Before I Forget — Things I've Learned from My Mother's Dementia

Pay attention to the list (photo credit: Glenn Carstens-Peters)

I am not particularly good at making lists. I know what needs to get done and when, and only when the world feels like too much to handle do I feel compelled to write things down in checklist form. It’s a bit strange considering I write just about everything else down that comes to mind as a writer and creative.

But I’m going to strongly advocate for this list.

It’s one of the few that I have penned. I’m sure there are similar lists out there, but this one is mine. It’s well-worn and lived in.

And I’m sharing it because I think you can benefit from it – even if a loved one isn’t ill or disappearing in front of your eyes. It’s a different kind of list, one that doesn’t bring the kind of joy and satisfaction from checking the box. Each time I am reminded to turn to it, I think of the Avett Brothers Murder in the City where brothers Scott and Seth sing these final lines:  

If I get murdered in the city
Go read the letter in my desk
Don't bother with all my belongings
But pay attention to the list

Make sure my sister knows I loved her
Make sure my mother knows the same
Always remember there was nothing worth sharing
Like the love that let us share our name
Always remember there was nothing worth sharing
Like the love that let us share our name

And with that, pay attention to the list.

1.      Life moves slowly, often predictably; then it changes all at once. Recognize this as the rule rather than the exception. You’re not being singled out.

2.      Being right doesn’t matter. Showing love does. 

3.      Show up.

4.      After you’ve taken it personally, don’t take it personally.

5.      Listen. There’s a story to decode underneath the misidentified people and places. There’s a memory trying to rise to the surface.

6.      Ask for stories. Write them down. History is fading before your eyes. 

7.      Grief is not an event. It is a series of high and low tides that never cease.

8.      Costume jewelry can save a lot of heartache.

9.      Watch the film Alive Inside and see how playing music awakens the brain, reaches that far off part that remains uncorrupted. Tap the well that appears to be empty.

10.  Hide-n-seek is not only a kid’s game. Approach what’s missing with a kid-like curiosity and desire to find.

11.  Give compliments. Tell her she looks beautiful, how she reminds you of a special time.  

12.  Enjoy the silence. Sometimes presence is enough.

13.  Take walks. Slow is still active.

14.  Pull photographs before the funeral home asks. They are memory triggers for conversation, not just a five-minute carousel of a life lived.    

15.  She’s your parent, but his spouse. Same person, different interpretations. Remember and respect it as they would want you to do.

16.  Let her eat what she wants to eat. We’re no longer staving off anything.   

17.  Ask often: what really matters at this moment?

18.  Denial: don’t let it be the disease you suffer from.

19.  Making up for lost time, lost ground, lost arguments is unachievable. Making the most of the moment is achievable.

20.  Become an advocate for their health and well-being. This is as important with family members as it is with physicians.

21.  You are of little good to others if you are not taking care of yourself.

22.  This isn’t forever.

23. Find community. Grieve together. Lift each other up. Keep walking forward.

24.  This is a list for dementia, for Alzheimer’s. But don’t let that stop you from using the list. 

Short attention spans, content deficits, and disconnects

You have 1.3 seconds.

One. point. three.

That’s the length of Gen Z’s attention span according to a new global study.

The good news is you’ll get a few seconds more with older generations.

To clarify, this is about active attention spans regarding advertising.

But advertising is a form of messaging. A sliver of storytelling.

And it either grabs one’s attention or it doesn’t. It’s memorable or it’s not.

This is an age-old challenge for advertisers and marketers: How to grab that fast-fleeting attention for a few seconds. And then a few more. The stakes have been raised and there is pressure-cooked dilemma of attention deficit driven by social media scrolling.

But don’t worry. Your marketing team will creatively crack the code.

You’ve got bigger fish to fry. Like answering this question:

What will we say once we have their attention?

More than two decades of asking company leaders what they do, why they do it, why people should choose their product/service – and then asking their people the same question – and it’s pretty clear most orgs don’t have clear-cut answers.

Vague ones? Yes.

Succinct and consistent? Rarely.

1.3 seconds of cool may be just that — cool.

What it cannot do is convey your complex message, even when distilled to something simple.

However, creativity can point to your story that connects emotionally to an audience.

Of course you know your story, right?

The one your team knows inside and out?

That conveys your unique value and what you bring to the market?

That underscores why people – employees and customers alike – are all in on what you do?

Yes? Vaguely?

This takes more than 1.3 seconds.

So breathe.

And let your creative team be creative when it comes to grabbing attention.

Don’t let an audience attention deficit lead your business into a content deficit.

You still need to nail your story. Know your why. Clarify what makes you worth their time.

Remember that old-school metric about how an audience needs to see/hear your message nine times for before truly acknowledging it for the first time?

The same is true in a generation of scrollers.

Except today it’s going to take a lot more than nine times.

But once you grab their attention, it’s game on.

To keep their attention you need to make a meaningful connection.

And in case you need reminded, that is why your company exists in the first place.

Bigger. Better. Faster. More. Focus on the one that matters.

Every growth-minded organization’s aspirational and unsustainable spreadsheet dream.

Most people can sniff out the BBFM thread of language for what it really is:

• False or misleading marketing claims.

• Running to the beat of the corporate drum (which is typically the opposite of disruption and, in turn, true innovation).

• Unchecked hubris born of previous success.

• An undisciplined and insatiable desire for more.  

 (Those last two are part of the five stages of decline that Jim Collins outlined in his lesser-quoted book HOW THE MIGHTY FAIL)

Yet it doesn’t prevent businesses from believing in the false promises of this mantra. In time, and always sooner than desired, this will happen:

• Bigger becomes bloated.

• Faster needs to increase its speed.

• Yesterday’s version of more is not enough.

• Better is subjective and becomes a point of contention.

If we can sniff this out as consumers, then why is it that we, as businesspeople and leaders, apply this same misguided thinking and bake it into our systems and processes?

We know that bigger isn’t intuitively or explicitly better.

Faster doesn’t guarantee greater efficiency or effectiveness.

And more gets you more of everything – the bad along with any good.

Better is the only meaningful pursuit on this list.

Better, when articulated what it entails and how you’ll achieve it, will present nuanced versions of more that you, as a leader, get to decide if the pursuit is worthy of the effort.

And while better might remain subjective to the end customer, you get to define the terms of what better means to your organization.

It will be discovered in the metrics, the anecdotal, the company culture, as well as the hard to quantify.

It will be in the ability to recruit and the ability to retain your best people.

It will be proven over the long term. Not last quarter or next quarter.

It will reveal itself in a loyal base of customers, suppliers, and partners.

Better has a purpose. It has a definitive feel.

The pursuit of better is ongoing, just like business itself.

It will be written (literally) in your company’s DNA.

And you will know when you are going astray.

Because all of us want – and are looking for – better.

We’ll all take the upticks of bigger and more as they come (and inevitably go).

Which is why our aspiration should be to laser-focused on better.

Better is achievable, measurable, sustainable, and profitable…

as long as we aren’t derailed by short-term, fleeting promises of bigger, faster, and more.

Silence as a Strategic Advantage

I recently spent an entire week in complete silence.

No talking. No verbal communication whatsoever. Doctor’s orders.

Not exactly ideal for a communicator.

Sadly, this isn’t unusual for me. It marked the fifth time in 10 years this has been necessary: a surgery to address abnormalities with my vocal cords.

Previously I tried to work through my recovery – using hand gestures, mouthing the words, using a white board to convey thoughts in the moment, and staying fully connected as best I could.  

But this time was different.

This time I left town for a remote place assured of silence and a focus on healing.

I limited all screened time. I walked a lot.

I did tactile things – mostly painting. I read for pleasure.  

And this is where my brain did something unexpected.

Instead of shutting off or winding down, my brain accessed a gear that is rarely found amid the speed of daily life.

A week of recovery turned into a week of renewed ingenuity brimming with ideas, surprising connections, and new possibilities. Things that would not have happened had I been running on the proverbial treadmill of work.

To be clear, this was different from vacation, from necessary downtime.

It was a mandated stop of verbal communication and a self-imposed limit on digital communication.

That, I learned, was the key to unlocking the floodgate of possibilities.  

When you are not actively communicating you become an observer, a listener – a discerning captive to that still small voice from within that provides a way forward.

IMAGINE THIS:

You have a big project hanging in the balance or a must-win pitch on the horizon.

You could engage as you always do – brainstorm meetings, ideation sessions, check-ins, status updates, work reviews, more meetings – and then “sprint” to the finish line.

Or you could give your team some silence and space. A mandate to think rather than perform. Consider it the opposite of the groupthink brainstorm.

This doesn’t require extreme measures or a full week’s worth of quiet and processing.

But what if you provided the freedom, untouchable increments of time and some space to breathe, think, and ideate in silence away from scrutiny of performance, away from the tyranny of the urgent?

What fruit might that yield?

What might a collaborative session look like when unfettered thinking is brought back to the table, rather than expecting brilliance to strike during a planned 60-minute brainstorm?

You and your team likely won’t find that hidden gear under those circumstances.

It is not how the flood of creative problem-solving is unleashed. 

Every organization wants the breakthrough idea that accelerates the business. Few are willing to give it the time, space, and necessary silence to bubble up from the quiet depths to the surface.

NOW IMAGINE THIS:

Your competitive advantage isn’t about doing more, or grinding, or hustling, failing even faster, or cracking the whip on your team.

In fact, it might look a lot like doing nothing – or appear to be ignoring the elephant in the room.

But you know looks can be deceiving.

Because what you are doing is making space and clearing a path for the best thinking to emerge. To allow for strategic listening to occur and see how ideas begin morphing into solutions.

That’s not only good business, but it also reenergizes teams to think – and then perform – differently.

And it’s also what organizations seek for the good of their business and their people.

Find Joy in Doing the Work

A sketch or an idea isn't the work. It's the start of it.

A post isn't the work. It's the end of it, a summary of work.

Everything in-between is the work — the hard work, the unglamorous work, the I-screwed-up work, the nobody-will-lay-eyes-on-it work, all of the minute decisions that others will never know or appreciate.

To keep alive the dream of the work being worthy or accepted, we have to show up and do the work.

When we do, we might find that our work has the ability to scale walls we’ve constructed inside us, it can be used to tear down old walls, construct new ones, or perhaps become mounted on a wall deemed important. But to realize such a future requires us to do the work.

Too often we focus on the end goal — visualizing to a point of paralysis. We seem more interested in the finish line, the prize, and the accolades without the act of doing the work, regardless of what work we dabble in.

There can be dread at the beginning of the work. It can feel daunting. It can drain.

It can cause feelings of imposter syndrome, of not measuring up.

Which makes us ask — what are we doing this work for?

Why do we do this work?

If your aspirations are greater than your answer, don’t sell yourself short.

If you are “mailing it in” on your employer who believes you enjoy the work, stop.

We are called to work.

You should have a desire to do the work in which you are called.

There should be joy in doing the work.

(not always, but more often than not).

If that's not your experience, go seek it out.

And do that work.