FoodTents Build, National Heritage Day & the Return of the Prowler!

Well, the first two days of the week were spent on site at Philippi putting in our first GrowZone! This was very exciting and the event went well overall although we obviously have some lessons learned for next time. Let me just say that I have never been so happy to see tomato seedlings as I was on Monday of this week!

The first day we put up four tents, and six on the second day. Already between the two days we learned a lot; this was our first time putting up so many tents at the same time. But it was really fun to get out there literally in the dirt and dig, plant seedlings, yell at people for not planting tomatoes deep enough (be laughed at first for pronouncing tomatoes the American way then for pronouncing them the South African way … sometimes you just can’t win!).

On Monday after finishing up I went to the gym, then to dinner at Beluga with my friends visiting from the States. That was a lot of fun except boy something was not right with the service on that particular evening … strange! Sad to have my friend leave, though, but I will see her again!

Tuesday was the last day of one of my co-workers so we mourned this loss while celebrating the completion of a hard two days of work over a few beers in Bellville. On the way there I saw a robot hawker (this is someone who sells things at traffic lights) selling sets of bow & arrows. Now, strawberries I understand. Garbage bags, ok, yes, I can get that too. Bow & arrows?

Anyway: 2 for 1 Castle draught happy hour … where else can you get 8 beers for R64? That is less than $10 people. Even PBR is rarely that cheap! So my original plan was to have one beer, maybe two, then head back into town to train at CCF. Obviously, that didn’t happen. So it may not have gone the way I planned but I had quite a lot of fun. No regrets other than that I had to deal with dehydration the next day which caused me to miss another training session so I was a bit annoyed with myself at that. But, as they say, you make your bed and you must lie in it.

Wednesday and Thursday passed in as many blurs, really. Literally I spent all of both days either in formal meetings or talking to people. Not sure how interesting I can make a bunch of meetings. Also, I have a lot on my plate and I need to start digging in. Talk is cheap and there is a lot to be done, not a lot of time, and not a lot of people. Well, as was pointed out to me recently this is the really hard part.

I guess the other big takeaway from this week was a lot of conversations about everything we should be doing better. Good news is very little I wasn’t already aware of, and awareness is half the battle. The other half, of course, is execution and getting everyone to see things in the same way and move to the beat of the same drummer… well, challenging!

Thursday night I kind of forgot that Friday’s workout was 7am and not 9am so I wound up going to bed a little later than I probably should have, but it all turned out OK because Friday’s workout was nothing too taxing. Although one-armed ring rows … a lot harder than they sound! I am getting much better at coordinating long strings of double-unders though, oddly enough I do them much better in a workout under time pressure than when just practicing. Strange because I would expect the opposite, that the stress and tiredness would cause me to become less coordinated. Well, who knows? Followed up breakfast with brunch @The Sandbar in Camps Bay with our coaches and another guy from the gym, during which we found out that apparently a lot of women don’t like to eat meat. I am not sure where they are finding these women. Crazy.

Friday was a public holiday, National Heritage Day. Apparently it’s also a day when a bunch of people braai but after brunch I started feeling a bit of a cold coming on so the day consisted of trying to kill the germs with wine on a bunch of wine farms we visited: Uva Mira, Dornier, Waterford (for the chocolate, which is always good when I have a sore throat!), and then Delheim after a [paleo in my case…] tapas lunch. So we went to the store, got a couple things, and my friend made chicken soup for me for dinner which I managed to eat after a two-hour nap. Then I pretty much immediately went back to bed and slept another 10 hours. I was determined to cure myself because I heard that Saturday’s workout was going to be fun, and it was.

So the posted workout was 5 prowler pushes of 20m each, 50 wall jumps, 50 kettlebell swings, 50 pushups, and 5 rope climbs. In the event we wound up doing it in teams (my partner & I finally lost a competition but to be fair, the other team had 3 people and we took less than 50% longer to finish than they did…. ;)) where we had to do a total of 10 prowler pushes, 200 wall jumps, 200 kettlebell swings, 200 pushups, and 10 rope climbs. Rope climbs are not one of my relative strengths so I did 2 of those, half the prowler pushes, more than half the ledge jumps (I am quite good at box jumps and jumping on the higher box is actually great training for me to become better at jumping on the lower box), and I think slightly less than half the pushups and kettlebell swings. So, definitely got in a good (and fun!) workout. Man, that prowler is ridiculous. I think after my third or fourth push I went to do some pushups and could only do like 6 or 7 without stopping! I tell you what, that thing is … well, actually words can’t describe it very well. If you haven’t pushed the prowler you can’t fully appreciate the fear that thing puts in you. Ouch.

Following that joyful event (and the requisite post-workout foam rolling and lying on baseballs), I took my friend to the Old Biscuit Mill for lunch and to stock up on meat. I just love the guy who runs the Neighborhood Butcher, on this occasion he gave me R50 of free meat! And boy is it good … need to get there a little earlier though, he was sold out of chickens, which is a shame because boy are those good! Of course, Old Biscuit Mill being what it was we did run into someone that I know (two someones in fact!), and now we need to plan a group outing to Mzolis!

Then we went to the beach! The weather was nice and not too windy. I managed to fall asleep which was fantastic, except then I woke up because the wind had come up and it was cold, and I looked up and what did I see but two of the guys from my gym. Small damn world. Then, I was groggy from sleep so I decided to wake myself up by practicing freestanding handstands. Needless to say I fell over a couple of times …. But that’s why I was doing this on the beach!

While heading to a bar for drinks, ran into one of our coaches (who I thought would have done his second workout of the day much earlier, to be honest), who then joined us for dinner after his run. Good times although I will admit for about the fifth time the entire explanation of the science around paleo was literally in one ear and out the other. All I know is, it works. Sunday morning found the three of us in the same place again for breakfast. This was a relatively effective deterrent from me doing the work I was meant to be doing, sigh … can’t complain, though, other than that I should have more self-discipline. But, sometimes self-restraint is not a lot of fun.

The weather turned to pouring! It rivalled some of the worst days of winter, and my apartment complex pathway turned into a river. Quite literally, I took a photo on the way out to visit a friend who is house-sitting for a while in Oranjezicht. This visit resulted in an unfortunate interaction between a cat, a tablecloth, and a glass of red wine that for some reason just amuses me to no end. But also we had to cut the conversation a bit short because we had to get back in time for a pickup for movie night but a lot to ponder. Also, I am very pleased (relieved??) that my thought patterns and reflections have settled down from the absurdity that was occurring two weeks ago (my goodness was Henley only two weeks ago??). At this rate the end of the year which is only three months away will seem like years! But, I guess everyone needs a burning platform and I guess also that when you finally wake up from existing to living, I suppose that must be what being addicted to drugs is like. But stability in my thought patterns is good; and very calming. Sometimes growth can be so rapid as to be disconcerting! But, speaking of self-discipline: I have a few things to do still before I sleep.

Don’t Really Want to Talk About It

I don’t actually want to discuss too much of the end of last week. Because it was hectic, and I was very much in the weeds, and, well, suffice to say I just don’t feel like discussing it. The good news was though that because I was so busy and not getting much sleep I was able to force myself into the three days of rest (!!) in a week that is what I knew I should take. And right now, I am excited to get back to the gym next week so all is good. Hopefully I can find the time … but I must.

I did find the time to go down to Parliament and meet with the MP I’d met a couple of weeks back. Very sharp guy. Very. I was even more impressed this time than last time because you can really get a much better sense of a person one on one. I started by explaining what heart is and where we are going and he got it. Fast. And I wasn’t giving it to him easy, either. Gave me some good ideas and some leads that may turn into some good ideas, we shall see. He’s off to the States for three weeks just now (!) as a guest of my government. My tax dollars at work, apparently. It’s early days but as much as I really didn’t have time for this meeting, relationship building is important.

On a totally separate note, can I just say … Parliament? I have seen better security in some corporate HQs. It’s kind of cool, though, there is like a whole road that is cobblestones with government buildings on both sides, it’s not just the one main building you think of as Parliament. Anyway that was that … then that night I was like 90 minutes late for dinner with friends because I was stick in Philippi.

The next day … picked up one friend at the airport, dropped her off to sleep, back to work, something like 90 minutes late to pick up the next friend due to various things and a Skype call with my boss that I wanted to be 10 minutes and wound up being 59 (!), and then I dragged this poor friend out with me to Philippi again to observe as we measured and marked out locations in the … never mind, it’s boring. On the drive out of town though got to see something very cool – a guy was repairing a car from a hole in the ground! Guess that’s the low-tech way to do it!

The first picture above is one that she took of our drive back to Cape Town from the township. Love the colors and the composition!

So Friday night stopped for wine quickly quickly before 8pm when they stop being able to sell wine, gathered ourselves and headed down to Simon’s Town. Had some dinner, then went back and drank wine. Took me a good bottle to calm the heck down.

Saturday one friend was sick with flu, and I was dehydrated so I ate a scone with my coffee (poison, poison!!) and took my other friend out to Stellenbosch. We went first to Simonsig because I like the wine then stopped by this place I’d never been before called Slaley’s or something like that, mainly because we wanted to taste the olive oil (which is fantastic and cheap, I bought the last 6 bottles of last year’s vintage). But we wound up talking to the guy who owned the farm for like an hour about everything from rowing to the X Prize to what constituted a good Cape Blend. Fantastic. I tell you what constitutes a good Cape Blend: Lindsay’s Whimsey at R29 a bottle. I bought a case and damned if I’m not going by there on Friday to buy several more…

Lunch @The Big Easy, then to Tokara (for the view, not the wine or the service thank you very much). Our return trip featured several failed attempts to buy decent food to cook for dinner so we wound up going out. Then we hosted a party for several hours and all things considered I was glad that ended early because I was so tired that I fell asleep on the couch! Bed never looked so good…

So there is this hill you have to drive up to get to the house. It’s what you might call a real first gear hill ... I tried to go up it in second gear the first time and that was a miserable failure. It is at least 45 degrees, if not 48 or 50, and is about 100m long or so. When I first saw this hill I announced I was going to run up it, so what did I do? Yep, I woke up, got dressed, and proceeded outside to run up the hill. Now before you start any workout you need to know in your head what you are planning on doing. I did not do that before this workout. I thought well, the hill is hectic, so maybe 3? Then I ran the first one and thought hmm, that wasn’t so bad (but then again I was only going at maybe 90%). I was taking short breaks … just catch my breath and walk back down and return up again so maybe 60 second breaks off of 25-30 second sprints. So I decided after running 1 that I was going to do 5. Let me tell you the last 10m of that fifth one is one of the hardest things I think I have ever done! It took me several minutes to be able to get up, and then I think I staggered up the stairs back home and it took me literally another 5 minutes to be able to recover sufficiently to feel normal, I was starting to wonder if I had actually managed to over-exert myself! But, I was fine. Good thing I didn’t go for 10… maybe next time. And a little more rest in between. And a stopwatch…

Sunday again we did the touristy things; penguins @Boulders, Cape Point, and Chapman’s Peak Drive through Camps Bay and then to the Woolworth’s for food and made some absolutely fantastic roasted chicken (I was working not cooking…), stuffed butternut and swiss chard. Which I am now actually thinking of as spinach. Help me. I also managed to say ‘now now’ the other day in conversation completely by accident. True.

It’s Never as Simple as You Think

heart, where birthday celebrations involve beer at 8:30am.

Trying to get better at listening to my gut. So Sunday night I was operating on extreme sleep debt and hoped to get to bed at a reasonable hour. Didn’t happen. So as I was setting my alarm for the gym I realized it just wasn’t a good idea… so I set the alarm for an hour and a half later instead! Then I proceeded to get 5.5 hours of sleep the next night and go to the gym anyway but that was more a matter of “if I don’t work out now I am literally going to chew off my own hand.” OK not quite that bad but when I’m stressed I *need* to work out. This is the balance I need to figure out how to walk….

But here is the problem. I have talked before about how similar work and CrossFit are when it comes to the mental focus required to do well. By Tuesday evening I was so mentally exhausted that I had what I can only describe as a serious mental fail on the deadlift. We were doing 3 rep max so I do a pretty decent set at 90kgs then I added on another 5kgs and just literally could NOT get my mind in the game. I had about 3-4 fails when I picked it up about 1cm and realized that my back wasn’t straight … finally I picked it up once and my coach congratulated me and I had to point out that my form was bad. It’s not about can I lift the weight, because I can lift a lot more than that with bad form. It’s about the form, and I could NOT concentrate on the form. It actually kind of pissed me off. Well, it happens at work sometimes when I realize I am just not effective anymore and need to take a break but this was the first time I hit a literal mental block while working out. As I said the other night, the two are exactly the same. Luckily the metcon part of the workout only required burpees and resistance sprints, and I had someone screaming at me the entire 3:30 that it took. Then on Wednesday we did bench press and finally, I didn’t run out of time before I ran out of strength! 51kg for a 5 rep max, not too shabby. Well considering my mother has been saying since I was about 14 that I could bench press 100 pounds, it’s about time I actually did it.

So Monday morning I went to the U.S. Consulate in Tokai to pay far too much money to get a notarized document requesting my criminal record from the state of Massachusetts. The first of paying way too much money to get a work permit begins…

Not even entirely sure what all happened after that; the day was a bit of a blur. Met about recruitment issues, went over some of the Purple Heart business case with the guys who work in Purple Heart, and headed down to the V&A Waterfront to check a site that we are pitching building into. It’s funny to see an empty space, and watch an architect look at it. They can just see things I can’t see.

So the unfortunate part about being invited to a co-worker’s house for dinner without being told a specific time is that before I knew it it was 7:58pm and I was still at work! 10 minutes and 1 frantic apologetic text message later I was wondering where all the time had gone! On the plus side I didn’t have to cook dinner and got to enjoy some pleasant company and a nice balcony with a different perspective on the city than mine. But soon enough that all ended and I went home to try frantically to draw up the pictures in my head regarding the idea factory to present to the company the next morning.

Sadly, lack of sleep and proper preparation took their toll and I did not communicate as clearly as I would have wished. The lesson, though, is good (and would have been obvious if I’d paused 30 seconds to think about it beforehand … hate when I make avoidable mistakes).

But then I spent a looong time talking about this model with a co-worker. A few lessons out of this:
1. Just because I’m pragmatic doesn’t mean everyone can remember that when you are talking about something very big
2. You can never assume that another part of the story is just going to work
Interesting, though, I am re-thinking some of the model but more on the periphery and the how than the what. But, of course, it’s just not as simple as you think, and every argument you hear must either help you strengthen your argument or re-evaluate. Because fighting “not invented here” is very, VERY important. It amazed me, by the way, how no one here I have talked to about the NIH syndrome had never heard of it. Not sure if it’s an American thing or just a software thing (or both).

The remainder of the day remained hectic … we had an issue with one of the Purple Heart guys, then status meetings for FoodTents and Wines with Heart. After that talked through some recruitment issues before heading out to Philippi to the site of the FoodTents GrowZone that is going in on Monday. Following this, a rush back to the office to negotiate terms of employment with someone we want to bring on to run one of our businesses.

For my sanity, as noted above, I insisted on hightailing out of there at 5 to go to the gym. Following that I went to Camps Bay for dinner at a friend’s new [short-term rental] flat, and after THAT back to my place for another 2.5 hours of getting the download on everything that has to happen in preparation for Monday’s activation. It is enough to make your head spin, I tell you!

Most of today was spent coordinating various activities around the GrowZone. The details are boring. So now I am sitting here thinking that there is more work to do than time to do it and I know how to get myself out of this mess but it takes time. It’s gotten to the point recently where I’ve become even more blunt than usual (!) with everyone because there just isn’t time to beat around the bush. I am also, to be honest, a little bit terrified for my American friends to arrive because they just won’t tolerate me staying at work to all hours of the night or coming home and working. And that is about the only time that any of my individual contributor work gets done because literally all my time at work is spent working with other people. And even given that there are not enough hours in the working day.

So, I have some things to work on. I also need to stop eating these pistachio nuts…clearly I am stressed! I’ll end with an amusing anecdote from the final Henley dinner. For some reason about halfway through after several glasses of wine we decided to Myers-Briggs each other. One person on the team got me in 3 seconds flat. But that was an exception … I got one of the guys I’d worked with closely but it took me about 30 seconds! And I was laughing the whole time thinking “how Type A are we that we both know our own, and what the criteria area, and, most damning of all, are finding this amusing dinner table conversation!”

The Conceit

Or, what happens when the chess piece becomes self-aware?

I felt great Saturday morning. For one thing, I had a full six hours of sleep (tongue firmly in cheek). But I woke up to a gorgeous day, wrote a couple of emails and headed over to CCF for what looked to be a super fun workout. It was a team workout where in teams of two we had two minutes on, two minutes off at a bunch of different stations: wall balls, prowler push, shuttle runs, pushups, kettlebell swings, and ledge jumps. My teammate and I started out on the prowler and let me tell you it was hilarious … he pushed it one direction then literally couldn’t get it moving the other direction for like 5 seconds! I busted up laughing and was still laughing when it was my turn to push it. I didn’t laugh long of course – first of all, that’s not possible with the prowler and second of all I had a similar problem on my return trip! And on this workout, unlike the infamous prowler madness of a couple weeks ago, we did something between prowler and ledge jumps. We did really well at the ledge jumps, but then again yeah, that is my big strength. I was also kind of amused because apparently I impressed him during pushups: he said something like I did it full out just like I was in a competition. Well, um, yes… that’s how I roll.

And hey guess what … you put the two most competitive people together and you wind up winning. Fun workout; not particularly challenging, but apparently that wasn’t the point. Cool to be out in the parking lot doing a workout though!

So my boss came by to pick me up at 10:30. First thing he does is thank me for making time on a Saturday and I’m thinking “Thanks, but we both know exactly how much I want to be here.” We drove in a somewhat inefficient manner to the house of an architect we have worked with over the years. He had an amazingly beautiful space in Oranjezicht. It was exactly what I would have expected of an architect’s house: very South African, very much a mixture of inside and outside, very traditional and very modern at the same time.

Now Cape Town is an incredibly small town … I know I have seen this guy somewhere before, but this didn’t seem the time or the place to explore it. Interesting though. I gave a too-lengthy introduction of myself (I was trying to give him some context for how to relate to me rather than just “yeah I’m here I’m doing this.”) and I was also put on the spot a bit to describe my role which is actually somewhat impossible without describing heart itself, and you try describing someone’s baby for the first time in front of them! Apparently I passed because my description was not corrected.

Then we spent about an hour talking through and trying to express our ideas around how this space we are likely to be developing should look. It’s not an easy thing, because it comes down to what is this space for, how will it be used, how do we want people to experience it and think of it. And again, I am reminded that when you put a bunch of smart people into a room it is stimulating in a huge number of ways. I am so excited to see what this guy comes up with; hopefully we will be able to coordinate schedules and get out for a tour this week because I am excited to see the space as well.

After we finished we had a little snack and I got teased just a bit for bringing my own food along with me (I had a big thing of biltong, nuts, and apples – this was my breakfast after the workout). Well, hey, we all do what we have to do for the things that are important to us.

Next up was my time to share the vision I had developed with the Henley team of what the future heart should look like; specifically around my part of the business. This was something I’ll never forget – sitting in De Waal Park, with a good answer to every question and a bunch of insights around what are some of the core things we are going to have to get right in order for this to work. Seeing the end game is what I need – when I have that I can figure out how to get there. I am not, however, good at coming up with the vision and this is why I was so darn pleased with myself that I got both the content right (for which I can thank the Henley team), and the story.

After that we talked about a number of other things and I also said a couple of things that I thought needed to be said (and one thing I didn’t mean to say but I’m glad came out). Following this meeting I was literally on Cloud Nine. At first I thought it was because I got approval from someone whose approval I really want, and yes that’s part of it, but the real reason I think is that now I know where I am going. But this is the other thing that is so cool about the whole being greater than the sum of the parts: for me, understanding how to make this all happen was easier than grasping the end game (I think, although it’s hard to say because figuring out what the end game is is a heck of a lot harder than just grasping it!); for my boss, the reverse was true. He got the vision but asked a few questions that really surprised me because I assumed the answers were obvious.

So I headed down to Kommetjie where one of the girls from the gym was throwing a birthday bash. It didn’t start until later in the afternoon but I availed myself of the invitation to come down earlier and chill, but of course I didn’t chill, I sat down and started drawing up slides that illustrate the story I told. I needed to get everything in my head out, while all the insights were still fresh. Boy I heard about it for that, and people kept distracting me with things like Jager bombs (SA version, Jager and Red Bull), and conversation. But the conversations of course morphed into my talking the ear off of everyone who would even pretend to be interested.

I feel a bit badly because I was going through a phase of very rapid self-growth and I needed to talk through certain things to reach certain insights, but this means that I was incredibly egocentric for that time period. I took a break in the middle and lay by the ocean then the flies annoyed me and I wanted to be very, very cold, so cold I couldn’t think, so I went into the water. Unfortunately I didn’t put 2 and 2 together and realize that I was going to be cold for a very, VERY long time! Ha.

So about Cape Town being a small town, the guy who had presented at our morning meeting the day before shows up at this party. I actually thought it was two days before and he reminded me that it was only the day before. This is the thing: so much happened in such a short period of time that it literally seemed to me like it was a few days prior. His presence was a stroke of divine luck (actually, not, but that is, I suppose one way of looking at it), because he and I had a lot to talk about. We still do. But the good news is I tested my drawings on him to explain the vision to someone who had zero context. It worked, but then again he’s also quite intelligent so not the real litmus test. He also nailed me by asking at one point if I had any brothers or sisters because he needed someone like me to make his vision actually happen. Apparently my strength must be THAT damn obvious for two wicked smart people to pick up on it within literally probably an hour of talking to me.

Anyway. This part of the conversation was useful because it led to some of the thinking that eventually led me to figure out what was so disturbing to me about all of this. Clearly something was bothering me or I wouldn’t keep wanting to talk about it, and now that I finally know what it is I feel so much better because now I can manage the risk. But this is why I need visionaries around me: he asked me why mentors need mentees which was just the question I needed to be asked at that point of the conversation. This is just an example, but what I miss sometimes unless someone else starts the conversation going this way are fundamental critiques or paradigm shifts: I let the box define me; I have to explicitly reject premises rather than naturally rejecting them.

So another example: the guys who run my gym have been telling me I need to rest more. So I knew they were right, but I didn’t know why … I feel fine, I’m not injured, my body is responding well, I need a stress relief (these are excuses in case that’s not obvious). So my natural inclination is to try and understand the reason behind things for me to commit, and since I didn’t understand this I chose to ignore it. But at the same time I knew it was true, so why shouldn’t actually matter all that much. So what do I do? I ask one of the guys who runs the gym and he gives me an answer that was the right answer for him, and is probably also true (it was about the body’s physical capability). Later I realized the real reason I need a break, which is that I am mentally tired, and I can NOT afford to get burned out of it. As the guy from Henley somehow picked up, for me, the mental and the physical are extremely intertwined at the moment. In fact they are almost the same thing, and if I stop progressing in one I know it will affect the other.

I was really quite tired so it wasn’t that difficult to persuade me to crash there rather than drive home in the dark. The drive is so gorgeous that doing it in the morning sounded like a fantastic idea. I actually wound up falling asleep while up late talking with the girls, then I woke up and caught a second wind. I really needed the sleep, especially as I had to meet a friend the next morning for yoga so I couldn’t really sleep in. But I was also really enjoying the company.

So the next morning the coffee I drank was, shall we say, very well-received. I was feeling so exhausted even after that I was fascinated by the guy at the petrol station who washed my windshield with more care and attention than I had ever seen someone wash a windshield. Insane. Why? I am not sure. Gave him a good tip, though, because he started my day off in an important way.

The yoga session was also apropos – the theme was focusing on eliminating our imagined weaknesses or something like that. Actually, the session itself was pretty much perfect. Somehow, talking in the courtyard after I came to a very key realization: I need to let go more. If you know me much at all, you know I’m a control freak and if you’re reading all this garbage it’s because you probably know me. But the metaphor I used was Michelangelo who said that he saw the sculpture instead each block of stone and all he had to do was release it. This implies an openness that I often do not have.

I explained a while back that I learned how to relax into the pain and put myself into the zone. But this is using the mind to do something physical. The same exact thing is true intellectually as well! I am always busy trying to figure shit out, but this means I am not open to just seeing the answer. If I can’t explain the rationale, I won’t necessarily accept the answer even when it’s right (like me needing to take some time off from gym). This is an interesting insight; I am going to have to see how to apply it. It’s a bit of a paradigm shift, so we shall see what happens. Of course as about four people have explained to me in the last week or so, none of it really matters anyway because whatever happens will happen and it’s outside of my control, influence, decision-making. But if that thought process is correct, I don’t want to go there. Ignorance is bliss.

Yeah so that was cool. I was also explaining to one of the instructors (who all have some of the inner peace I’ve seen in the Dalai Lama, by the way) that what’s happening to me just now is interesting and disturbing. I am gaining more and more insights into the world around me faster and faster, at the same time as I’m realizing just how damn complex what I am trying to do is. So basically I am changing, rapidly, into something else, and I have no idea where it’s going. I would be scared except that I’m not and actually it doesn’t really matter because it’s too late. Whatever is going to happen with me is going to happen so I may as well enjoy the ride.


In mid-afternoon I headed down to Muizenberg to check the street fest where my friends had a small stand selling native plants planted in found objects. My boss was saying just yesterday he looks for signs in life to tell him he’s on the right path. I had a couple of interesting signs in Muizenberg. First of all I met this woman who is utterly fascinating and who I suspect will be very important to me moving forward. I need someone to keep me honest. No, not honest … to keep me good. This is important and I’ll get back to it in a moment. But I also ran into the person I am trying to recruit for a key position, who hadn’t gotten back to me with his thoughts at the end of last week and I was worried because I assumed no news was bad news. I’m still not sure what will happen, but I did get a chance to do my bit to influence the situation. The third thing: I go to the CrossFit web site to try and find something in particular and what do I see? A picture of a box in California that says: “We Can Because We Think We Can.” If there is any summary of Thursday night’s conversation, this would be it.

So here’s the conceit: it’s not as simple as who-the-heck-do-I-think-I-am to be a) dreaming so big, b) believing that I can do it, and c) believing that I have no choice because the stakes are too high to fail. c) is an important point because I don’t want to over-emphasize it, first of all it’s a particularly bad conceit and secondly giving it too much importance puts too much emphasis on failure anyway. We’re not doing this because we don’t want to fail, we’re doing it because we want to succeed. I can only speak for myself, of course, but my own conceit is that I am in danger of doing what I’m doing for the wrong reasons. I’m doing what I’m doing both because I want to achieve it for myself and because I want to make a difference in the world. Rob Wrubel used to talk about changing the world back in the Ask Jeeves days. Peter Shrimpton talks about changing the world too: the difference is, he means it. Actually, the other difference is he can really do it!

This is what has been bothering me; that I wasn’t honest with myself about this. Now I know why it’s so important to keep my ego in check, because I need it for the confidence it brings, but if I don’t keep it in check it will destroy me. Asking about my weaknesses plays right into this because I want to know them so I can destroy them. I don’t, at the moment, know what to do about this other I guess than to keep doing stuff I’m really bad at! Maybe someday I’ll get overhead squats right. But in all seriousness, I do have an element of doubt and I need to figure out how to keep that without letting it affect the outcome.

The other thing is that I am dangerous. Well, I’m dangerous in a lot of ways; I didn’t get that nickname for no reason! But life is like a giant puzzle or multi-dimensional game of chess. I am starting to see the game around me, which is first of all amazing and secondly scary. But the more I see, the more other pieces I see (apparently I’m in the flow or some such thing!), and I can start to understand more and more how do accomplish what I want to accomplish. But this is very, very dangerous. What I need to do is watch the hell out and make sure that I am conscious about what I am doing, and why I am doing it. Unfortunately, this is going to be very hard for me!

The final insight I had, that relates to the above, is that we are not alone. We have people who will help us if we a) let them and b) ask them (in that order of importance, because there is no sense asking if you are not capable of listening). In the last couple of days I have met three people who I think are going to be very important to me in the future, for different reasons and in different ways. I guess only time will tell whether or not this “insight” I have into stuff that hasn’t happened yet will turn out to be true!

So I’ve had a very intense couple of days. I think this step function is done for now and thank goodness because I have a lot I need to do next week. Other than regretting being a terribly self-obsessed bore for the last few days (I do feel badly but this was something I had to do), the only thing I regret is drinking at the rate that I did, because I wish I remembered more of the conversations that I had. I guess the important stuff I remember, but shame… guess I’ll have to talk to these people some more!

Henley Madness

Well, this was a busy week. Way to state the obvious, so was the week before and so will be the coming week.

Anyway, the team from Henley was in the office on Tuesday doing interviews of staff and stakeholders to help us understand internal and external perceptions and understanding of heart. This was a useful exercise as it had some key insights but from my perspective the really valuable work that went on was in helping us figure out why the organisation that I am running should exist. To this end, I talked for several hours on Tuesday with the two team members who were focusing on that part of the problem. We didn’t really accomplish anything on that day other than just moving the ball forward a little bit.

Everything else about Tuesday that I wrote was boring so I’ve changed my mind and will move on to Wednesday because that day was more interesting. In the morning a co-worker of mine and I went out to Sea Point to get the download on market research results from one of our social enterprises. This was great for a lot of reasons; there is a lot of good insight there. I also gained a few more key insights: a) people should listen more (especially me), b) making the whole greater than the sum of the parts is critically important, and c) we exist in a wider context, and what we do impacts on others and we often don’t spend enough time understanding this.

The rest of the day was spent in interviews. Nothing I want to share publicly around the challenges here, but at the end of the day I was … well I was going to write exhilarated but that’s not actually correct. I was relieved. However, I was also frazzled but the yoga brought me right back to where I needed to be, which was a good thing because I had dinner plans at the house of a good friend. Had I gone over there in my earlier emotional state, I would not have been good company. I can shift my mental state, but doing that requires a level of focus that is difficult to achieve when you are physically stressed out. The very awareness of the existence of the tool can be missing, and may have been on that evening. My good work quote of the day, if I do say so myself relates to this: “It’s hard to see the forest for the trees when you’re stuck in the weeds.” Especially for me. But dinner was lovely, and relaxing. Some relationships are just comfortable and mutually beneficial.

Thursday! This day blew my mind. So I spent a little bit of time with the Henley crew in the office before they headed back to their hotel/conference center to work. I had one more interview, followed by an hour-long planning session with my boss. He was off the next day in Joburg, and to China for a week on Sunday, so we needed to talk about what needed to be done across the different projects. But, with one key exception, that didn’t tell me much I didn’t already know, so the value in the discussion was around more the core of getting on the same page with what we are trying to accomplish.

After that was over, I headed up to the Cape Milner which is where the Henley group was staying, trying to draw conclusions and pull together a presentation. I worked with them for maybe an hour and change before I had to go back to do Purple Heart business coaching. I was a bit impatient and frazzled and tried not to let that get through to the girls too much, but really I wanted to get back to the Henley team. Shame, life is what happens when you’re waiting for other stuff to happen and I need to work on being more present.

But soon enough I got out of there and back to the hotel. At some point over the course of the evening what started off in my head as a muddle turned into a crystal-clear picture. That was tremendously exciting: I could see through all the complexity to understand both why this organisation should exist, and how it would work in practice. A raison d’etre is key for any organisation but especially when you have to have a fundraising story a) and b) a fundraising story that doesn’t compete with another, somewhat similar organisation under the same umbrella.

One of their teachers came by around 6:30 with a beer and offered some commentary. Fair enough, but when he came back at 8:30 with another beer I was pretty impressed (not sure how many were consumed in between …). Impressed not that he was drinking, although that was cool, but that he was just as sharp mentally as I was, and I was obviously still sober. But more fundamentally I am impressed with people who can see the big picture. So I am sitting there and most of what is going through my head in terms of feedback is within the box, but his feedback is what’s missing. And once you get me thinking about it I can contribute at that level, sure, and hopefully offer some insight there but I know it’s not my key strength. But then again, we must work on our weaknesses and when it comes to comparative and absolute advantage the picture becomes muddier. It’s also hard when what I like to do the most isn’t the thing that I absolutely excel at.

Anyway. Being sober didn’t last long as after we gave feedback on the presentation and the team focused on crafting how to communicate our insights to a wider audience, and we went to the bar. Where we planted our butts down and stayed for the next six hours (in my case, five in his). Second shift, I guess. As I was saying above, some relationships just work. For whatever reason, I don’t know cause and effect in this case and I am not sure it even matters, I was needing to work through a period of self-reflection. Now of course I like myself perfectly well and am happy to talk about myself, and yes I like having my ego stroked because who doesn’t? But I’m getting ahead of myself. But what I got out of this was not just good company but a series of questions and commentary about myself and my boss, and what we’re trying to do here that once I finally followed the thought process to its logical conclusion led to a pretty interesting insight. However, I am way ahead of myself as that insight didn’t arrive until Sunday morning at the Gururamdas patio. I think that place may be my own personal temple.

Now my comment above about giving feedback while drinking notwithstanding, one of the other groups was getting feedback on their presentation so I sat in and contributed to the discussion (as a complete outsider of course). LOL of course I think I had some insights…

Again an outside highly strategic perspective was interesting. Actually a bit scary. I was so focused on the “simple” task of trying to do what I am trying to do that I had failed to look at the implications of success (or failure). Peter talks about creating your own reality, which he does purposefully and I, at this point in my development, do accidentally but in this particular case the end effect is the same: we know that we can succeed, and we know that we will succeed. We might fail, yes, or rather I should say it is possible that we could fail: but we will not. Watch this space: I can’t wait for the day when we’ve done it and can look back on this time, but I also look forward to the actual process itself (and thank goodness – life must suck if all you do is look forward to the future!).

This sounds arrogant, or at least audacious and it is but a) only unreasonable people reject the premises put in front of them and go make big things happen, b) everything I’ve done up to this point has prepared me for this and so this is not blind faith, and c) it’s not actually about us. We are both doing this entirely for ourselves, and entirely not for ourselves. But this too is dangerous because with what we are doing in particular the means is as important as the ends even though it may not seem that way. So we must be careful not to led the end justify the means when we need to make tough decisions. And not to let egos get in the way: there is a big difference between being capable of doing something and actually doing it. Check Fight Gone Bad for case in point, except one problem I had there was I didn’t know I could reach 300. It’s the mind. “It’s all in the game, yo.” – Omar.

Eventually the group I was with all decided that we must sleep at some point so I went home (I stay three blocks from the hotel so I was quite happy – no driving involved!). The next morning I felt the lack of sleep, though, as I had a couple of mentally-intense meetings first at the morning meeting where we met someone who is 14 months into five years of living without money, then on Purple Heart and then on FoodTents. Both of these latter two were interesting because if you’re going to do something you have a team and the team needs to work as a team and co-create the plan to achieve the objective. This takes time, and trying to figure out where everyone is at the current moment, and how we all need to work to get where we want to go: a complicated thing! Everyone is different. But hey that is also what makes it fun: working with people. I wouldn’t want it any other way. But the morning meeting was fascinating because the explanation of how the money multiplier is actually a bad thing was difficult for me to follow because of lack of sleep. The rocket fuel coffee helped, sheesh.

I left work a little bit early to run an errand, and then back to the Cape Milner (aka my home away from home for a few days there!) for the final presentation by the team. To be honest I don’t think they did a fantastic job of it, which I told them later. There were key bits of context that were missing, as well as some insights that to me were really key. As I said above the vision in my mind that somehow formed on Thursday was so crystal clear, and this delivery was not. That was the bad news, because I had to share this with my boss the next morning and I wasn’t going to be able to lift the presentation from the team verbatim. The good news is that I don’t really care about the presentation because I have the insights, and the team was really absolutely fantastic to work with. I am so, so, grateful that we had them here to work with us, what they did was of extreme value. But also, I got to know some of them a little bit in this short time and I really enjoy them as people.

Then I did something stupid and went to the gym. What did I wind up doing? Tearing the skin on my hand trying to do a pullup and not really paying proper focus. It all comes back to the mind. I won’t repeat that mistake again (I hope), and you’ll understand why once I finish writing this navel-gazing tome and get to Sunday’s insight.

Yeah so after the workout I went to a restaurant called Carne where we had our final dinner. Of course they plied us with champagne before we ate, and the alcohol lubricated everything as it often does. In vino veritas, yes, and removing inhibitions can be ok up to a point … but it’s also quite interesting what goes unsaid. I also think about my boss a lot, because I find him interesting. Fascinating, actually: he is impressive to me in a number of ways even though he has weaknesses himself, of course. Sometime between Thursday night and Friday night I reached a conclusion about our relationship and I also simultaneously realized that he already knew what I had just figured out. The asymmetry of information is/was interesting, but I was thinking about this as I sat in the bar of the Cape Milner for the final time. What are we saying, what are we not saying: what do we think the other person already knows, and what do we not say because it’s not necessary, or because it’s so basic, or because we don’t think of it, or because saying it could actually cause damage. This is different to avoiding a subject, which is a whole other area of course…

So my head is still spinning from all this, but I found someone kind enough to indulge me and perceptive enough to get me thinking deeper. A lot that we talked about but the key thing I want to mention here is that my whole career I have learned how to focus on finding my own weaknesses because I either don’t get constructive criticism or I do, but it’s so far off-base in terms of tackling an effect and not a cause that I still need to do the archaeology to understand what the root problem is. So as a result I have become what I consider to be very aware of my own weaknesses. As I said above I do like having my ego stroked but at a certain point I turned this around and said fine, you don’t know me that well but what do you see as my weaknesses. The answer I got back was very interesting because again it was something I already knew, but didn’t make it onto the radar as one of my most important weaknesses. But now having poked at this open wound for a little bit (and it doesn’t hurt because … hmm, I was going to say because I already knew but it’s actually different than that, somehow it should but it doesn’t. Will need to think about that one), I recognise that it is a lot more important than I had thought. This is why an outside perspective is a good one. Next up is to ask my boss this same question. That scares me a bit but in fact is exactly why I need to do it. It will also be interesting to see what’s actually happened by November when we can continue the conversation. Should be interesting.

If you’re still reading this, I don’t know why, but there is more to come. This whole blog is as much for me to have a history for myself of what happened as it is to let y’all know what’s going on. So this is where my head has been recently and hey there’s very little that’s as interesting to me as me. Humble much, Ellie?

Should Have Been, Would Have Been, Could Have Been

Saturday morning’s workout at CCF involved me falling. Not on my head this time, though … we had to do a team workout with thrusters (this is where you start with the bar at your chin and go into a front squat then go immediately into an overhead press where you press the bar over your head), where the rep only counts if one member of the team is in a handstand. I started on the thrusters and did like 22 or 23 or something before slowing down and telling my teammate to come out of the handstand. Then after maybe 10 seconds rest I went into my own handstand. Not entirely sure how long I lasted … something on the order of 30 seconds would be my best guess and I was so focused on letting my teammate get her last rep in that I somewhat overestimated my own strength and wound up crashing down rather than landing gracefully. Good news is on later sets I was much better at yelling out when I was coming down!

The rest of the day found me in Newlands at my boss’ house with another co-worker where I worked on something unrelated to my job but critical to complete as soon as possible. Good to get it done (ish … I still need to spend a few hours cleaning it up I think) so I can focus on my real job because goodness knows there is enough work for two people there. Although I certainly enjoyed the time, and the more insight I get from these guys the better, it is just truly inspiring, it really is, and there is so much that I have to absorb. I keep saying, I love strategy and think I have a pretty good strategic mind but compared to this guy, boy, I have a lot to learn and I can’t learn fast enough. At least I am a pretty good do-er, but I always knew that stuff came easily to me. Oh but what I was starting to say was that I could have done this work much faster in my own home because conversations about determinism, people management, and the Mayan calendar, while fascinating, take time. It is fantastic to have someone cook lunch for you though and attend to your every need! Patience and love of a saint, I’d say!

We also paused to watch the rugby game. What a shitshow. After being down 31-6 or so to Australia, the Springboks managed not only to come back and get ahead only to lose in the last like 20 seconds due to a stupid penalty that resulted in Australia scoring a kick. Ouch, that is like classic Cal football snatching defeat from the jaws of victory kind of performance although really, REALLY, they shouldn’t have gotten into a hole like that to begin with. What I learn from this is that I should just not watch the Springboks … the All Blacks game (this is New Zealand, for the uninitiated) game I watched two weeks ago had a similar result. Fortunately for me, during that game I had already had enough to drink that I didn’t care so much about it… this time we didn’t drink so much because we still had to go back to work after the game!

So that evening I also managed to fix a computer game I had been lent. This thing is my new fascination because it uses biofeedback – you control the game using your brain. For example you have to move rocks across a screen and stack them using just your brain, or move a balloon across the screen without letting it float too high up or too low down. I was so good at the moving the rocks that I wondered if it was fixed a little bit and I wasn’t actually doing it so I specifically stopped concentrating and lo and behold the rock dropped down and it took me 30 seconds to get my brain back in the groove. But, as I suspected, the mental state I know as ‘the zone’ is exactly what you need for this sort of thing. As you move through the levels you need to learn more and more control over your mental and emotional state and this, of course, is the whole reason to do it. Yes, folks, this is how I spend my Saturday nights –working until 9pm, and then playing computer games. As this was the night before the night before Fight Gone Bad, I needed to sleep. Well, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

Sunday was also pretty chill. Woke up, had some breakfast, and went to yoga. Man, some of that stuff is pretty hectic I tell you, and my hip flexors told me today. LOL, well, also apparently I am low on calcium because my arms just couldn’t take this absurd 11 minute pose (and what is it with 11 minutes anyway??). OUCH. So I marched right over to Woolworths and bought some yogurt and got milk for free, so I marched right home to make some Dunkin Donuts coffee.

Later that evening I went to a going-away party for a friend in Sea Point. This was interesting … there were two co-workers there (this friend had done some volunteer work for us). The first one took one look at me and asked if I had been working. Sadly I can’t tell a lie … guess the glazed computer look lasts a while! The second one cornered me after about an hour (by the cheese … nice move there … until we moved to the balcony that was by then deserted); and we talked for about an hour; he had a couple things on his mind. I agreed with everything he had to say and am still trying to sort out the best way forward. Thing is, I am fiercely loyal to my boss and my organisation and I don’t say that lightly but at the same time there is always room for improvement and I am trying to figure out how to fit into that.

But darn it … after I just had my ego knocked back into check these bloody people this weekend just ARE NOT HELPING. Stop it people, stop it … I don’t need a big head, but hey I’ll take the positive feedback. Who wouldn’t?

So then I tried to leave at a reasonable hour and, well, needless to say I failed and wound up staying another 90 minutes or so. Yep, I’m a sucker for red wine. But as I had the aforementioned Fight Gone Bad the next day I did leave at a reasonable hour.

I had intended to do the workout in the morning but when I woke up at 6am I found myself tired and dehydrated. I really hadn’t drunk enough water during the day and certainly not enough in the evening, so discretion being the better part of valour I put my frittata in the oven and went back to sleep. It was a good thing because it didn’t hurt to be at work early to check in with my Henley MBA crew before the morning meeting.

The first few hours of the day we spent downloading thoughts about the incubator vs portfolio management company to the crew, and talking about the current status of our relationships with our stakeholders. Following that, the team headed out on a Purple Heart site visit while I stayed to catch up on the status of a couple of things, including pulling my boss in on a tutoring business concept because what we had been missing all along was his insight into what the funders had in mind, and how we need to position things to them. Good news is he is on board with our plans for the business, but we will need to be careful with positioning.

When the Henley team returned, we went out to a FoodTent in Milnerton. Now this may not be the Cape Flats but the guy who runs the place is an absolute inspiration and we are going to use him for some R&D in terms of how things grow, how much we can harvest, etc. Fascinating. Things are so hectic that using the 20 minute return drive to catch up with the guy who runs FoodTents was absolutely critical. Yes, that’s sad but true…

So after planning with the crew for tomorrow I changed and raced off to the gym for the Fight Gone Bad challenge. When I first got there I was a judge/coach for one friend of mine who absolutely rocked the workout – she was doing the intermediate level and just crushed it, and wound up winning the most improved among the women, so good for her! This workout is insane though, I had literally been dreading it since the first time we did it. Now I like tough workouts, ok I really like tough workouts but holy heck this is I think the only workout I’ve ever done that literally scares me. So what is this ridiculous workout you ask? Well here is the explanation direct from the CCF web site:

This workout consists of 3 rounds that are each 5 minutes long: In these 5 minutes you move from station to station and spend a minute on each. After this 5 minute round, a one-minute break is allowed before repeating. The stations are:
1. Wall-ball: 9/6kg ball. (Reps)
2. Sumo deadlift high-pull: 34/24kg (Reps)
3. Box Jump: 50/40cm box (Reps)
4. Push-press: 34/24kg (Reps)
5. Row: Calories (Calories)
The clock does not reset or stop between exercises. On call of "rotate," the athlete/s must move to next station immediately for good score. One point is given for each rep, except on the rower where each calorie is one point.

Whatever. Anyway. It is just death. After one round you feel tired. After the second round you literally feel like death and then you need to do the third round! So on the last time I did this 8 weeks ago I scored 242. This time my target was over 280 except that then someone put in my head while drinking that I should score over 300 (it’s amazing what I remember vs what I don’t remember when I’m drinking…) so then I wanted to get over 300. Well, I scored 287 but here’s the thing: one of my contacts fell out near the end of the second round push press so I lost 3-4 reps handing it off to my judge, but here is the real kicker: on the final round I used the men’s weight wall ball (which as you can see is 50% heavier than the women’s ball!). I had about 7 or 8 missed reps because I couldn’t get the ball high enough and I was wondering what the hell was going on … was I that tired, or was it depth perception … wasn’t until after the very end that the guy who shared the station with me told me that he was pretty sure I used his wall ball on the last round. LOL. Well, I might not have gotten quite to 300 but I would have been damn close. But it doesn’t actually matter what might have been … what matters is what is, so I’m a bit annoyed with my mistake but hey: next time 300 is going to be, um, I won’t say easy, but I’m gonna get it net time: I was that close, really, when you think about it. So there.

Afterwards we had our paleo potluck (I made the frittata without cheese and surprisingly it was pretty decent!). After what seemed like hours of collating scores we had our awards ceremony. My improvement was “only” 18 percent or so, which was only fifth (!) among the women, we had some people just smash out improvement, which is great. I did manage to come in first in overall score. A win, but a win by default because our resident Olympic-level athlete had not been feeling well and did not compete (she scored 322 8 weeks ago). Eh, like I said, doesn’t matter what you could do, it matters what you actually do. But I was pretty happy all things considered. I have not been so hot with my diet the last two weeks or so; time to knuckle down there and as I have friends coming into town in mid-September I will naturally be taking some time off because yes, it’s about time for that. Problem is, if I don’t work out during the week every day the work stress gets to me. Noticeably. But then I love the Saturday workouts! Not to mention that the last time I tried to take a day off the workout involved rope climbs and handstand pushups so I changed my mind.

Humble Pie

I finally did it. It’s funny … I know, of course, that I’m not perfect. And I am my own harshest critic, by far. And yet, I think pretty highly of myself, which of course you know if you know me at all. But, this week, I have been forced to re-evaluate myself because in a couple of different areas I pushed myself beyond my capacity.

So, of course, I spent a lot of time evaluating what happened and what I concluded was that I had been moving so fast that I wasn’t taking the time to a) figure out what I was actually trying to accomplish and b) wasn’t planning. I was just moving, and doing, and that’s actually quite stupid, and actually when I really thought it through I realized that what I was doing wasn’t even actually in line with what my actual goals are, which makes it all the more strange to me that I was doing what I was doing. It’s always interesting when you act in a way that is out of character for you, especially if you don’t know why. For all the personal growth I’ve experienced over the last few months in terms of becoming more aware of my mental state and the influence that my mind has over what I can do and the outcome I create in the world, it was a little bit shocking to realize that I was just moving so fast that I was being stupid and not thinking. But, not surprising because my tendency is to move fast. Apparently, too fast if it means that I start going down the wrong road!

Also, I tend to get a big head when things go well and then I will sometimes drink and talk shit and really, there is just no reason for that. So, it’s good to be cut back down to size from time to time, some of which was from external things and some of which was from reflecting, HARD, on the external feedback.

Anyway we had an internal review which pointed out a lot of, shall we say, areas for improvement in one of the areas in which I had been working. That’s the bad news. The good news is, we took the time to analyse what we had done wrong, and are taking steps to make sure that we do better going forward. One piece of advice I will give to anyone reading this is that I always respect people more when they take responsibility, and openly taking responsibility and even going above and beyond the constructive criticism you receive to admit to other areas where you think you didn’t do well is actually quite helpful in another way – no one can criticize you behind your back if you openly admit where you messed up! Of course, we all have blind spots […apparently!!] but being defensive gets you nowhere, and one thing I love about here is that there’s not a huge amount of assigning blame because really, who cares. It’s all about ok, fine, we under-performed in this area, how do we correct the problem going forward. It is a very healthy form of reflection (and one that I try to do on a personal level as well). Awareness is the first battle.

I also was pretty mad at myself because for the first time in my working career I had stretched myself so thin that I wasn’t effective. I can’t say that I didn’t think this was possible because of course at some level I knew it had to be but there is a big difference between knowing something in theory and actually experiencing it in practice, and also you don’t really know when you’ve crossed a line until you’ve crossed it. There is a very fine line between pushing yourself as hard as you can go, and pushing yourself too hard.

Yeah so anyway my comment in the last post about sleep … I got a really good amount of sleep Sunday night and it turned out to be a good thing because we had a really fun workout early Monday morning, and I just kicked the heck out of it. I always do better when I have someone at about my level to push me, and today one of the other guys was literally with me at almost every step – sometimes I was a step ahead, sometimes he was (ok, yes he had a 24kg kettlebell to my 16), but that was just awesome. The workout was three rounds and we just powered through them … about 90 seconds a piece and I was really happy to see that the final round took only 5 seconds longer than the first round. It really is true that you perform significantly better when you’ve slept enough; this is going to be an interesting pull these next few weeks and months between work and the gym, I know it (oh and that thing … what’s it called … a social life??).

Two more CrossFit things: on Tuesday we had to do this exercise called manmakers. So we had to choose our weight and after choosing too low of a weight for Saturday’s workout I didn’t want to make the same mistake. It was funny though, I tried with the 7.5kg and thought ‘this is easy!’ then with the 10kg and thought ‘hmm, all right, this is a bit challenging for one … sure I can do 30, it will just be a little painful…’ But there was a lot of “are you guys ALL SURE that you have the weight that you want to use for this workout” going on so I was wondering to myself if I was just being stupid. Turned out pretty well all things considered, it was appropriately challenging. Next up was wall balls and jumping rope. Now this was interesting because I was for some reason a bit tired this day (oh, wait, I remember why instead of going home to eat dinner and go to sleep like I planned I went to yoga then out for what was supposed to be one drink and wound up being like 90 minutes…) so on the third round after far too many missed wall balls I was trying to do 90 jumps and I was tired … really tired. Especially my wrists, because our coach made me use a heavier rope. So I decided to put myself in ‘the zone’ and guess what happened: first of all, the pain went away [mostly] and secondly I started jumping rope faster. A LOT faster, like almost twice as fast. Then by realizing this I lost concentration and missed a jump, but boy is that cool. Only problem is that I can’t do it when the movement requires thought, or is just something heavy. But I’m pretty excited for when I finally make it out to do a 400m time trial.

Oh ok I lied … had a long talk with my boss Friday afternoon; again on the power of the mind and how to manifest the reality that we want rather than turn the negatives into reality. But it’s fascinating for me how everything he says both resonates in terms of “normal life” experience but also in athletics. Like when I lift some easy weight I don’t really need to concentrate because I can be lazy and just muscle it up. But when the weight gets heavier you can’t get sloppy like that and if I don’t concentrate, I miss the lift. So many times I go to start the lift then literally stop, and stand up (or whatever) because I know I am not ready. Like yesterday morning was kind of pathetic, I was just mentally tired (gee I wonder why) and so once I got past like 30kgs I couldn’t clean properly … just wasn’t getting my elbows around fast enough, even though I know the movement perfectly well, but my head wasn’t in the right place. And then once I got into that mode, it was kind of all over. What I will soon learn to do is fix my mental state so this is not a problem, but I am not there yet.

So what happened at work this week? Spent a good amount of time working by myself to draft then with my rock star boss to refine the incubation framework for seed phase. This is both fantastic because I love this sort of work: designing and systematizing, because the more I know this the more I’m going to be able to hold the incubator accountable as a client, and because designing out the meetings, tasks, and deliverables will really enable us to get this up and running so effectively. It’s just exciting.

We are also trying to recruit for a few positions and I was a bit shocked at how when reviewing these CVs I was racial profiling … nope: not South African, nope, not black. Wow, amazing how BEE plus the reality on the ground has affected me, and, when you think about it *especially* me!

While I’m on the subject, here is another contrast with America: in the States you are lucky to get a politician’s main secretary on the line. Here, MPs answer their own emails and promptly (within hours).

Good work quotes of the week:
• Addiction? It’s good for some things
• Coffee? Are you sure that’s a good idea? Maybe Red Bull
• Unfortunately that’s become a way of life – timing it down to the last second!
• If you quit before the finishing line, you never reach the finishing line
• In the battle between water and a rock, the water always wins

So it was a pretty busy week socially, too, which is probably why I didn’t do a great job of sleeping after Sunday night! I had friends over for dinner on Monday and Thursday. Thursday was particularly funny because I knew my propane was running low but it actually ran out in the middle of sautéing vegetables for the frittata I was making. Fortunately the oven is electric, and necessity being the mother of invention, I finished dinner in the oven. Great conversations, though: any time I can get people to talk about my latest fascination and the power of focus, I am happy.

Wednesday night was an “until next time” braai for one of the guys from the gym who is going back to Sweden for a bit to visit family, but he really feels at home here. Everyone has their place on the planet, I guess. It’s a hard position he’s in, and I really empathise with that. I think the highlight of the evening (after a certain point I had so much wine that I don’t remember many details at all!) was the strawberries he had somehow managed to procure. Holy heck they were good! Oh, and one of my coaches informed me that I don’t actually need to eat carbs (I was saying, truthfully, I would love to live off of just protein and fat … there is a certain amount of fiber that you need of course, but salad is really just a vehicle for olive oil and avo anyway!). I took that one to heart the next day (no pun intended) when I was in meetings from 9:30-4pm, then had Purple Heart coaching. All I ate until dinner was random macadamia nuts, biltong, and some beef or something I had in the fridge.

Luckily for me, I don’t really get hung over. But I do get dehydrated, and like an idiot I had left my water bottle at the gym (not to mention my cell phone at this guy’s house … what a disaster I was that day!). But the glasses at work were all tiny so I decided to be a little different and filled a flower vase up with water. I love that at heart you can admit to being out drinking the night before as long as you show up to work in time and are mentally sharp. After all, my co-workers already think I’m nuts when it comes to diet and water intake, so this amused me more than it did them I think! It was also odd that on that day I got an incredible number of comments about how fabulous I looked. I guess I should stay out drinking late more often. Oddly enough, despite everything I felt the most tremendous sense of peace that day. Go figure.

Last night was an informal dinner with three of the Henley executive MBAs who will be working with us for the next week. That was quite enjoyable – they are smart, interesting, insightful, and they actually chose specifically to work with us rather than choosing the group and being assigned to an NGO. Can’t wait to meet the rest of the team, although I am quite sure I will be completely exhausted a week from now! Right now – off to the gym then over to Newlands for some work. :)