In several previous posts, I mentioned a book I read called Deep Work by Cal Newport. After reading The Lean Startup by Eric Ries and another book Cal Newport wrote called So Good They Can't Ignore You, I came to a somewhat upsetting conclusion - the work I thought was great deep work was not really as deep as I could go. Following Newport's advice of developing a craftsman mindset toward my work, I thought I was fulfilling the mandate to engage in deliberate practice that pushed the boundaries of my abilities. I delivered highly-praised results to several clients and completed a month-long blogging challenge where I wrote a 500 - 1,000 word blog post every day for 30 days. While it was difficult, I see now that what I was actually doing for the past several months was more an exercise in disciplined consistency than limit-stretching activities.

Catching feels

I feel two ways about it. On the one hand, I'm disappointed that I wasn't doing the work necessary to improve my expertise with tasks that caused some level of mental strain. Sure, I delivered, but what I delivered wasn't something that transcended current thought leadership or that defined a new cutting edge in social enterprise business models, online communities, or philanthropy. I wasn't consistently investing in new areas for exploration in a bid to discover the adjacent possible in my field. I didn't even know what the adjacent possible (an untapped potential of what could be) was until I read So Good They Can't Ignore You. [caption id="attachment_620" align="aligncenter" width="850"]

Image credit: AZ Quotes[/caption] On the other hand, I'm delighted that I have even more in me than I thought possible. I feel compelled to hunt down that adjacent possible in order to build disruptive infrastructure for social enterprises in STEM, arts, education, and minority success. I see some interesting parallels between the build-measure-learn feedback loop for Innovation Accounting described in The Lean Startup, the mission-based approach to meaningful work described in So Good They Can't Ignore You, and the concept of deep work described in Deep Work. By combining these ideas, I think I can create a process that proves objectively that I am growing what will become a sustainable career that proves the presence of career capital. It can turn what would have been considered faith-based assumptions of career expertise into a conceptual model to help guide me through mentally-straining deeper and deeper work with an accountability mechanism built in.

The change

Now that I have an interesting new work process to explore, I'll be turning my blog into progress reports on the process and ideas for adjacent possibles in business models, online communities, and philanthropy in support of STEM, arts, education, and minority success. On Thursday, I hope to have the following items to help explain my idea synthesis:

• Conceptual summaries for The Lean Startup, So Good They Can't Ignore You, and Deep Work
• A visual that describes the fusion of the above

On Monday, I'll have my first report on the process including the accountability metrics I used to create it.

I'm really excited to get started with this as I think it's going to help me create a system that keeps me doing and contributing to a fields I love: social enterprise and social entrepreneurship!

To stay up to date on this deep work/lean startup experiment and get the worksheets and diagrams I create during this process, sign up for my mailing list!