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Hello Friends,

I’m experimenting with a new format today, and let me know if this makes a difference to your reading experience.

It’s been a week since I got back from visiting my nephew, and my routine is still struggling to snap back in place. I reckon there must be a yet undiscovered concept of ‘routine lag’ akin to ‘jet lag’, whereby routines take time to snap back in place after a long holiday, break, travel or intense projects.

The release of ChatGPT to the world, coincided with precisely the time I left organised employment. So I’ve had a lot of bandwidth to play around with various AI tools, like a kid in the candy store. But I forget that I am an adult whose body doesn’t agree well with so much candy.

So I am going through an “AI withdrawal” before it takes over all aspects of my life to protect my brain from cognitive restrictions.

More on that in the coming weeks.

Meanwhile, this week, we’ll explore what is called ‘feast or famine effect’ and how it impacts our life and work.

Enjoy the read! Siri🌱🌀

Exploring Feast and Famine Effect

Feast and famine cycles in nature

In nature, ‘feast and famine’ describes alternating periods of abundance and scarcity. Consider predators like lions, tigers which hunt for prey for sustenance. When the prey population is high, the predators have plenty to eat. With a reliable food source, predator health and reproduction increases, causing their population to rise.

An increased predator population leads to more successful hunts, which causes the prey population to decrease. As the prey population dwindles, the predators run out of food. The feast is over.

The famine begins and the predator population starts going down due to insufficient availability of prey, and their population dwindles. Now, with fewer predators, the prey population can recover, reproduce and grow, thereby starting the cycle all over again.

Are feast and famine opposites or synonyms?

The ‘feast and famine’ are two sides of the same coin. You would have experienced this in your own work and life, irrespective of whether you are a freelancer, employee or leader. When there is a ‘feast’ of work – many projects, lots of clients, too many meetings, lots of fires to combat on a daily basis, there comes a scarcity of bandwidth, energy and time.

When there is a feast of ‘bandwidth, energy and time’, we experience a FOMO reaction when we log into LinkedIn or look at our peers, who seem to have a ‘busy’ life, doing lots of important things.

Many of us, when we are in those cycles of abundance of time and bandwidth, are unable to rest, replenish and restore ourselves so that when the cycle of feast comes in, we are not overreaching on our capacity. Instead of relishing the delight of work, we stuff ourselves more, even when we exceed our limits.

If you have been in feast mode for a really long time, then famine is sure to follow. Except that this famine is likely to take the form of burnout, emotional instability, mental fatigue, bad decisions and this nagging sense of being stuck on a hamster wheel and not able to get out.

Are you currently stuck in a never ending feast and famine cycle?

Here’s a reflection if you want to apply this concept to your work life.

1. What parts of your life/work is in a feast mode?
2. What parts of your life/work is in a famine mode?
3. What is the mindset that is fuelling the feast-famine cycle – resignation, fear or enthusiasm?
4. Are you able to make time for activities that are urgent but important?

Siri’s Picks

I’ve spent the last weekend binge reading, and this is a book I’d recommend if you are looking for a radical way to manage your time. The author is a Zen monk and his approach to manage time is based on cultivating trust in yourself, being fully present and surfing the waves of time instead of racing against it.

The principles are simple, but not easy to follow. Not unlike sitting in Zazen. But the wisdom is timeless and can be life changing, if you choose to embrace this.

See you next Sunday! Bye for now.

Siri 🌱🌀

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