I’ve always been through real phases with things.
In recent times it has been mountain biking (no longer an obsession), CrossFit (current phase, but not the white hot obsession that it once was), looking further back, rugby, outdoorsy stuff. I wrote the book in a kind of obsessive bursty way too: 3 months of disciplined writing, done and dusted from start to finish in 6 months.
From a work point of view, it was marketing, then entrepreneurship, then digital, then social media, then culture and organisations. Now it’s my new role. I am noticing as I immerse myself. So is my wife.
These phases or cycles last different amounts of time. But the patterns are similar.
I devour everything on the topic. With mountain biking I subscribed to two magazines, read a forum daily, rode when I could, lovingly washed the bikes, took photos of them, ate and slept biking. It is obsessive. These things become ‘my thing’. It has been the same in work. When a world catches my interest, I immerse myself, I turn almost all of my available attention and energy to it. There’s both a learning energy and a doing energy.
Quite funny really.
Family and friends seem to be less cyclical, fortunately. But some of the people I love to be with the most are newer friends. That said, nothing compares to people I’ve known and who’ve known me for decades.
So for me, cycles are interesting.
It’s the winter solstice today (I just remembered, as I write). Another cycle, another turning point. In my work, I am seeing cycles and phases – as Brandwatch becomes a bigger company, with bigger international teams, moves into its next and most ambitious (yet) phase, as our market moves into a new phase, as I move into a new phase, as my team start a new cycle. We are all shifting.
These cycles are irresistable. They just are.
The best advice my mum gave us when we had our first child was that, now matter how rough things were at any time, to ‘remember that everything is a phase’. She was right. And not just about coping with new borns 🙂
Will McInnes 
Lovely post Will, wonder what’s next!
It’s not surprising we live in phases – after all every 7 years there is a 100% turnover in your body’s cells: not a part of you today is what it was 7 years ago.
That’s gotta cause some churn even if nothing else does!
D
I love that, Dave. Have you seen this? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus Only came across it recently. A lovely mind puzzle.