Executive Coach Ed Batista launches his most recent newsletter with a lovely meditation about life on his farm. As is his gift, he spins that experience into fodder for his professional practice, nailing down a key choice point for practitioners in a wide range of fields.

In our own various ways, my clients and I are “re-grounding” ourselves, finding ways to live and work sustainably under new conditions. Sometimes this involves adapting to a radically different environment, as in our case on the farm. More typically it involves distinguishing between A) those pre-pandemic activities that are meaningful and important and should be restored, and B) all the others that were merely by-products of a world in which in-person time was a commodity, and not a precious resource.

For me, things feel busier than ever for October and yet I’m still feeling energized. But that’s in part because I’ve tried to fill my days with as many meaningful, move-the-dial kinds of activities as possible. I’m busier in large part because I’m engaged, interested, and drawn to my work. Or, in Batista’s useful framing, I’m feeling restored because I’ve returned to tasks that “should be restored,” not “merely by-products” of a world of work that was headed in the wrong direction long before the pandemic.

Source: Ed Batista’s October 2021 Newsletter.