In search of the light — a trip to reflect and renew
“The way we live and travel has changed…”
So began the somewhat unconventional in-flight announcement before the cabin attendant told us about the precautions being taken on board this flight. It’s Monday morning and I’m on a British Airways flight from London City to Edinburgh. My first time in the sky since late 2019.
Pre-2020 my working life used to naturally throw short trips into the calendar. A one hour flight or a half day train ride away. Staying one or two nights. Going to Bristol, Cardiff, Leeds. Amsterdam, Madrid, Munich. But of course there hasn’t been business travel lately. Like everybody else I have travelled the world — from Latin America to Russia — from my attic desk.
Alongside those trips to run a workshop or deliver a presentation, over the last fifteen years I’ve planned trips away to come up with ideas or get started on a book project. I call these ‘inspiration jaunts’ in the tradition of impressionist painters travelling south to find the best light and get the creative juices flowing.
So that’s why I am on this BA flight. I have carved out 48 hours to focus on two things: Reflection — looking back, and Renewal — looking forward.
An offsite for one
Most people who work inside organisations have regular ‘offsites’ — where you go away for an afternoon, or a couple of days, to review progress and plan ahead.
As I work for myself, this little trip is an offsite for one.
And as soon as we get above those fluffy white clouds, I’m rewarded with a clarity and sense of purpose. Those clouds signal to me a blank canvas and already I get scribbling in my notepad, ideas flowing.
I am off!
Wow, look how far you have come!
On the one hand, you could say that nothing much has happened these last fifteen months — our day-to-day lives have pretty much been the same. But on the other hand? So much has happened.
As was the case for many, last year was rocky for my business. I lost projects and revenues as C-19 changed everybody’s plans. I’ve had to rebuild the business, adapting my products and services to suit. It’s been hard work, but I’m pleased I’ve now got the business back on track.
But up until this moment, I hadn’t stopped to take stock. I’d just been head-down, not looking up.
So from my position in seat 13A I feel like I am looking down from above and seeing my 2020–21 path on a map. Only now can I see just how far I’ve come. Just like my fifteen year old son who has shot up — taller than me — during the last twelve months, I can say the same about me. “Look how I’ve grown!!”
Step out of your area
I know that it’s not always easy to take stock of things at the scene of where it all happened. To get the best position for reflection I need to travel to another place.
Yes, it’s a luxury for sure.
How often do we get the chance to go outside the confines of our daily lives, to go to another place for reflection?
As the plane touches down at Edinburgh Airport I look out of my window and notice something.
Inscribed on a section of the wing is a sign, “Do not step out of this area.”
That’s what life is like when we’re busy, working at pace, immersed in our own world. Often we don’t get the opportunity — or the permission — to step out of our area.
But to step over the line — that’s often what we need to do in order to see clearly.
The unpredictable nature of cities
I have brought two non fiction books with me on this trip. One is Deyan Sudjic’s ‘The Language of Cities.’ It’s an apt read for a flight from the heart of London’s docklands. The regenerated docks, City Airport and neighbouring Canary Wharf office development are the subject of a chapter of Sudjic’s book.
It’s important that I’m traveling to a city for this exercise. I’m not going to the mountains or the countryside. The city is an essential backdrop for my best thinking and working.
And at the end of the first chapter Sudjic puts into words why I like cities. It’s their unpredictability.
“We value the quality of the unpredictable as one of the key virtues of the city. We want to get lost in cities, we don’t want them to be comprehensible all at once. We want to discover them gradually, to understand their layers of complexity,” he writes.
Navigating your way through a library
Sudjic writes that we are attracted to cities because they offer us the chance to find “people and things that we did not know existed, and that we did not know that we wanted to find before we went there.”
I love that sense of what a city might reveal to me. Things — ideas, insights, occurrences — I didn’t know existed. And that I didn’t know I wanted before I got there.
Sudjic suggests that navigating a city is like negotiating through a library. “Randomly stacked shelves means that their contents are left to us, or reveal themselves only through random encounters.”
It reminds me of what Tinker Hatfield, the legendary Nike designer, says about stepping away from our desks and getting immersed in the world around us. He believes creativity is stifled by being chained to the office or design studio. He advocates getting out and experiencing life in order to give us a library in our head. The thoughts and concepts we pick up will translate into new ideas.
So here in Edinburgh I can top up that library in my own head.
The newness of unfamiliar streets
On this trip to Edinburgh I am staying in a neighbourhood — Bruntsfield — recommended by a local (my sister, who has lived in the city for 20 years).
I like its newness, that I am unsure where turning a corner will lead me.
I am struck by the architecture and enjoy following the lines of the tenement buildings that face onto the park. I am drawn to the consistency and order of the facades, one after the other, one after the other.
I’m also drawn to independent coffee shops and bars. Here in Bruntsfield I have Project Coffee, Montpeliers, Artisan Roast and Honeycomb & Co, all within a few paces from each other, to choose from.
And whilst this is a friendly neighbourhood there is also the anonymity that a city provides. Whilst my accent reveals to waiters and baristas I’m not Scottish, it doesn’t mean I am not a local.
So I relish in being able to blend in with everyone else. It’s this anonymity, Sudjic writes, that differentiates a city from a village. “To walk into a bar or a store, to rent a room or buy a book, without having to account for who you are, or where you have come from, is a precious quality.”
“Are you okay?”
My sister had collected me from the tram stop and taken me to my hotel. Afterwards we sat on the pavement in the sunshine having a pot of tea.
She looked across the table and asked me,
“Are you okay?”
Maybe I looked distracted. And truth is, I probably was.
Because as the facts unravelled in my reply to her, I realised that — of course — there has been so much we have all had to deal with these last fifteen months. Layer over layer of challenges and pressures. Family. Work. Lockdowns. Money. Health. Elderly parents. Homeschooling children.
Layer on layer on layer.
We haven’t stopped to take a breath.
Even today. Train. Tube. DLR. Plane. Tram. Car. Until now, when I’m outside this cafe, finally sitting down and taking a breath.
And yes of course I am lucky. I have had downtime over these last fifteen months. I have sat in a deckchair in a garden, I have read more novels than ever. I have enjoyed life by the coast.
But this is the first time that I have gone to another place. Taken a journey by myself to another country. And when I got there, I realised what I had been through.
I hadn’t stopped to take note of that before.
A bench of my own
At 8am on my first morning I step out of my hotel and find this bench in Bruntsfield Links park.
I sit for a while. I watch people pass by. A woman cycling to work. A man and a woman — walking in opposite directions — who recognise each other, removing their respective AirPods to chat. A woman pushes her baby in a buggy. An old lady walks her old dog.
And as people pass me, no-one calls out, “look at that bloke — he’s just arrived, he’s never been here before!”
To me there’s a beauty in that moment, that nobody knows. And for now — at least — this part of the city is as much mine as it is theirs. The city is generous — it gives me a place to belong. I like that.
So here I am sitting on a bench I’ve never sat before, looking at a view I’ve never seen before.
And it feels good.
Reflect with honesty and plan with possibility
I have some tools to aid my reflection. Alongside my notebooks I have a set of worksheets to complete — some designed by me, others downloaded from the generous folk at SY Partners (you can find the link at the bottom of this essay).
One key workbook for me is entitled ‘Year Compass’ that I filled out at the end of last year. The workbook asked that we “reflected with honesty and planned with a sense of possibility.” It’s fascinating to dig it out and review what I’d written six months ago.
Back in December I’d written some goals and hopes for 2021 around growing the business and also getting a book deal. After the commercial challenges of 2020, it’s quite a moment to reflect on the recovery of my business and how I have pulled off these goals, six months on. As I wrote back then, “this year will be special because it’s the year it all comes together.”
Now that I’ve looked back, I turn to a set of worksheets created by SY Partners to help me look forward. “What change will you create in the world?” asks the front page. I take a slug of my long black and dive in.
I am my projects
In 2004 I accompanied my then girlfriend — since wife — on a business trip to Palo Alto, California. I found the trip lonely. While she was at work, I wandered the streets but found the quietness and lack of pedestrians in Silicon Valley didn’t fuel me. I took refuge in a café on California Avenue where I worked on a book proposal and considered the reinvention of my business. Walking into Borders bookstore in Palo Alto one afternoon, I stumbled upon the perfect companion to guide my thought process. It was ‘The Brand You 50’ by Tom Peters, from his pocket size Reinventing Work series. I’m a fan of Tom’s work and every few years I dip into his books again. So I brought Tom’s book to Edinburgh with me.
I’m sitting in the window of a coffee shop looking at the pages I’d annotated 17 years ago. I’m noting that my career — whilst following an unconventional trajectory — has all been about projects.
“I am my projects,” Tom writes, “I carry them around. Figuratively and literally.”
I like that.
And then I smile.
What’s the name of the coffee shop I’m in?
Project Coffee ;)
Following you
As I wander the streets of Edinburgh, I’m following Me. Seeing what attracts me — I wonder what’s down this road, or I like that building — and seeing where it takes me.
I like that sense of being a flâneur, wandering around, people-watching. Pouring the experiences of the city into my work.
In his book on cities Sudjic writes that the essence of a city is to choose from it what you need, and to politely ignore the rest.
Me? I’ve always been drawn to side streets and independent shops — it’s like a short cut to the magic of a city. Away from the obvious centre, the picture-postcard landmarks, the tourist shops.
And in Edinburgh I remind myself of that. On my first morning I decide to cross the city towards George Street. But as I walk beyond the open space of The Meadows and towards the centre, the city starts losing its appeal. And by the time I see Edinburgh Castle and hear bagpipe music blasting out of a shop selling tartan face masks and shortbread, I know I need to turn around. The tourist areas don’t appeal. I head back in the direction of me.
Taking the slow route home
I am always seeking those habits and behaviours that fuel my best work. Once I find something that yields results — or just leads to me having a good day — it becomes part of my formula for success. So I repeat it.
And so the last time I came to this city — to speak at a conference three years ago — I arrived by plane, but left by train.
I took the slow route home. And I loved it.
So I’m doing the same on this trip.
On the one hand, yes, the plane is faster. But there’s so much waiting around and steps to go through: place your liquids in a bag, take your laptop out of its sleeve, wait by the gate.
As I board the London train at Edinburgh Waverley station, it puts a smile on my face. The sun is shining. A few minutes later, the train sets off and a steward wheels his trolley down the aisle, the sound of wine bottles clinking.
I choose an ice-cold glass of rosé, a treat. Celebrating — for that is the word — just how far I have come.
And as we journey south, that changing landscape out of the window is like watching a slideshow. So many different scenes play out in front of me.
The coast above Berwick upon Tweed. A beach with people swimming. A pretty harbour. An open top car on a country road. A castle-like residence. Fields. Ruins.
Perfect scenes for daydreaming and scribbling ideas.
And then across the field I spot something. Standing erect. A lighthouse, looking out to sea.
I think about that lighthouse, a beacon to shine a light and help approaching ships find their path. To follow the light.
And I realise, this short trip away has been my equivalent of finding the light.
Food & drink
Honeycomb & Co, 1 Merchiston Place, EH10 4NP
Artisan Roast, 138 Bruntsfield Place, EH10 4ER
Project Coffee, 192–194 Bruntsfield Place, EH10 4DF
Montpeliers, 159–161 Bruntsfield Place, EH10 4DG
Tempo Perso, 208 Bruntsfield Place, EH10 4DE
Books & tools
‘The Language of Cities’ by Deyan Sudjic
‘The Brand You 50’ by Tom Peters
2 x Moleskine Sapphire Blue soft cover ruled paper notebooks
Set of 6 colour 0.5mm gel ink pens by Muji
Free tools, prompts, and exercises to help your teams flourish by SY Partners
Year Compass — a free guide
