Category: Writing

I’ve slowly learnt over that what’s popular is not usually what’s useful for me.

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order—willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living.” – Anne Dillard, The Writing Life

I’ve long struggled with ‘keeping’ a schedule and then sticking to it, despite trying a number of different styles over the years- the calendar in outlook, a handwritten notebook, a journal, combinations of all three, ad infinitum. None of them seem to work for long enough.

I’ve remembered only the popular “how we spend our days is how we spend our lives”, part of the quote above.  For me, the idea that a schedule is “a net for catching days” is so much more powerful, memorable -and actionable. These others too, depending on one’s interests, I suppose.

• A scaffolding to stand on and labour  with both hands at sections of time.
• A mock-up of reason and order
• A lifeboat on which you find yourself still living

 

Genchi Genbutsu (literally, “real location, real thing”) is a vastly under-rated concept by nearly every leader I have come across. Few people have the stomach to walk an hour, let alone a day or week – in the shoes of their frontline people.  Besides the usual platitudes of “you are doing a wonderful job, we couldn’t do this without you”, nearly every frontline folks I’ve met are deeply suspicious of the “leadership” team.

With CoVID’s shackles finally coming off, in the last few weeks I have had the opportunity to re-start my field trips. The amount of learning in spending two days I have personally had is utterly useless unless I translate it for the rest of the people I work with, who aren’t yet able to do what I can do.

I came across an article yesterday that made the point loudly – the skills gap in Tech that exists that few people are talking about is writing. The author, writing from her recent experiences, observes:

Perhaps the importance of writing is why, in the tech policy space, a majority of leaders come from legal and policy backgrounds – where clear communication is part of the training – despite the need for technical expertise in many of these roles. This gap in writing is impeding our ability to recruit technical experts in these critical government positions.

While there’s little in the way of training I can claim, writing every day is one of the few things I can think of to improve the way I articulate my ideas.

I’ve been trying to understand a little more about the workflow of version control that my technology colleagues talk about all the time. It’s particularly relevant now that we’re all collaborating (me included) on a technology problem that I will be the documentation guy of. I figured I could write (my strength) about a subject I know much less about (this tech thing we’re doing) using the tools of the trade (version control and documentation pages).

I learnt how to use Git & GitHub a few years ago, but like all things unused, they are far away in the recesses of my mind. Now is the time to learn from the inside from those who use this tool everyday, and learn to contribute to the repository (aka repo), and learn the workflow.  This video I discovered over the weekend was most useful as a refresher.

* with apologies to Bon Jovi
The last month or so has gone by quickly, and it’s time for another reflection on the time invested in these new habits.

Spencerian Calligraphy

I’ve gotten a lot more fluency with arm movements, working on the drills and the shapes and shades for all capital letters. It felt like a huge victory when I got through to the letter Z.  I’ve spent a lot of time in drills, and it is slowly starting to pay off.

Habit stacking: Focus on how I begin and finish is my focus for the next few days. Start with a tidier table. Clean the pens out after I’ve finished.  Tidy the desk after.

Walk Every Day

Illness stuck, as did nasty weather. We’ve managed to walk every day otherwise, and recommencing after both the illness and the weather inflicted stops was not hard. We’re walking for an hour or more. I’m taking more pictures.

Habit stacking:  It feels like I need to focus on ONE picture. It doesn’t matter how beautiful everything else is.  I will take one picture and learn about the ‘manual’ controls on the phone camera from here on.

BUT:  The purpose of this habit is exercise, not photography.  Jog/run for 2 minutes in the middle of the walk is what I will attempt for the next few days.

Vocal Learning

This has been surprisingly easy to keep doing. I missed only one day.
I find my voice slowly changing timbre. I’m slowing down in my everyday conversations (unless I’m excited or agitated).

What I’m not doing well is the preparatory work – like everything else. The breathing. The exercises. The posture.  The mindset.  Lest it turns into a task to complete. I also didn’t get to do the recording in the mornings as I intended, because I’m not waking up earlier.

Intentional preparation for the next few days.

Writing here every day

It was easy to get 100 words in, but not so easy to focus on one idea. I tried to do that for the last couple of weeks. Quality isn’t the aim, volume is. I will continue with this – except that I will write in the mornings, before I start my work day.  Journal writing in the night helps to deal with the emotions and scars of, and gratitude for, the day.

What I’ve learned

1. I can do all these in less than an hour.
2. The preparation and conclusion routines are as important, if not more, as the habits I’m trying to develop.
3. Removing the limits on the phone automatically increased the amount of time I’ve spent on it, mostly on Chrome. Re-establish these immediately.
4. I’ve started going down the rabbit hole of learning about Web 3.0 and crypto. Deliberately, collectively learning about these new technologies in the company of others who understand a bit more than I do, and who care enough to explain it to me is a wonderful experience. It requires me also to focus on searching out content that I seem to have an easier time of that is relevant to my learning friends.
5. Doing things as naturally as brushing my teeth or drinking water – ie without overthinking about them – removes so much overheads on limited mental energy.

I’ve noticed a change on YouTube videos of late: the like button shows the number of thumbs up, but the dislike button has no such numeric count.

Engagement with these platforms is often measured in the number of views, the number of likes, the number of comments.

I wonder if that small change will result in a change in the number of comments? What about those that go along the lines of “200 idiots who know nothing”.

All this to say that I’ve been reading a lot of late about Web 3.0. One particular observation that struck was “You’ve been happy to exchange your content to the big platforms for a like or heart” – the context being that large centralised platforms have for the last twenty years or so garnered all the value of the work / content of the plebs who use these platforms.

Another useful mental model of Web 3.0 came from Andrew Chen, a VC at Andreessen Horowitz who described it:
Web 1.0 – Read
Web 2.0 – Read/Write
Web 3.0 – Read/Write/Own

There’s a lot of content that gets created (labor) that is not compensated in the current digital economic model. The dream of the Decentralised Web, or Web 3.0 with its blockchains and cryptocurrencies and smart contracts is to change the game in a way that value accrues to the creator. Communities, something I am truly obsessed about, care about creating value for not just the individuals but indeed for the community. The promise of Web 3.0 is to bring that vision to life.

They call this a rabbit hole, and I’m about to tumble down one, at least in my readings.

By the way, Natalie Merchant’s performance is amazing.

For the longest time, I’ve struggled with explaining my ideas.

It’s a combination of thinking in a language, then realising I don’t know the right vocabulary in English to translate, then freaking out because I’m lost trying to keep track of the idea and the translation, then realising that I no longer have any idea about what my original line of thought was, then totally losing it when I start thinking that the person I’m trying to communicate is now judging my lack of words for stupidity.

I’ve come up with my own hacks to get around this problem: accepting that starting to think in English is advantageous in the lifecycle of the idea,  learning vocabulary (Wordsmith.org is wonderful, as is Norman Lewis’ book Word Power), reading ideas from different domains and using them as analogies when necessary, practising getting over the stuttered speech at Toastmasters, and several others.

Today I had the opportunity to share a couple of them with at least two colleagues, both of who were feeling stuck. It felt good to share those ideas with them. I also learnt that I talk way more than I need to. Succinct articulation of ideas is a worthy goal.

***

Another glorious evening after several days of wet weather, with no opportunity to go for walks.

Stories are powerful forces for inspiration, and action.

I witnessed one today by a colleague who is hearing impaired, and an incredibly smart engineer. He spoke about his challenges, and how he’s learnt to deal with them, and the future he sees for himself – or makes happen.

I am grateful to have had him ask me if he could present. I ‘m lucky that his response to my encouragement to share his personal story instead of his product innovation was positive. Everyone who attended was privileged to hear his story of patience, perseverance and passion – and they all shone through in an audience of 50+ people who voluntarily turned up to the session I arrange on every Thursday afternoon.

By assenting to share his story, he also created the content that he can share with the world, with kids going through similar challenges as he did, with other people who support people going through similar challenges. I’m glad to have had a chance to play a small part in pulling together his story.

I love doing this, and I would do it without pay. Which funnily, I am doing now 🙂

 

How do you differentiate between a relationship and a transaction? If I reach out to connect with someone, it’s generally in the hope of getting from someone else.

Over the last couple of decades, I’ve rediscovered the power of things I did without overthinking as a child. Some of them are universal.

Like a child? Seems too simple to work in this complex world.

Is it?

As a child, you always want to play. You see someone about the same size as you. You don’t think too much about it; instead you simply ask if they want to play.  Most often, the answer is yes. Great fun is had by both/ all parties. Rinse and repeat.

Through the eyes of a child, every such interaction is a relationship. The objective is fun in the moment. It may last only as long as the game. The intent is not fun only for yourself. Instead a strangely yet deep understanding that two (or more) people will have far more fun than playing by yourself.

Something changes as soon as we get ‘older’. The narrative in our heads feels different. The intent is on my want, not our want, because I no longer can presume to know what your want is anymore, & rightly so. Very quickly we get caught in this story we tell ourself. Connection begins to feels harder, transactional.

The need for connection, for human engagement, never goes away though.

Going back to the basics, in a child-like manner, being genuinely interested in us rather than me feels natural again.  And apparently, it’s also a super-power.

The poor man always buys twice

That was a quote I’ve not heard before but I knew exactly what was meant when my colleague said it today. He mentioned it in the context of tools and workmanship that we were observing, and its outcome.

I have lived it myself multiple times when I couldn’t afford to buy better quality tools in the moment I needed them, bought what I could afford, which promptly either broke or last one use. Either the job did not get done (FAIL) or I had to buy better tools (which I still couldn’t afford but needed to get the job done).  I’m probably doing that without thinking about it so often too (worthy of self-examination for sure).

I don’t think it’s a deliberate, malicious intent of organisations to starve the people they employ of the tools and training and incentives to do the job well.  I witnessed the effects of small decisions ostensibly to processes efficient led to a situation that seems “complex” or “chaotic”, as referred to by the Cynefin framework.

My colleague said something else about the leadership that prompted the memory of a quote by Upton Sinclain:

it’s difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

I took this photo on the trip

 

 

Last night we learnt that our little man has taken great advantage of his parents failure to abide by the ‘trust but verify‘ rule on a subject of academic importance.  Or said differently, he lied to us and got caught out, thanks to a report I decided to glance at.

The emotional roller-coaster that followed for everyone won’t be forgotten in a hurry. He’s been fantasizing about the opportunity it opens up for him – but not putting in the necessary work recently (to his credit, he has been diligent for months prior).  His mum was hurt that he took advantage of her trust. I was disappointed in that, and worse, my failure to verify his work.  In any case, my instant response was to say “You’ve proven to us that you don’t want to, and so you won’t be taking this test.”  That triggered waves of despair for everyone, and tears enough to fill a new ocean from him. He could see, feel and hear his parents’ disappointment.

My wife has been distraught about his lying and about the opportunity that he will lose in this instance. I have been rationalising all day about my momentary stance about him not taking the test, weighing it against the consequence of actually following through. The disappointment he will feel if/when he doesn’t get through won’t last long, but will he remember how his parents felt on this day?

Choices have consequences. For everyone.