebody remix exactly 2 of its songs. Heart-Shaped Box was 1 of them. That is what renew actually looks like. Not tearing the record up. Going back and touching 2 songs.
And 1 more thing from Kurt in January 1994, about his drummer. “I try to give him as many compliments as I can… Dave is a person who needs reassurance sometimes.” And, in the same interview, “Dave, Krist and I have never screamed at each other. Ever.” Whatever else was true of that band, somebody in it had noticed what another man needed and was saying so out loud.
go home… pour a glass of wine… repeat
What broke my pattern was a prescription from my Executive Coach. Four simple lines:
Go home
Sit on the porch
Pour a glass of wine.
Repeat.
Oh, and at 5pm. It was crazy. I was far too busy for it, and frankly far too important. And it worked. That is the whole intervention. No framework, no offsite, no 90 day plan. A man I trusted told me to sit down outdoors at a fixed hour and let my level come back up.
Adam Duritz of Counting Crows did the same thing from the other side. He said what was wrong, in print, under his own name. “There was a period when I felt like I was getting worse and worse for years. Then around Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings, I felt like I got a handle on it a bit.” And then, plainly, “I realized I probably wasn’t ever going to be fine.” The relief did not come from sounding undistorted. It came from saying it plainly.
so what will you turn back up?
Out on my own now, I have slowly been letting that Compression out. More feelings. More joy. More pain. The new work is all about that, and I am 50 odd years late to it, and it is still the best trade I ever made.
Your “Simple… Not Easy” move: Somewhere is a sentence you turned down years ago. Say it to 1 person today, then ask them what they heard.
Helping leaders renew the part of themselves they turned down years ago to get through a door is the work I love most now. Schedule time with me here.
You do not have to remake the record. You get to go back and touch 2 songs, and one of them can be… Heart-Shaped Box
