This is episode-7 of the calm conversation with Josie Gibson from The Catalyst Network, inspired by Robert Poynton’s book “Pause – You are not a To-Do list“. The approach is simple: we both read chapter-7 of the book and highlight three sentences, and mark the words that resonate most. These sentences and words are the triggers for a very slow-paced conversation on whatever comes our way. No tricks, no gimmicks, just a gentle and calm wandering and meandering of minds.

Chapter-7 is about Time for Pause

Here are Josie’s three sentences:

A longer pause…gives the intelligent unconscious – what Claxton calls the ‘undermind’ – a chance to have a crack at a problem, bringing a more associative, creative quality of thinking to bear.

In any natural system, there is always ‘redundancy’  or ‘requisite variety’ built in; stuff that isn’t useful yet, but could be one dayf relying on just one.

The decision to start properly came in a pause.

And here are my three sentences:

Our fulfilment does not derive from being as efficient as possible

It (pause) gives you the chance to follow your mood, not the schedule

Instead of trying to cram more in, you focus on getting more out

We covered a wide range of topics from redundancy, richness of experiences in a complex world, we are not machines, beautiful change, elegant movements, cybernetics, requisite variety,…

…the “undermind”, leaving space open for sacred moments, commitment, to start doing, at the right time, after the right pause, after reading all the signals.

We also discussed how efficiency kills imagination, and why we should go into the t-shirt business 😉

Other links mentioned in this podcast:

• The book “5 Minds for the Future” by Howard Gardner
• John Hagel’s difference between narratives and stories.

Episode-1 is here. Episode-2 is here. Episode-3 is here. Episode-4 is here. Episode-5 is here. Episode-6 is here.

These are very calm conversations; so best is to take a pause, install yourself in a quiet corner, and enjoy!

Peter & Josie