Process Mindfulness is not a meditation but an impractical framework that will encourage you to waste some time thinking about, planning and organizing communication in order to figure out what/how you want to get something done, instead of actually going to get something done. 

Curious though isn’t it? That sometimes you can just shoot from the hip and go get shit done, and yet others you need to stop, think and sometimes you know, make a god-damned plan. How do you know when you need to do one or the other? 

Let’s Think Slow for just one minute. Considering your situation, question or challenge. Where are you on a spectrum with “predictable” on the left extreme and “unpredictable” on the right? 

If you’re with anyone, find a partner and discuss where each of you believe you are in just one minute per person. If you’re with a larger group of people, join with another pair. Paraphrase your partner to the new pair, invite them to do the same and see if you can synthesize your perspectives as one answer in just 4 minutes. If you’re with more people, go around to each set of four and collect their answers in a minute or less. 

Now divide your spectrum into 4 segments. 

The one on the farthest left is Clear, prolly fine to just go get shit done.

The next one to the right is Complicated. Lots of pieces moving around. If you nerds all locked right into this answer and know how the things fit together, get after it! If not however I’d do whatever your version of Googling shit is or ask GPTetc, because expertise and analysis is advisable here. Take note that if you fuck up and jump to getting things done(GTD) without the requisite expertise here, you’ll kick yourself to the far right bucket called Chaos. 

Chaos, being chaos, the relationships between cause and effect are changing sometimes at different rates over time. Ironically in this context the DOing mode is your godsend. With all this flux at play, it doesn’t make much sense trying to go all smarty pants and figure things out. Just find some decent heuristics and get after it. For example: keep moving, capture the high ground and stay in radio contact. These aren’t prescriptive. They are simple enough to remember and they narrow enough to help you figure out which one to do next.

Now that last ¼, between Complicated and Chaos is… Complex. Complex has lots of unknown-unknowns at play. You’ll need to uncover things as you go. Complex is like groping your way through unfamiliar darkness. Taking your time with small steps, keeping some slack to make sense of the progress you’ve made and how things fit together from time to time. Probe, Sense and Respond to what you sense, is a tried and true search algorithm that will get you through the darkness without banging your toes on any coffee tables.

Now there’s a lot of nifty insights in this simplified variation of the Agreement Certainty Matrix, but that will do to make this point, calling back to our initial question of how do we know when to stop and think vs when to get to the doing:

It depends.

Except for Chaos mode, chaos mode always works, but it will sometimes waste a bunch of energy going in circles(doing the wrong thing) and from time to time push things into Chaos. Which sometimes sucks, because sometimes you just want to chill right? However if you kick ass at the game of fuck-around-and-find-out, and those around you don’t, well then there may be some strategic advantage to inviting Chaos.

But yeah, it depends on the context, as to what the correct course of action is. Pay attention, take notes and ask around. Somebody, or perhaps the sum total of some-bodies, will have the insight of whether it is a good use of time to engage in Process Mindfulness: organizing communication in order to figure out what matters, decide and plan how you want to get something done, before you go get things done. 

Fin.

Post Script:

This post is an unpacking of one pattern useful for Process Mindfulness, the Liberating Structure: Agreement Certainty Matrix. There are remixes and variations on everything, this one is mine. It has been heavily simplified and shares much DNA with granddaddy Dave Snowden’s Cynefin Sensemaking Framework. I would encourage everyone take not of the differences with my adaptation compared to the cannon of both. May many grains of salt be upon you!

Interesting rabbit holes(premises) I’m going to open up(assert) but not go down(explain/defend/argue) here:

4th Industrial Revolution: that there is something significant in adjusting to the digital paradigm that makes these skills of situational assessment essential and how this shift bears an 86% resemblance to the type of embedded ecological thinking I associate with indigenous-ness

Process mindfulness is a radical departure of our cultural understanding of leadership from Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey to squad wealth and group as hero. See Lord of the Rings Trilogy as a recipe for distributed chaordination that: creates a shared map of reality, takes turns leading in often very different ways around different relevant contexts and recruits those close to contexts to respond. We need A-teams of spiritual warriors.

The future of leadership is coaching and facilitation. What these have in common is the skill of guiding inquiry/discovery of relevance realization through the continuous embodied availability of 3rd person metacognition. See artful participation, membership or the awareness of “what does the group need (from me) now?”