Category Archives: LIFESTYLE

How to Overcome Financial Pressure

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We just wrapped up the 2020 launch of Conscious Growth Club, and our next opening will be in April 2021. The launch did very well. We have 87 members enrolled in our next CGC year together. Financially this was our second six-figure launch of the year, the previous one being for the Stature course in January.

I received some feedback from people who really wanted to join CGC this year (some of them waiting months to sign up) but couldn’t do it because of financial challenges, especially related to the virus. Some had been recently laid off. Others have been reporting a business slowdown. Others are uncertain about the economy and want to conserve cash. All of this is totally understandable, and I’d never pressure anyone to join CGC if it would mean overextending themselves financially.

I spent most of my 20s broke and in debt and went through a bankruptcy in 1999. Financial stress was a big issue for me back then. So let me share some insights on how to reframe financial pressure, so it doesn’t keep haunting you and stressing you out for the rest of your days.

Framing Financial Pressure

How do you frame the presence of financial pressure, such as bills or expenses you’re not sure you can cover?

One way is to see such pressure as an annoyance. Maybe it’s something that pushes your buttons emotionally. But if you see it as something that irritates or bothers you, you’ll probably try to avoid dealing with it. Since this framing doesn’t help you resolve the source of the pressure, the pressure just continues.

The annoyance framing often leads to escapism. Many people try to retreat into using the law of attraction to fix their money problems, but that doesn’t usually work when the underlying relationship with financial pressure is rooted in annoyance.

Another option is to escalate it into a threat. Sometimes this will happen as an extension of framing financial pressure as an annoyance. If you avoid dealing with financial problems, they can multiply, and eventually the pressure becomes great enough that some part of your livelihood feels like it’s under threat. Maybe you’re at risk of losing your home, for instance.

Beyond that, you could try surrendering, which can grant some temporary relief emotionally, but by itself this doesn’t resolve the financial pressure either. You may feel a bit better, but you could still lose your home.

There’s also the obligation framing. I think this is mostly the annoyance framing in disguise. You may see financial pressure as a part of life where you just have to suck it up and deal with what arises. It’s not pretty, so just grit your teeth and handle it. But this framing tends to result in punting the problems to the future. You’ll do the minimum necessary to handle the immediate pressure, but it will just keep coming back for another round.

A Framing That Works

A framing that worked very well for me was to see financial pressure as an invitation. I imagine that reality is trying to help me train up my character in a positive way. The existence of financial pressure is an important part of the character training.

Imagine hiring a personal trainer to help you improve your fitness, and then framing your workouts as annoying, threatening, or obligatory. Are these really the best frames to use? How would your trainer feel about that?

It would make more sense to reconnect with the purpose for hiring the trainer and then connect with that purpose-driven frame as the reason for doing your workouts. This would establish a better relationship with your trainer as well, one based on mutual respect.

Do you respect the trainer that is financial pressure? Do you frame its presence as purposeful? Or do you treat it disrespectfully, like it’s some kind of scourge?

Having a strong purpose is a good motivator. Seeing the greater purpose behind a challenge makes the challenge feel more engaging and less stressful.

Be Trainable

When I was in my 20s, I wasn’t very trainable. I was most uncooperative when financial pressure made its presence known. I rejected its offer again and again, repeatedly slamming the door in its face. I kept trying to run from it and find respite. If only I could somehow make enough money, then it would stop chasing me.

Because of my framing, I believed that the solution to my problems was to make more money. But this is like saying that the best way to avoid doing difficult workouts is more fitness. If only you could become fit enough, then you wouldn’t have to workout anymore, and you’d no longer have to deal with that annoying personal trainer. So forget the trainer and just become more fit. Then you can ditch the trainer. Yeah, that makes sense. 😕

That sounds pretty silly when we look at it this way, right? Can you also recognize just equally silly it is to imagine that more money is the solution to financial pressure?

Embracing your financial pressure and respecting its purpose in your life is the solution. Say yes to the training invitation.

Do Your Financial Workouts

Just as I learned to accept and embrace the importance of physical exercise, I learned to embrace the importance of doing financial workouts too.

And just as it’s helpful to find exercise that you’ll like, it’s also helpful to discover the financial workouts you like. You have many options.

A financial workout could mean getting all of your accounting in good order. That’s pretty basic, but if that’s all you do, it will probably get a bit boring. There are people, however, who like this kind of financial workout, including updating their accounts daily. I’m happy to do these kinds of workouts monthly or quarterly though.

The financial workouts I enjoy most include exploring and testing creative and purposeful ways to generate income while serving others and enjoying the process. So they’re compound workouts that hit a lot of muscle groups.

I started small and worked my way into bigger workouts, just like you might do with physical training.

In the mid-1990s, I started learning how to generate income without having a job – badly at first and eventually with some modest degree of competence. I remember launching a computer game in 1999 that sold 50 copies at $10 each in its first month, so $500. The next month it did $1000… and $1500 the month after that. That was an exciting experience. But the real workout was to stretch my creative skills to design and code a game that could generate that result. Then I had to stretch myself to promote it widely.

I didn’t really frame it quite like this at the time, but looking back I realize that I kept giving myself interesting progressive training challenges with respect to money. I kept doing financial workouts of one kind or another. And the more I did that, the more my finances improved.

If you want to survive in business, then of course you have to find ways to generate income. But I think it’s especially helpful to frame these activities as financial workouts.

Doing your financial workouts is an intelligent way to deal with financial pressure. Build up your financial skills, so you can face that pressure from strength. And don’t get complacent.

Slacking Off

Just as we can slack off of exercise, we can also slack off from doing our financial workouts. I fell into that trap too. I could say I was focused on other parts of life, which was true, but I also let myself stagnate in the area of finances for some years. I kept doing token financial workouts (like affiliate deals) that were easy for me, but I wasn’t progressing.

What got me back in the game was to discover financial workouts that looked fun and engaging again. Just trying to make more money doesn’t cut it for me. I find that rather boring.

But if the constraints for a financial workout are just right, then it appeals to me, perhaps even excites me. If the workout looks fun and rewarding, then I’m much more drawn to do it. But if I only see boring workouts being accessible, then I’ll slack off.

And of course where do we find those interesting workouts? We find them outside of our comfort zones. We find them where we don’t dare to look.

Embrace the Training

Training is challenging, whether physical or financial. Don’t expect it to be otherwise if you’re doing it right.

Good training takes us outside of our comfort zones. When we become too comfortable, that’s when we need to mix things up and reintroduce novel forms of challenge.

Daily blogging is a form of training for me. I’ve never blogged every single day for a year, but I’m doing it this year. It’s not always easy, but I like what it’s doing for my character. It’s helping me become more focused, disciplined, and organized. My life and work have much better structure this year than last year.

For my financial workouts, I like doing creative launches. I love to use my creativity, resourcefulness, playfulness, and personal growth experience to create value for people. Then I like to combine that with making honest and ethical offers. This combo is challenging. It stretches me to train in areas that are weaknesses for me, such as advertising. But I like seeing myself continuing to get stronger. This last launch went very smoothly, and I’m seeing the benefits of my skills improving from doing the training – while also spotting more areas where I’d like to train harder.

The money isn’t the reward. That’s like saying that the reward is being able to lift a certain amount of weight. Money is just a number, and the weight is just a hunk of metal. Making more money isn’t the point at all.

The point is to train up your character to grow stronger.

When you use this framing, you won’t have to see financial pressure as your enemy. Allow it to be your friend instead. It’s an invitation to grow stronger.

You have many options for how you train. It matters more that you exercise than what kind of exercise you do, as long as you’re challenged and you’re growing and improving from the training effect.

If, however, you disrespect this invitation, reality isn’t going to reward you for that. The financial pressure will just keep haunting you year after year until you respect and accept its invitation.

Believe it or not, I actually like financial pressure these days. It’s fun. It’s like the invitation to lace up my running shoes and hit the road for a delightful pre-dawn run of a few miles. I used to majorly dislike financial pressure, but since that mindset didn’t work, I opted to befriend the pressure instead. That does work – very well in fact.

Just as there’s such as thing as runner’s high, it’s also fun to experience a high from financial workouts. Having a six-figure week is fun and stimulating. It’s so not about the money though, just as weight training isn’t about the weights. It’s about the experience and the training effect. It’s about being present to the challenge.

Financial pressure is not a demon, so don’t demonize it. If you do that, you’ll just stress yourself out. The trainer isn’t your enemy. Make the trainer of financial pressure your friend instead. Accept the invitation to push yourself. Find the financial workouts that appeal to you, and do them. Keep upping the challenge, so you don’t remain stuck in your comfort zone.

Most importantly, don’t train with the goal of making more money. Train with the goal of strengthening your character. Choose financial workouts that with this in mind, and you’ll make better choices. Otherwise you may try to find shortcuts to circumvent the training, equivalent to lifting heavier weights by using a forklift, which would defeat the purpose.

I chose to develop and launch courses as well as CGC not because these were convenient shortcuts to greater financial abundance but because they’re hard workouts. These projects challenge me deeply. They cause me to spend a lot of time training outside of my comfort zone. And I like the results of that. They’re great workouts for my character.

Making more money isn’t the real progression here. The progression is to transform yourself from a person who tries in vain to stay in your comfort zone into a person who embraces the growth benefits of uncomfortable challenges.

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Virtual Coworking

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I learned about virtual co-working in the past year when a Conscious Growth Club member introduced me to it. It’s very simple. A group of people hop onto a Zoom call together, and they work, each person in their own physical space. A work session session might last for a few hours.

This might sound odd, but it’s surprisingly helpful if you’re used to working solo. With everyone sharing their videos and being able to watch each other if they want, you also know that you’re being watched, which can make you feel more accountable to doing real work. You see everyone else working diligently and looking focused, which makes you want to join in.

There’s also the option to check in with each other at regular intervals. Ultraworking hosts sessions with 30-minute work cycles and 10 minute breaks. Those intervals are a bit short for my tastes since the check-ins feel too frequent, but the general concept is interesting.

I’ve done many virtual co-working sessions, mostly last year, and while I wouldn’t want to do them all day long, they’re nice now and then. I like the variety of it, as long as the check-ins aren’t too frequent.

Once drawback, however, is that it’s not that exciting to do virtual co-working with strangers that you don’t know. It’s not bad though since it’s basically the online equivalent of working at a Starbucks surrounded by strangers.

Well, one CGC member recognize the opportunity for inviting other members to do this together, so she started up a co-working group inside CGC in March. Now some members are doing regular “let’s work together” work cycles in the CGC Watercooler (our 24/7 member video hangout).

I think this is a great idea, and I could imagine this becoming a popular feature if other members want to join in on some of these sessions.

Virtual co-working not only helps with accountability, but it also makes working from home (which many of us are doing now) feel more social. Instead of taking breaks by yourself, you can take breaks to check in with your coworker friends. You can share progress updates and help each other stay motivated, focused, and productive.

Since CGC is a pretty stable group – the minimum membership is a year – you’ll surely get to know the other members too, so then it feels like you’re working with a group of friends. It’s nice to feel that other people care about your projects and are keeping tabs on you.

I love the organic nature of CGC because there’s lots of opportunity for interesting ideas and experiments to bubble up inside the group. This year I’d like to encourage more of these kinds of experiments, and then we can work on making the popular ones more consistent, so they’ll always have a space inside the club.

By the way, if you’re thinking about joining CGC this week, I invite you to join us for a Q&A call with me and some of our members on Thursday, April 30 at 11:11am Pacific time. You can learn more about the club and what it’s really like inside. Meet some of our members. See this news post for the call details:

Conscious Growth Club Q&A and Meet Your Future Friends

The deadline to join Conscious Growth Club is Friday, May 1st. This is the only week of the year that we’re inviting new members to join. Many have already joined this week and are getting a warm welcome inside the club. 🙂

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To the Pain

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When I was learning Taekwondo, I had to work extra hard to improve my flexibility. Most of the other students seemed to have an easier time than I did. It took me months to reach the level of flexibility that they had when they started as white belts. Eventually I could do roundhouse kicks to the head no problem. Then I reached the point where I could kick way above my head, but it took a lot of extra stretching time to get there.

As I reached the higher belt ranks after a few years of consistent training, there was a flexibility requirement to test for the next belt level. I think it was doing side splits down to 6″ and front splits down to 2″. At the time I was about 4″ too high on both. I kept working on the stretching, but I plateaued and didn’t seem to be getting any closer.

When I asked the instructor how to progress beyond this point, he suggested that I talk to one of the black belts who struggled with flexibility too and was eventually able to pass the test. So I talked to him right away – we already knew each other – and he readily agreed to help me. He invited me to stay after class for an extra 10-15 minutes and work on stretching together. He told me to bring a couple of plastic grocery bags to the next class, which sounded odd.

I brought the bags, and after class he had me put them on my feet. The studio had a padded canvas floor, so my plastic-covered bare feet could slide across the floor with minimal friction.

Just doing the splits with the bags helped me sink a bit lower, and so I figured that was the method, but actually that was only the first step. After I did a few rounds of breathing into the stretch and worked myself down as low as I could go, he pushed down on my hips to sink even lower, which was really painful. Now and then he’d tell me to take another deep breath, and as I exhaled, he’d increase the force to nudge my hips towards the floor, and my feet would slide farther apart due to the plastic bags – basically while I screamed.

He told me that if it was really too much that I could tap out, but otherwise screaming was fine.

It was painful but effective. Within several weeks I was able to meet the testing qualification on my own.

While some students could already do the splits down to the floor when they first walked into the studio, I always had to work extra hard at flexibility. Other than the black belt who helped me, I never knew of anyone else in our studio needing to put plastic bags on their feet and have someone push down on their hips to keep improving. Many students were already able to satisfy the flexibility requirement well before they needed to qualify, just from the normal course of training at the studio.

In other aspects of Taekwondo, I was doing great. I especially loved sparring. But on the flexibility aspect, I was the slow one who needed remedial help – bottom 5% of the class for sure.

What made it easier was that I didn’t need to wrap the problem into my self-esteem. So my body wasn’t very flexible. That didn’t mean that I had to think less of myself. It was just a problem to be dealt with and solved.

I find this framing helpful in many areas of life, including mental and emotional challenges. Just because I’m struggling in a certain area doesn’t mean that I have to wrap the problem into my self-image. I can still think well of myself while dealing with various challenges since it doesn’t help to do otherwise.

It is good to admit the truth though, such as when help is needed to solve a particular problem. I wouldn’t have figured out the plastic bag solution on my own. The solution seemed a bit extreme. Perhaps there was a better approach, but I didn’t know of one at the time, and the extreme solution worked. It was painful, but it didn’t injure me.

If I had known earlier that the basic solution was to accept more pain, I probably could have gotten there on my own at a more gradual pacing just by using the plastic bags. Having someone push down on my hips was needed to go faster, so I could meet the qualification in time for the next testing. But if I was willing to progress more slowly, I think the bags would have been enough on their own.

Consider what problems in your life you could solve if you’re willing to endure more discomfort or pain to cross the finish line. Perhaps a little extra pain spread out over time would work. Or perhaps a lot of pain over a short period of time would do it. The pain doesn’t have to be physical. It could be emotional or psychological as well.

Maybe you struggle to progress beyond a certain point because further progress requires crossing the pain line. How can you leave the misaligned job, face the inevitable breakup, or fix your habits unless you’re willing to take on more pain, at least temporarily?

Your personal pain line isn’t fixed. It’s flexible. In order to improve my physical flexibility, I had to stretch my mind as well. I had to replace my old mental rules with more flexible ones, so I could finally cross the pain line instead of automatically ruling that out as a potential solution.

Where are the lines you seldom cross when seeking solutions? Consider that your unwillingness to cross those lines may be the very thing that’s causing you to plateau. What if the solution is to cross one of your pain lines?

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Practicing the Art of Change

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Every month in Conscious Growth Club (which will open for new members April 27 to May 1), we host a group 30-day challenge. Members can choose which challenges they want to do, and we share updates as we go through each challenge together.

Some challenges are to improve our habits or to test new habits. Other challenges are more exploration-based. Some are just for the experience.

Each challenge allows for plenty of customization, so members can adapt any challenge to fit their situations. In May 2019, we did a daily exercise challenge, and members decided whether to walk, run, bike, do yoga, weight train, etc. In January we did a self-expression challenge, and members chose how and what they wanted to express each day; some did daily blogging, for instance.

Here are the themes of last 12 challenges we did, from May 2019 to April 2020:

  1. Exercise
  2. Overcoming procrastination
  3. Building momentum
  4. Mindfulness and gratitude
  5. Explore a curiosity
  6. Optimize your sleep habits
  7. Shift your vibration
  8. Declutter your space
  9. Express yourself
  10. Be a good friend
  11. Fuel your body / strengthen your immune system
  12. Structure your time

For each type of challenge, we provide some specific examples. Here are some examples we provided for the October 2019 “Optimize your sleep habits” challenge:

  • Get out of bed by a specific time each day
  • Get into bed by a specific time each day
  • Go 100% stimulant-free (no caffeine, chocolate, etc)
  • Keep your phone out of the bedroom for the whole month
  • Take a 20-min nap each day
  • Use a sleep mask for 30 days
  • Turn off WiFi at night
  • Sleep in a room with no active electronic devices
  • Get into bed by a certain time and read till sleepy
  • Avoid using anything with a display screen (TV, computer, phone) after a certain time each day
  • Test a 28-hour sleep-wake cycle
  • Keep a dream journal and log your dreams upon waking
  • Practice lucid dreaming each night
  • Sleep naked
  • Sleep without a pillow or with a different pillow
  • Fall asleep cuddling someone

I especially like the exploration-based challenges. For the September 2019 “Explore a curiosity” challenge, I decided to learn more about one city per day by loading it up into Google maps and diving into the street view feature. I picked different cities all over the world and imagined what it would be like to walk down the streets of each city. This made the world feel smaller somehow, and it made me want to travel more.

These challenges are… well, challenging. They help to build self-discipline and determination. Each one requires a small habit change for 30 days, so there’s a training effect when we do them. They strengthen our adaptability and flexibility as we practice incorporating small, positive changes into our lives.

We don’t map out 12 months of challenges for each CGC year in advance. I feel that would be too rigid. Instead we prefer to select each challenge on a month-by-month basis. We look at what’s arising in the community and develop a sense of where the momentum is and where the group energy wants to flow next. This has been working well. Many members find that the monthly challenges are nicely aligned with their personal goals.

Growing as a human being requires change, and change is difficult. These monthly challenges help us practice the art of change. At the start of each month, there’s a new invitation to change or improve some aspect of our lives for the next 30 days.

Members don’t do every single challenge. They selectively choose the ones that feel aligned to them. I don’t do every challenge either, but I do like engaging in many of them, especially for the training effect. I also like doing the challenges as a group, which can make some of them more energizing and fun.

The best challenges help me discover different modes of living that I like better than my defaults. They introduce me to new possibilities for my life and my character. And they’re also great for learning tips and ideas from other members who share their insights along the way.

Do you have a reliable method for practicing the art of change? How do you keep inviting freshness and newness into your life? How do you prevent your character from becoming rigid, crusty, and stale? How do you introduce positive habits to the structure of your life?

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The Beauty of Endless Projects

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One thing that Walt Disney loved about Disneyland was that it was an endless project. He could always continue tinkering with it. He knew that it would never be finished.

In contrast to Disney films like Snow White, Bambi, and Mary Poppins, Walt found it appealing to pour his energy into a project that he could never complete. This allowed him to make continuous improvements. He would walk around Disneyland often, especially on Saturday mornings, and note issues that could be improved. Sometimes he’d even tell team members to relocated trees that they’d planted, so the views for guests would be better. He was good at noticing how small details contributed to the overall experience.

Conscious Growth Club is that kind of project for me. We’re about to enter our fourth year, opening for new members April 27 – May 1. We’ve made numerous improvements to the group since we first opened for early access in April 2017. And there are many more improvements yet to be made.

From one perspective, the list of potential improvements can seem daunting. Whenever I invite members to share ideas for improvement, like I recently did in our private forums, there’s a flow of great suggestions that will take time to implement. I capture these ideas and integrate them into my project planning system, so I can keep track of them. The hardest part is prioritizing what we’ll do next.

For the early months and years of CGC, much of my focus was to get the big rocks in place: the forums, the coaching calls, and some courses. We now have three major courses and a nice flow of three coaching calls per month. We’ve had significant daily activity in the forums since we started. The core pieces have all been working well for quite a while now. And we can maintain a nice flow of continuing to add to these resources.

We’ve also added other stable elements to the group: a 24/7 video chat channel where members can connect (called the CGC Watercooler), new 30-day challenges every month, 5-step quarterly planning sessions for members to clarify their goals, and lots of spinoff projects and experiments that members have come up with, including a writing mastermind group, a CGC movie club, and an online co-working group.

CGC is my own version of personal growth Disneyland. It’s a project that will never be completed. Ideally I’d love it to outlive me – always evolving in different ways. With so many growth-oriented people inside contributing to it, it’s been expanding in interesting directions since we started.

Here are some of the aspects I want to improve for the upcoming year of CGC.

Helping Members Feel at Home

CGC is great for people who are very growth-oriented and have sufficient time to delve into all the resources and opportunities the group provides. But it can feel a bit intimidating to new members, and it takes a while for some people to warm up to it and feel socially integrated into the group, even though the people inside are very friendly and welcoming.

We always welcome new members in the forums after they introduce themselves. Rachelle and I do our best to welcome everyone personally too. That’s a good start, but we need to build upon that to help people feel even more welcomed and to help them feel comfortable enough to start using CGC’s resources regularly, especially on the social side.

After our 2020 opening, I plan to host an orientation webinar in the first half of May. All members are welcome to attend. This may be followed by a video Watercooler welcome party (either right away or shortly thereafter). The orientation will be recorded and added to the CGC member portal, so members can rewatch it whenever they want. If someone has gone inactive for a while, rewatching this could help reacquaint them with the key features quickly and help them re-engage.

As part of the orientation process, I could also invite some members who’ve been in CGC for at least a year to share their tips and suggestions for getting the most out of the group. I think some of our members would be happy to share, especially in terms of what they wish they understood better when they first joined.

I plan to create a nice onboarding email sequence too (instead of just a single welcome email), so when new members join, they’ll receive a series of emails gradually introducing them to different features of CGC one by one. They can reply to these emails to ask questions too. I’ll set it up so that previous members can opt-in to this sequence too if they want a gentle refresher.

Helping Members Build Comfort and Trust

I do the coaching calls personally, and even though I find them fun, casual, and stimulating, for some members it’s still a bit intimidating to raise their hands to participate in a live video coaching call.

Even after a year or more in CGC, many members have never participated in the live coaching (other than watching), and a key reason is that they don’t feel comfortable enough with it yet, especially when it comes to talking about personal growth challenges. We’re pretty gentle and encouraging on these calls, which are geared towards helping people find solutions to their problems. But it can take time for people to get used to this level of intimacy.

I don’t think I could get nervous doing these coaching calls if I tried, and it seems like I’ve been sharing intimate details of my life online forever, so this can be a blind spot for me. It’s easy for me to forget what it’s like to just be getting started with this level of sharing and trust. So I’m looking into adding more intermediate steps to help people bridge this gap.

One idea is to host occasional “office hours” or hangouts in the video Watercooler for members who want to connect and chat with me in a less structured format than the coaching calls. This could help members feel more comfortable talking with me on video if they find the regular coaching calls too big of a step.

There are other ideas we’re considering along these lines as well.

In the beginning our focus was on adding a lot of value to CGC. This year we’ll continue doing that, and I also want to do more to help members leverage the value that’s already there.

When you first enter Disneyland, you have to walk down Main Street. That’s the only way in. Then you get to the round courtyard in front of the castle, and from there you have options. It’s basically a hub-and-spoke design.

For some members the experience of joining CGC is like starting the Disneyland experience right in front of the castle. You’re dropped into the middle of the park, which can seem a little overwhelming. Which way do I go first? Should I go through one of the courses? Hop on a coaching call? Join a 30-day challenge? Start posting in the forums? Just lurk and read the forums for a bit?

So we need to build a Main Street for CGC. I can see that it would be helpful to provide a more linear channel into CGC to help guide people into the experience. Help them warm up to the new reality they’re entering. Then point out the options for further exploration when they’re ready.

Experimenting

I’m also interested in doing more experimentation this year. We already have lots of daily engagement in the forums, and members are finding wonderful ways to leverage CGC’s tools to create extra value, such as using the video Watercooler for mastermind meetups and co-working challenges. I’d love to do more along these lines. Lots of good ideas bubble up from observing how members are using the different tools.

Here are some ideas that I’d love to experiment with:

  • Investigate ways to add games to make CGC more fun and to help members connect in different ways.
  • Look into team-based projects, experiments, and challenges in CGC. What about a team-based 30-day challenge now and then? This could increase accountability for those who want more motivation and support to complete all 30 days.
  • Explore the video co-working idea in more depth. See if more members want to engage with it and if we could do more with it, such as team productivity challenges.
  • Explore adding some competitive aspects or contests to CGC for members who’d find that fun and motivating. Team 30-day challenges could be one version.
  • Brainstorm what we could do with multiple Watercooler-type video channels.
  • Consider having occasional Watercooler check-in chats for the more popular 30-day challenges, so people can discuss progress and sticking points. See if we can help more people finish all 30 days.

Most of these features will be of greatest benefit for the members who feel right at home in CGC and want to keep exploring and growing together. So I want to be careful to balance the addition of new features (including experimental ones) with making sure that we’re doing enough to invite members to engage with these features.

In this next year, I also want to give members more authority to help manage and implement some of these features. I’d like to explore adding some positions with paid stipends, so members who contribute a lot to the community can generate some extra income from their participation. This seems like a good year to lean into that.

I’m excited about the future of CGC. We have a really interesting mix of structure and organic elements within the group. It’s rewarding to have this endless project that can continue evolving year after year.

In some ways the most difficult years are the early ones because there’s so much to figure out and improve. Walt Disney and his team were constantly testing different ideas for Disneyland. They failed early and often, building rides that didn’t work well, tearing them down, and trying something else.

Sometimes I think of CGC as an amusement park of different experiences, although we focus primarily on growth experiences instead of entertainment. When I think about what Disneyland was like when it first opened in 1955 and how much it evolved over time, it helps me understand how far constant experimentation, improvement, and iteration can take us if we simply persist and keep striving to serve our members well.

Sometimes I dream about what it would be like to visit Disneyland in the 1950s or 60s. I’ve been there every decade from the 70s onward, but I’ve never seen the park during its earlier years. By the time I saw it, it had already been evolving for at least two decades. That would be a fun experience to recreate in virtual reality someday. Perhaps a smart enough future AI could build a decent simulation of that experience by researching historical footage and reading first-hand accounts from people who were there in the 50s or 60s. In creating some aspects of Disneyland, Walt realized that the past could be brought back to life. Imagine what past experiences we could recreate and experience with advanced enough technology.

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