“How are you?” I asked my friend, Joe.
“Fine, I guess,” he said. “It’s just that every day seems like that line from the old Talking Heads song: same as it ever was, same as it ever was, same as it ever was.”
I hear that a lot these days. The days in this new abnormal can all start to blend together. What used to keep variety – travel, meetings and conferences, business events, kids’ activities, social groups – they’ve all been made virtual. The topics may be different and the virtual background may change, but in the end each day seems like another endless Zoom-a-thon.
That could become numbing. We could start just going through the motions.
Or we can take it as a challenge. We can do what every great athlete and artist does, to practice repetitively so that we master something we care about deeply. We could engage in a simple practice like the Action Replay, which helps us to focus in on the last day, to notice, to mine it for everything it’s worth. We can rinse and repeat, but with an attitude of curiosity rather than drudgery.
If the key to mastery is repetition, we’re standing in a field of diamonds.
