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Category: Life Tips

  • Intrinsic Worth

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    Once an Object of Joy

    This is a ~20\’ Reniell Boat with the engine included, and I can get it to you for a low price! Just kidding. I took this picture in downtown Seattle on Elliott Ave, near the campus of Expedia and that cool Amgen Helix bridge that leads to the still-lovely Centennial Park. This part of Seattle intrigues me – a mix of dystopian industrial zone kitty-corner to swanky Norwegian boat city called Ballard.

     I have no clue how this boat got here, nor why it\’s still there. Despite my mad Google skills, I was unable to lock down the exact model, but you know that someone paid big money for this dream. I\’m betting this was a sweet ride in its heyday. Check out this link and notice that most of this brand of boats, even those 20 years old, are still over $10k in value. I\’ve heard that the two best days of your life are the day you get your boat and the day you sell it. The question that struck me: Why has this once-noble craft been abandoned and tagged, a shameful disrespect of its beauty and utility? From dream to garbage in a blink, but why? What constitutes value?

    Why has this once-noble craft been abandoned and tagged, a shameful disrespect of its beauty and utility? From dream to garbage in a blink…but why? What constitutes value?

    The Formula

    Well, there\’s a guy in Detroit who noticed this phenomenon of dumping boats and started photographing all of them. He claims it\’s probably something to do with insurance and the fact that parking boats have gotten more expensive, etc. I see something deeper here, a loss of intrinsic value, and I wonder what we can learn from it. Even the materials alone in this vessel must be worth something, no? I imagine it floats, or at the very least, the materials could be claimed, or is reclaiming those too much?

    What constitutes value? Is it in the form? The function? Both? Status? An older car can go into a dump unless the owner really takes care of it. Jay Leno has a garage full of rare cares that were cared for. Many Model-T Fords were scrapped I\’m sure, but for those owners that took care of theirs, they now have a collectors edition. Even the lowly AMC Pacers have retained value. Check this one out:

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    While I love this odd car ( understand, I currently own a Nissan Cube), it is a well-known dud, making many lists of \”worst cars ever built\”, and yet, here we have one sold for a cool $30k (click here for more car reviews). So I ask again, what is intrinsic value? Saying cost is what people will pay is just a meaningless statement. What made that Pacer a keeper while the Reinell a city eyesore? What\’s the intrinsic worth of a house that\’s not maintained? A building? A church? A city?

    It seems to me that a fundamental part of intrinsic worth is the energy that humans put into it. Almost any asset will depreciate, of course, as Function fails or falls behind, but by maintaining Form you regain that worth in age and the sentimentality that the object provides. Really old buildings are historical landmarks, priceless art, and so on all fit in this category. Yet, in all of the instances, value must be protected through vigilant maintenance. For the Pacer, I\’d say we\’d have to add sentimentality to that equation and rarity.

    Perhaps the formula for Intrinsic Worth = (Form + Function + Sentimentality)* Maintenance + Rarity works? Note that I put rarity outside of the parenthesis because on occasion even when something is dilapidated, if its very rare, that alone gives it value. e.g. a tooth of a T-Rex, etc. If you google the term Intrinsic Value you\’ll get investor jargon, where they try to tease out the value of stocks, and while some of those concepts can be applied, it still cannot ignore the maintenance aspect of value, nor would you want to apply their cold calculations to people, which is my next subject.

    What about People?

    Can we extend this to people? Of course, I believe people have intrinsic worth. When I drive down the streets of Seattle and see the homeless, I get the same feeling I had about that boat. Who left them there? Why? What can be done? This is a child, a brother, a sister, a dad, a mom. Do they not have intrinsic worth? Moreover, who failed to maintain that worth? If maintenance is a key part of fighting off depreciation, who failed to maintain that person on the street?

    Of course, we can\’t force people to maintain themselves. This is the core tenant of free will. Want to smoke? Okay, but that\’s going to cost you down the road. Drinking? Drugs? All that cuts into your worth to society, despite the fact that it is society that may have been a participant in this failure. Alcohol addiction treatment is one way society can intervene and help people regain their intrinsic value before it\’s too late. Access to resources like methamphetamine rehab and other support services could make a difference. In some cases, a luxury rehab centre could offer the specialized care and environment needed for recovery. But the boat and its owner didn’t fail alone – the ability of the system to offer proper recycling options is part of it. Also, the alcohol rehab is essential for those struggling with addiction, as it provides crucial support and treatment options that can help restore their health and dignity.

    It is the Christian perspective that people are intrinsically valuable. I love this quote from C.S. Lewis

    “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously – no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.”

    – C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

    How can we treat people like immortal beings, both heavenly and fallen, but forgiven? How can the system be tweaked to help more while enabling healing and allow people to achieve more than they thought they could? These are complex questions and beyond this article, but the image of that boat keeps coming back to me, haunting and compelling me to action.

    We have to fight for what we want to maintain. The house, the cars, and the cities we live in only have intrinsic value if we decide that they do. We maintain those cities, we clean up the boats and the streets, and people will find value in that. We must fight entropy for our objects and ourselves. If we maintain ourselves – be educated, interesting, and healthy – then we will benefit those around us and maintain our value. If our society and institutions value humans, it can play an important role in that maintenance.

    Most importantly, we must find value in ourselves and our relationships. Put in that time in your place of worship and with your people. Maintain those things that can age with energy and effort. Nothing is rarer than you and your relationships. They have Form, and Function, and if you keep the barnacles off of you and yours, perhaps you\’ll never be dumped and defaced in a scary city parking lot.

    Love to all – JF

  • The KALM Way to Put 2020 Behind You

    It\’s safe to say that most of us think 2020 was a rough year, to put it politely. Most of the articles I\’ve read are either laced with despair ( 2021 might suck as well, etc. ) or profanity (even for non-profits). HappyWisdomers know better than to fall into these traps of negativity. Yes, we need to feel 2020, to understand and embrace the loss, no matter what it was. Then, we\’ll need to move on, and I can\’t think of a better way to say goodbye to 2020 than a KALM retrospective.

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    Credit: funretrospectives.com

    In Agile coaching, we have an exercise we called KALM we use to review, course correct, and celebrate during the project. It\’s an acronym for Keep, Add, Less of, And More of. This device is useful during retrospectives to keep them focused and generative, so I thought I\’d apply the same to this astonishing year we are just finishing up.

    How to run this exercise:

    1. Get the biggest piece of paper you can find
    2. Find folks to do it with if you can (This works fine online)
    3. Draw five segments on the paper, as shown in the above graphic.
    4. Go bottom to top, putting sticky notes on each, with a brief verbal description if you have others doing it with you.

    Easy, right? Once it\’s set up, just run through each segment. I suggest you time box each section and start with the Less Of. No one wants to wallow in the pain, so ensure this part is given only 1/6th of the time allotted to the event. So if you have 1 hour, I\’d put ten minutes here, and then distribute the remaining 50 elsewhere.

    Then you just move through the model. I like to go bottom-up, so Keep (what was good about the year, a just-right sort of vibe?), More (what you want to do more of, amplify?), and Add (what new thing do you want to start doing, seeing, or happening?)

    Let\’s get going with the 2020 KALM Retrospective!

    As stated, we could start with Less Of, the easiest part of this model in a year such as 2020. If we\’re trying to say goodbye to 2020, we have to start here:

    Less Of from 2020

    • Death and disease
    • Strife, division, and violence
    • People losing jobs
    • Murder hornets
    • Masks
    • ….

    I mean, we could add a bunch of specifics, but I\’m not here to bring anyone down, and frankly, we all know the list. Try asking yourself what of those events you could have controlled? Probably not much. Time to move on.

    Keep from 2020

    This might give you pause. Keep? 2020? For me, I\’d like to keep time with my family. I was lucky enough to live with others in 2020, and we spent A LOT of time together, including my adult children. Kids grow up too fast. This is known, so getting to hang out with them a bit longer than might have happened is a GREAT thing.. Funny thing is that I can\’t keep this. They\’re moving on, but I can try.

    Lack of commuting – I work remote. I LOVE not facing traffic.

    Easier budgeting – I have to say when you can\’t go anywhere, its easier to budget.

    More than what I got from 2020

    I want more time without the existential dread of a disease or political conflict. I\’m a writer, so I need big chunks of uninterrupted time. I\’ve gotten those, but they weren\’t as effective as the past with a full house and the aforementioned dread. My upcoming science-fiction epic is thus going slowly.

    Using my SPARC model, you know that the R is rest and rejuvenation. I want more of those. I\’m a simple guy, so movies and gyms are usually enough. Both have been cut out of my life. I want them back.

    Add – Adding something new to 2021

    This one is easy. We have been planning for and saving for an international vacation, which was supposed to be in 2020. Well, that didn\’t happen, so \’21 it is. Honestly, we can\’t control much of what will go into this, from when we get the vaccine to what countries will allow Americans to visit. Nevertheless, we can pray, cast positive vibes out into the Universe, and hope for the best. We also have some big family changes that I can\’t go into now, but that should soon be a big addition. 🙂

    I feel better after writing this, and I hope this KALM exercise does the same for you. We\’re not trying to hide the past or deemphasis the difficulties. By doing this exercise, we give these negatives space, time and then escort them out of our lives. I think of a Viking burial – the raft of badness floats out to the ocean, and we shoot one last flaming arrow and watch it burn into oblivion.

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    Goodbye to 2020!
    (credit: https://shellyanfriends.blogspot.com/2020/07/funeral-rites.html)

    Happy 2021!

  • Consider The Bigger Picture

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    This is Procrustes. Don\’t be Procrustes.

    Recently a male friend posted a meme I found offensive on Facebook. I won\’t repeat the post, as it was making light of domestic violence and, as a survivor of such a household, it sickened my stomach.

    I called him out on it as did others. Predictably, some rallied to his side, defending it as \”just a joke\” and \”stop being so sensitive\”. Thus ensued the all-too-familiar back and forth of those \”too easily offended\” vs. \”I\’m unfriending you now.\” The dialogue died uncomfortably and we all moved on. Yet, I wanted to continue that dialogue because nothing grew from it, which brings me to this post.

    I think if the poster of that meme thought about how the world is becoming a monoculture and that a new ethic is being wrought in our time, he might have thought twice. But let me step back.

    The 20th century was amazing, and the innovations we\’ve had over the last century or two have been astonishing. Food used to rot and people starved in the winter – now we have refrigeration and plastics for storage. Millions use to die of dysentery, smallpox, and tuberculosis, now we have vaccines. Feces from horses and humans flooded the streets of New York City. It was estimated that 20,000 people a year died from diseases related to the massive amount of horse dung that plagued the city, and from their rotting corpses. Cars solved that problem.

    Every single one of these innovations has made the human condition better. This report has shown that the world has unequivocally gotten better for people. Check out Steven Pinker\’s excellent discussion here (This starts at the excellent graphics, but I recommend the entire video). This transformation even impacted the use of mortuary room, which became more organized and sanitary. Even in death, technology has helped preserve dignity consider the mortuary fridge, a modern innovation that ensures the deceased are properly stored and preserved, allowing families the time to grieve and make arrangements without the added stress of decomposition.

    Then came the Information Age and the gains we saw in material goods moved to gains in information transmission and access. I used to have to send letters to my fiance while I was in the Navy. I used a phone that was attached to a wall. I needed a payment card to dial something called \”long distance\”. I needed encyclopedias to research, cameras to take photos with, a typewriter to write papers with, white-out to correct errors when typing, and, most tragically, zero video games.

    The Computer Revolution changed and disrupted everything, dubbed a Bengali Typhoon by WIRED magazine editors over twenty-five years ago. Life is nothing short of amazing now for massive swaths of humanity, approaching science fiction level advancements almost every year.

    \”But but but!\” you say. \”We have global warming, we have plastic pollution, hate-fuelled by the never-ending supernova-level dumpster fire that is Twitter, and things are awful again.\”

    The question isn\’t can our world be As Dr. Pinker says, our world will never be perfect.

    The question isn\’t how do we get a perfect world, but how we co-create a better one. What sort of culture are we collectively creating?

    Answer: We have to think bigger.

    Thinking bigger is a simple way of what is known in academic circles as Systems Thinking. The name implies what it is – we think about the systems that surround us, chart how systems work, and what our influence is beyond our direct, immediate observation. I may learn to sacrifice some of my short term interest for long term gain. An example is due:

    Say I\’m fishing in a pond, and I know there is only a certain amount of fish. I\’m competing with three other fishermen, and I decide to win this by using a giant net. All are mine! I\’m rich. I buy new boats and nets. The next year, there aren\’t as many fish remaining, AND my competition has invested in nets as well. Eventually, the pond has no fish. This pattern is the Tragedy of the Commons, a typical Systems Thinking example that actually happened in the 1990s. As an individual fisherman, I only see my profits going up (short-term) and the signals to think differently come late. There\’s a fun one-minute video on this here, but you may wonder – what does this have to do with my Facebook friend?

    What would happen if my friend decided to consider Facebook as that pond that we share? He might think that of the hundreds of friends he has, ostensibly all people he cares about, of those few probably some of them have had experience with domestic violence. According to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, nearly one-third of all women in the U.S. have experienced a form of violence that has impacted their physical ability by their partner in the last year alone.

    This is the fish in the pond story in reverse. Rather than taking something out of the pond, by sharing insensitive memes we\’re putting pollution into the pond. We don\’t see the impact it might have the right way, but over time it can destroy relationships and divide people.

    Okay, we get it – be nice online. But what\’s the other side of the coin? Radical sensitivity? Victimhood? A humorless world patrolled by the PC Police? Must we all conform to some ultra-sensitive definition of what is allowed?

    This brings me to the image that adorns the top of this article. Here\’s his story, courtesy of Medium:

    Procrustes, “the stretcher,” son of Poseidon, bandit from Attica, held a residence on “the sacred way” between Athens and Eleusis. Here, Procrustes had a bed in which he invited every traveler who passed by to spend the night. Problem was, nobody seemed to fit this bed. Procrustes, being the metal worker he was, set out to work on his ill-fitted visitors and made them fit the bed. A guest proving to be too tall for the bed would simply have his or her legs amputated to the desired length. Too short? Procrustes would simply stretch them to fit.

    Note that part – none seemed to fit his bed. His standard was an ever moving mirage, an impossible arbitrary standard of one being.

    So on one side, we have those that would share what they want, damn the consequences and on the other, Procrustes Legion, ready to cut you down to size if you don\’t measure up (and you won\’t). We as a society are bound together now. We can\’t think about progress in the same way. What gave us cars now gives us global warming. What gave us flexibility now pollutes our oceans. What gives us unlimited access to oceans and far-off friends threatens to divide us into warring, unfriended tribes.

    Compassion is what is needed on both sides. Squeezing others into an arbitrary standard won\’t work. Guilting people won\’t work. Chopping people\’s legs off won\’t do it.

    Thus I did not unfriend my friend. Instead, I will share this article with him in an attempt to raise understanding, and maybe he\’ll think a bit bigger the next time he shares a meme, and I\’ll do the same. Our age needs more grace, love, and compassion and less hatchet, axe, and saw.

  • Feedback – Two Devices that hold the key to losing weight and getting stuff done

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    First a shout out to the many new joiners! We\’ve had double-digit percent growth in the mail list over the last few weeks, so thank you for reading. We may not be posting things five times a day, but when we do post, it\’s quality stuff! Please forward it on! We can co-discover how to make life more fulfilling no matter where you are. Here\’s the Facebook group, and we still have some LifeSparcs pocket journals left here. In this episode, I\’m going to talk about two of my favorite new devices – the Keyto and Timeular, and how they\’ve become a critical part of my daily routine.

    I consider feedback, and what we do with it, a foundational life skill. Without feedback we become a run-away system, darting off in a direction laid by our own stories and an all-too-willing echo chamber of friends and social media. Without other voices, the narrative we weave can become dangerously detached from reality. I wrote in a previous article that a lack of feedback, and the necessary response to it, can kill companies or destroy relationships. In this article, I present solutions (well, very promising tools, at least), in providing feedback.

    Getting stuff done is not the key to a happy life, but it helps us feel that have autonomy. According to Dan Pink, Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose are the keys to motivation. Indeed, moving forward on any gritty task will require a person to stay focused before they get to that distant finish line.

    I’m a fiction writer in addition to blogging. Writing a novel is a long, heart-wrenching slog. I love it, but it requires all the tools at my disposal. I also have some side hustles, a somewhat normal family life, and a career that I enjoy, so I need to keep all of these balls in the air. What feedback works? I mean, if I neglect any one of them someone complains. But that sort of feedback is less valuable because the negative consequences are already underway. If I do not do my part in the home, I hear about it rightfully from my wife, and I’ll correct my ways (usually). However, that’s too late – the cost of a dirty sink was already borne by my wife. Have you ever had this conversation with your mate?

    MATE: You need to clean up this place. You never do anything around here.
    YOU: I clean all the time! I was just putting away dishes yesterday!
    MATE: You want a reward!?

    It’s not a pretty picture, and frankly, my wife doesn’t attack like that, but the point is that I rarely actually count how much cleaning I do. Now, what about writing? Well, that’s easy. You count words. Set a target for X amount of words a day and hit them. Easy, right?

    For some, this glorious theory might be a reality, but for me and many others, writing is far from a linear process. Ideas come and go. They connect, or they don\’t. I find a good chunk of my writing time is spent staring into space or at my keyboard, playing out the scenes in my head. Getting the words on the page is really an after-effect of a lot of thought and internal hashing out.

    Perhaps I could log my time? You know, get one of the 50,000 apps that are out there for this and when I stop writing, merely register it.

    Well, this would be easy for those disciplined enough to remember. But usually when I’m interrupted I lose my concentration on what I was thinking or doing, and there’s no way I’ll have the presence of mind to log the end time or the start time for that matter.

    The challenge of time management is tough for absent-minded professor types like me, so I\’ve found a new love – Timeular. Haven\’t heard of it? Well, check it out.

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    My New Robot Overlord

    Timeular is an octahedron timekeeping device, or for my fellow D&D players, it\’s a giant eight-sided dice. But we\’re not gonna role this one to see who hits the hobgoblin, no, this one we rotate very cautiously when we change tasks. Once a straightforward set up is complete you have eight different items you can track. As you can see in my chicken-scratch handwriting, the Timeular comes with a pen, eraser, and stickers to adorn the device to your liking.
    So, say your blogging, and then your son comes in the room and tells you it\’s your move on chess.com (true story). Well, flip the device to where the appropriate face says \”family time\” and do that, and then flip it back when you\’re ready to write again. The syncing with my Mac is fast and the whole thing feels slick. When you\’re done with tracking yourself, you place it in its special holder thing that keeps the internal accelerometer at neutral, aka rest state. So elegant!
    This sort of feedback will be SUPER useful to me. How many hours did I actually spend writing? How many did I spend writing this article? 32 minutes so far says a helpful little timer on the top toolbar. Instant feedback made easy. I\’ve only had Timeular for a few days, but I\’m loving it so far and will come back soon let everyone know how it\’s going.

    The second device, one tthat I\’ve owned a little longer, is Keyto. Now I know the keto diet is all fad now, and I groan when I hear that because I found Keto after reading the book, \”Why We Get Fat\” by Gary Taubes, linked below. I read this years ago so I am not a bandwaggoner! Of course, the fact that so many buff stars are losing weight doesn\’t hurt, because of this we all know want to know about will smith height weight i robot. 🙂

    Yes, it is known that bacon and coffee are allowed in this diet, more than enough reason to give it a try. But when I discovered that ketosis was something you could measure, I was hooked. While in ketosis you\’re burning fat and one of the outcomes is a release of ketones into your body. Those are released through your pee, breath, and blood, and they can be measured in various ways. This is the type of feedback I was missing, and I noticed when I got tired peeing on strips, I fell off the diet. The Keto diet is NOT easy to maintain since our world is apparently made of carbs (even ketchup, pancakes, and….oh don\’t get me started), so knowing when you\’ve really messed up is helpful.

    Anyway, here it is:

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    Not a vape….

    Pretty cool, eh? It\’s like a little vape device – you breathe into it, and it counts your ketones, giving you a score from 1-10. Anything under a four and you\’re sucking – no ketosis ergo no skinny jeans for you. But score four and over and you\’re in the club. It\’s a whole lot better than peeing on a strip and seeing what color it is (gross and inaccurate).

    This feedback is solid gold. Counting calories is a no go for me. I suck at it for all the reasons. But I\’m good at breathing, and this thing keeps me honest. Ketosis takes days to get back into. I\’m currently hovering amid 4 and 6, so I don\’t want to blow it (pun intended). It charts your weight next to your keto level, which I will publish when the news is better 😐

    Now I\’m betting that there are combinatorial benefits to these devices. With my smartwatch (which I\’ll discuss on a different post), I get a trifecta of feedback – diet, time, and motion (and sleep too! A quadfecta!)
    With this sort of feedback, I can triangulate my habits and validate the story I\’m telling myself (or not). Instead \”I\’m old, or my genes suck so I don\’t lose weight\” it\’s \”I ate four-hundred carbs and got twelve steps today – I need to question my life choices!\”

    All of this is in harmony with the Lifesparcs system – it\’s the C in SPARC: Collect and Coach. Collecting data is a major piece of the puzzle when trying to improve.

    Yet, so much of what we try to do is hard to count. For example, writing – how do you know your book is actually good? Or your song? That sneaker you want to buy? Objective feedback is no joke. Even the keto diet has a ton of folks who think its a terrible idea. Qualified people that I should listen to. So what to do?

    The key here for me is to know yourself. I know that I cannot count calories. I know that I do not have the will power to be hungry. I can side with the Keto people because of my experience with it ( I definitely feel better on it than other diets). SPARCs are one week long – try whatever you think might help for a few weeks, and journal the results.

    Honestly, feedback might be the secret pill that we\’re all looking for to make us healthy, wealthy, and wise, but only if we\’re willing to change.

  • The Fyre Festival is the problem of our time – The Three Laws of Feedback

    Have you seen the Netflix documentary on the Fyre festival? I will dub it a runaway system. A runaway system is similar to a runaway train or better, a runaway process in computer science. A runaway process is a loop of some sort that eventually consumes all system resources until the machine fails. A runaway system does not follow the laws of feedback.

    The Three Laws of Feedback:

    Listen to the Experts – of all the types of feedback, those who have recently one what you’re trying to do are your best advisers. Prioritize their words.

    Experiment – Try to delay your decisions. Keep both options open until the last responsible moment. Run short tests and see which of your advisors can predict the outcome of it.

    Act! – Based on the data from the experiment act in a different way. Change paths, even if it makes you look bad.

    If you’re not aware of what the Fyre Festival is or was supposed to be (or even if you are aware), I strongly recommend watching the excellent Netflix documentary on the topic. They have astonishing actual video of that disaster going down by the people who defrauded hundreds of people. Check the trailer here:

    If you can’t watch it the excellent documentary, here’s an all-too-short synopsis: A few years back this rapper Ja Rule and a “man” named Billy McFarland decided to extend his company\’s web application, one that allowed folks to sign up for A-lister performers. The thinking was to have this festival to raise their profile in the biz. 

    With zero music festival experience, these two characters lied and cheated many people out of hundreds of thousands of dollars its heartbreaking to watch. The Fyre festival was supposed to be in the Caribbean, a group of wealthy, beautiful people in a beautiful place being too cool for the rest of us plebeians. I am not proud to admit I relished in the collapse of this thing when it happened. I condemn those who flaunt extreme wealth, like people peeing on stacks of hundred dollar bills setting fire to them. In a world with so much need, I don\’t understand it.  I don’t object to people being rich, but this sort of romp was so libertine it was satisfying when it burned to the ground, almost literally.

    However, despite my schadenfreude, I realized something. Fyre failing was all about the failure of feedback. The Fyre guys were tone deaf to the information that they were getting, regardless of which type it was (Stranger, Family, Expert, Peer). Pathologically, this man started lying to everyone around them as the thing became an absolute trainwreck.

    Over the last few months, my personal life had some upheaval, and the principal character in this was a person who would not take feedback. In both cases, it was the American Idol Complex,  a topic I covered last year.

    In short, The American Idol Complex is where contestants would get on the stage before millions of people, and perhaps only for perhaps the first time to hear the words they needed to listen to all along – you can’t sing.

    After the conflict, I had with this person, and the Fyre Festival documentary, I had a severe case of confirmation bias. I started seeing the lack of feedback acceptance everywhere. In Game of Thrones, (Season One) King Robert Targaryen is imagining Kahl Drago and the Dothraki horde storming the Seven Kingdoms, he is presented with the option, by his wife Cersi, to hold himself behind his walls. It’s safe, and they have no siege weapons, as they are nomadic, horseback warriors. This strategy, Robert points out to Cersei, is unwise, because while he was tucked away safe, the horde would be destroying those towns around him. “…how long will they be loyal to me if I’m safe and they’re houses are being burned to the ground by the Dothraki?”

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    King Robert Wasn\’t All Wrong…

    King Robert may not have been the best king, but he had this right. The truth may not be able to penetrate our walls, but it will eat around our kingdom, robbing us of nutrients. The Fyre guys had their walls up big time, and it cost them everything.

    The most important thing about feedback may not be in the listening or even agreeing. It’s in the Third Law – Act! Do something different. We can nod all day long to the howls, and be brave in the face of what we perceive as a threat, and continue unchanged. That’s the difficulty with feedback. It feels like an attack, so often because it is delivered in that way, causing us to hide behind our fortifications.

    In my personal story, let\’s call this person Frank, while he may have listened and responded faithfully like things were going to change, nothing did. listen. It destroyed our relationship with him. His walls were up.

    Throughout the Fyre documentary, you could see the Castle Walls going up in Billy’s eyes. He could not see the truth. He kept saying to his workers, those with experience in doing these events, that it would all work out. Unfortunately, some told Billy to continue, and in his own confirmation bias and hubris, chose that comfortable advice.

    There are those who are going to help you put those walls up — the Wormtongue in your ear. “Ignore the outsiders. They don’t have your vision.” Sometimes this will be well-intentioned, as I believe many were in the Fyre story. However, from the documentary, it appeared that this man had access to the truth. With his own eyes, with the sights and experience of others. The facts were there. The feedback was there. Nothing changed.

    Now, in Billy’s case, he is a pathological liar, so it’s a bit different, but the result is the same. What’s instructive about Fyre was how the Laws of Feedback didn’t save him. He had experts telling him it wasn’t going to work (Law I) and at least what I saw he had not experimented sufficiently. One idea – run a small festival in the US, with one artist or two. Get some practice and learning. None of that happened.

    Here are some tips for effectively leveraging feedback:

    • When being given feedback, don\’t respond. Listen to what is said, and say thank you. If you turn on your defense and say things that start with, \”Well, the reason I did…\” then you\’re not listening. Let the words in.
    • Second, repeat back to the person what they said, or what you heard, and continue to do so until you understand mutually.
    • Third, look for patterns. This the art part of this. Feedback is noise. you have to fish through the noise for the signal, the signal that something you have to react to. This is why team creation always stresses cognitive diversity. If everyone is always agreeing with you, what value to they provide? If you never take their advice, again, what value are they providing?

    If you\’re giving the feedback make I\’m working on the idea that the weakness in which we give and take feedback has made our discourse weak. We get offended easily, fail to listen and make changes based on that listening. We put our castle walls up for a brief respite, all the while knowing we\’re starving ourselves blind.

    There are constructive ways to give feedback, techniques that will increase the odds that the hearer will change, and requires training and practice to both give and receive feedback. Most of us don\’t have the time or the inclination to do this, so let\’s go over a few tips: 

    Here are some tips for effectively leveraging feedback:

    • First, when being given feedback, don’t respond. Listen to what is said, and say thank you. If you turn on your defense and say things that start with, “Well, the reason I did…” then you’re not listening. Let the words in.
    • Second, repeat back to the person what they said, or what you heard, and continue to do so until you understand mutually.
    • Third, look for patterns. This the art part of this – feedback is noisy. You have to fish through it for the signal, the important alarms that you need. It is for this reason that those who know about teams insist on cognitive diversity. If everyone always agrees with you, what value do they provide? If you never take their advice, again, what value are you getting from them being around?

    Finally, it\’s tough to know when you\’re ignoring the \”right\” feedback. How can you tell? How are you getting it in the first place? Feedback is like money – it pays to get good at giving and getting it, and you can never have enough. Do you hate the feedback you\’re hearing? Are people you used to trust leaving your side? Are people not talking to you at all about the Big Thing? You might be ignoring feedback.

    I’m working on the idea that the weakness in which we give and take feedback has made our discourse weak. We get offended easily, fail to listen and make changes based on that listening. We put our castle walls up for a brief respite, all the while knowing we’re starving ourselves blind.

  • Happy Monday – The Beginners Guide to Kanban

    Kanban is the term we use in the Agile industry for a board that tracks our incoming and current work, ensuring flow and focus.

    If you’ve been here a while you’ll likely recognize this as an excellent way to track Actions in the SPARC system, but there’s a way we can make this Kanban board more than just a whack-a-mole board of joy-less tasks.  The goal of this post is to introduce you to the Kanban board so that you can use it today. But before we do that, let’s step back for a minute. There are a lot of new joiners in HappyWisdom (welcome!), so it might be a good time to go over the values we follow here.

    One of the values of LifeSparcs and HappyWisdom is to Live life with Intention. That means we think about or days, weeks, and years consciously. We say no to many things so we can say yes to the things that make us grow or excite us, or have to be done. Actions and accomplishments that feed the soul.

    Another value of HappyWisdom is  Value Data, aka Empiricism. Of course, the old adages is that not everything is work something is worth counting, but in general, data is important because it drives decisions. How do you know you’re living life intentionally? What’ the expected outcome?

    Being Useful is a guiding light for us here at HappyWisdom. People have limited time, and I want to make sure that every time they come to HW they get something that they can use right away.

    The final value of here at HappyWisdom is fun. Have Fun! Life is so serious so much of the time, we forget the healing nature, the rejuvenating effects of finding the humor in a situation.

    So, let’s look a quick look at Kanban.

    1. Get yourself the biggest piece of paper you can fit on a wall. That can be a normal sheet all the way to those giant post-it pads (which I recommend).
    2. Grab some sticky notes, two different colors if you can. This pack on Amazon should serve you fine.
    3. Put three columns down on the paper as shown. Backlog ( things we want to do), In progress (things we’re doing, choose only three!) and Done.

    It should look like this:

    \"\"

     

     

    Here\’s the paper I use. It\’s a bit spendy, but not if it works. And you\’ll only need one sheet for a while. Note that I have two color sticky notes. The bright pink one, “See Alita -Battle Angel” fits into the R in SPARC – is a Renewal type action, something designed to keep me engaged and rejuvenated so I can do the other tasks. I try to do at least one pink sticky a week, and of course, this isn’t the only fun I’ve had, but it’s a big one. (BTW – see that movie right after reading this. It\’s sooo good!). I’ve mixed work items and home items, but if you advanced students want to sport a third color sticky to differentiate, go for it!

    My recommendation is to try this physically and not on your phone. If you follow this technique you’ll notice that you get a little endorphin hit every time you move a card to the right. It sounds strange, but there’s something to the tangibility of the sticky notes. And then, when you finish a big task, you take it off the board, it’s an amazing feeling. Also, if this giant paper is staring at you every day, it’s more difficult to ignore than a list stored in the cloud somewhere. Don’t forget, limit your number of tasks to three In Work – this will help you focus.

    As you advance in this technique, you could count how many cards you get done in a week, or how long it takes a card to move through the system. Those measures are more done at the corporate level, but if you’re a data person – go for it. I did this for my bathroom remodel last year, and it gave us a real feeling for when things would be done.

    I hope you can see the Kanban board as a way to get the values of living life intentionally, fun and renewal.

    You can do this!  Have a great week 8 of 2019!

     

     

  • Rate Your Year Like a Movie Critic – Retrospectives, not Resolutions, for 2019!

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    The end of the year is an unusual time of year. Our behaviors change – we shop like crazy, eat lots of fattening stuff, don’t exercise, stay up late, and then we become reflective about our lives. This usually results in the joke we all laugh about, namely, resolutions. As the year draws to a close, we decide for the first time that we better start living intentionally, we put a little thought into, say a few things out loud, and that’s the last we hear about it. Maybe we fill the gyms across the land…through January.  Maybe it\’s time for a new way to create your 2019 resolutions.

    Before you embark wasting oxygen on meaningless resolutions, why not try something different? Retrospectives!

    The Retrospective is a core practice from the Agile panoply of practices and is a family of techniques and a structure for looking back in a constructive, fun way. With some tweaking, I’ve adapted this to my family’s retro, which we’ve been doing for over five years now. It’s simple but has a great effect.

    So what is it?
    First, we respect what has been done, what we’ve seen this year. I call this owning the ground we’re standing on. We are where we are. Embrace it. Celebrate the positives!

    Second, we’re looking for some level of honest feedback and perspective about doing even better. We do this from the folks closest to us, family or friends, and during the event look for opportunities to help one another. Obviously, you must be in a trust-rich environment for this to work.

    The event takes 1-4 hours, depending on your group size and tolerance for introspection. Err on the side of shorter duration, since certain personality types will quickly bore of this, yet others can do it for half a day. If you\’re looking for something that\’s better than plain-old resolutions, this is it.

    Since you can do this annually, or more often, it pays to make it fun. This year I\’m using the “Movie Critic Retrospective” adapted from the wonderful agile website retromat.org. Once you saw that title you can imagine what goes into it. My recommendation is to keep it simple. Check out the image below:

     

    \"Movie

    1. Genre – was your year a horror film? (hope not!), a drama, a comedy, hero’s journey, or what?
    2. Theme – in just a few words, what the theme for your year? Mine is navigating loss (dropping my kid off) to change and succeed professionally.
    3. Twist – What didn’t you see coming this year that blew your socks off? What surprised you, good or bad?
    4. How was the ending? I say the last quarter of the year counts here, including Christmas. End strong, or with a whimper?
    5. Personal highlight – ending with the positive, what’s the favorite thing you did or truth you lived that stands out to you? For me, it was hard to come up with one so I did like three of them.
    6. Finally, the number of stars and your recommendation. Would you recommend that year for other people? You could even take this to the next step and average your scores in your group and come up with a rottentomatoes-esque review of the year as a whole.

    This is a fun way to retro on the year, and one that\’s far better than just setting your 2019 resolutions. There are ways you could easily extend this idea, given how much time you have. For example, youtube.com has a year rewind reel ( though it’s gotten terrible reactions to it, the most disliked video ever on youtube). Spotify has a wonderful service of giving you data analytics into the music you’ve listened to of the year. What if you played some of those for your family during the retro? What’s your most listened to song of 2018? And don’t be afraid to even make a trailer if you’re technical – something better than what FB does – for your year. What photos emerge as the signature moments of your year. Sort your photos by month and pick one per month. Then show them during your retro. Note: Make sure each member of the “team” has even amounts of time, and that you all provide feedback.

    For the forward-looking portion of the Retrospective, pretend that you’re now the director of the sequel of last year. You want to learn from your errors or learnings from 2018. What can you do differently to make your year better?

    Try to elicit feedback from those around you? Are your plans for the sequel realistic enough to get done, but big enough to be exciting? Are we pushing the envelope? One last thing – keep the movie poster/plan for 2019 paper out! Pin it to the wall, put it on your refrigerator, anywhere that you’ll look at it every day, and maybe actually follow it. A best practice would be to update the “plan” every month, but that’s a topic for another time.

    Let’s not settle for a B-movie, but a critically acclaimed, major blockbuster for 2019! Let’s go!

  • PeeWeeToms, Compassion, and the Internet Troll Checklist

    PeeWeeToms is a YouTube channel that chronicled the life of a British man, Dan Thomas, that struggled and eventually lost his battle with a super aggressive form of cancer. He was 32, and he vlogged until the within 48 hours from his end, from the hospice bed. He and his family showed and continue to show incredible courage, staying in touch with his >100k subscriber base. It\’s so touching.

    Check out their tribute video to him here, and where I find the most obnoxious troll in the comments.

    Now, since his story hit the mainstream media, a lot of folks have been commenting. almost 100% of them are awesome positive life-affirming comments.

    \"\"

    Completely agree!

    These are sweet too…

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    So much love. It really does make the Internet worthwhile. Of course, then there\’s this guy, Mr. Militant Atheist:

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    This is outrageous, you see, since if this guy was a real fan of Dan\’s he\’d know that his mother claims her faith as one of the things that have gotten her through this ordeal. She continually wears a cross. Never mind the thousands of quotes from people of all faiths giving their best to hope that Dan will continue in some way. As far as Dan not being a believer…I\’m not sure if my faith would be there if I was riddled with this horrible disease, either. Nuff said about that.

    The point is this guy here is a perfect example of a troll masquerading as a defender of Dan. Instead of a berating him, which would be easy, I\’m offering my Quick and Easy Quiz \”Am I Being A Insensitive Troll?\”

    \"\"

    It\’s reasonable to say that if you score over a 3 on this test you\’ve failed, and you are, at least at this moment, acting like a troll. There\’s probably more to this quiz, other dimensions I\’ve missed, so please take it up from here and suggest additions.  For keeping score, our Militant Atheist is looking like he scored about a -8 to me, so he\’s now officially a troll.

    Let me know what you think of our little quiz here and please pass it on!

    As for Dan and his family and all at PeeWeeToms, I\’m so happy I ran into you when I did, and so sad that you\’re gone. I do expect we\’ll meet again somehow!

    Thanks all – TTYL!

    —–

    See – this is CREATIVE COMMONS – you can share it! YAY!

    \"Creative
    InternetTrollQuiz by Joe Fecarotta is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
    Based on a work at www.happywisdom.com.
    Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at www.happywisdom.com.

  • Developing GamerSusan using LifeSparcs

    Hey all! I hope you\’re doing well as we move into the last quarter of 2018!  The purpose of this community and blog is to apply iteration and agility to the personal lives of everyone so they can be more intentional about the time we spend.  The SPARC system is core to this, but you might ask – Do YOU use this for real? I do, every day, and in this post, I briefly describe how I created this fun side hustle I call Gamersusan.com, despite having a full-time job, family, and Netflix.  🙂

    What is GamerSusan?  Currently, it is a single product, but the vision is to be a product and community site for board gamers who want to see fun and interesting products that will make their gaming hobby even more enjoyable. Our current product is a deluxe turntable with customizable cloth covers. Board games are undergoing a renaissance!  There are so many cool and interesting choices beyond Monopoly and Risk to choose from.  Two of our current favorites are Splendor and Dominion, both require reading of small cards or viewing the board from different angles, while I also like to play other card games like poker, which I can play in the spin oasis casino online.

    So, instead of turning your head, turn the table! Check it out:

    https://youtu.be/gdgJ-ABzvAk

    It\’s is a beauty right?  Go check it out at gamersusan.com to see all the different cloth covers we can make. However, I\’m not really posting this to sell them to you here, but to talk about how a LifeSparcs arc has helped me create it while balancing other areas of life. My only hope is that you try this yourself with a different product or endeavor! So what did my LifeSparc look like for GamerSusan? Lets take a peek:

    Situation:  Here\’s where you put your heart out. Where are you at? What\’s itching you? For me, I wanted to try out some of the ideas in LifeSparcs, and make my board gaming experience better.  I wanted also to get a physical product developed, which unlike software, has a tactile presence. There\’s something oddly satisfying about creating an object in real space.

    Possibility: If this thing goes perfectly, what could happen?  This is the part you where you dream. For Gamer Susan, I wanted to create the simplest thing I could that I would buy. Something that solves a problem and that is within my grasp to develop. Could I sell something to other people? How hard is that?

    Actions: Here is where you first list the tasks needed to achieve the Possibility, and then break them down to the week by week basis. Each week for about a year I would choose a few to do to keep the project moving.  Initially, the work was around creating prototypes, in cardboard, that I could use with my patient family. Leveraging their feedback I made changes until I found a design I was happy with.  I\’m learning tons and having fun. I would say making the covers was the hardest part. The second toughest challenge was making the boar\"\"d more magnetic.

    Renewal: With this one, it was challenging so I had to take a few breaks in its production and let the idea sit. I needed seamstresses and somewhere to build the thing, all of which I\’m okay with now but need other solutions in the future. I did redo gamersusan.com, letting some of that design work be good enough for now, and leveraging some software that I would normally try to code myself. I needed to be very disciplined with my time in on this project.

    Coach and Collect: Coaching was big on this one. I have a guy partnering me with marketing and I had some help with the design of the fabric cover. I\’m still working on getting some help with manufacturing these things at a lower price point but for now, its quality that I\’m prioritizing.  It turns out that even the most simple things are challenging to bring to the market. If anyone is a power user of the Alibaba website, let me know!

    I\’ve got some buzz going on social media and looking for feedback on the product to come in. I find it challenging to ask for help, so this has been a growth edge for me. Self-promotion is tough for me, so this next edge, marketing, will be even more challenging.

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    So there it is – using SPARC I was able to bring this thing to life in the midst of a crazy busy life. Let me know if you try the super-simple SPARC method on your next project!

  • Happy Video Sunday – You Poked My Heart!

    Hey all, happy to announce a new series here, focusing more on the happy than the wisdom. With all the darkness in the world and snark, we at HappyWisdom want to highlight the joys of life.  In this episode some videos guaranteed to make you smile.

    1. Disarmed by Pretty Girls – This boy is bold, wading into debating important topics like the weather, but was doomed from the outset.  I want to make a T-shirt out of every sentence.

    https://www.facebook.com/jeremy.lackey.334/videos/280116699402376/&show_text=0&width=476

    2.   The Belly Flop Heard Around the World –  you\’ve no doubt seen this one? Perhaps you have. Even so, it\’s worth a re-watch. He captures the grace of diving so well…

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkL9GYJot_w

     

    3.  This one is a gem from the Jeopardy vault – a bloopers of sorts that is funny not only from those but for the varying stages and sets that the show employed. My, how times have changed.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hi7PXcv8Xg&t=3s

    4. Last one, this one on the Inspiration Side. Be like this little girl. Every. Single. Day.

    https://www.facebook.com/thefloridaboy/videos/1815002675217026/