Happy New Year!
As we start 2023, I've decided to begin a blog (of sorts). Its main focus will be on my experience with coaching, both as a student in a training and certification program and as an actual coach with clients.
My intention is to use this space to process my own learning and experience and to share insights that I hope are useful to other coaches, people considering coach training, and anyone leading and managing in this zany world and at this zany time. I'm resisting putting any qualifiers on that latter group--e.g., people who are leading or managing in progressive nonprofits, which is where I've spent the bulk of my career. This past year I've coached clients working in tech and government, which I've found fulfilling (and I think the clients would say they benefited, too!). It was good to get a bit outside my comfort zone.
Why start a blog now?
The primary reason to start now is to process my own experiences and to share learnings and insights, as I said above. But also: I've been spending a lot of time lately thinking about how to increase the amount of time I am focused during my day--not distracted by texts, email, direct messages, the hollow allure of endless scrolling on social media, etc. Writing is one thing that lets me do just that, especially if I have a topic at hand or goal in mind.
I realized I had lost a lot of focus in the past couple of years when I began to coach clients in early 2022--I was long drunk on the idea that my brain could multitask (no one's brain really can, but I thought I could be the singular exception to the rule). By last summer I was spending about five hours each week coaching clients one-on-one. During that time I would do nothing but coach; I'd shut down and otherwise silence all other distractions. After several weeks of having this more focused time, I realized how little of the rest of my life was spent truly being focused. This realization led me to this Ezra Klein podcast with Johann Hari. That podcast led me to Hari's book, Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention and How to Think Deeply Again, which was disturbing in its topic, scope, and findings. Hari has plenty of critics, but nonetheless I saw so much of myself and family, friends, and colleagues in the big-picture problem his book identified. As a result, for the past month or so I've been slowly making changes (which I'll write about) to bring more focus and purpose to my minutes and hours and days, and that work has led me to this page.
To be clear, I love coaching and am eager to share that experience more broadly. So I hope this blog helps people who need it, and if you're reading this, I hope you return as I build out content. And I especially hope that that content is useful for you.
But I'd be lying if I didn't say a big part of my motivation here was to help myself by finding time to focus, think, write, and share.
Of course, please get in touch if you'd like to learn more about coach training, what it's like to be a coach, or how being coached can help you. I'm always happy to schedule a 30-minute call or video session.
Be well!
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