Writing – Page 26 – Perspectives

Human Engagement & User Interfaces

For the last few weeks, the pressures on frontline healthcare workers, particularly when it came to vaccination targets was insane. The abysmal failure in sourcing sufficient vaccine dozes, the ridiculous challenges in finding appointments in the area where you lived, the hours-long wait to get into the building on the day of your appointment, it has taken a toll on nearly everyone who had to deal with it.

My teenager was finally eligible to be vaccinated, and today was her first dose of the Pfizer vaccine. We were in an out of the hospital in 30 minutes, including a 15 minute observation wait, so it was overall a far better experience than mine just over 3 weeks ago.

What was more interesting to compare was the number of mouse pointer clicks that the nurse had to deal with. In my case, I counted at least 100 before the nurse was able to administer the dose in <10 seconds. In my daughter’s case, it was fewer than 30. Much of the effort seemed to have been streamlined. The nurse spent more time engaging my daughter as a human at the center, rather than clicking away and making the computer the center of her work. The UI seemed to have taken over & hidden all the administrivia to the mechanical process that was built into the workflow, and the experience was so much more bearable for it.

Meeting Madness

It was a beautiful day. A few people on the beach – if not in this frame. A gentle breeze. Perfect temperature. An hour long walk on the beach, feet sinking in the damp sand. Occasionally the surf racing quickly and getting feet wet. Better than a walk in the park. The weather stayed pretty awesome nearly all afternoon.

***

A meeting I was in today went from a useful discussion on practical things to a verbal car crash. I’m not sure my life – or anyone else’s for that matter – is better off because of that discussion. It required a follow up conversation to clear things up which didn’t necessarily do that, which meant that was a waste of time too.

“How to avoid meetings” must be a subject for all students. Even better, “How to have effective – or no – meetings” could be a subject. I suspect it will save time, energy, frustration, and quite some hair.

***

Much better in meeting with nature.

Reflecting on an ibis

Didn’t think much of this ibis when I was on my walk this morning, but it looked interesting enough to capture.

It had a lesson for me though, in reflection after a long day. It didn’t quite matter that someone was watching it in an ‘inelegant’ posture. That it was alone. That it made disturbed its environment, and made ripples in the water.

It simply focused on the task at hand. Being one with its surroundings. And if someone was watching it, and was going to use it as a prop to reflect on his own day, so be it.

***

Like everyone else, I’m having a hard time making sense of the number of changes that are going on around me. There are so many things to do, so many alternative narratives, so many choices – it is paralyzing!

Perhaps, like the ibis, the thing to do is simply to focus on the most important thing in the moment, & do it regardless of what anyone else thinks.

100 days to go

This post is a few days late but better late than never.

Every year, September 22 reminds me of the day that signals the start – and slow strangulation – of countless resolutions. This year is no different.

2021 started with promise of the pandemic ending quickly. We were going back into the office 2 days a week per corporate dictates, life was going to go ‘back to normal’ etc etc. I’m not sure I would call it ‘normal’ but for a few weeks, at least until early June this year, the commute was a standard feature that bookended daily life again. And with it, exhaustion and lack of sleep.

Not for long though. Come June, we were back into ‘lockdown’, ‘working from home’, blurring the line between work and life, again. The kids weren’t spared either; they too got into the groove (& dare I say enjoyed the longer sleep!)

So with 100 days to go before the year ticks over, I’ve been going over what was important enough to pursue at the beginning of the year. They still remain so. Reading, writing, exercise, family time, investing, and eating better continue to get near daily attention. Writing publicly has fallen off the routine, after a rather healthy start, although I’ve continued to journal nearly every day. I got through quite a few books. I’ve taken enough notes to remember and use many ideas in my work/personal life. The others have had various levels of consistency, maybe becoming secondary to work demands.

So with ~~100~~ 97 days to go before the year ticks over, I’m aiming to:

Consistent Spencerian alphabets practice: for a long time I’ve wanted to improve how I do this form of ornamental penmanship. I want to do this so I can continue to write letters the old fashioned way to those I love dearly in a form they might want to preserve. Write a quote and publish here every day in Spencerian.
Walk an hour a day EVERY DAY. There have been reasons to not do this, valid ones. This is still a priority that I need to bring to the fore for the next 100 days. This is for me. Take a picture every day, to assist No. 4 below.
Learn, record, and publish my version of a song or poem every week. That is 15 songs before the end of the year. This is to improve my voice so people want to listen to what I have to say.
Write at least 100 words here every day. Prompts from No. 2 above.
There are couple of family & investment goals that require me to build a system. I might choose to share about those here later .

System over goals; creation over consumption; consistency over quality.

Naive or authentic?

I was witness to a series of presentations this week that had me spellbound. It was not because of the brilliance of their oratory, or the slides they used, which some might argue were middling to average.

These presenters weren’t industry veterans; on the contrary, they were young folks often dismissed by the corporate machinery with epithets such as “naive” or “green”. The depth of their understanding of the subject, and the fresh perspective they brought to the discussion was refreshing.

What got me hooked was their authenticity and the humility with which they made their case. They stated the problem they were tackling, where the wanted to be, and how they anticipated getting there. I noticed this pattern after hearing change practitioner & “thinking partner” Alan Arnett articulate it in his TED Talk titled Sensemaking.

Connections

I have two distinct memories of my childhood.

My parents work meant that they’d be transferred every so often & we’d move. The first memory is as a student who kept changing schools, & being picked on by every new group of classmates. It would take a while until I had somehow become one of them, at which point it was time to change schools. Again.

The other was much more fun: meeting new kids who lived nearby, making friends, getting into all sorts of mischief. Some of them are still in touch.

Connecting with other humans has seemingly come easily to me. The Internet has made it even easier to do so. It gives me great pleasure, knowing fully well that while they’re not deep friendships, they’re not superficial either. I remember things about people* I don’t find it hard to reconnect when something relevant to the person comes to my attention either.

There’s no big reveal here for you, if you’re reading (thank you if you are). It’s just becoming apparent to me that a lot of people struggle with reaching out, even to their friends. Lockdowns are making it even harder to do so.

I’m grateful for this little big gift of easy connection, & for the wonderful conversations I have had today with three – until a few hours ago – strangers.

*It might be a superpower, and sometimes it does feel strange that I do remember little things, as a good friend told me recently!

Quote of the Day

Today I heard someone use the phrase “Guide on the side, not a sage on the stage” to describe their leader.

Over the course of the last decade, I’ve seen so many of the latter: their flamboyant style of “leadership” supposed to “lift up the troops & march boldly ahead to success”. Work is not war, & I have come to loathe that language.

Occasionally, I have had the privilege of being around good leaders, to learn from them. Of course I fail awfully, but if only 1 in 10 of the ideas become part of me, the compounding effects have been invaluable.

Sleeping beauty

“What are your strategies for resilience?”

That was one of several prompts for discussion between the young women of Bankstown Girls High School and their mentors at the recent ABCN Empower program that I was part of.

The answer that resonated me was “sleep”. I was reminded that my own sleep habits have changed substantially over the last year, thanks to the time saved on commuting. I’ve slept much better than in the last decade.

While much of the discussion I’m reading about “returning to work” revolves around the pros & cons of human interaction, I’ve not (yet) come across much on the impacts on sleep, & its second-order effects.

One Post to Another

One of the joys of having your children learn a musical instrument is having to discover things about the instrument.

For example, the cello has a little piece of wood that isn’t visible unless you’re actively peering inside the hollow chamber through the f-holes (yep, that’s what they’re called!). It’s called the sound post, and it apparently plays (pun intended) a very important role.

I learnt how not to change the strings on the cello thanks to that little post. Long story short, unlike on a guitar, you NEVER change them all at once. I should have done a search before I set about changing the strings – mistake number 1 listed on the first google search would have given me the insight I needed.

But of course I didn’t, so I had to take it to a luthier to get the sound post reset. I got three references from my son’s cello tutor, & the first one responded immediately to my plea for help.

It was the best decision to go to this luthier.

Not because the post was reset & the cello sounds better than before (it does!)

But because I met a master craftsman.

In the short time it took him to put the post back in its precise place, I learnt that John started making violins & cellos when he was in his forties, an accidental hobby he got involved in because of his son’s broken violin. I learnt that John’s parents were violinists, & his sister was a pianist. Unlike his family’s musical inclinations, John loved the smell of wood, & working with it. John claims not to be a very good string instrument player.

John said it takes him over 120 hours to make a violin, and over 300 hours to make a cello! I learnt a little about John’s family, his family name & the journey of discovering his ancestry – which is not Dutch, despite his Dutch-sounding name.

In the shed were several violins, violas & a couple of cellos in various stages of construction or repair, & several blocks of wood that he was patiently waiting for to mature, along with tools I’ve never seen before. The smell of wood & varnish & history & knowledge in the little shed was literally breathtaking.

I learnt why the master luthiers obsess about a particular kind of grain in the wood (I’d heard this before), & the effect the distance between the grains has on tonal quality of the instrument (I’d never heard that before).

John is a wonderful conversationalist, & has an easy laugh. There was an old framed picture hanging over his workbench – and when I asked, John told me about Asmira Woodward-Page. The violin she was holding in the picture, with John fondly looking on, was one of John’s creations: the first prize at a Sydney Eisteddfod quite a few years ago.

I asked permission to take a picture of the violin he is making; and while I did, I also learned about one of his heroes, Arthur E Smith, Australia’s foremost violin makers- and it was one of Smith’s original 1947 designs that was coming to life in John’s little shed. If his memory serves him right, John has made more cellos than Smith (10 vs 3), & is well on his way to Smith’s 200 (John’s made 172!)

John is 82. He may be retired, but his enthusiasm for his craft & the instruments he makes & repairs is infectious. I learnt why my son’s cello, while a reasonable instrument, was probably causing much playing discomfort for my ten-year old son.

So infectious that he generously invited my son & I to return to John’s shed in a couple of weeks, to get a little more love and care for his cello – and a lot more education for me – from the master craftsman.

A little piece of wood called the sound post led me to this blog post 🙂

PS: Check out John’s website here.

[Link] 50 Short Rules For Life From the Stoics

Ryan Holiday synthesizes from the vast body of Stoic philosophy:

Don’t talk about it, be about it. The whole point of Stoicism is what you do. It’s who you are. It’s the act of virtue, not the act of talking about virtue. Or reading about it. Or writing about it. It’s about embodying your rules and principles. Letting your actions speak for you.