Author Archives: David Truss

If I never fail…

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I’ve written a lot about failure. Just click the ‘failure‘ tag under this post and you’ll see my most recent thoughts (including this one).

But today I actually share the words of someone else. I saw a video clip of Adam Grant on LinkedIn, where he said the following:

If I never fail, it means I’m not challenging myself. I actually set a goal that I would start at least one project every year that didn’t succeed. And let’s be clear, I’m not aiming for failure. What I’m doing is creating an acceptable zone of failure to know that’s going to motivate some risk-taking and some experimentation and hopefully some growth. If you succeed on 90% of your projects, that should be a hugely successful year. If you succeed on 100%, I think you’re aiming too low.

Brilliant!

This is what I said in a post a few years back, about how even ‘A’ students should have tried at least one epic thing and failed:

Every student will encounter failures later in life, ‘in the real world’, so if we don’t challenge them in school, we have not given them the tools to face adversity later on. The question we have to ask ourselves is, “Are we challenging students enough, so that they are maximizing their learning opportunities?” 

Two sides of the same coin. But I like Adam’s framing of it a lot better than mine. I prefer to think of it as failure brings growth and inspires new experimentation rather than failure prepares you to face even greater failure in the future.

Creativity struggle

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The one place in my life right now that I seem to be struggling is with being creative. I can find time for everything I need to do… except when I want to do something creative. This includes writing. It doesn’t seem to be about time, it seems to be more about focus.

I can put my head down and get to work. I can push myself on the treadmill or exercise bike. I’m struggling a bit to work out hard for strength exercises, but I still do them. I’m home a good amount of time now after a lot of late nights at work to start the school year, and I have been sticking to my routines that I’ve created.

But I can’t seem to focus on listening to books or podcasts. I can’t sit and start any creative tasks, and I find myself easily distracted any time I have down time. Normally blog post ideas come at me and I throw them into a note on my phone, or I see something interesting and my mind starts making connections to new ideas. Normally, but not right now. Now I’m in a bit of a creative slump. I’ll keep my routines that are working. I’ll try to get more sleep, since I tend to not get enough, and I won’t try to add anything new to my plate. I think I’ve got enough going on.

The one thing that seems to be working well right now is a new meditation app called Balance. So I’ll continue to meditate, exercise, and of course write something daily, all while being grateful for the things going well right now. I don’t know what to do differently to spark my creative juices, so I won’t stir things up, I’ll just be patient. It’s hard to come up with creative ways to be more creative when you aren’t feeling creative.

Do not go quietly

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16 years ago, January 28, 2008, I shared a presentation I did in with some SFU student teachers. Here is a clunky version on Slideshare. Here is the post I wrote about it. And here is the video I made out of it for a presentation at BLC 08 in Boston.

Do not go quietly into your classroom! 

The video had close to 100,000 views on BlipTV, which died in 2011… like many of the place I shared that you could find me online at the start of the video. A lot of those links are dead now. But this slideshow and video were pivotal in sharing my transformation as an educator who empowered students with technology. I remember the hours I put into timing the slides with the music, and the the relief of finally thinking it was good enough to share.

A day or two before the original presentation to student teachers, I found out I was going to become a Vice Principal. I was inspired to share the things I’d learned and started another blog, “Practic-All – Pragmatic tools and ideas for the classroom.” Where I shared a weekly series called Dave’s Digital Magic. It only lasted for 19 posts, but it was my way to stay plugged into what was going on in classrooms and to have good learning conversations with some of my staff.

So hard to believe this was 16 years ago… And I’m still exploring the Brave New World Wide Web and sharing what I learn along the way.

Conversational AI interface

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A future where we have conversations with an AI in order to have it do tasks for us is closer than you might think. Watch this clip, (full video here):

Imagine starting you day by asking an AI ‘assistant’, “What are the emails I need to look at today?” Then saying something like, “Respond to the first 2 for me, and draft an answer for the 3rd one for me to approve. And remind me what meetings I have today.” All while on the treadmill, or while shaving or even showering.

The AI calculates your calories used on your treadmill, and tracks what you eat, and even gives suggestions like, “You might want to add some protein to your meal, may I suggest eggs, you also have some tuna in the pantry, or a protein shake if you don’t want to make anything.”

Later you have the ever-present the AI in the room with you during a meeting and afterwards request of it, “Send us all a message with a summary of what we discussed, and include a ‘To Do’ list for each of us.”

Sitting for too long at work? The AI could suggest standing up, or using the stairs instead of the elevator. Hungry? Maybe your AI assistant recommends a snack because it read your sugar levels off of your watch’s health monitor, and it does this just as you are starting to feel hungry.

It could even remind you to call your mom, or do something kind for someone you love… and do so in a way that helps you feel good about it, not like it’s nagging you.

All this and a lot more without looking at a screen, or typing information into a laptop. This won’t be ready by the end of 2024, but it’s closer to 2024 than it is to 2030. This kind of futuristic engagement with a conversational AI is really just around the corner. And those ready to embrace it are really going to leave those who don’t behind, much like someone insisting on horse travel in an era of automobiles. Are you ready for the next level of AI?

More bubble wrap

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Back in 2009, while living in Dalian, China, I wrote ‘Bubble Wrap‘ about how overly protected we are in the West compared to other places in the world. Here is the first half of the post:

“After a month in China, I’ve come to realize that North Americans live in a bubble wrapped world.
In the ‘Western’ world we walk around oblivious to our surroundings, going about our business feeling safe and secure. I don’t mean safe in the sense of being cautious of others, since in actual fact, I have always felt safe in China (other than in the occasional taxi), and in fact Dalian feels safer than downtown Vancouver or Toronto when I’m out late at night.  I mean safe, in the West, in the sense that there are laws and bylaws and rules in place to make sure that we are ‘protected’ from unexpected harm: Guardrails and warning sign and lit-up crosswalks with pedestrian controlled lighting abound.
In the bubble wrap West we occasionally read or hear about someone who slips right next to a ‘wet floor’ sign or trips on an uneven curb and they end up blaming and suing others: “It wasn’t safe”, “It was faulty”, “The step was too high” or “The railing was too low”. Our day-to-day environment is safe, secure, sheltered… and sterile.
In China, things are different. Pedestrian walkways are a suggested crossing location and give no rights to the pedestrian. White and yellow lines on the roads are mere suggestions for where a pedestrian should stand as cars zip by at speeds up to 60km/hr, the occasional horn blast reminds you not to make any unexpected moves.
Here, doorways have immediate steps going up or down as you cross the threshold. You must walk with your eyes on the curb as a missing tile, or a sudden step may appear, unexpected by Western terms but fully expected here.”

Since then, I think things have gotten worse rather than better when it comes to safety. Case in point, the ban on cell phones in schools that has happened in other provinces and is about to happen in British Columbia. I can understand that they are a distraction, and I have no problem with schools or teachers having policies about using them appropriately and at appropriate times. But when one of the issues being discussed is student protection, a ban is not the answer.

As quoted in the Premier’s announcement:

“Today, kids live with different challenges than they did a generation ago, and they face them all in the palm of their hand,” said Premier David Eby. “While cellphones, the internet and social media help us connect with each other, they also present risks that can harm kids. The impact and influence of these tools is so great, and the corporations so powerful, it can be overwhelming for parents. That’s why we are taking action to protect kids from the threats posed by online predators and the impacts of social media companies.”

This reminds me of the filtering of websites, which I also was quite opposed to, (beyond porn and gambling as easy examples of things that should not be in schools, as compared to social media and web tools that were being blocked at the time). How do we help teach things like appropriate use when use isn’t allowed? Both my posts that I link to relate to issues at school, but here is another, totally unrelated and quite humorous example:

Last night I went to a washroom in a hotel in downtown Vancouver and saw this sign above a urinal.

Seriously?

We need a sign above a urinal… one that flushes with the water running along the walls of the basin we pee in… to remind us not to drink it. Oh, and not only because that’s not a smart or normal thing to do, but because the water is ‘non potable’?!?

Silly warnings, silly bans, silly attempts to bubble wrap the world.

No matter where you go, there you are

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It’s one of the most common proverbs I hear,

“No matter where you go, there you are.”

And I don’t like it.

It is not just about location, it’s also about our habits and our identity. The most striking example of this was shared by my grandfather decades ago. When my grandmother told him that a person they knew died, my grandfather said, “He was a jackass!”

My grandmother protested, “Leon, don’t talk about the dead like that?”

And my grandfather replied, “Why, you think death would change him? If he was such a jackass when he was alive, you don’t think he’d be a jackass when he’s dead?” I could always count on my grandfather to ‘tell it like it is’, he was a wonderful, wise man that I learned so much from. He was also practical and honest, and called things as he saw them.

I’ve met some people that have made some incredible transformations in their lives. They’ve met adversity head on, they have been reflective and grown, they have ‘changed their tune’. But most people are almost the same people they were years ago… A little older, a little wiser, but still the same. That’s not a bad thing, it’s hard spending your life being a significantly better person, being a new person with new habits and different aspirations. We just need to grow incrementally, seek small improvements.

The hardest part is managing expectations: Expectations of ourselves and expectations of others. These are not exclusive. The expectations of others very often drive our expectations of ourselves. When someone tells you that you aren’t doing a good enough job, or that you need to try harder in a relationship, or that you need to be better at something, anything… it directly affects our own expectations of ourselves. We can often feel disappointed not because we thought we needed to change or be better, but because someone else does.

Then we try to get better, but the person has already decided that we are who we are, (no matter where we go, there we are), and so even if we hit the targets they wanted, change our habits, they still see us as they did before. Meeting the other person’s expectation doesn’t always just make them see you in a better light, but it is seen as a one-off, something unusual. And this rather cold reflection of others to what you think was a really positive change makes you less likely to repeat what was changed. In other words, their expectation of you being who you are yesterday reflects more on you than the person you are today.

I think that’s why I dislike this proverb. It’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s not about growth, it’s not about getting better, it’s about being stuck in a metaphorical place. And you are stuck there more from the expectations of others than of yourself. I guess what I’m trying to say is, ‘If you are going to believe that no matter where you go, there you are, then you are surely not going anywhere else.’

The world is our oyster, but for many they only see a closed shell. We need to open up if we want to find any pearls. And we are more likely to do so if we worry more about our own expectations and less about others.

 

Bad choices

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We all make bad choices. The collective ‘we’ do so in so many categories: Food, exercise, sleep, relationships, procrastination, gaming, social media, alcohol & drugs, even hygiene… Did you know that flossing your teeth can increase life expectancy?

The operative word in ‘bad choice’ is choice. Choice suggests that we have power, we have control, and we can make other choices. That’s easier said than done. It’s easy to skip a workout, to buy a fast food meal, to distract yourself with attention seeking media, and avoid doing something harder, even if it’s better for you.

For me, that’s where my healthy living calendar comes in handy. I can see my progress, and I can see when I’ve made a mistake. I can see the bad habit repeating itself… and I can actually stop it. I’ve missed two daily mediations so far this year. I’ve chosen to take just 2 days off from working out so far (which is still an average of more than 6 days a week). I’ve written every day. I don’t lie to my calendar, and my calendar doesn’t lie to me.

But I have other goals, other good habits that I want to implement, and a few bad habits I want to reduce. I’ve put the dental floss in front of my toothbrush, so I actually have to move it to brush my teeth, but I still don’t floss regularly. I’ve put a mid-week 30 minute time limit on TikTok… my version of watching TV, but I’ll often end up distracted watching similar videos on other platforms. Easy entertainment and also an easy distraction from some of the other things I want to do.

I still make some bad choices. I still distract myself with everything from watching videos to work emails. I still stay up way too late and still get up early to start my routine. I’m writing this late at night, past my bedtime goal. Like I wrote yesterday, the impediment becomes the way. But when I wrote that I made it sound like I had my shit together… I really got the point of the book, and I was living by the quote, “It’s easier to act your way into a new way of thinking, than think your way into a new way of acting.”

However, while it’s easier to act your way, rather than think your way, into doing better things, it’s also easier to embrace the impediment: To live in the status quo and continue to make bad choices. I’m not beating myself up about it, I’m just admitting that it’s hard to change, it’s hard to make good choices when the bad ones are so easy and even attractive. Still, I’m winning a lot of battles. I write every day. I exercise and meditate almost every day. I feel fit, healthy, and even happy. Yeah, I’m still going to make some bad choices, I’m just not going to make really bad choices, and I’m not going to let the bad choices define me. The good things I’m doing are pretty good, and pretty good is a pretty good place to be.

The impediment becomes the way

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I’m re-listening to Gary John Bishop’s book, ‘Unfu*k Yourself: Get Out of Your Head and Into Your Life’, which has a very stoic approach. One quote that speaks to me from the book is from Marcus Aurelius:

“The impediment to action advances action.
What stands in the way becomes the way.”

On a positive note, the obstacles to learning can become the impetus to new learning, like this example from a student at Inquiry Hub… where a roadblock to continuing a project led to new, creative approaches and learning.

But often the impediment or obstacle becomes the block to new learning, or new approaches, or different, better ways of doing things. The impediment becomes the way, it becomes what you do, or rather what you do to avoid change, or worse yet what you use to define yourself. “I can’t” becomes the mantra, the limiting thought that makes not changing, not improving easier than doing what’s best. “I’m too tired, too lazy, too fat, too stubborn, too ‘insert-excuse-here’ to change. You continue to do what you did before, or you try something new, but decide that what you are already doing is either easier or more comfortable than the thing you had hoped to do. What stands in the way becomes the way. Inaction becomes the action.

This reminds me of one of my favourite quotes, attributed to Jerry Sternin, but I read it in ‘Surfing the Edge of Chaos‘.

“It’s easier to act your way into a new way of thinking,
than think your way into a new way of acting.”

We often convince ourselves of things we should not do, we talk ourselves out of trying new things, and we limit ourselves by thinking something is too hard… we think our way out of acting differently. The reality is that we are quite good at that. Our thoughts themselves become the impediment. The trick to overcoming this is to act… to actually start doing regardless of the thinking. Start small. Start really, really small but start to ‘do’ the thing we want to do. We are far more likely to achieve our goals if we act our way into doing them rather than trying to convince ourselves that we can do them.

Our thoughts can impede us, or our actions can push our thoughts forwards so that the thoughts (eventually) follow our actions.

“It’s easier to act your way into a new way of thinking,
than think your way into a new way of acting.”

Otherwise, the impediment to action advances (non) action.  Start small… but start now.

Dead links

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I started my Daily-Ink blog in China in September 2010, but this name and site came a little later than the original blog. Originally it was created using a blogging platform called Posterous, which you could use via mail. Simply send an email to your personal blog address and it automatically added any pictures, links to videos, and your writing to a post with the email Subject as the title of the blog. Living in a country with a very challenging filter wall, this was a simple way to get a small blog post out without actually having to access a blog or having to upload pictures etc. It was a great tool. But then it died and I just started using WordPress, like I do now. However, I guess I didn’t follow the process to preserve my data and now all the links for images and videos are dead. So this is what my May 2010 archive page looks like.

But it’s not just my blog that’s the issue, it’s the blogs of others as well. The first post seen above, ‘Memorize This’ has links to two other bloggers, Joe Bower and Will Richardson. The link to Joe’s blog just goes to a “HTTP Status: 404 (not found)” page. However the link to Will’s page goes to this:

That is NOT the Will Richardson post I was looking for! I did a search on his updated blog location and found the post, “Is it Really Learning?“. I also went to my post and changed it there so I no longer link to this web-address stealing essay site, instead I link to the correct and intended post.

But realistically, I’m not going to go through my entire blog to do this. Even if I did, I’d probably spend more time trying to replace my own work, and not links to other sites. Because as I shared in my “Goodbye Posterous” post 11 years ago, “I decided to move my little-used Posterous site to this [‘Daily-Ink’] address, as a place to easily upload photos of what I thought would be a daily hand-written journal“, and the only record I seem to have of any of my journal writing is the screen shot I took of my first hand-written daily-ink for that post.

And while I’d love to recover all of these hand-written posts and the videos and pictures that I shared of ‘TIC’ – This is China moments, the reality is that most of them are gone forever.

And that makes me wonder, where will all this go in 20 years? In 50 years? I know I can find my original Pair-a-Dimes blog on the Internet Archive… is that where this blog and my current Pair-a-Dimes blog are destined to go? I guess so. I’ve paid for DavidTruss.com for another decade, but I haven’t paid the web host for that long. How long until this is just a series of dead links? I really haven’t given it too much thought, I just know that for now I plan to keep writing, keep sharing, and keep my links alive a little longer.

The power of protein

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I’ve listened to a few people like Dr. Peter Attia and Dr. Rhonda Patrick, who are both looking at the recommended daily allowance of protein (for healthy people) and questioning it. In this video they discuss, “The longevity benefits of proper protein intake and strength training.

I already start my mornings with a protein shake, but now I’m looking at ways to increase my protein even more. There are risks around eating things like too much red meat, and after watching ‘The Game Changers‘ on Netflix, I could see myself moving to a vegetarian diet at some point (not too soon, I just love animal meat too much).

But for now I’ll blend my intake of protein between meat and vegetables… and I’ll increase how much of it is part of my diet. I remember when I did 6 weeks of the Keto diet. My body loved it, but my social life didn’t. It’s too restrictive, but I do recall just how good I felt when I was consuming a lot more protein than I do now.

I also loved the book, ‘Younger Next year‘, and I’ve shared it and suggested it to more people than any other book in the last few years. The reality is that I may be 56, but I’m not done building muscle. I’m on a path where at least 5 days a week I will work a minimum of one muscle group to fatigue and remind my body that it’s not going down hill and degenerating. Instead, I’m giving my body the message that it is still young and growing. And what I also need to do is give it enough protein to keep my body healthy… and that’s more protein than I currently eat.

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*I am not a doctor and I don’t play one on the internet.
This is my plan and please do your own research and
consult your own doctor about diet changes…
especially if you are not already healthy!