This is how we learn.
An apple is a lot like an orange, but you can eat the skin and it’s not as sweet. If you know what an orange is, you’re most of the way to understanding an apple.
But the indoctrination of school pushes us to be literal. When people talk about apples and oranges, good students imagine that they’re talking about apples and oranges.
Even when something is labeled as a metaphor, it’s a common instinct to simply focus on the details, not the ideas. If you can make a point with three very different examples, you’ll begin to see how powerful metaphor can be.
The hard work is to shift our default. To imagine that every incident, story or example is actually a metaphor, and only eventually coming to the conclusion that the specific details are what’s on offer.
Logic is symbolic. Learning requires handholds to help us understand the symbols, but it’s the logic that remains.
March 2, 2025
January feels like the start of the year, but there’s always a hangover from the holidays. In the northern Hemisphere, February is dark and dreary and we’re mostly hunkering down waiting for the short month to end.
But March? Around the world, March can be a chance to get down to the work we committed to do.
Invest 31 days into outlining, discussing and fleshing out the strategy you want to bring to your career or your project. It doesn’t matter how fast you’re going if you’re headed in the wrong direction.
Here are two resources to consider:
Purple.space is a worldwide community of more than 1,000 people supporting each other as they seek to do the work. It’s not a social network, it’s a community of practice, worth more than it costs. It also includes access to many of my video workshops, best done as a team. Find the others.
This is Strategy, my latest book, is available in print, audio and as a deck of cards that make it easy to dig ever deeper into what needs to be done and what’s holding you back.
Better is possible.
March 1, 2025
