Quarters or Seasons
Welcome to the 31st entry of my public journal, where I share *some of the things* I've been thinking about, learning about, and exploring across work, tech, wellness, and life.
Dear Friends,
As March comes to an end, I’ve got EOQ on my mind. After working for 20 years at public companies (Aon and Cornerstone), the rhythm of quarterly cycles becomes second nature. Quarterly earnings calls would keep everyone laser focused on finishing various projects because of the pressure to show Wall Street good results. Mentions of EOQ would flood my inbox and ring out through leadership and planning meetings. It's been almost two years since I left the structured cadence of a public company and started my entrepreneurial journey, yet I find myself instinctively checking the calendar, feeling the familiar EOQ crunch: What do I need to rush to finish before this month ends?
I don’t have an opinion whether this ingrained habit is good or bad; it’s just an observation. While I prefer continuous delivery over arbitrary deadlines, both approaches have pros and cons. An interesting alternative I've learned about recently stems from the world of DAOs - Decentralized Autonomous Organizations - and is based on the concept of “seasons”. DAOs aren’t bound to a stock exchange or any one calendar, and they tend to cycle through different rhythms and periods of planning, designing, building and reflecting.
There’s something about using the language of seasons that resonates with me. Continuous delivery, for all its advantages, can get monotonous, like running on a treadmill. Using the concept of seasons provides a natural time to reflect without losing the momentum or motivation that comes from time-bound deadlines.
Whatever works for you, happy EOQ to those that celebrate. 🎉
Some Of The Things
As always, some of the things I’ve been reading, creating, thinking or learning about since my last post:
Desperately Seeking Autonomy: I wrote a personal blog post about my path from leadership to DevOps to blockchain and how the common thread has been a gravitational pull towards more autonomy, empowerment, freedom, and happiness. (Random side note: I’m starting to use Paragraph more and more for publishing. We’ll see what the future holds but I don’t have any current plans to migrate all my writing there. If your curious about Paragraph and how it compares to Medium, Substack or Mirror, check out this post by iSpeakNerd)
Org charts, hierarchy and leadership. The traditional org chart with the decision makers at the top and workers at the bottom is broken. I’ve read in the past how it was designed for the industrial age, but Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang talks about how the org chart was designed for war - keeping information away from soldiers was ideal - would someone walk into their death if they had all the information? In knowledge work, the more information the workers have, the better. At Cornerstone we talked a lot about the future of work and a lot of the DevOps practices are based on reinventing how people are organized to break down silos and empower people at the edges. I like how DAOs are starting to reinvent how work gets done - permissionless participation, funding specific projects or initiatives, continue if providing value, discontinue if not.
Fermentation before fire - A new study suggests it was fermentation, not fire, that allowed human brains to grow around 2.5 million years ago. “According to the study, fermentation makes it easier for humans to absorb macronutrients and micronutrients. It also makes carbohydrates and proteins more digestible.”
Break Free From Dopamine Culture: I came across this excellent post urging people to limit scrolling and swiping and instead take time in slower, more meaningful, immersive experiences. As I lean further into the Farcaster ecosystem, this article was a great reminder to be intentional about how I spend my time. A few things recent things I’m doing to counter the infinite scroll:
Watching The Three Body Problem on Netflix with my family. It’s rare to find a show that satisfies all 5 of us but this one is nailing it.
Finally took the shrink wrap off of Bohnanza - a game I bought last month that’s been sitting on the bookshelf - and played with my 13 year old and my 15 year old this week.
Started reading Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin after enough people recommended it. The first sentence pulled me right in and I’m excited to have a novel to escape into.
Wandered into a local bookstore and straight to the poetry section where I chose two books by their cover. Started reading unlock your storybook heart by Amanda Lovelace and enjoying it greatly.
A Note to My Subscribers
I started this substack in December 2022 as an experiment to see if developing a writing habit would help clarify my thinking and/or provide other benefits. You can read about my original intentions in my first post or my more recent reflections after sticking with it for a year.
I write about twice a month and share musings, meditations, and links to things I’m finding interesting as I build out my consulting company, raise my kids, and have fun creating and learning in the worlds of crypto, tech, finance, science and wellness.
Thank you for supporting my writing and journey. If you’d like to get in touch you can reply to me here or find me on X and farcaster.
Until next time, keep putting good into the world. —adrienne🌏❤️