Spring Training for work

It’s spring training right now for Major League Baseball, and even if you’re not a huge fan (I am #GoYankees), you can appreciate why spring training makes so many adults feel like giddy children: it’s a blank slate.

Every storyline is new. Every team might compete. We see familiar faces playing in new places, while old friends on our team report back for duty.

The green grass and the WHUMP of the ball against a catcher’s mitt and the THWACK of the wooden bat making contact — what’s old feels new again.

We need moments like this. Not just in baseball and life, but in work, too. We need the ability to hit reset, to experience a blank slate, and to start fresh. Sometimes, the benefits of leaving a toxic place or a stale brand or a bad boss far outweigh the certainty or the nobility of staying. (It’s a false nobility, after all.)

We need our own spring training moments. We need that feeling of being kids again, as if lightning hit our chests, prompting us to want to laugh and run and celebrate again.

We pack our work so full of routines and politics and characters and problems. Sometimes, we just need that blank slate feeling. It can be utterly addicting, and exactly what we need to get excited again.