A while ago I accidentally stumbled across the Eckhard-Busch-Stiftung by which is a German charity organisation aiming to support people impacted by mental health in different ways: through supporting research, families & friends and to make it okay to talk about mental health in our society.
People with mental illnesses and in mental crisis’ are still way too often stigmatized in our society. Still it is not accepted equally if you see a psychotherapist like it is accepted that you go see your doctor when you have the flu or a broken leg.
A flu or a broken leg have two things in common:
- they’re externally visible or have measurable/tangible symptoms
- there’s a quite clear treatment plan
Mental health (compared to physical health) is more intangible, it is harder to diagnose and it requires (way) more patience when it’s broken.
There I see parallels to my work as an Agile Coach: the “people, team and organisational parts” of my work are often also quite intangible, they’re harder to express with “hard numbers” (than e.g. cash flow is) and they require patience to develop, to change and to flourish.
So what do Agile Coaches do to deal with intangible work and the required ‘heaploads’ of patience for change management and organizational development work? They create awareness e.g. by educating and by connecting with people. They foster visibility for those topics, they sow seeds, they work with leaders.
In my own life, I am the leader! And my purpose is to make the world a better place… one step at a time. With the new green loop for my handbags and scarfs I am exactly doing this: I am creating awareness for a bigger topic! I am doing this e.g. by:
- connecting with people asking what that green loop is about
- fostering visibility for mental health
- sowing seeds e.g. by blogging about it 😉
- (hopefully) inspiring YOU as a reader as the leader of your life
Sidenote: For this article I made the experiment of “timeboxed writing” and then deploying a good-enough-to-ship-version. Let me know what you think about this article, about my thoughts or anything else that matters to you.
Take care,
Cosima
Hi Cosima,
what a great article about such a wondrous little green thing! I just ordered two loops to make the world a bit better.
Timeboxed writing seems to work really good! Is it ok to ask how much time you gave yourself? I write every morning (or at least the days i manage to have the time :)) for fifteen minutes. This timebox is my way to always leave a bit for the next day, which is quite motivating.
Best regards,
Sebastian
Hi Sebastian,
what a joy reading my very first comment and it is coming from you. Thank you for responding and for making the world a bit better, too. <3
On timeboxing: I've been experimenting using Pomodoros a while ago (also to estimate a bit later on) but that didn't work out. So yesterday I took 15min in the morning to sketch my blogidea on paper (when I had it fresh and sparkling in my mind) and I wanted to spend max. 2*25min for writing in the afternoon. I did this because I know that I tend to overthink the article and then don't get it done, I postpone a proof-read and then the article sits in draft for days. That sucks!
Yesterday it worked out fine. The first 25min were for writing. The tiny break made my mind free and afterwards I spent 10min of the 2nd timebox on polishing and inserting pictures.
I like your habit of spending 15min each morning. Maybe I'll try more regular writing with smaller timeboxes as well. Do you have a goal for your regular writing (e.g. something like "one article per day" or the like)?
All the best,
Cosima
Hi Cosima,
thank you for your answer and sharing your writing experience! Its interesting to read about how others find the way to write productive and creative 🙂 at the moment i have very sparse time for writing. But i do it for several reasons: i like the reflection on the topics, i want to stay able to write and think in english and hopefully one day there is a great idea for a book. So no real goals here. Maybe get more people to read it, therefore i share nearly every article.
I like the topics of your blog! Did they grew or was there an initial “i want to write about X,Y and Z”? This inspires me to think deeper about my why: some readers told me they liked the fresh ideas and that they could reflect to. So i guess a good point would be to make “reflections” to the main focus of my blog.
Have a great weekend and all the best too,
Sebastian