Productivity Reboot Day 4: A glimmer of hope

Yesterday’s post about sucking it up ended with a declaration of intent: I would wake up no matter what and start the day! And when I woke up, the alarm clock read 6:30AM, which was a little later than my target, but still early! Encouraged, I closed my eyes in contentment and then reconfirmed that it was indeed…1130AM? Apparently my body had a different idea about how much sleep I was to have, hijacked my motivation, and did me in. Bummer. But the day ended up taking a hopeful path.

Serial task switching

I had a 1PM appointment with my music teacher, Angela, for a mutual “project regrouping” session. We met at Bonhoeffer’s, a local coffee shop, where I was planning to work for the rest of the day. What was on her mind was her upcoming professional website, a distillation of her public identity as a music teacher to the most impactful essentials. What was on my mind was maintaining weekly continuity with my music education, despite my piano practice being shoved aside due to my project work.

I suggested that we ping-pong between our individual project discussion in 3-minute chunks, based on my thoughts yesterday regarding merciless time-blocking. In other words, she would get to talk about her immediate web site goals for 3 minutes, and then I would get to talk about my music lesson challenges. To maintain context between switches of topic, we each had a small whiteboard to write on.

Three minutes, as it turns out, is just about enough time to get a thought going and draw it to a tentative conclusion. It’s not enough time, though, to really go off on a tangent because you feel the time pressure. The resulting meeting ended up being rather exciting and dynamic, with excellent momentum and lots of passion. What was surprising, in retrospect, was that the discussion was not disjointed in the least; I would have thought that the “hard context switch” would prevent natural continuity from developing. Angela and I have similar conversational styles, jumping from thought to thought, so this kind of serial task switching may not work for everyone. I could see this working very well, however, in a group brainstorming session. Having the whiteboard to record where we left off was critical, and the dissimilarity of topics may have laid a foundation for creative random juxtaposition. It rocked.

Personal versus impersonal inspiration

When I mentioned to Angela that I believed I needed to close personal connections with people so I could focus on work, she suggested that I find inspiration elsewhere by going to a concert. This would be an intermediate form of human connection; I realized that merely seeing inspiration etched across people’s faces would likely uplift me as well. And there’s another advantage: time-consuming personal conversations are not required. Now, I love having long conversations with people about their lives and their aspirations, but it’s a big time commitment that occupies a lot of my mental reserves. It hadn’t occurred to me that I could draw energy from inspiring public events, and this reminds me of my good friend S, who once told me that she likes to go to noisy public events to “be alone”. It totally makes sense to me in this context; sometimes you need the external source of energy to feel what you need to feel, without having the commitment of a one-on-one human connection. In my case, I am energized by expressive energy, passion, imagination, and inspiration. In the past I’ve gotten that primarily by maintaining very close relationships with multiple people, but as I said there is a time cost.

Counseling the inner child

After Angela left, I settled down to do some programming. The problem was that I was hugely inspired by the quality of the previous communication, but rather less inspired by the world of Visual Studio and C#. I caught myself checking my email, Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr accounts—the automatic impulse to reach out for personal connections—and then stopped myself. The coding mindset requires an unusual clarity and singularity of purpose, and my mind was not cooperating.

I recalled what I had written in my last Groundhog Day Resolutions post about shedding my armor, which had involved a mind-clearing technique I’d made up. The technique had given me a significant bit of insight about myself…maybe it would help clear my mind so I could write the GUI base classes I needed to implement. I jotted down an impromptu process to follow:

1. Close my eyes.
2. Identify each surface thought, and then respectfully tell each thought to fade away for now.
3. Find what feels like the center of my consciousness.
4. Note pains, tensions, and other discomforts. If they are not 911-level emergencies, tell them to fade away.
5. Try to count up to 33 after getting to this state. This was an arbitrary number I picked.
6. See if anything interesting happens.

The experience was like peeling away the layers of an onion. The end result of identifying each thought was that I drew into myself. Once I’d tagged and cleared those thoughts, I was in my own mental space, and could then hear the little discomforts, pangs, and things going on in my body that I usually ignore. I determined whether these discomforts were life-threatening (which they were not), and dismissed them. I never did count up to 33, because I became aware of feelings and impulses that were unnamed and unknown. Strange denizens of the emotional deep, I imagined them, that usually do not see the light of consciousness. I listened.

The foremost emotion, I am almost embarrassed to say, was a desire to cry from an ambiguous feeling of loneliness and abandonment. The second underlying emotion was an unspecific fear of failure, a feeling I was not “measuring up” to anyone and everyone. There they were, wreaking havoc with my sense of self.

A couple of years ago I had the epiphany that I could split myself into a parent and a child. As adults, we’re used to thinking we know how to deal with the complexities of life in a responsible matter. We also crave being in comfort zones of competence and security; this is one measure of how “together” we feel our lives are. When faced with a challenge, we can cope by either telling ourselves a “look on the bright side” story or plan a “this is how I’ll get out of this” escapade. I have a good adult coping mechanism, but yesterday I came to believe that coping treats symptoms, not causes. To treat the cause is to treat all the symptoms with finality. The process starts by finding the root cause of the problem, calling it out, and dealing with it directly. In my case, merely naming these fears was enough. Once named, I could acknowledge that they existed, understand what they indicated, and move onward.

It’s difficult to admit to yourself that you feel like crying because you’re lonely and unconfident about the future. The common wisdom is that this makes you weak, but that’s only the case if you are whining like a victim. This is my situation, as clearly as I can express it:

The boat I’m rowing toward my grand vision is empty except for me, and it sucks because I realize that it’s been empty for a long time and I have no idea if and when the situation will change. My first response was the raw emotional one: the desire to hide and be sad. The optimistic response, however, is to recognize that even though I don’t know the future, that is no reason not to believe in something better. And unlike a child, I have the means and the experience to actually do something about it. All I need is the courage to choose, for myself and for people I can connect with in the future. Even if those steps ultimately fail, even if I'm sad and demoralized, it’s of utmost importance to me that I choose to act. To give up, throw in the towel, escape in personal indulgences, and so forth is to choose failure, and that is not the kind of person I imagine my best self to be. The stories we are all writing about ourselves should not end this way.

I closed all my browser windows and started writing code.

Productivity Reboot Day 1: Failure and Laughter

I wasn't even going to write this, because I went to bed at 9PM so I could be at the polls by 6AM. By my official schedule, I should be sound asleep to establish an inspiring personal track record of productive discipline. What I didn't count on was a sudden blast of insight that jolted me wide awake about two hours ago. After I heard my Timex beep the hour twice, I gave up and decided to do some writing. The day started strong and ended haphazardly. However, failure has led to a series of epiphanies regarding productivity and mirthfulness.

Starting strong

The first day of any habit usually goes pretty well, because I'm motivated and ready to go. And indeed, my morning started out great. I woke up at 530AM, dressed in real clothes, and got over to Starbucks by 6:40AM to start planning on an Emergent Task Planner sheet (see photo). This being the first ETP sheet in some time, it's fairly choked with things to do. I had no illusion about getting them all done, however, so I just kept adding to it to rollover to tomorrow's sheet. By 700AM, I pretty confident about what I needed to do overall for the day, and wrote down first steps for the day's programming tasks in a separate notebook. By 715AM, I was ready to head to the gym for an hour, planning to follow-up with a quick trip to pick up a room divider screen plus adequate protein for the day.

I also decided on a day's personal challenge of sharing positive energy with strangers on the street. I found that I was unable to really muster the ability to power through other people's default mood, which was that of casual preoccupation and indifference. I had never noticed this before, probably because I'm in the same place. The best I could do was mirror people's mood in a reactive way. When people smiled, I could smile back. If they didn't smile, I just moved my gaze onward. This was a disturbing realization, as this indicated a lack of positive energy on my part. And that's a problem; if you want to be around positive people, you had better be positive yourself. Like attracts like, ya know.

Getting back to the gym in the morning was nice. It had been quite some time (3 months) since I'd done an early-morning gym routine, and it felt good to just work through the muscle groups and sweat. I didn't push myself too hard, as I wanted to be "clear headed" without the tiredness. Mission accomplished, I zooped back home to read my email. Several readers provided some very helpful comments regarding the productivity reboot, offering empathetic advice. "Clyde" noted that although cleaning up my space was one way to improve motivation, the real change has to happen in the mind. He suggested a particularly vivid mental trick, imagining that one is sucked into the task to create joy and openness. This would prove to be an important observation for later in the day...thanks Clyde! As much as I like to think myself the master of mind trickery, it's good to be reminded that others have their own master collection of insights.

Blowing my momentum

The day started to go awry when I made some poor choices about the use of my time. First, I decided to go buy the room divider screen I'd seen at a store last week. It was no where to be seen, so I went to another store, then another, then another. I spent the next couple hours going to six stores where I thought I'd seen screens like this, only to find that they seem to have been completely erased from the face of the Earth. I knew the entire time that I was being obsessive about it, and decided to end my trip by at least buying some low sodium soy sauce from Trader Joe's (my favorite for taste and cooking) to salvage the rest of the day. It being close to lunch time, I made my second mistake: I went to KFC and got a chicken breast meal with potato wedges. The combination of KFC plus the tiredness that had accumulated over the extended shopping after working out at the gym completely knocked me out. I would have slept longer if it wasn't for the incessant calling and doorbell ringing from Obama supporters throughout the day.

It being 2PM, the day wasn't completely screwed, but I knew that by 5PM I would not be able to maintain any work momentum. That is when I made several more erroneous judgment calls. Three good friends of mine happened to contact me one after the other, and I chose to spend time visiting with them rather than telling them that I wanted to work. The first friend, A, is going through a similar bout of motivational reconfiguring, so I rationalized that this might pay off in the long run. We talked for two hours, outlining possible issues and strategies regarding motivation, all the while acknowledging the irony that we were also procrastinating. At 5PM, I went to meet my best friend E at Starbucks to restock on general cheerfulness, which is important to have stocked in New England during the cold months. Finally, at 615PM I met friend number three at Lowe's to pick up some stuff, and offered to help him unload a new snowblower at home because it was a two-man job. And then, the day was gone. Poof!

Reflecting upon this massive failure to stick to the plan, I recognized two mechanisms in action:

• Succumbing to the Easy Fix: I'd somehow had it in my mind that getting this room divider was really important to establish the right atmosphere to work. I really just wanted one. I think it will actually help the office for other reasons, but in terms of functional productivity it provided false positive feedback. Buying stuff feels like change. If you like what you got, and can rationalize the utility of your purchase, you feel like you've done something. It feels like you've added more potential to the system. Well, that's not true. When my attempt to purchase to screen failed, I went into a backup reward recovery mode and indulged in a greasy treat from KFC. I knew all the time that I probably shouldn't spend so much time looking for the screen, but there is always just one more store, and it's just a few minutes away. And I knew that the KFC would probably make me sleepy, but I convinced myself that maybe this time it wouldn't. But it did...my desire for immediate reward overrode the modicum of discipline I had mustered up for the day. Bah.

• Shortcutting to the False End Goal: If it wasn't clear yesterday, I'm feeling the need to break out of my rut of isolation. However, I have to get my projects completed and out the door, and I need to build a support enterprise that gives me the freedom to operate the way I want. This freedom will allow me, theoretically, to travel more and work on interesting projects that are based around human interaction. I crave this. And because I crave it so much, it was easy to succumb to my desire to be around more people. I gained a lot of insight about myself and my current process, mind you, and I feel good for having spent the time with my friends...but I didn't get what I wanted done. It will take discipline to limit my social activities during normal working hours (and this includes shopping trips). This is one of the perks of freelancing in the first place, but for this productivity push I will need to maintain a firmer hand on my time.

Discovering mirth

Despite the drawbacks of the day, they did lead me to an important personal observation:

I'm silly and unrealistic.

Ok, I already knew this, but instead of depressing me, this made me laugh at myself. My propensity toward silliness was evident while talking to my motivationally-challenged perfectionist friend. I worked myself up to a comedic fervor, vividly guessing an over-the-top version of his probably dreams. My friend pointed out that this was a kind of vision, and this struck me. The truth is this: I like being silly, and I like making up stuff that is improbable but awesome. This is one of my passions.

For someone who likes silly things, I have nevertheless tended to chose to be serious about life. I've known that I needed to lighten up about life for a long time, and recently I've felt I need to project positive energy to have any hope of being productively happy in a self-sustaining manner.

In retrospect, the approach I took to address my squareness was to address these three areas of discomfort:

• To try not to care about details I can't influence or control, because that accomplishes nothing.
• To look on the bright side of everything, because life lessons are learned through hard knocks.
• To not feel judged by other people, because they are not experts about me and my world.

These are all good mental stances to have, but here's the drawback: they are all reactionary methodologies! After all:

• I do care about the details and get stressed out, and then I calm myself down.
• I acknowledge the dark sides before I extract the positive lesson.
• I do feel judged by people and feel uncomfortable, then I shrug it off.

These are coping mechanisms. And because they are reactionary methods, I am reactionary. My experiment earlier in the day to spread positive energy fizzled because I didn't have the energy to begin with; I only had the ability to reactively shape what is already was in the world. It would be far better to be able to create such energy from scratch.

Cultivating silliness and mirth may change the equation, because it unlocks my sense of joy, which I think is inherently creative. My particular brand of mirth recognizes that there are a lot of crazy, obsessive, unique, and off-kilter people in the world who are completely inspiring. Their uniqueness is a source of excitement and change, and I like to amplify and share it wherever I find it. I also believe the the world is inherently sorta improbable to being with, and we exist AT ALL is a cosmic wonder. In my search for greater meaning, I've forgotten this. Maybe finding my bliss is as easy as finding something to laugh with to see where that goes. Is there anything more positive and joyful to share than a good laugh? If I can cultivate my natural silliness as a source of demonstrable mirthfulness, that might give me what I need to make more changes in myself and the world around me.

Tomorrow's plan

Day 2 is usually harder, but armed with today's insights I am hopeful of maintaining discipline. The challenge is likely to be more physical: I'm going to be tired. I need to make sure I don't eat anything that makes me sleepy, which means avoiding sugar and carbohydrates. It is also Election Day here in the US, so it will be awfully tempting to spend the day watching the progress of the vote. We'll see how it goes. I need more data to see where my patterns are breaking down.

As I wind down to sleep, I'm struck by the Christian phrase, "God is Love". Perhaps God is Laughter too?

Writers Block? Me?

I've never really had a problem sitting down and spewing out a bunch of words. My process is pretty simple:

• Start somewhere, see where it goes, then try to make some sense of it in a closing paragraph or statement.
• If I have the energy, proof read and tweak the text. Otherwise, let 'er loose!
• Hope no one notices that I'm a hack ;-)

I think think the process works for me because I tend to present in terms of conversational narrative. I write as if I'm talking to my friends, and I am constantly thinking of the best way to sequence a bit of information so it can be comprehended correctly. This actually doesn't play as well in real-life; in the process of establishing the context, iterating the supporting facts, and drawing my brilliant conclusion, attention spans tend to wander. This is good, because it forces me to try to be more visceral and succinct.

But I digress.

>> CONTINUE READING

Alex Shalman’s Happiness Project (and interview with me)

I'm still holed up with work, but here's a quick link: Practical Personal Development blogger Alex Shalman interviewed me via email a while ago for his Happiness Project, in which he lined up an impressive list of other bloggers to ask them a few questions about what made them happy. This was an interesting question to me, because I hadn't been thinking if I was happy or not; you can find my interview here.

Print Your Own “Re-Gift Receipts”

I don't know if this is common around the world, but after Christmas Day there is a frenzy of returns at retail outlets across the United States, as people trade-in/trade-up their gifts to something they like better. To make exchanges easier, stores issue gift receipts to gift purchasers with the price omitted to maintain some semblance of propriety. Call me sentimental, but when someone gives me a present, I find it difficult to treat it as just another material asset to be cashed in. It just doesn't jibe with what I think of as The Spirit of Giving. Why not leave warm cups of "Drano" out for Santa instead of milk while we're at it, or have a nice reindeer venison stew for Christmas Dinner as we throw rocks at elves? But that's just my moral outrage masking the true issue at hand: sometimes I get terrible presents and I'm not sure what to do with them. The barbarian materialists exchange their presents and are materially happier afterwards. Traditionalists like me get principles stuck in their craw, muttering bitterly as their houses fill with junk they can't just throw away because "they were gifts."

There is another gift-related practice here in the States called the Yankee Swap, associated with office Christmas parties, where you can potentially bring all your unwanted junk and gift it away to some poor sucker. Each person brings a present, and gets one in return. The trick is that each person draws their present based on a number, and they have the option of exchanging whatever they got with whatever someone before them got. It's deliciously balances the Spirit of Giving with the Spirit of Taking Away, just the sort of spirit one needs to survive the modern corporate environment. We are what we are.

While this year I received no bad presents (in fact, they were all awesome), there was an interesting moment at one of these events when someone recognized a "real" gift from a Christmas many years in the past re-gifted to someone else. This created some awkwardness on the part of the re-gifter, though the original gift giver didn't mind at all. This got me to thinking: we already have gift receipts. Why not take it a step further and include a re-gift receipt that establishes once and for all that once you are given a present, it's yours to do with what you want?

Design of the Re-Gift Receipt

To create the Re-Gift Receipt, I used my Stockwell Rubber Stamp Kit (I'll have to write about this sometime later) to create the RE-GIFT RECEIPT: YOUR GUILT-FREE PASS lettering at top. I scanned this in, colored it to resemble the purplish ink on old-style receipts, and laid out some text using an 8-point monospaced font (Bitstream Vera Sans Mono if you are curious...it's one of my favorite console fonts).

Since I wanted to reproduce the length of the typical gift receipt---they are often filled with legal mumbo jumbo---I had to write some filler. I figured it wouldn't hurt to cover some of the basic scenarios that lead to "poor gifting". Here's what it says:

RE-GIFT RECEIPT POLICY

This present has been given to you by your (CIRCLE ONE):

CO-WORKER(S)

CASUAL BUDDY

REALLY BUSY BEST FRIEND

SIGNIFICANT OTHER

OTHER ACQUAINTANCE

If you like it, great! However, in the event that dismay and polite confusion ensued rather than joy, please allow that (CIRCLE ALL THAT APPLY):

I DON'T REALLY KNOW YOU THAT WELL SO I JUST WINGED IT

IT LOOKED MUCH BETTER ONLINE / IN THE STORE

I'M A CLUELESS GUY/GAL WHAT DO I KNOW ABOUT PRESENTS

I GENUINELY THOUGHT YOU LIKED THIS KIND OF STUPID CRAP

I DID ALL MY SHOPPING AT THE SAME STORE THIS IS WHAT THEY HAD

I THOUGHT YOU COULD USE IT FOR HOBBY/WORK BUT WHAT DO I REALLY KNOW ABOUT IT

MOM SAID "IT IS THE THOUGHT THAT COUNTS" AND I BELIEVED HERE

In the True Spirit of American Giving, this RE-GIFT RECEIPT entitles you to pass this item guilt-free to a third party, no questions asked.

AUTHORIZING GIFT GIVER:

RECIPIENT:

by re-gifting this present, you agree that there is no reason to ever mention this again

I think this covers about 80% of all bad-gifting scenarios, and having it in an easy "circle your excuse" format really captures the Spirit of Exchanging Gifts For Better Ones: convenient, cheerfully impersonal, with no hard feelings at all.

After I got this text laid out in Illustrator, I noticed that the overly-crisp quality of the text was at-odds with my scanned rubber-stamp letterings. I applied a 1-pixel gaussian blur over all the text using a raster-based effect. It's cool that you can do this stuff now; back in the old days, I'd have had to convert the whole file to a high-resolution TIFF file and that would have been a pain in the butt. Blurring the text slightly made everything fit together visually. I was pleased that the file size didn't get too large either. At about 250KB for the PDF it's about 100K larger than the non-blurred version, but that's acceptable I think for the visual result. On the minus side, there's a good chance that non-Adobe PDF readers will render the file incorrectly; let me know in the comments if you come across this problem. I'm curious.

Download the Re-Gift Receipt Forms

There's three Re-Gift Receipts per 8.5"x11" sheet. Just trim along the print marks and you'll be ready to start disavowing any intended thoughtfulness to your gift giving. You could also use these forms to legitimately (sigh) let your friends know that you did your best, but there is no obligation to hold on to it...just don't give it BACK. :-)

• Download Re-Gift Receipt Printable Form (PDF, 316K)

You will need a Portable Document Format (PDF) viewer installed such as Adobe Acrobat Reader to view and print. If you can't install Acrobat or are having trouble viewing the PDF, you can try these alternate downloads and "adjust size to fit to page" when you print:

• View Re-Gift Receipt in PNG format
• View Re-Gift Receipt in GIF format

PC users can right-click and choose "Save-As..." from the pop-up menu to download the file to your computer. Mac users can option-click and do the same, I believe.

Other Silly Things

If you appreciated the dubious value of this download, you might also like my Chain Letter Nullification Certificate, Arm-Mounted Task Nagger, Procrastinator's Clock, and Social Yardstick designs. Enjoy! :-)

Ground Hog Day Resolutions Review Day 7

Yes, it's that time again: Groundhog Day Resolutions Review Day. I almost forgot about it, but fortunately I had entered all the days into Google Calendar and I got the reminder last night.

The quick recap for those unfamiliar with the Groundhog Day Resolutions Concept: Forget January 1st, and set your resolutions on February 2nd. Then follow through and check every month and a day until December 12. This is the first year I've tried this, and it's kind of gratifying to look back and see what progress has been made.

Rather than go into a long-winded explanation of what's been going on, I'll just recap each statement; you can read about the original ideas in the original post and various followups (there is an index of posts at the bottom of this article).

1. Make Money from Writing and Making Stuff

The general idea is to shift from pure services and become an original content creator, deriving the bulk of my income from my own work. This ties into a new goal I established this month: to be completely mobile by 2010, so I can go to where the interesting projects and people are in the world. There's so much world to experience, it drives me nuts. I've also been inspired again by Tim Ferriss' continuing adventures, which you can follow on his mind-bogglingly excellent tip blog.

The "whiffed" (missed) goals I have decided probably weren't as important as I thought. I still do need to transition to Expression Engine, because my current blog structure feels very constraining, and I think EE's system will be a welcome improvement.

I actually have been booked for the remainder of the year, and probably a good chunk of next year, so my big challenge will be actually time management. The nature of the projects are steeped in writing (essentially, analysis) and making stuff (software, basically). It's kind of what I was doing before, but more challenging and therefore interesting. I will be learning a lot that I can proceduralize and redevelop into new things.

2. Build a Sustainable Social Network

It feels like I've finally stabilzed a few social structures over the past month, though I am uncertain about my level of commitment to them. This uncertainty arises from the amount of energy that I receive back. I actually feel a little "overdrawn" in terms of my social energy and time, so I need to hole up and regenerate. Also on my mind is the continuing search for suitable partners, in terms both of romance and in working mission. In an ideal world, it would be the same person, but I am not sure how to go about finding this. I may write about some of the challenges I'm facing in the coming months, as I haven't yet come across a really good explanation of the process.

I do need to get off my ass and resurrect the May goal of creating the co-schemer / freelancer list...this is pretty important to me, and is related to my overall search strategy of being able to connect people. I'd like to be connected too, of course, and I've come to believe that all it will take is someone standing up and taking names. I guess that will be me. Watch for a post in the near future.

3. Sell a Product This Year

It's taken a while, but the Emergent Task Planner Pads have finally gone to press. Related tasks: forming an LLC, figuring out the design-to-fulfillment chain, and starting to think like an actual business entity instead of some guy working out of his basement office in New Hampshire.

This goal relates closely to #1, and there are actually some new deadlines in place. If last year was any indication, the last months of the year are when people start thinking about planning for next year, so having pre-printed versions of the Compact Calendar, perhaps a full-year planner product, and goodness knows what else could be nice product to have. Now that some of the design-to-fulfillment workflow is in place, I can start to automate the process and shorten the cycle. While I was at the printer, it struck me that there's quite a lot of custom print work I can do beyond pads, and working with a local printer could be a lot of fun. Apparently there is a thing that paper manufacturers create called a paper library, which is a sampler of all the paper stock with printing examples. I was so excited I thought I would faint. This might sound crazy, but I have the ability to touch any material and instantly envision something I could make from it that "respects" it. Putting that into practice would kick ass.

For Next Month

We're in the home stretch, with only 3 more review periods before the GHD year comes to an end.

• The biggest goal on my mind is shipping those ETP pads and getting feedback from the brave souls who have taken a chance on the product. The second goal is to establish the LLC (I'm thinking of calling it "The David Seah Group", which scares the crap out of me because I would have to grow into that) and getting the online ordering and fulfillment automated.

• I'm not so concerned about #1, as the printing goal sort of takes care of that.

• Regarding #2, I do need to gather a group of like-minded people with skills, just so we know who we are. I've done some of this already privately, but there are so many cool people I've been contacted by that I feel the need to organize them into some kind of directory of awesomeness. Everyone has a skill and a story that they can contribute to the pool.

• A bonus goal that wasn't even on my list was going to the gym...I've been going for two months now, and am likely to continue doing so because I have been feeling stronger and---I admit this doesn't make much sense, but it's true---breathing more enthusiastically...maybe it's a result of the improved cardiovascular endurance. The next challenge that isn't part of my GHDRs is to systematically lose weight.

So that's it for this month...now, back to work! Time for dreaming will have to come later.

PAST POSTS ON GROUNDHOG DAY RESOLUTIONS AND REVIEW

• Original Post and Rationalization - February 2nd
• GHDRRD #1 - March 3
• GHDRRD #2 - April 4
• GHDRRD #3 - May 5
• GHDRRD #4 - June 6
• GHDRRD #5 - July 7
• GHDRRD #6 - August 8

Circumnavigation of My Arrogance

I have noticed a disturbing trend in myself in the past few weeks: I've been losing patience and I've been kind of a jerk to my friends and coworkers.

What's new is that I've been under a bit more project load than usual. This is fantastic because I have been wanting to sink my teeth into something nice and meaty for some time. However, I've found some bad old habits resurfacing from the white-hotness of the old 2001 Internet Bubble. I have been arrogant and self-serving under the mistaken belief that I was just being proactive and responsible. I'm lucky that the people that I work with are understanding and strong enough to stand up to me, so I can see what I've been doing wrong. I just feel awful about it, though.

ARROGANCE

First, the positive: my default mental stance is to believe that everyone has a knack. That is, everyone has some kind of incredible potential that, if we can but unlock it, will result in an explosion of empowering happiness.

When I am in the position that I can help someone come into that potential, that makes me feel incredibly happy. This is a mission that I've recently accepted as being one of my primary life goals. Because of this, I am a patient and nurturing teacher, free with my knowledge and my time. I can trace this tendency back to when I was trying to learn the BASIC programming language in the 7th grade, and this older kid named Donald Dimitrios took the time to show me the ropes. He put up with my blank-eyed questions and endless confusion when it came to understanding PEEKS, POKES, and the mysterious FOR-NEXT loop. This generosity of knowledge was particularly notable because in junior high school, there is such stratification between grade levels that even TALKING to a 7th grader was grounds for ruthless taunting. He didn't give a crap though, and as a result I had a positive introduction to computing that not only helped set the course of my career, but imprinted me with the values that lay the foundation for a strong community of practitioners. I am forever grateful.

That said, you might find it surprising that this patient gratefulness dries right up when I am working with someone who is already an equal. The reserve of patience and understanding gets put away for the next student, because I'm excited to gird on the armor and the sword. I'm not exactly Leeroy Jenkins when it comes to group projects, but I must admit there is a certain LET'S GO OUT AND KICK ASS! YEAH!!!!! vibe. I want to drink the blood from conquered skulls of bad interactive media, reveling in the lamentations of the corporate tools who inflicted such point-and-click monkeyware upon the world in the first place! Ok, I am exaggerating a little here, but I really do feel that it's a moral imperative that must be followed through.

I believe that this is arrogance masquerading as the belief that quality and skill are most important for a professional project. That's not to say that quality and skill are not the point; it is the basis of business trust after all. What is arrogant is my belief that valuing quality and skill entitles me to say and do whatever I think. I never fully calculated the human cost in terms of lingering hurt feelings, lowered morale, and confusion. I think for the first time, I am ready to concede that this cost is unacceptable when it is exacted for my own standards. It is only worthwhile when everyone benefits for their own reasons, and they want to be in the room.

WHAT'S OLD IS NEW AGAIN

The last time I experienced this form of personal hubris was in 2001. I believed I knew exactly what should be done, how it could be done, and was incredibly blunt about it. The net result was that I drove away a lot of good people, and it took four years to rebuild both myself and real relationships with people. I learned that I did have this dichotomy of expectation between my mentoring and collaboration modes. My solution? Go freelance...obviously, I had trouble working with others in a company context, so maybe the freedom to put up or shut up on process was my destiny. Problem solved! This path resulted in the start of this blog and the freedom to build many new relationships with people. I have never been happier or more excited in my life by the possibilities before me.

There's just one problem: I really do want to work with people. So for the past year, I've been slowly building up to the point where I can start working with people more closely.

What's different now is that I'm aware that it's much easier to attract similar people than it is to find them, if you are brave enough to put the vibe out there. One reason that I write so broadly on my blog is that I like eclectic people; I figure that if someone is intrigued by the types of topics I write about, they are probably more likely to be someone I'd like to work with. If they like the way I write, that is an even closer potential match! I think this is a good example of finding your niche; it's more important, particularly at first, to find a few people who deeply connect and enrich you than thousands who you superficially encounter but form no bond whatsoever. The reason I think this is important is that when we're getting started, we all need additional sources of energy to push through our fears, uncertainties, and doubts. Having even one person who really believes in you can make all the difference.

I've also thought that maybe it was the style of collaboration or scheming that was the crucial relationship element, which is just a special case of attracting similar people. People that have similar values and interests are more likely to have a harmonious relationship. In general I've found it to be true...for establishing friendships. Extending this principle to a working relationship has so far eluded me. My weird arrogance regarding competency and process rears its ugly head, and drives away the people I want to work with.

DIAGNOSIS

I hurt a few people today who are important to me, which is why I'm trying to work through this and fix it because I apparently did not achieve closure before. I think there are probably others out there who have gone through---or ARE going through---a similar cycle. Here's a few warning signs, based on feelings that I've had before:

• You believe that people around you just aren't willing to understand the value of what you're doing.

• You believe that you are doing more than you are supposed to with regard to your job or role.

• You believe that there is a lack of definition and direction in the workplace, with no apparent end in sight.

• You believe that if you take responsibility for conveying the importance of these issues, matters will improve if people are willing to listen. Through education and persistence, you can effect a change.

There are two responses to this that I've tried in the past:

1. Step up and lead until someone makes you stop: When you don't have authority to make changes directly granted to you, you can apply personal leadership to the situation. Though it's not strictly part of your job description, bringing clarity and vision to the people around you is often appreciated if it's not perceived as a power trip. Being willing to take punches, go the extra mile for your peers, and create recognized excellence within the organization can be the beginning of a new era of solidarity. However, this approach requires a lot of energy with no guarantee of recognition or reward. It can pay off big, or you will burn out in about a year.

2. Withdraw and cut your losses: Situations in which you do not have the authority to change culture and process are difficult to win overnight. After you assess the amount of effort and luck required to remedy matters, you determine it is too much work. You can stop caring and restrict your role to the smallest unit of responsibility that won't get you fired. Or, you can leave.

I've practiced both responses half a dozen times with various companies. The typical patterns is to lead with "stepping up" and try to last long enough to achieve whatever goal was set before me. Very draining, but rewarding when we pulled off something kick ass. Eventually, though, my energy stores are drained so thoroughly that I become very moody and depressed. I ask myself am I really going to be happy doing this forever and come to the conclusion that it's time to move on. So I close off things as cleanly as I can, and enter a new phase of my life.

The current phase of my life, which is this blogging/design thing, has been sustainable because I'm generally working on shorter projects. With shorter projects, I can work hard to get the thing out, and then count on some downtime to replenish my store of energy. Shorter projects also tend to be very well-defined or limited in some way that makes them much easier to tackle comprehensively.

It's the longer-term projects that require more of a marathoner's approach to energy management: the pace is necessarily slower, because you need to maintain energy for the entire project track. And it's these projects that are the ones with the most need for collaboration between peers. I also think it's these projects that are the most rewarding due to the larger scale of the accomplishment. I need to develop a third option that doesn't involve total withdrawal or total sacrifice.

IDENTIFYING THAT THIRD OPTION

What I need to confront is my ego and sense of entitlement. I thought I'd dealt with this years ago, but they both live on. I also need to resolve that sense of responsibility that tends to exert itself when I think I can help clarify things. Here are my thoughts on the matter:

1. I should acknowledge that I'm really good at some things. And that's as noteworthy as someone having hair because everyone is really good at something. Even exceptional skill, I think, is just a tiny aspect of a person's place in the universe, no sense in kicking up a fuss about it. Also, embracing one's talents without feeling embarrassed is a necessary step to performing on the broader world stage; if I really want to do cool stuff on a bigger scale, I need to get comfortable with offering what I can offer.

2. There's no need to "awaken" or "educate" people all the time. What's funny is that I believe that I already believe that expressing ideas in tangible form is most effective in creating positive change; so me merely telling people things and expecting them to follow without some kind of concrete example is just foolish. I'm amazed that I did not see this before.

3. Forgot job boundaries, assigned responsibilities, and appropriateness of action. Just pitch in and help. It's the right thing to do. And this is the path through which quality may be attained with much less friction. I've just realized that assigning distinct responsibilities to people is a form of zero sum thinking; the implication is that if people don't do what they are "supposed to do", the project will go horribly awry. Well...maybe not!

So that's my amended course of action, and I am hopeful that this means that I'll finally get the hang of collaborating with people more closely. I don't think clients will necessarily notice a difference (it's quality and skill that they're paying for). However, I think these new guidelines will help me come to a more comfortable work-life balance that includes everyone, not just me. It's a moral imperative!

Groundhog Day Resolutions Review Day 6

Yes, it's that time again: Groundhog Day Resolution Review Day! This is the extended format version of new year's resolutions, diddled a bit to make them a little more workable with my oh-so-modern life. You can read about the idea's genesis in detail if you like, but the basic idea is this:

• January 1st is a terrible day to do New Years Resolutions. We're all hungover, and got a whole month of catching up to do. February 2nd, now there's a day that needs a boost.

• New Years Resolutions fail because we don't follow up on them. So why not designate regular easy-to-remember days like 2/2, 3/3, 4/4, and so forth?

I've been putting myself through the process this year to get a feel for what works and what doesn't. I haven't yet made a nifty download for this, but fellow form productivista Corrie Haffly has her awesome Monthly Goal Trackers. There are a few people scattered across the Internet who are also trying this out, so ROCK ON.

Anyway, it's time to catch up and figure out how badly I've been blowing my resolutions.

BLOWN ACTIONS

I've been noticing that as the months go by, I've been adhering less and less to the specific goals, but overall I've been following the spirit of my GHD resolutions. I had deliberately picked (I think) just three overall goals in February:

1. Make Money from Writing and Making Stuff
2. Build a Sustainable Social Network
3. Sell a Product This Year

In May I started to realize that I was not making deliberate progress toward fulfilling these goals, so I started setting action items. Here's the chain of them:

1. Make Money from Writing and Making Stuff

2. Build a Sustainable Social Network

3. Sell a Product This Year

I can see that many tasks just didn't get done, so that's not too good. However, overall I've incrementally moved just a little closer to fulfilling my resolutions. That's something to feel good about, though I probably wouldn't be that LOUD about it :-)

GENERAL TRENDS

I've noticed that while my planned actions didn't necessarily get done, I think just having these thoughts on my mind has helps fit other opportunities to my needs.

• The Emergent Task Planner sheets are going to get printed, and they'll be sold. That's going to happen. I've just been slowly plugging away at it.

• The Social Networking actually has been going well for me personally. However, as I privately suspected it might, the World of Warcraft Business Networking started out strong, but has dwindled. I haven't been putting the energy into running the guild as a "primary leisure activity". However, I have made a few new friends through it, which is great! I've also discovered that my personal social network has expanded to include the coffee shop as a kind of spiritual anchor. I would never have guessed this would happen, but I am getting to know the people that are there every day, and they are real people with interesting lives, troubles, challenges...just workin' to get by, working for a better life the best they know how. Getting back in touch with that has been important to me. It gives me perspective.

  I've also come to realize that I am both craving responsibility while pushing it away. I like being responsible for things, but I hate being drained of my energy. I'm also afraid of wasting people's time (including mine) by trying new relationships and not seeing them work. This is a poor attitude...best to wade in and make what sense you can. You can't let the possibility of something being disappointing prevent you from trying. I tend to try to think of ways to maximize success before starting something, but all that seems to ever get me is a fine coating of cat hair across the back of my pants, impressed upon my backside by the couch.

• As far as Making Money from Writing and Making Things, this has been reframed as a growing sureness of my identity as a designer. The more things I've written and made, the more easily it is to see what's made me happy and what keeps me fulfilled. My challenge is to keep chipping away at the mountain of tasks and stay energized.

SPECIFIC ACTIONS

I'll keep this short and sweet:

• Print Pads! Ship Them!
• One New Statement on the Website that Clarifies My Design Work!
• Start a bunch of New Working and Personal Relationships. See What Happens.

If you'd like to read about the past Groundhog Day Resolution Review Days, click below!

• Original Post and Rationalization
• GHDRRD #1
• GHDRRD #2
• GHDRRD #3
• GHDRRD #4
• GHDRRD #5

A Printable Certificate for Breaking Chain Letters

The other day I was checking my email, and was surprised to receive a mass email---you know, the kind where all the recipients are listed in the "to" field---from an acquaintance I barely knew. The photos attached were that of a recently-born child in their family, which seemed nice enough. However, soon afterwards I received a mass email reply from someone I didn't know at all, with a CHAIN LETTER attached to it. The enterprising recipient, seeing an opportunity to foist the chain letter onto people she didn't even know, bundled the chain letter as a forwarded email envelope, and artfully neglected to indicate its non-baby related payload.

Some people may say I'm getting upset over nothing, but what really burns me is that this MISCREANT took advantage of a bunch of strangers for her own salvation. She applied SPAMMY TECHNIQUES to hoodwink a bunch of baby picture recipients into taking the fall for her own crappy email superstition. I was livid at this treatment.

I hate chain letters because they're thinly-disguised attempts to create something large on the backs of hundreds of strangers. There is, however, something magical about them; it's interesting to think that a single person can send a letter to 10 people threatening them with misfortune...and be practically guaranteed that the chain will continue. This is particularly easy with email, a fine-but-trivial example of the psycho-mathematical forces behind pyramid schemes. Usually I just break the chain and forget about them, but this particular instance was particularly onerous in its callous disregard of my right to pursue happiness free of other people's baggage. GRR.

INVOKING THE MAGIC

I got to thinking: If a chain letter can promise misfortune, what would be the most credible countermeasure? If people were making up their own chainletters, I figured that this gave me license to create my own magic certificate to draw on the power of like-minded people. And thus, the Chain Breaker was born. I call it the Certificate of Chain Letter Nullification. Here's what it looks like:

It's basically some stock Illustrator CS2 borders and some clip art from the Historical Ornaments and Designs clip art book I have. The anti-chain letter mojo comes from the following declaration:

There are times when the forces of Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt conspire to coerce Good People to aid the propogation of Certain Letters of Ambiguous Benefit or Misfortune. Such Letters are conceived to Frighten people into serving the Ego of a Master Jerk. We can not, as free men and women, allow such Threats to bound our Happiness.

By signing and dating this certificate, you declare that you are a Creator of Positive Energies. Together, we break the Tyranny of the Chain. We declare that we are defined by our Actions, not our Fears.

Then you sign the document, and have a witness sign it too, and the unbinding magic should take effect if you, in your heart of hearts, agree with the statement. Since there are many of us who believe this, I'm figuring that this is some pretty strong magic. Failing that, I suppose we could always sic the Libertarian Party on the next chain-letter sendin' yutz to cross our paths.

In any case, I feel a little better. Perhaps some of you out there will find this certificate equally calming. Next time you get a chain letter, print out this certificate, sign it, and help drive back the FUD.

» Download Certificate of Chain Letter Nullification (PDF, 360K)

Enjoy! :-)

Tanabata, Plus Groundhog Day Resolutions Review Day 5

Today is Tanabata, a Japanese Star Festival that falls on the 7th day of the 7th lunarsolar month. That's actually 2007-08-19 this year according to wikipedia, but 7/7 also corresponds to the fifth Groundhog Day Resolutions Review Day, on which I review my Groundhog Day's Resolutions and figure out how things have been going. It's particularly nice to celebrate Tanabata because the festival has a tradition in which you write down wishes related to bettering yourself. Afterwards you hang them in a bamboo tree, where presumably some universal force will notice and help bring them to fruition. This is very compatible with GHD Resolutions...we can all use a boost.

Last year I made some printable streamers, which I again printed out and wrote wishes upon. I didn't choose specific wishes, but wrote down forces that I would like to have more of right now; I'm trusting the "universal wish-granting force" to handle the implementation details for me---how's that for effective executive delegation? The wishes themselves were just single words describing what I'm in the mood for:

• Camaraderie
• Silliness
• Receptiveness
• Delight
• Resolution

Then I hung them on the tree. I'll burn the wishes at midnight on my grill, as I understand the tradition to be.

PICKING OFF FROM LAST MONTH

The basic premise behind Groundhog Day's Resolutions is this: Make resolutions on February 2nd instead of January 1st when we're caught up. Check your progress every "month plus one day" (3/3, 4/4, 5/5, and so forth).

My three main 2007 resolutions:

1. Make Money from Writing and Making Stuff
2. Build a Sustainable Social Network
3. Sell a Product This Year

Last month I had stumbled slightly and not gotten my action items done. This month, the same thing happened: I completely blew off my action items, which were as follows:

• June 13: Get the ETP Printed, Dang It!
• June 20: Put the HUB statement on the website.
• June 27: Create some original content, like a booklet or number of thoughts, and sticking it up on Lulu.com or Blurb.

I had forgotten to schedule these on my Google Calendar. It was a pretty busy month from both a business and personal perspective, and I dropped the ball. Although a lot did get done, the whole point of having a resolution is to really make a change, deliberately.

Here's the current status:

1. Getting the ETP Printed!

This is the new pre-printed emergent task planner sheet I had designed, for selling as an actual product. Convenient, beautiful, affordable...that's the idea! And, this is a way to dip my toe into productive development without risking too much.

I did draw up an initial plan on how to get this launched, and talked to my friend Scott to get it priced out at various area printers. It's been taking longer than expected with my busy schedule. My next action item, once we have the pricing figured out, is to put up some kind of order page for "pre orders", so we can arrange to have exactly that number printed. After that, it's figuring out payment, packaging, and shipping. Because we're looking at using an offset press instead of print-on-demand, after the initial run our incremental cost will much lower.

2. Put the HUB statement on the Website! A HUB statement is a form of elevator pitch that emphasizes your "hottest undeniable benefit" to a very specific target audience. By having a HUB statement, you can really effectively communicate what you do to people who actually would be interested in working with you. By putting this statement on my website, it would likely improve the chances of people figuring out they want to work with me.

I have been slowly getting clear about what it is that I do well and is worth paying for:

• critical analysis, architecture, and planning
• information graphic design
• experience design

and how I do it:

• investigative design
• scientific creative methodologies
• using media to create stories that unfold in real life

All this information, in addition to how people can initiate the process of working with me, has to go on the website. It's been driving me nuts for the past few weeks, because I feel the website structure and navigation is somehow holding me back.

There has been some movement though: I've decided that I'm going to use Expression Engine for the base of my next website path, because it has the features I need in one fairly inexpensive integrated package. I have slowly been figuring out how to transition the features of my existing WordPress installation into an Expression Engine equivalent.

3. Create Original Content and Stick it on Lulu.com!

I originally thought of rewriting some of the Printable CEO materials into book form, but this didn't happen. If I'd scheduled it into my google calendar maybe I would have remembered. There were a couple of book-related activities, however:

• Last month I had worked on my first print piece, a perfect-bound printed book of glossy photos. I got to use InDesign for this project, and found that it was actually a rather pleasant environment to work in.

• I was talking to a friend of mine about writing children's books, so I decided to use what I'd learned while using InDesign for the print piece to try laying out A Bee Story, the writing experiment I did last August.

It took a while to figure the best way to import the text---I copied the HTML from the browser and pasted it into InDesign. You can take a peek at the Bee Story PDF, formatted for a 6x9 Lulu run. I'm not planning on printing it; for one thing, it hasn't been proofread or reworked in any way. Each story segment was written in one sitting, four periods for 4 days, without any planning. It's at best structured stream-of-consciousness writing. However, I picked up some knowledge of how I would lay out an actual book: this likely will be some kind of PCEO-related booklet. In the meantime, it's just convenient to see the entire bee story in one document.

ACTION ITEMS

Since the website is so much on my mind, I'm scheduling a two-hour block of time tomorrow to try to resolve the remaining issues. These are largely related to just learning EE's template langauge, though I also need to redesign the large photo header at the top of the page to visually define each distinct content area. July 8.

Getting the ETP printed is a big deal, so I'm hoping to have a good idea of the pricing required on a good piece of paper. After that, it's time to figure out how to create some kind of pre-ordering system, and it's time to formally think about customer service. July 12.

Finally, creating some of the new original content for printing: I have a lot of content that can be repurposed and clarified; it's just outgrown the simple blog-journal / category model of information hierarchy; I need to start making this site look like a real website while retaining the community model of the blogosphere. I think that will be a huge relief. Until then, I can at least start creating review PDFs that describe every system on the website, and move them to the Wiki. I've scheduled some time to do this. July 19.