At the beginning of 2019 I read an article on a website called Raptitude – it explains the benefits that the author David Cain experienced when he completed a ‘Depth Year“. During this year, instead of acquiring lots of new hobbies, or consuming lots of new things, he would go deeper with the ones that he was already committed to at a more surface level.
A bit of background: I’m someone who a few years ago decided to sack off didactic personal development programmes (in which total strangers aim to tell you what to do with your own life) in exchange for working with philosophical practices as a route to personal change. My brain just had it with being patronised after a while and said to me one day: Heleana you work in strategy for goodness sake – choose a path that embraces independent thinking!
So I chose a few skills I wanted to focus on deepening: 1) Strategic flexibility 2) Stand up comedy and 3) running. It was pretty refreshing to do this because it gave me a clear sense of what to say ‘no’ to. Someone wants to collaborate with you on a shiny new project? Considering re-starting a wellness blog you did a few years ago? No and no. If it doesn’t fit into the three buckets above, it just ain’t happening.
Throughout the year I got to do a few enjoyable things as a result of a focus on the areas above: I attended an exceptional strategy bootcamp hosted by Mark Pollard and Julian Cole, got interviewed on the Sweathead Podcast, and started going to Group Think meetings again. I also started a new job with more opportunities to lead on the planning side.
I got more into running after doing a couch to 5K in 2018 and became a regular Parkrun attendee. I also got a couple of half marathons under my belt, which was painful yet fun. Despite a few attempts, weight training didn’t see much success and this made me realise that I need to have a gym much closer to work.
I also enjoyed doing more stand up comedy gigs, after starting a course in 2018 – I found that if anything stand up is like ‘cross training’ for strategy professionals. Want to get some free practice at storytelling presenting under your belt? Try doing it in front of a bunch of bored people scrolling Instagram at an open mic gig. Want to land an insight clearly? Try telling it to someone who’s had a few beers at 930pm on a Friday night. I also was able to make some improvements to my sets thanks to coaching from the brilliant Maria Shehata.
It makes sense for me therefore to give this depth thing another go this year. Why? I liked the results. The only tweak I’ll add this time is to focus on building a regular writing habit on the broader topic area of creating space to think – as I’m becoming increasingly convinced of the importance of designing our environment – physical space, digital space and creating space in our schedules, to facilitate the best creative thinking.