Ok, I admit it – I think astrology is cool. I read the full moon horoscopes to my family who enjoy laughing at me. I think it’s fun! I don’t take astrology super seriously (unless it’s good lol), but I do find it interesting. You can judge, or maybe you’re into it too ? I like that the stars, sun, and moon are always in flux, on the move, and ever changing. And that’s what is really meaningful to me when it comes to astrology: the changing phases and cycles of it all.
When you pause to reflect on it, there’s a roaming goat herd of cycles and phases in nature and our lives!
The moon has four phases in its cycle. The Earth has four phases in its yearly weather cycle. Sleep has 3 major phases. Plant lifecycles have four phases. A day has four phases. Butterflies have four phases in their lifecycle. The human lifecycle can be broken up into major phases as well.
All that to say: cycles are always there. Starting, moving, completing, and repeating.
Cycles are something I’ve been working with as a way to organize what gets done in my life lately. If your daily to-do lists are as painful as waiting in the security line at ORD on Mondays, then it might be time to consider a new way of working: cycles longer than 24 hours.
The concept of organizing my time through cycles came to me as I was flailing around from the complete lack of structure in my days after quitting my job. After about a month of trying to figure out whether mornings were for working, resting, or house stuff, I stumbled onto Kate Northrup’s work in her book called, “Do Less”. She talked about how she made the shift into living and working in cycles and the transformative power it had on her life and business… and I thought, “Why the hell not?”
Shifting into cycle based time is really about viewing time as a circle, instead of a line. You might be suuuuuper unimpressed after reading that, but stay with me. When you realize that circles can be any time based point, you’re no longer constrained by a typical “24 hour day” to get things done.
This is a good thing – because one 24 hour day is a tiny window of time to accomplish your 12 things, and also live your life as a human (who sometimes has the productivity of a sloth, which is normal!)
I’ve come to realize that I go through 4 phases of energy/focus to get stuff done:
1. Umm, ok life. I guess that’s what I’m doing today.
2. Let’s get it ALL done – I have the energy of a small child hyped up on candy!
3. I just want to focus on this one thing, ok?
4. Oooh – I have soo many ideas! Let’s do them allll!
Through some experimentation, I’ve noticed that I can go through all of those in about a week. I’ve shifted to a weekly cycle of work/life planning, and my energy/focus phase will determine what I do on a given day.
Also, there are also cycles within our work too. There’s project cycles, sprint cycles, budgeting cycles, creative cycles – all with their own distinctive phases.
Most businesses aren’t really thinking about their work or customers in terms of phases and cycles (and certainly not tracking the data that way). That’s where you can leverage this idea and work smarter than everyone else. Where in your work is there a cycle that can be tracked that is meaningful for your customers?
Imagine how much more impact you could have with your data if you started to think about customer cycles and how you can use them in your business.
Let’s imagine you own a restaurant.
Today, your restaurant can likely track revenue and customer traffic by date, and maybe even time of day. So you can see revenue for Saturday, or the weekend. Maybe even MTD and YTD revenue. Awesome!
But imagine if you dared to try adding some other meaningful cycles into your data:
Calendar seasons: adding in a dimension of data called season can open the door to seeing revenue in spring vs summer and thinking about how you can plan and offer specials during lower volume seasons (or plan for higher volume seasons)
Customer Life Seasons: adding in a dimension of data around life seasons perhaps to track how much of your revenue is from families vs non-families (probably based on party size), or couples vs non couples could help add rich context to your sales data. Looking through the lens of a life phase can help you offer better specials that resonate with your customers. Perhaps a family movie night every month would be a fantastic idea, or a date night special is what can help drive volume on Tuesdays.
Foodie Journey: There could even be a cycle you think about around customer’s knowledge and curiosity around food. Perhaps for newer foodies – there can be tasting offerings that help them learn about the nuances of fine dining. For foodies who enjoy cooking – there can be cooking class. For experienced foodies – there can be opportunities to cook with the chef. Imagine! That could be incredible!
Humans and the world we live in are inherently cycle driven, whether we realize it or not. Learning to live and work with cycles instead of fighting them can be transformative if you’re open to some experimentation with your work and your data. And who knows? Maybe one day, you’ll even find yourself burning a little incense and reading the full moon horoscope too.
