Cave or Cocoon: What are you doing with quiet time?
In the past few weeks a theme I’ve heard again and again is there’s a sense of a lull … a quiet time amidst the storms. Maybe it’s the annual summer slowdown, exacerbated by the number of people still working from home, unemployed, furloughed or held back from “non-essential” projects. Or perhaps this is a more normal pace that feels like a let-down after the intensity of a crisis. In some organizations, it may be about being ostensibly back in business, but still without the customer demand, supply chains or working capital to operate at full output.
In any case, there are options as to how to be in a lull. You can CAVE or COCOON.
From the outside, these both may look like you’re hiding away in a dark place. But the experience, energy and activity on the inside is dramatically different -- whether you take this from an individual or organization point of view. Here I’ll focus on the individual experience, though you can extrapolate to an organizational level.*
There’s the cave option. This is when you retreat deep into a mountain, into a quiet place where few can find you. Certainly, the dark, solemn silence is a good place to rest ... a retreat from the stress and pain and discomfort and upheaval that’s out there in the world. We all need to escape into a cave now and then. The downside is that in that cave we can lose touch not only with people important to us and what’s going on outside, but also with the possibilities outside our safe place. When we do emerge, we can be blinded by the light, stunned and have a sense of having been left behind.
And then there’s the cocoon option. You’re separated from the activity of the world in this version as well. From the outside, people may see you as asleep at the wheel, but inside your cocoon, you are anything but. For the whole purpose of being in the cocoon is to transform, so that when that cocoon simply gets too small for your potential -- for your new form -- you can emerge, vital, full of energy and ready to soar, no matter what else is going on in the world.
What can happen when you’re in a cocoon?
You can rebuild your energy -- not through passive rest, but through what @alisoneyring calls “active recovery.” The analogy here, and throughout her book Pacing for Growth, is training for endurance sports like triathlons. In sports, active recovery looks like similar physical motion, but at a slower pace. In life, active recovery can, according to Eyring, be about conscious self-renewal. In self-renewal, you rebuild your personal resources of hope, optimism, resilience and perseverance -- so that you are ready for the next phase of exertion and challenge. She offers both a framework (PACER - standing for Peace, Adaptation, Control, Energy, Relationship) and a short self-assessment in her book linked above.
You can, quite simply, practice being rather than doing. You can let your analytical, judgmental, thinking mind take a break. You can step away from to-do lists, plans to achieve your goals, or strategies to solve your problems. Instead you can be grounded, at peace and open to see the answers that appear without your even looking for them. Get peaceful enough and you may even find yourself in a state of what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi was the first to call “flow,” where the doing just happens effortlessly. You’ve probably had the “eureka” experience of discovering -- no, absolutely knowing -- an answer when you aren’t actually thinking about the question. In a cocoon, we increase our chances of having “aha” moments of deep wisdom when we simply stop trying to … well, trying to do or think or solve anything. I would say “give it a try,” but then you’d be trying.
If you’re in a cocoon because you’re spinning your wheels while fully employed, you can look for ways to transform how you’re seen in your company. Step forward during a quiet time to learn new skills that are in demand now -- either through formal (if virtual) training, or taking on a different role or project. A dramatic example of this is a physical therapist I know, who works at a hospital within an outpatient physical therapy clinic. When the hospital shifted to be a COVID center, the clinic was postponed. She asked to be trained as a phlebotomist and fill a critical role for the ICU team treating COVID patients. What an experience she has had, to say the least.
If you’re furloughed, underemployed or unemployed, you have the gift of time to be in your cocoon. Re-engage in a hobby or service activity you haven’t had time for. Read. Learn. Use the time actively to restore or build personal relationships. Sure, this can include burnishing your professional network. More important is connecting with your secure bases who care about and dare you -- in other words, who project both a sense of comfort and challenge you to be your best. Even if you’re furloughed instead of unemployed, build your confidence by recognizing and embodying your strengths. Envision that butterfly you can become -- that resilient, free butterfly that can fly far, far beyond the job you have or had. Your own inspirational poster, right in the imagination of your own cocoon.
For those of you who have been following this series of articles, you may have noticed that it’s been a while since I’ve published one. I myself have been cocooning, doing a little bit of each of the items above, and also questioning some very fundamental ways I’ve seen the world. In this I’ve become intensely aware (a) that there is so much I don’t know and don’t understand; and (b) that’s OK. It’s a reminder that our transformations don’t need to be fully organized, complete or perfect. They just take us forward, one cocooning opportunity at a time.
* Interested in the organizational version of cocooning? Let me know in the comments, and I’ll write an article about that.
