Finally getting back to this series (see links to the previous installments at the bottom).
One of the things that’s most challenging about high chaos environments is that they can foster a sense of hopelessness. A lot of goals and dreams were absolutely crushed on the rocks of the craziness of the past two years. Think back to New Years Eve, 2020. What resolutions, goals, plans, dreams were you focusing on? What trips were you planning? What challenges to overcome? What bucket-list items to scratch off? What were you hoping for?
Probably not what we all fucking got, right? Even if you personally managed to reach your goals, you were probably close to people who couldn’t. And even if some things turned out OK, others were no doubt less than optimal. For example, I healed from cancer and moved to a new house with room for chickens and a garden (yay). We couldn’t visit my husband’s grandmother and had to attend her funeral via Zoom (decidedly not yay).
Everyone has stuff that’s bad and good in their lives all the time. The difference is when the negatives seem entirely out of your control it can foster a sense of hopelessness… and this is a killer for agile. Agile presupposes that you operate proactively and flexibly, that you respond to circumstances in a way that moves you to your goals. This requires that you believe that you can keep doing that.
Having worked in agile environments professionally for a really long time, I can tell you that team empowerment is key. No one likes to feel that what they do doesn’t matter, but agile just completely falls apart under those circumstances. The whole point of agile is that it empowers the team to self-organized and work together to meet goals, to try stuff out, fail fast, etc. But if what you do doesn’t matter than none of the process matters. If this sounds like authority (bad corporate management in a professional context) can torpedo agile efforts, well that’s correct.
So what do you do when your personal authority structures (governments for example) are torpedoing your own life’s goals? Well, first acknowledge that this is happening and not just to you. We need to level a cold objective eye on the world we currently live in. If we can’t (and it’s unpleasant and hard) then we risk just deciding that everything is about to go back to normal and we will be unprepared — and unpleasantly shocked — when it doesn’t.
You need to become the kind of person who can get through a time like the time we’re in. Does that mean you will get through it? Maybe not. Sometimes shit just happens and sometimes it happens to you. But at least it won’t be because you didn’t step up. How do you do that?
Be sovereign. Look to your own authority. Take ownership wherever possible. Own your choices and your constraints and your situation. Keep hope alive — even if it lives only in your heart. Own your hope. Don’t let anyone else own it for you. Because with hope you can keep trying things out and refining your goals and moving forward.
Be ungovernable. Be a pirate, a Robinhood, a rebel. Not by fighting but by avoiding, ignoring, tricking, going under the radar, and operating by your own code. You can’t fight the master with the master’s tools — or rules. Don’t kill what you hate, save what you love (some movie that everyone seemed to hate on, but that contained deep and powerful truths). Don’t destroy your world, build a new one. If you follow a rule because it’s a just and good rule, that’s fine. If you follow a rule to keep yourself immediately out of prison for the sake of your family, that’s also fine. If you follow a rule simply because it’s the rule and you are fearful of “getting into trouble” — well, FUCK THAT.
Be free. Prioritize your freedom. That means freedom from constraint, but also freedom from surveillance and censorship. Remember that you have choices. You may not like them, but you still have them. You can stand up right now, this very moment, and you can get up and wander down the road and leave your life for an entirely new one. You can throw your phone in a ditch and cut up your credit cards and NO ONE WILL EVER FIND YOU. You may not like where you end up. You may be worse off. You may end up frozen to death in a bus in the wilderness… but that choice is still yours. You are completely and 100% free.
So how do you do all of this (particularly if you have bills and kids to watch out for and don’t really want to end up frozen to death in a bus)? You do it one little mindset shift, one little choice, at a time. The agile way.
And that means that you not only take this for yourself, but give it to everyone else. Even people you disagree with… maybe especially people you disagree with. While I don’t believe we should tolerate intolerance, there are plenty of times when what I think is right and best makes other people less free. And that’s not OK. And when other people want to make other people less free that’s also not OK. If you start with the position that freedom is a priority, censorship is always wrong, and that people are sovereign (not just you, but everyone, including non-human animal and plant and rock and river people) then you will be in a good place to help create the world we’re going to want to live in.
Finally, you may be feeling incredibly hemmed in by constraints placed on you. You might literally be in prison. Or you might be under house arrest, or feel like you are. You might be in a place where you can’t express who you are, be with who you love, engage with the world without it being criminalized. People might be dropping bombs on you. But you still own and control what goes on in your head. So make sure you don’t hand that control away. And before you think that what goes on in your head isn’t real or doesn’t matter… remember that it is and it does. It’s a hell of a lot more real than a lot of what passes for “reality” and might just matter the most.
