Years ago, with my very last private yoga client, our lessons had a unique format.
Most of my 1:1 clients were high-powered execs trying to sneak in a stretch session before the markets opened.
Yoga sessions therefore always began and ended as scheduled, with an almost military precision.
With this guy it was completely different.
Hovering around 80, with a treasure trove of life stories to share, the lesson was slated for mid-afternoon, beginning with a 45 minute gentlemanly conversationabout both our lives before we even thought about getting started.
While this country-club format would have been absolutely unsustainable beyond this one student, with him it was a sheer delight and the highlight of my schedule.
More often than not, realizing we probably should get to some actual yoga, he’d say, “I suppose that’s enough chatting like magpies…” and roll out his mat.
I share this because Magpies have indeed been on my mind this week…
They’re not only the chattiest of birds, but also famed for being drawn to bright, shiny objects
On our morning walk each day, Vlad and I pass through a community garden where old CDs and DVDs are displayed to repel such birds.
The discs spin and flash in sunlight, creating unpredictable, bright reflections which apparently can look like predator movement.
While magpies and their friends are clever enough and may eventually get used to them, the effect can still discourage birds from feasting on the gardener’s labors.
What struck me most strongly, however, was that using old CDs as gardening tools is a truly whimsical example of this month’s theme — meditation HERE — Adapting.
I’m also reading Pema Chödrön’s book When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times.
I selected it for this month’s Transformation Book Club — you can join us HERE — for obvious reasons.
Every page resonates with the theme of adaptability, of remaining open to whatever arrives in our experience.
As Pema writes:
Life is a good teacher and a good friend.
Things are always in transition, if we could only realize it.
Nothing ever sums itself up in the way that we like to dream about.
The off-center, in-between state is the ideal situation, a situation in which we don’t get caught and can open our hearts and minds beyond limit.
This week while reading her introduction with fresh eyes, I also learned how adaptability plays out in the text on a meta level as well:
When her editor asked if she had a new book in mind, Pema sent her two cardboard boxes of “very raw, unedited transcriptions of talks” she had given over the last 7 years.
The editor sifted through them and they became Pema’s third book.
Beyond its topic, in other words, reflecting its own themes, When Things Fall Apart is itself an adaptation, content surfing from one medium to another.
While hanging CDs and DVDs in a garden is an unexpected and delightful repurposing, I’m also drawn to other examples within the digital world.
Allow me to share some of my favorites.
It was originally supposed to be an online game called Glitch.
While building Glitch, the tech team needed a better way to communicate internally.
Email was too slow, so they created an internal chat system with searchable archives and channels.
Despite having a quirky fan base, Glitch couldn’t scale profitability.
It failed in 2012.
Its hidden gem, however, was its internal chat tool.
The game fell by the wayside and that chatting system became the real product: Slack (an acronym for “Searchable Log of All Communication and Knowledge”).
A year later Slack launched triumphantly and in less than two years had a $1B valuation.
Sometimes adaptation means refocusing on the bright shiny object hidden deep inside.
Flashback, if you can, to a simpler time: early 2005.
Three ex-PayPal employees want to create an online video dating site.
The problem: no one is posting videos.
Why?
There just isn’t an easy enough way for anyone to do that yet.
Somehow, they figured it out.
Their breakthrough moment: users begin uploading a wide variety of clips — funny moments, music performances, how-tos — and sharing them through MySpace (remember that!) and email links.
By late 2006, less than two years after the launch, Google buys this company — now called YouTube, for $1.65 billion.
Amazingly, this failed dating site adapted to become the second most visited website in the world.
As a Buddhist nun living in an abbey in Nova Scotia, Pema Chödrön is perhaps a galaxy away from the adaptation required in the digital universe.
Yet I think she would appreciate how the same principles apply.
We have to expand our thinking beyond a narrow-minded focus on our original goal with only one result in mind.
She writes of this reframing:
“We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem,
but the truth is that things don’t really get solved.
They come together and they fall apart.
Then they come together again and fall apart again.
It’s just like that.”
Beyond just being open-minded (and becoming a tech billionaire), the value of this is that adapting expands our spirit.
“The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen:
room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.”
A final digital pivot worth considering is how in 2010, developers were trying to create a location-based check-in app that was basically Foursquare with some gaming elements.
The problem was that it was way too cluttered.
There were just too many unfocused features.
The one thing people did respond to, however, was its photo sharing.
The founders decided to strip away everything except those photos, plus likes and comments, and added a few simple filters.
Renaming the app Instagram, they relaunched.
In two months, they had 1 million users.
The adaptation in this case again came from the beauty of simplification — finding the pure signal amongst the noise — and pivoting to create an entire universe around it.
Pema’s talks became a remarkable book, just as an undelivered keynote speech of mine is evolving into these newsletters.
A magpie might swoop in and snatch a silver trinket — but in a vegetable patch, that same reflective glint is supposed to send birds away.
With my chatty client, our well-spun conversations might have had as much value as the physical poses, a kind of soul stretching, if you will.
“Shiny object syndrome” has become a popular catchphrase in business management and creative psychology, used to describe how new trends can derail focus and dilute strategic effort.
Yet sometimes that shiny object — whether it’s the convenience of video uploading, or the appeal of photo sharing, or a heartfelt conversation with an unexpected mentor — reveals the true value of an enterprise.
Pema tells us that even the most painful moments are actually opportunities to adapt:
“Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing.
More often than not, if we’re brave enough to accept the invitation, the rewards — and the surprises — can be astonishing.
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