A teammate texted me about an escape room on Sunday night, the Sunday night before our work summit started. My first instinct was to figure out how to politely decline.
I was on a train somewhere west of Chicago at the time, two days into a slow trip from Ohio to Las Vegas. The slow approach felt like the right way to enter a week I had been quietly dreading. I was reading The First 90 Days between dining car meals, trying to make peace with the fact that I had not done a great job of those first 90 days myself. And I was watching myself reach, one more time, for the comfortable answer.
I caught it. Skipping the escape room would cost me at most a few dollars and an awkward two hours. Going might give me a few hours with people I do not see in person often. I was about to choose the worst option for no reason except that I usually do.
A few days later, our summit had a session by Shawn Willis on what he calls Radical Adaptability. The framing that stuck with me was simple. To start something better, you have to end something. A small amount of discomfort now buys a different tomorrow. Listening to him, I thought about how often I get hung up on my own processes at work. I have a way I like to do things. The way I like to do things slows the team down. Knowing that has not, on its own, been enough to make me stop.
The pattern is the same. The escape room. The process. The quiet evening at home instead of the new thing. Each one is a small case of holding on too tightly to a known shape, even when the known shape is not serving anyone, including me.
The version of this I want to write is the heroic one where I went to the escape room, had a great time, and came back changed. I never made it. By the time I checked into the hotel, I had been awake for a day and a half, and I slept for thirteen hours straight. The honest version is that I have a list of small choices in front of me that I can practice loosening my grip on. Sometimes I do. I went to the cocktail party I had been planning to skip, and stayed long enough to count. Sometimes I do not. The process I keep running my way is still mine.
For me, the work is not a single grand pivot. It is noticing the pull toward the comfortable answer often enough that I can sometimes choose the other one before the moment passes.
Where are you holding on too tight?