In typical Do Lecture founder, David Hieatt, style I’m going to try and keep this post short and sweet. 

Mainly because since I’ve decided to start writing journal posts I’ve realised how many things I’d like to share and my list of unfinished posts is getting long, and my list of unstarted ones even longer.

And just as I was trying to schedule the time around my regular work to write for multiple hours a day, David's infamous newsletter landed in my inbox and stopped me in my tracks.

This was the essence - 

For all of your life you’ve been taught to get to the point slowly. 

• Essays 
• PHD’s 
• White papers 

(Very true for me)

What the world wants you now to learn is to get to the points fast.

Good writing makes complex things simple.

_

It sounded good to me, and like it could save me a fair amount of time with our ever decreasing attention spans, more chance that people might read all the way through. 

So here goes my short and sweet attempt at summarising 6 packed days volunteering at the Do Lectures, meeting many new faces, listening to hours of aspirational purpose driven talks and many more hours talking over long table breakfasts, lunches and dinners.

On the last day at the Do Lectures I found a post-it note on a tree. It said “Ask me a question?”. Without much thought I stuck it to my top and went about the rest of the day doing the volunteer tasks we needed to do to earn ourselves a ticket to the farm.

Whenever I would forget it was there stuck to my jumper someone would point it out and read aloud, “Ask me a question?”. So I would. I asked them, “What was the most memorable thing someone said to you at the Do Lectures?”. 

The replies varied from witty anecdotes to heartfelt moving words a new friend had shared in the early hours of the morning.

“What about you?”, were always the final words they’d say firing the question back at me. 

I thought about this a few times and had the opportunity to edit my answer as the day went on. Finally I stuck on a quote David had said during his talk. 

He told us, making something happen is like pushing against a broken down car. At first it feels like it will never move, you club together pushing against the solid metal boot and it feels as though you’re pushing against a brick wall. 

Slowly, slowly you start to gain some traction and the car starts to gain momentum. Before long you’re cruising down the road with the car feeling almost weightless at your fingertips. The driver drops the clutch and they’re off down the road, the engine kicking into action.

Just like starting a project, a social enterprise, a movement or anything else from scratch, it takes many hands and a lot of momentum to get started. But it will get easier. 

So let’s get together and start to push.