My friends and I went pottery painting recently. Next, we’re trying crotchet. The pottery painting was fun, and my star shaped bowl painted in rainbow colors came out better than I expected. I’m thinking to go back and paint a dragon next.
My friends and I, we’re exploring. Trying some new things. Seeing what we enjoy. No pressure to be good at it, or even do it a second time. It’s oddly liberating. I think this is good for me, because I get too focused on being good at things, which makes me too likely to stick to what I know, unwilling to branch out and explore.
It also reminds me of professional development. Sometimes I know what I’m trying to learn and how to do it – I’m pursuing it, in a depth mode. For example when I took the full co-active coaching training, or when I wrote the book.
Right now I’m in more of an exploratory mode. I have some broad themes that I’m interested in, but I’m not quite ready to commit to anything that big. I was inclined to be a little self-judgemental about that, like, I ‘should’ know and focus and achieve. But I’m trying instead to find the beauty of the exploration. The freedom to make small decisions, the lack of pressure when I can truly believe that it’s okay to be wrong, the joy of following my own curiosity, just because.
As a result I’m:
- Listening to wildly different podcasts (a history one!)
- Reading an interesting book with no real practical application
- Redoing a new version of a program I took before, and experiencing it very differently
- On a program committee for a conference I really like
- Planning on taking a course that feels wildly different from anything I’ve done in a long time
- Working on a fun / exploratory project with a friend
In an exploratory mode, I feel much less of a sense of progress, perhaps because it’s so much more chaotic than when I’m more focused on something specific. But I think maybe that’s part of what makes it good for me right now. Exploring is a more generative activity, as in, generating of ideas and perspectives. Depth is more of an exploitation of ideas and perspectives that are already there. Post writing a book – basically a packaging and exploitation of years of exploring – I really want to get back to a more generative space; and I’ve concluded that means I have to explore.
How about you? What have you been exploring lately, and what did you learn?
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