Use your favorites as a guide
Your favorites are important guideposts
A while back I ended up in an internet rabbit hole about why making friends is simpler when you’re a kid then when you’re an adult and two themes came to light:
1. Kids are trapped with each other for hours a day in school for weeks and months at a time. Friendships are formed as a kind of survival mechanism. But then, those same friendships are fostered through connecting outside of the school day.
2. Kids haven’t been trained out of being overtly rude yet. If some people are friends then other people are by definition not friends. Friendship shows a kind of favoritism.
I was thinking about this favoritism aspect again because another stylist I know asked for input on a SubStack article about why we don’t wear the clothes we don’t wear.
In answering her questions I realized I play heavy favorites in my closet and sometimes clothes fall out of favor. It doesn’t mean they’re bad clothes, they just aren’t favorites of the moment.
The thing about favoritism is, when you think about it as data it highlights your strongest preferences. It’s why I ask clients about their favorites in their closets. I’m learning more about what they love so we can add more love to their closets.
In business…
Obviously you can’t use favoritism in business the same way you can in your closet. People are not objects and shouldn’t be used as such.
But your favorites still hold valuable information. Your favorite clients to work with, your favorite products to sell, your favorite services to deliver – all of these hold clues about where you should be directing your future.
You can and arguably should craft your business in the direction of your business’s North Star. This is true even (and especially) if your business is “just you” or “just your freelancing” or “just a couple of gigs.”
This applies outside of style and business too…
Knit more of what you enjoy knitting. Cook more of what you enjoy sewing. Grow more of what you enjoy growing. Sew more of what you enjoy sewing. Read more books you enjoy reading. Spend more time with your favorite people.
Lean into what you love. Important clues live there.
As always, if you’d like to work together on your business, your style, or your creative life, schedule a call and we’ll get the process started.
This post was originally emailed as part of August’s newsletter. Sign up to receive next month’s email.
Taking deliberate action: slowing down to speed things up
I have a client navigating some health challenges and so one of the things we’re working on is doing fewer things better. We’re creating more lead time so she has room to maneuver around flairs, low energy days, and other surprises. And generally building in more buffer and proactive rest days.
In some ways this looks like working slower. But what it really means is working more deliberately.
Working deliberately carries its own kind of speed.
This is one of the most counterintuitive things that I keep needing to relearn in new ways.
Staying within my capacity expands my capacity faster than pushing outside of it. Deliberately slowing down each step speeds up the whole process.
It’s frustrating.
And it’s one of those things that requires repetition after repetition after repetition to learn.
But it works. As counterintuitive as that is.
I suspect the magic comes down to smoothness and getting things right the first time.
Rushing and pushing almost inevitably leads to mistakes. In the rare instances it doesn’t, success comes down to luck, not skill.
Troubleshooting and back tracking and fixing and getting back to where you were are time consuming. And no one knows exactly how time consuming and frustrating it’ll be until it’s done.
Going slowly, staying within your capacity, and doing the very next right thing means you can focus enough to do this step right and plan the next one. You aren’t jumping from the past to the future to the present. You aren’t zooming between the granular details and the big picture and the in between all within the next five minutes.
Slowing each step down means you can stay in one time at one level of detail until your task is completed or road blocked.
I see this happening in…
Movement – slowing down a lift to make the same weight more challenging, a controlled approach the edges of your flexibility expanding your flexibility.
Making – late night knitting makes for early morning ripping, rushed sewing means more time with the seam ripper, hasty measurements means your cutting is probably going to be wrong.
Business – doing the very next most obvious step is typically better for growth than flailing around, deliberately laying the groundwork means growth is typically easier to manage, and taking the time to build a coherent strategy means you’re less likely to get distracted by something new and shiny.
Style – hasty shopping makes a mess of a closet while deciding on your style cues ahead of time gives your shopping a personalized filter, and taking the time to practice your style makes iterating clear.
Recovery – recovering before you’re depleted means you’re not trying to fill an empty cup because the cup was never empty in the first place. (Leave some energy in there, it’s like seeding the tip jar of your energy banks.)
I know deliberate action is difficult in the short term, while overworking seems easier. Taking steps slowly seems slow, while speeding up seems fast.
It helps to remember that the tortoise won the race against the hare.
Of course this does require belief that the race you’re running is one worth winning.
But that’s a topic for another time.
That’s all for now.
As always, if you’d like to work together on your business, your style, or your creative life, schedule a call and we’ll get the process started.
This post was originally emailed as part of July’s newsletter. Sign up to receive next month’s email.
On enough, vision, and gathering
I’ve been thinking a lot about enough, vision, and gathering recently.
Gathering and community and connection has been a running theme I’ve been hearing among conversations with clients, friends, and acquaintances.
Another theme I’ve been noticing from both clients, and non-clients has been “I suspect something needs to change, but I’m not sure what, or how, or when I’ll know the change is complete, or even if I actually need to change or just give it more time to work.”
I find neither of these themes surprising given [the state of things].
Let’s consider the second theme first. I’ve been thinking about this as the “what’s enough?” theme.
Is staying the current course good enough? Should I add another product / revenue stream / platform / system / market / event? Should I post more? Should I email more? Should I spend more? Should I try more? What’s enough? These questions are coming from all across the effort and capacity spectrum.
This theme boils down to: whatever “enough” is, no one thinks they’re doing it.
The other theme I’ve been noticing is the theme of gatherings.
I started my career in theater – an art form built around gathering.
Theater is by definition communal. It is people in a room together having a group experience. The trappings of scenery, and costumes, and lights, and such, set the stage for the experience, but the experience doesn’t happen until people are there to co-create it.
In some ways the show is an excuse to get together.
And that is the heart of the theme I’ve been hearing in conversations of community: what is the excuse to get together?
“Let’s hang out” is easy to brush off or reschedule when things get busy (and when aren’t things busy?). But an event with a reason + a date + a time, that’s harder to brush off.
A reason + date + time gives the connection a container.
If the heart of this theme is more connection, more conversations, more emergent insights, then the container needs an excuse that stands up to the encroachment of modern life, but does not quash the flow of connecting.
Which rather ties neatly back into our “what’s enough?” theme.
What’s enough to generate connection without creating another calendar burden? What’s enough of a reason to make the time?
What’s enough to be the nucleus of a salon until the salon becomes the place to be?
I don’t exactly know. But what I do know is that enough is often decided not found, and what different people get from the same event is often different but can still be exactly what they need.
Deciding on enough starts with a clear vision. And so does putting on a good show.
This post was originally emailed as part of June’s newsletter. Sign up to receive next month’s email.
