Everyday is Day One

It’s always Day One at Amazon, said Jeff Bezos. That’s an aspiration for Amazon, that it will always act like a startup, no matter its size. To Bezos, Day Two is stasis, which leads to irrelevance and decline.

Always be in Day One, he said.

I like that fresh reframing of having a beginner’s mind, on living and working with a growth mindset.

It’s harder to imagine a beginner’s mind once you’re no longer a beginner, and growth mindset can feel kind of abstract. But Day One is visceral, feels more immediate. Everyone remembers their first day at work – the butterflies, the sense of adventure, the uncertainty, the whirlwind of introductions and onboarding that zip right past to Day Two.

Everyone remembers the first time they ever tried something new.

Like today I did. Facilitating my first ever all-day Zoom workshop, while whiteboarding on Miro. Of course, there will be technical issues in the morning. That’s required for any trial by fire. I’m exhausted now, but it’s good tired. Good because I’d always felt unsure about this shift to remote workshops. My facilitation skills in design had always been honed in face-to-face settings, and remote just seemed too hard. No way to read the room, see people’s expressions. That got me questioning if I might be fast getting outdated as a consultant. But so far, based on today’s proceedings, the transition looks less scary than I initially thought.

It got me thinking how I loved learning, growing, pushing my limits forward. Living and working in Day One.

Everyday, in Day One.

Always.