To the DFT Brain Trust,

I’ll try to be brief since I feel a longer year end wrap up in my bones for a later date, but a couple bits I’d like to stress in this newsletter:

    •   you’ve earned deep rest.

    •   what do you want?

the first is how I hope you’ll end this year – beginning Monday, 12/20, the hope that Ramy and I have for you and your teams is rest. Spend that week working from home, working at your own pace or working only when need be. The following week, Monday, 12/27 we are offline and at rest as a company. Full stop.

Getting ahead sounds nice, and maybe that will genuinely bring you more comfort and rest in the New Year, but every last one of you has earned *deep rest* – which means to disconnect not just from email, but from expectations and obligations (I mean, don’t ignore your kids, fur babies, etc., but maybe shut off that alarm and forget your phone at home sometimes).

This team has been running at a breakneck speed for nearly 2 straight years, and while “vacations’ were had, most were pandemically challenged, and so turning our brains back to work seemed… just as much an option as resting.

So as it is with new parents (sleep when the baby sleeps), I’m strongly asking that you sleep while our clients are sleeping and there aren’t hard delivery dates in sight. Put the OOO notification on your email. Send the text that says “sorry, we’re OOO until Jan 3rd, but I’ll jump on that as soon as we’re back” and let the call go to voicemail – work that muscle 12/17 – 12/24 and then really be offline from 12/24 to Jan 3rd.

    •   Because you’ve earned it.

Second, when we’re back, we’re going to start another round of feedback sessions with Ramy and me. Our hope is that as many of you as possible will join us in person or at least via Zoom, but we’ll once again send out questions ahead of time.

What you want and need – for yourself, your family, your career, your day-to-day work, your health – to be successful genuinely matters to us, both as the folks at the helm, and as members of a team that heavily relies upon one another. Your success is our success and ours is yours.

Blind spots, personal achievements and discoveries, areas of potential and opportunity to improve, hindrances or insecurities that keep you from your best self at work – bring it to the table.

The hardest question for most people to answer is “what do you want?” Largely because the answer then entails action… and in case you didn’t already know, Ramy and I are big on action – so heads up, that’s where we’re going in the New Year. We all have dreams and goals, but the ones we can bring to life together are our bedrock. And we’re ready to hear about all that you want and hope for as we embark on yet another evolution together.

So much for keeping this short, but by golly do I ever adore you folks and look forward to seeing a bunch of rested folks on January 3rd – that’s what *I* want.

Thought is the labor of intellect, reverie is it’s pleasure.
– Victor Hugo

They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.
– Edgar Allen Poe

The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within.
– Mahatma Gandhi

Never regard study as a duty, but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy, and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs.
– Albert Einstein

My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there.
– Charles Kettering

With Gratitude,

Nancy