I am a work in progress

I write a blog to share my thoughts with colleagues within the company. This is one I had written in September of 2018 and appears to be quite relevant these days, so I modified it a little to share with all of you.

Coming off a week of external meetings, I had the opportunity to talk with a group of up and coming professionals about "leadership" – upon reflection it was more about life. Not the typical talk I give – I couldn't dive into a presentation about, let's say, gene-editing or bioprocessing. That was a good thing. I talked with them about being active, and I looked to my own personal journey to find answers.

With so many advisors, with so much already processed information, how often do we engage in active thinking ourselves? Reading is not the same as active reading. Browsing the internet is not the same as research. Reading conclusions from sophisticated data analytics is not the same as analysis. 

I find this particularly poignant as we face the COVID-19 global health crisis. From daily press conferences led by government officials with projections from medical professionals, to opinion pieces in major global news outlets and nightly news programs influencing our family’s thinking – it is more critical than ever that we are active as we interpret the news and information in front of us. We must read ourselves to understand and ask if we have doubts and trust our instincts to really distill the facts. I know this is not easy.

Each day, the world changes, as does the context. I find that I must force myself to be active while so much already influenced knowledge exists around me. This is for two reasons. One, I am human and to be active is to be human – to be in touch with the surroundings and to feel them firsthand. Two, insights are only derived by finding inconsistencies between observation and theory. And I want the happiness of insights. I want to feel. So, I am active.

Now, on to how I stay active. I run in the rain and in the snow and in the heat and in the cold, I read old literature and science, I provoke debate, so I understand what is really meant. I ask questions because I really want to understand the answers. I read newspapers for facts and not only opinion, I limit my meetings with advisors, I tune out of long presentations, I try to find what is being felt and not only what is being said. My son has recently taught me that it can be hard to keep up with a teenager on the basketball court! I try to stay active. I am a work in progress.