Tidying, Part 1

Last fall, I couldn't look anywhere without seeing a reference to Marie Kondo's book, The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up.  I finished the book on New Year's Eve and began plotting my own 6-month tidying escapade.  You see, after nearly 10 years in this house, we have accumulated so much STUFF.  We have far more space than we need to live, and the truth is that much of the extra space is storage for our STUFF.  I really like this system, because it is rooted in JOY.  The antidote to STUFF is JOY.  I can dig.

So, the first phase is all about the closet.  Kondo makes a great argument for starting here, and a friend who started instead with her kids' toys (and then succumbed to the emotional attachment of said toys and got nowhere) has confirmed that the closet is a great place to start.

Kondo says to grab all the tops from all the hiding places around your house, put them in one place, and go through them one by one.  The key is to only keep the items that bring you JOY.  For items that don't bring JOY but still present an emotional challenge, you thank the items for serving their purpose, and send them to the donation bin.  I did that twice!  Ultimately, I let go of three garbage bags' worth of clothes (two of them only had tops, and the third had random clothing items that I knew I was ready to part with), and I believe it only took me an hour.  Already my closet feels lighter, clearer.

There are 11 tops that I made that do not bring me JOY.  I will photograph them before I bring them to the donation center.  But I am already dreading the day I go through my dresses.  I have made so many of them, and will have to work hard to distinguish between the dresses that bring me PRIDE in having made them, and JOY in wearing them.

Although I didn't anticipate making as much headway in January and February, just because I'm working and traveling so much, I see that March will be a huge month for me in making space for JOY.

What I read: The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp

Nearly ten years ago, on first read, The Creative Habit made a significant impression on me.  Like a meteor, falling through space, burning through the atmosphere, crashing without ceremony into my brain.  A fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants winger by nature, I considered the value of preparation in everything I did, because Twyla said so.  Taking this advice to heart and building a solid preparation process has improved my creative output immeasurably.  

I also stopped categorizing the seemingly disparate interests of my life into "creative" and "non-creative," and I started to think about everything I did (not just sewing clothes and playing music, but also negotiating contracts, writing manuals, and speaking in front of audiences) as a creative endeavor.  This time around, I recognize that seeing myself as an inherently creative individual whose work is all creative has helped me to (ironically?  coincidentally?  accidentally?) create a life that brings fulfillment and joy every day.

It was with fond memories and much reflection that I cracked open The Creative Habit on New Year's Day.  Reading the chapters on preparation, and scratching, and failure were like visiting an old friend.  And, as you'd expect, I found myself captivated by other sections that are more relevant and immediate now than they were 10 years ago.  

Here are two brief lessons that I didn't catch then, that I experienced on my own between the two readings:

• "Overplanning can be as pernicious as not planning at all.  There’s an emotional lie to overplaying; it creates a security blanket that lets you assume you have things under control, that you are further along than you really are, that you’re home free when you haven’t even walked out the door yet."
• "Whom the gods wish to destroy, they give unlimited resources."

I specifically chose this book as my first book of the new year because I am starting to obsess over the importance of daily rituals, and I remembered Twyla doing a bang-up job exploring ritual in The Creative Habit:

• "What makes it a ritual is they do it without questioning the need."
• "By making the start of the sequence automatic, they replace doubt and fear with comfort and routine."

We follow rituals every day by accident -- we didn't design them, just fell into them.  We follow some rituals with alarming consistency and absence of conscious thought.  Isn't that kind of outrageous?  I'm asking myself if the rituals are helpful or hurtful, and if there are steps I can add to them that will make them helpful in some way.  Rituals are a great way to form habits -- are my rituals encouraging the best habits for me right now?

Here's my review of The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp on Goodreads.

10 Best Books I Read in 2014, PART 2

Squarespace is gonna fight me on my numbered list, because this starts with #6 AND WHO AM I TO ARGUE WITH THE SQUARESPACE AI -- so here is the rest of my list with correct numbers and substandard formatting:

6. The Parallel Apartments by Bill Cotter
It’s kooky, quirky, and hysterically funny.  At least a little bit brilliant.  And happens to be written by an author who lives in Austin.  

7. All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews
Just because of the topic, this book will not be for everyone.  But maybe it ought to be.  I’m so impressed by how easy it is to know this narrator, Yoli — to really feel immersed in her skin, in her thoughts.  But it was emotionally draining for me to read.

8. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
My sole feel-good read of the year, which was actually published in 2011 and has been sitting on my shelf since then, unread until a few months ago.  This was so much fun for me, and has been elevated to top-10 status because it’s the only book that my husband, 11-year-old son, and I all read (separately) and enjoyed.  We were able to talk about it, muse over it, debate plot points in it, and basically create family time discussing it.  Hope there’s a movie coming out of this one.

9. We Are Called to Rise by Laura McBride
Although the prose is a touch melodramatic, and the plot can feel contrived as can any story with a large, multi-character ensemble, there is so much truth embedded in this book.  Plus, the story is set in Las Vegas and much of that is painfully and wonderfully familiar.  I feel like this is similar in some ways to We Are Not Ourselves (and I’m not talking about similarity in the titles), but way better.  Would have liked to have seen We Are Called to Rise on more of the well-known top 10 lists for the year.

10. Yes Please by Amy Poehler
I had a hard time picking my favorite 10 titles, which means I’ll work on an “Honorable Mentions” list soon.  Yes Please is a book that came at the right time, with the right messages, for me.  Having hit a milestone birthday in 2014, so much about my world, and my place in it, felt clearer, and in some way that’s due to Amy Poehler sharing her experiences, challenging the way I see things, and giving voice to some of my own latent thoughts and ideas.  Although I can’t say this was even close to the best-written book I read last year, it has influenced me to action more than any other.  Maybe Ms. Poehler can start a Smart Women offshoot of her successful Smart Girls initiative…

Honorable mentions to come.

10 Best Books I Read in 2014, Part 1

Happy New Year!  One focus for 2015 is getting back to blogging, so even though this post may have been better timed as a year-end post, it's my first post of the new year.  I read A LOT of books last year -- 96 total, probably an all-time high I'm not likely to come close to again -- and the best of those were really, really great.  Here's Part 1 of my Top 10 books I read in 2014, in order (click on the title for my full Goodreads review):

1. Wool by Hugh Howey
   The best book I read in 2014 was published in 2012, but it was so exceptional in pretty much every way.  (I wish I could say the same for the second and third books in the series, but I can’t, and I won't.)  So I’ll heap lots of deserved praise on this one, which has got it all:  memorable and sympathetic characters, a unique setting, and a plot that unfolds masterfully.  
    
2. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
   Give in to the hype.  You can almost feel yourself in this beautiful, futuristic setting, with these other survivors all around you, getting to know your tribe by hearing their stories.  Post-apocalyptic without being even a little bit sci-fi.
    
3. Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit
   This is the only non-fiction, non-memoir in my top 10 this year, either because the fiction was just so stellar or because I have become an unabashed fiction lover, but this is the only book I read in 2014 that I recommend to everyone, everywhere.  Yes.  EVERYONE SHOULD READ THIS BOOK.  And then read it again.  And everyone should then talk about it, and decide what to do next.  It’s that kind of book.
    
4. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
   This has shown up on several top 10 lists I’ve seen this year, and I knew from the first few pages it would be on mine.  This novel just glows, so brightly that not even 500 printed pages can obscure the glow.  It made me warm from the inside out, and seemed to do so effortlessly.  It was fun reading a recent interview with Mr. Doerr, in which he talked about how all those little details that came across so effortlessly had often perplexed him when he was sorting out how to put it all together.
    
5. Fourth of July Creek by Smith Henderson
   The liquid prose and flawless plot momentum serve as perfect foils to the complete stagnation we experience alongside our resident social worker hero, Pete Snow.  This is one of a couple books this year in which the story unfolded with the requisite tension of a good mystery.  Hooked me.

The rest of my top 10, plus honorable mentions, are coming soon (tomorrow?) to a blog near you (this one).

What I read: On Such a Full Sea by Chang-Rae Lee

[This is my first sort-of book review on this blog, at least in a long time.  I've been writing reviews at Goodreads for a few years, and I usually don't reveal any spoilers by speaking less about details, and more about form and feeling and perspective and thought process and application.  Let's just go with this and see what happens...]

Only a 3.5 star average on Amazon?  I'm surprised.  I wasn't the biggest fan of the writing style, which was so fluid as to lull me into a soothing rhythm of meditation, but it is probably exactly the writing style that the book needed.  It's not that I was bored reading this -- just calm and meditative.  I wasn't falling asleep, but I had the experience of reading to the end of a page and realizing I didn't know what I'd read.  Then I'd go back, start at the last spot I remembered, get to the end of the page, and realize I again didn't retain anything.  This happened more than I usually have patience for.  But I envisioned the narrator of the story as an old man, spinning the yarn of Fan and her love, Reg, to a bunch of us youngsters, seated at his feet.  It would be natural for us to zone out from time to time, and zone back in a few minutes later.  

After a few sluggish chapters, where my interest was piqued just enough to keep me from putting the book down, the narrator entered a very purposeful, predictable rhythm:  giving a wallop of a story, narrating Fan's journey with its hair-raising twists and turns, and then backing off for a long section, filling in details of the back story or the history SO I COULD BREATHE.  This alternation felt good for me.  I remember at one point, putting down the book to take a breath, and saying out loud to no one in particular, "This book is outrageous."  Not outrageous bad, or outrageous outlandish, just WOW.  The tension was gripping, the story very compelling.

I guess I thought the book would be rated higher because it really made me think and feel deeply.  About the feelings...  The quiet affection between Fan and Reg was written so delicately...  The way that the narrator tracked the community's simmering reaction to Reg's and Fan's disappearance was easy to attune to...  The heartbreaking treatment of an elder in the community as people struggled with emotions they couldn't handle, and turned outward, directed specifically at this man, made me cringe deep in the pit of my stomach.

I'm still thinking about this book!  In the future dystopia of On Such a Full Sea, there is explicit social and economic stratification, written rules about where people belong and how they can behave and how little they control their own destinies, and a strong deference to the communal flow over individual thought, choice, and will.  Even though those written rules don't exist in the present day, I'm asking myself:  How closely do those written rules of the fictional future reflect the unwritten rules by which we live today?

Distractions in the Learning Environment

There are so many things that can distract a learner from focusing on content:​

• ​What happened to them before they came into the classroom
• Exciting things / traffic happening outside the classroom window​
• ​Competing visuals, i.e. flip chart pages all over the walls, active slide projected on the screen, working groups milling about the room
• The temperature of the room​
• And the list could go on and on​

What's a properly prepared instructor to do?  Can we adequately plan for every possible distraction before we walk into a learning environment?​

We can plan for more than we think, and frankly, that's our job.​  Preparation solves at least 90% of the challenges we will face in the classroom.  Generally speaking, we all know we can:

• Know our content inside and out!  
  ​Mastery of the content means less time obsession over ourselves, and more time to focus on who really matters -- everyone who cared to show up for our class.
• Review every discussion and exercise that is planned, and ensure ahead of time that they physical environment supports moving into and out of workshops quickly, and supports maximum learning in general.​
  If we need people in groups of 4-6, and we have tables that seat 3, classroom-style setup with 5 rows and 2 columns with an aisle down the middle, how do we give instructions to minimize confusion and get right into the activity?  If panoramic windows are to everyone's left, can we draw the blinds in a way that we keep great natural light and keep the passers-by on the sidewalk from garnering attention from our learners?​
• ​Be strategic about where focus should be in the class.
  ​If we are not talking about the slide on the screen, turn the screen off (B or W on the keyboard, or use the presentation remote).  If we aren't going to use the flip charts anymore, take them off the walls, or consolidate them in the back of the room.  Use a tool that keeps track of the room temperature, and aim for a comfortable range of 68-73 deg F.  We know if it is trending out of that range, it's time to actively manage that, before we see too many shivering bodies or people start peeling off layers of clothing and soon no one remembers what class they're in.

Is it possible to change circumstances in each learner's world outside of the classroom, so that they are not distracted by "real life" that is happening without them, while they are in class with us?  Often, the answer is no.  And we have a unique opportunity to exercise a form of leadership that is so effective that what happens inside the classroom is far more important and urgent than anything begging for their attention outside the learning environment.  More on that in the next post.​

Keynote Remote

Sometime soon, I’ll share more about Keynote on iPad, which in itself is just lovely and wonderful and incredibly productive — but what really blew me away recently was the addition of Keynote Remote on my iPhone to control the presentation.  I was in a training room where the only connection to an LCD projector was via wire in the back of the room, and as I was using my iPad, I couldn’t easily give the presentation from the back of the room.  I remembered the Keynote Remote app, and 99 cents later, I was scrolling through my iPad presentation from my iPhone.

Quick notes:

1. The iPhone and iPad worked perfectly in a test scenario at home, but in the training room, there were a few instances of dropped connections.  Not sure how that happened since both devices were on the same wi-fi network AND they were linked Bluetooth.  But I was able to pair them up again in a matter of seconds.
2. The Keynote Remote app is great because, in landscape mode, you can see both the slide you’re projecting and the next one.  That said, this app could do SO MUCH MORE than a few functions.  How about a blank option, a mouse, a pointer than you control by touching your fingertip to the projected slide on the iPhone?

When I get a call from a potential client who says, “Hey, I am having this problem with my business and I need help solving it,” I think I might feel as inspired as this dancer did when he heard this song.  There’s an internal motivation to create a solution that really enhances the business, like the dance completely enhances and elevates the song.

PUMPED UP KICKS|DUBSTEP (by WHZGUD2)

When Leadership Highs Outweigh the Lows

A friend called me today to share a story. She met with a visible public figure recently, and after the meeting, my friend wrote up some thoughts about the meeting and emailed them to a small group of friends and business associates who might be helped by hearing her thoughts. (This public figure happens to represent issues that affect my friend both personally and professionally.).

Maybe you know the twist to this familiar story: The email got forwarded once, twice, three times a lady, and ended up back in the hands of this public figure, who called my friend and was quite bothered — at how the tone of the email might negatively reflect on the public figure, might have misrepresented things this public figure said, and maybe felt backstabby.

My friend, who is a skilled and influential leader, expressed such regret to me that she had worked for years to build her reputation and relationships in her field, and with one email she felt she had flushed it all down the drain.

In companies everywhere, this scene is played out. The details may be different but the first lesson remains the same: watch what you put in writing because different people can read the same email in very different contexts! :)

We ended up having the richest discussion, though, on how our careers are not built in a day, and they are rarely taken down in a day. Today, emotions are high. Tomorrow, they will surely be lower. And the day after that they will be still lower. And so on, until the emotions are right where they need to be — taken in sum total with every bit of good work my friend has done over years. And like a trusty math equation, one small, momentary “minus” doesn’t make a dent against the hefty “plus” column.

So chin up, leader. There’s still work to do and the world still counts on you to work your magic. Let’s go!

Chez Panisse turns 40

Can you feel it?  The cool, crisp air of fall (depending on where you live) and the first rumblings of 2012 business plans.  I love a good business plan — the excitement of potential not yet realized, the clarity of vision we gain, the geeky Excel-iness of it all.  We can get so caught up in planning the future that we forget the purpose for what we do that grounded our business in the first place.

Both Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind and my current read, Jim Loehr’s The Power of Story, talk about how integral purpose is to success.  Alice Waters and Chez Panisse exemplify that passionate purpose can provide a business not only a solid foundation, but also an influential legacy, even in the notoriously fickle restaurant industry.

Remember to take that extra step in planning for your business to reconnect and realign it with purpose.

Artist Shea Hembrey talks about creating his own personal biennial exhibition in a way that is completely charming, totally unpretentious, and absolutely inspiring.

“The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.”

— Orson Welles

Rework, by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson.

Really great, quick read, written in a very concise and crisp style.  My major takeaways:

1. Start at the epicenter and focus on the things that won’t change.
2. Sell your by-products.
3. Make tiny decisions.
4. Build an audience, and out-teach your competition.
5. Give away an easily digestible intro to what you sell.

I can absolutely start working on those now.  Getting this blog back on track is a tiny decision I could make tonight!  Chip chop!  

Countdown Timers

An indispensable training tool is the countdown timer. This allows everyone in the class (esp. us!) to be fully aware of time remaining before/ between sessions and on breaks.  You run the countdown timer on your computer and the countdown is projected onto the screen for all to see.  Here are a few I have used:

Online — must have live internet connection:
http://www.online-stopwatch.com

Mac only —
Minuteur 3 (free) or 5 (paid): http://phg-home.com/index_mac.html

Windows only —
BlingClock (30-day free trial, $20 after): http://www.blingclock.com
TimeLeft (free but you can’t make timer fullscreen): http://www.timeleft.info 

Presentation Remotes

Deciding which presentation remote to buy depends on what you want it to do.  Remotes can be equipped with impressive features, such as a countdown timer on the remote itself, the ability to be used as a mouse or remote control, and even a palm-sized keyboard for on-the-fly typing during a presentation.

I like my remotes simple and nice to hold.  All I need the remote to do are go to the next slide, go to the previous slide, blank the screen, and maybe point at something on the projection screen.  There is one button on my remote for each of these functions, and that’s it!  Add more buttons and I’ll push the wrong one at the wrong time.

I’ve had my Kensington remote for the last 8 years and it has performed like a champ.  It includes a little wireless receiver that plugs into a computer’s standard USB port so the remote works, and when you’re done using the remote the receiver tucks right into the remote itself for storage.  The most recent version of this remote is the Kensington 33374 Wireless Presenter with Laser Pointer, currently retailing at Amazon.com for $42.45.  

A promising upgrade to this is the Kensington Wireless Presenter with Laser Pointer and 1 GB Built-In Memory, so you can store your presentations right on the wireless receiver!  Also available on Amazon, currently retailing for $58.36.

What presentation remote do you use?  How is it working for you?  Write a post and tell us a little about it.