BTD Newsletter – October 2025: Your Multiple Personalities, 99%, and Hedges

There are three of you – in a work context and perhaps outside. Who are these people? Person #1 is the President – who answers the question "What are we going to do, when and how?" (Thinking & Planning). Person #2 is the Chief of Staff. Barack Obama said, "One of the things I've learned is that the big breakthroughs are typically the result of a lot of grunt work—just a whole lot of blocking and tackling." (Doing). Person #3 is the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State is the conduit between the Oval Office and the outside world. (Communicating).

So, #1: thinking & planning, #2: doing, and #3: communicating. It came up on a workshop yesterday, and we decided a couple of things. First, while each of us has to perform each of these functions at some point, we tend to favour one function over the others. This leads to an imbalance in our performance. Second, we tend to skip from one function to another – changing "modes" quite frequently. This is unproductive; it's much better to "batch process" this stuff. Being Presidential for a couple of hours (maybe when your brain is at its sharpest), then Chief of Staff, then Secretary of State.

So, my questions to you are: how clearly have you defined each of these roles? And how do you "batch process" most effectively?

Yesterday, I ran a client session called "Avoid Opinions". The idea is that most of the stuff that we have opinions on is a waste of time. Issues on which we form opinions are (1) of no interest to us, and/or (2) inherently not solvable, and/or (3) too complex. I argue that 99% of matters today fall into one of these categories. Throw these things into a big bucket marked "Too complicated" and bask in the joyful glow of the 1% of things that are worth expending your precious mental energy on.

I am a yoga widower. My loving wife dedicates every free moment to mindfulness, contortion, and Lycra. I have chosen another path to enlightenment: hedge-laying. Proper physical exercise, outdoors in all weathers, creative, and resulting in rare physical beauty. Oh, and no Lycra required.