No matter how fastidious you are about creating and executing a plan, working toward any big goal will require adjustments. No matter how diligent you are about documentation and maintenance, any process will break down over time. The work we do is always changing—whether because of the people we work with, the market we operate in, or the cultural context our work is received in. Even when it seems like smooth sailing is just one standard operating procedure away, things will shift.

That can feel like failure, or at least like you're not doing quite as well as you should be. But really, it's an opportunity. You can embrace the confusion, the entropy, the breakdown... and learn.

Today, I've unlocked and revised an episode I put out in February 2024 for premium subscribers. If you like it, you'll love Summer Seminar, a 7-week program that combines speculative fiction with curiosity about our own lives and work. This year, we're reading Sofia Samatar's The Practice, The Horizon, and The Chain and venturing through 6 explorations of systems thinking. Learn more and register with choose-your-own pricing.

Footnotes:

Read the written version of this episode.
Learn more about Summer Seminar.
Learn more about YellowHouse.Media (we currently have openings for new podcasts).
"The Many Functions of Should" by Tara McMullin
The Donella Meadows Project
Small Arcs of Larger Circles by Nora Bateson
Thinking In Systems: A Primer by Donella Meadows

(00:00) - Process Entropy & Evolution
(19:26) - Credits

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EP 496: What to Do When Things Get Messy

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