This is episode-8 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 a chapter 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. As this chapter is the “Afterwords” section of the book, this is also the last episode in the Robert Poynton series. Maybe other calm conversations follow. Who knows?

Here are Josie’s three sentences:

What I couldn’t anticipate were the unplanned pauses that would occur along the way

If anything, rather than delay things, the time-out accelerated them.

Too much pause and nothing gets done.

And here are my three sentences:

Rehearse ideas with different people

Carlo Rovelli’s book, The Order of Time

That long gestation period meant that once I started I was able to get going quickly

We covered a wide range of topics:

Ideas as the starting point, not the end point

Chance

Serendipity

STOP ASKING QUESTIONS

Confidence and permission

Revisiting intentionality

THE APPROXIMATION COLLECTIVE

What is real and what is not?

Implicit judgement

When pause become procrastination

Vs.

When pause becomes heaven (zen/buddha)

It also gave rise to a new t-shirt design:

Other links mentioned in this podcast:

• The book “The Order of Time”

Episode-1 is here. Episode-2 is here. Episode-3 is here. Episode-4 is here. Episode-5 is here. Episode-6 is here. Episode-7 is here.

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

Peter & Josie