Learning from the discomfort
Talking with Mivin Mathew recently, I realised this month is the start of my tenth year doing yoga. I haven't always been consistent. But in the whole nine years I've never dropped it for long enough to stop considering it a part of who I am. Currently, I go to a class four days of most weeks. As we talked about it, Mivin asked me what I'd learned from such a sustained practice.
The answer is something I've reflected on for years. Yoga teachers often ask their students to "stay in the discomfort". Not pain, nobody wants me to hurt myself. But if some stretch, pose, or hold feels uncomfortable to me, can I stay there and explore that feeling? Can I reach right to that limit and sit with it? After a few experiments, I found I can sustain significant discomfort for some length of time. And that next time, my discomfort zone is further away. It's a concept I've taken beyond the physical sensations I experience on the yoga mat.
As an anxious depressive, I find discomfort everywhere. New practices, unfamiliar circumstances, social situations. They're all difficult and uncomfortable. Avoiding discomfort has always been hard, and it compounds the effects. Now I ask myself if there is value in staying in this specific discomfort. Can I learn something from this? Does it open up new opportunities if I become used to it? Is there a benefit here?
Challenging oneself is always uncomfortable. Learning to sit with that, reflect on it, and look for the value is one way I've learned to keep at it.
~ Lachlan
What’s been happening?
Nicola and Elle wrote blog posts!
- Conflict Conversations — Beyond The Words
- The Power of Personal Branding and Visibility
- Overtime is Harmful — Confirmed by Science
Donations
Every one of our invoices informs that client that 1% of the invoice will go to support charities the Blackmill team members believe in. As the end of financial year came rushing in, Elle made this year's donations equally to:
- The Australian Literacy and Numeracy Foundation
- Digital Rights Watch
- FoodBank
- Minus18
- Northern Rivers Wildlife Carers
If you're interested in what else we give, there's a page on our site for that.
Product engineering team health self-assessment
We work with startups and scaleups to improve their product engineering practices and culture. And we regularly see common challenges repeat with clients.
We created a survey so that you can assess your current situation and identify challenges. This survey includes a set of 30 questions for quick self-evaluation. The focus is on product engineering and team health rather than business overhaul.
We will send your results with additional information within a few days of filling the survey.
If you are interested, head to https://tally.so/r/meBQlJ.
What are we reading?
- Generative AI is not going to build your engineering team for you – Charity Majors details the flaw inherent in the idea that GenAI can replace junior software engineers on your dev team.
- How Coaching Works – A short illustrative (and illustrated) video of explaining coaching as we view it.
- Excuse me, is there a problem? – Jason Cohen describes a theory for why startups fail despite identifying a real problem and building a product that solves that problem.
- The Right Way to Process Feedback – Cameron Conaway shares some ideas for how to process feedback so that we truly learn from it.
- The Know All/Tell Not Leader – A short sketch video from Blackmill favourite, L. David Marquet, sharing a classic two-by-two grid balancing Knowing and Telling.
- 11 ways to get better feedback from your manager – Wes Kao with 11 single-line item actions you can take to get better feedback from your manager.
And we’re out
Thank you for showing an interest in our newsletter and we hope that you enjoyed the read. Feel free to contact us if you have any feedback, a burning question, or just a recipe that you would like to share.
Until next time, keep learning!
Everyone at Blackmill