Reflecting on the future of XP with various consultants
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How are you? How are you feeling? Are you busy growing? Trying to grow up? It’s
ok to stop... How do you feel about the future? It’s ok to feel down… Does the
future scare you? Do you prefer to think about the past? Or are you chilling
right here right now in the present moment? It’s all good, fall is good for
reflection in every direction. Up, down, inward, outward, sideways. Look at
your leaves before you let them go. Come spring we’ll continue to grow.
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This is a newsletter about how we accidentally became children in our attempt
to grow up. It’s Emma speaking, writing to you from a café in Barcelona. I was
supposed to write this a week ago, but editing it while being away from the
studio actually feels pretty good. It’s always a little easier to reflect
on things once you have some distance from them, don’t you think?
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Last summer I took a trip with my dad, with a similar goal: to reflect on life,
together, from a distance. We discussed various topics: work, money, art, love,
the past, the future. I love my dad, we share a sense of humor and
playful creativity, even though he has worked in offices most of his life as an
executive consultant. He values hard work, family, comfort and stability, and
although he is a chill and supportive dad, I sometimes worry that he might
sometimes worry about my future, and what will become of me. I have no steady
income, no partner, I do not own a house and I have not birthed any
grandchildren yet either…when he was my age, he had all of those things. When
will I grow up?
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When we talked about XP, dad the consultant asked me things like ‘where do you
see that going, exactly?’, ‘have you guys figured out a way to make money
yet?’, ‘what is your vision for Extra Practice?’ and suggested getting more
serious and structured (his expertise is in leadership). I see his point,
structures and systems can definitely bring clarity and make things grow and
move faster.
But what is the point in growing
or moving faster if you’re not sure what direction you want to grow or move
in?
That’s why last week, with this question in mind, I prompted every XP member to
prepare a 15 minute mini-workshop, in preparation for the Grown Up Business
Trip were about to take. Our ‘XP Away-Day’ would be a perfect moment to think
about the future together, from a distance: what we want from it, what
direction we want to grow in, and how. And so we all met in Culemborg on
October 31st and cycled through the dark to the attic we rented in a farmhouse
next to the Lek (Leak) river.
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After settling in and staring at AI generated autumnal ambient jazz videos that
were auto-playing on the TV for way too long, we started with the first mini
workshop, led by Elliott. Here are the instructions, so you can try it out
yourself, maybe with some friends or colleagues:
So we all sat there pondering, waiting for memories to come up - both
individual and collective experiences, trying to write them down. I struggled
at first, feeling like entering a gigantic library and having to pick 5 books
from miles and miles of shelves, from ANY possible genre. But we all picked
some, and after extracting the nice things from them and sharing those, we
ended up with a very nice list of words that, even though they were harvested
from the past, can tell us something about what we want from the future. Some
of the words: Curiosity, Adventure, Rest, Initiation,
Trips, Connection, Surprise, Learning, Play, Spontaneity, Love, Simplicity,
Risk, Other-worldliness, Nature.
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Next morning we realized this trip was too short if we were going to go through
5 more workshops that day, so we decided to spontaneously book another night in
a tiny forest house 1,5 hours away. We stopped for lunch in a restaurant on the
way and drew on our placemats like children, swapping every few minutes to
complete each other’s drawings. We were not growing up but our imaginations
were definitely growing in many directions.
Elliott scanned all the placemats. He said we might be on to something here.
Are these subconscious maps to our future?
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