Monthly Archives: November 2019

Update on routines

This has been my healthiest year in about 20 years. I’m physically fit, with better definition than I’ve had in about 15 years, my cardio is great, and I’m hovering around my weight during my university years – 30 years ago. (I was close to 25 pounds heavier just 18 months ago).

Beyond that, I’ve meditated at least 10 minutes daily, I’ve averaged more than 4 workouts weekly, and I’ve listened to about 20 audio books since the start of the year. One of my goals this year was to read or write for at least 30 minutes daily. I was doing alright with this goal, mostly listening to books while working out, and on commutes. Since July I’ve been blogging daily, and I’ve really loved doing this.

I shared how I’v made daily blogging easy, but I have a few updates that I think can help others. I shared this quote in my post, ‘Why blog daily‘:

“For years, I’ve been explaining to people that daily blogging is an extraordinarily useful habit. Even if no one reads your blog, the act of writing it is clarifying, motivating and (eventually) fun.“ ~Seth Godin

For me daily blogging is a powerful learning tool. I get to reflect on my learning and on life. And I enjoy the process of being creative, rather than passively watching TV or sports.

Here are a few things that have made this sustainable for me:

1. I have a great home gym. Many people spend as much time commuting to and from a gym in a week as I spend working out for 4-5 days.

2. I seldom do more than 20 minutes of cardio. 5 minute warm up, 10 minutes hard, 5 minute warm down. I know a lot of people that will do at least 45 minutes on a treadmill. As I age, I want to keep my cardio up and also protect my joints from over-exertion. My workouts are about 1/2 to 1/3 the time of others, if you include my lack of a commute to the gym.

3. Voice to text memos. Inspiration hits me at odd moments. In 20 seconds I can record a blog post idea on my iPhone by telling Siri to make a note. Example: ‘Make a note’, ‘What do you want it to say?’, ‘Update on routines with ideas like voice to text and using Pixabay.’

4. Pixabay for amazing royalty and attribution free images. I used to use memes for images to go with my blog, and sometimes still do, but finding a good (and appropriate) one became too slow. I find great images to go with my blog very quickly on Pixabay.

5. I get most or all of my blog posts done before bed. I am enjoying writing a lot, and I’m taking longer to write, but my morning time is fixed, and unlike today, a Saturday afternoon, all my posts are scheduled between 6:30 and 8:30 am – still playing with a ‘best time’. Basically the schedule means I’m done blogging before work starts. Other than 20 seconds of inspiration as described in #3 above, my blogging and exercise are completely done between 6pm and 6am. Having clear parameters is important.

6. I don’t waste my time with TV or sports. I mentioned this already, but I know many people that spend more time on entertainment during the work week than I spend on exercise, meditation, blogging, and social media in a full week.

7. I monitor my social media time. My blog auto posts to Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, and when I go to these tools, I am looking to learn and converse with my digital friends and colleagues. I don’t really spend a lot of time surfing, and I use the Apple Screen Time monitor to keep me honest.

8. I’ve temporarily given up archery. I started this hobby a few years ago, but one session is a minimum of an hour and a half including my commute. I’ll get back into it, but for now, my other goals are a priority and you can’t always do everything you want to do.

That’s my update. Basically, blogging, audio books, and working out are entertainment for me. I enjoy this time, and I prioritize my personal time to make them work. I hope that whatever you prioritize, you make time for as well!

A conversation about culture

I had a great conversation last night with colleagues, Principals and Vice Principals, at our Professional Development Dinner. We broke into table groups based on the books we had read, or in my case listened to. Culture Code is a great book, and one that I listened to while on my treadmill this summer. I really enjoy audio books but this is one that I wish I had a hard copy of. It is filled with gems of ideas, but I didn’t bookmark them and it is too hard to go back in an audio book to find specific sections unless they were bookmarked.

Luckily for me, the book was just a launching point to a great conversation. I tried to summarize some key ideas at the end of the talk and this was what I came up with. I’ll start with a quote Bryan shared with us, (I’m not sure of the source):

“You have to belong to a place before you can transform it.”

We talked about the challenge of coming into a place as a new leader and how people need to feel safe before they are willing to trust and work with you. Until you build a relationship it is challenging to meaningfully lead and offer up your strengths. We also discussed 5 other ideas that we thought were really important:
  1. Agency – We all want to have agency and feel empowered. If we don’t help to give others agency, they won’t feel valued.
  2. Listen! Be present – Give people your full attention. This is especially important when someone comes to you with something that is urgent to them, even if you don’t think it is urgent.
  3. Listen! Rather than solve – Don’t try to fix or share a similar example. Coming from a teacher background, we all want to help fix the situation, we all have experiences that are relatable, but we should start by truly listening and recognizing that it is better to be heard than to be related to. 
  4. Show vulnerability (as a colleague and a leader). Be willing to say ’sorry’ and to let your staff know that you don’t know everything. 
  5. Willingness to go to the hard places. It’s not enough to gloss over things and hope they go away, or to make decisions because they are popular. 
 
Final thoughts:
Culture doesn’t develop on its own, and if it does, it’s probably not the culture you want. Building a good culture can be a slow process and yet destroying a good culture can happen very quickly. We had a great conversation at our table and I am glad that I work with an amazing group of leaders who have made these kinds of conversations part of our learning culture.
learn-by-gerait-on-pixabay

Learning on the job, for the job

I’ve been a fan of Tim O’Reilly ever since I heard his “Create More Value than You Capture” talk he gave at Stanford:

When a colleague suggested his new book, WTF? What’s the Future and Why it’s Up to Us, I knew I had to get it on Audible.

This quote from the book really got me thinking:

“A lot of companies complain that they can’t hire enough people with the
skills they need. This is lazy thinking. Graham Weston, the cofounder and
chairman of managed hosting and cloud computing company Rackspace, based
in San Antonio, Texas, proudly showed me Open Cloud Academy, the
vocational school his company founded to create the workforce he needs to hire.
He told me that Rackspace hires about half of the graduates; the rest go to work
in other Internet businesses.” ~ Tim O’Reilly, WTF – What the Future

This goes well with two other quotes:

The only thing worse than training your employees and having them leave is not training them and having them stay. ~ Henry Ford

And,

Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don’t want to. ~ Sir Richard Branson

When I think of Tim O’Reilly’s book and his catch phrase, “Create more value than you capture”, one of the ideas here is that there is social capital that you can capture by creating a workforce that is going to help you, not just because of the money, but because they want to. Yes, good and well trained people will leave your company, but is that because of the training you provided, or the lack of support or encouragement that came during or after that training? While some occupations will keep employees for decades, many employees will work for several companies in the careers, and some of those will be competitors. Creating a positive work environment, and training staff, are essential for success. Social capital will be essential for success in the future of most organizations.

Also related:

Work is going to get much more specific and instead of job descriptions like, “A bachelor’s degree and 5 years of experience in the field,” what we will see are descriptions like, “Familiar with at least 2 coding languages and willing to learn on the job.” Or perhaps, “Portfolio evidence of a growth mindset.” Both of these suggest the person is a learner, and willing to learn on the job, with the first example having a specific skill added (in this case coding), and the second one asking for evidence of learning, rather than certification or accomplishments. That isn’t to say that certifications won’t be important, in fact certifications will become more important than degrees.

My nephew has a great job with a startup in Silicon Valley. He didn’t get the job because of his 4 year college degree, he got it because of the 18-month comprehensive training certification in the field of programming and artificial intelligence. Even then, his learning curve on the job was huge. He is and will continue to be successful because he is interested in learning and he wants to learn. He is working in a job where the expectations are high, but it is a rewarding and positive environment.

There will always be a place for university degrees and technical colleges. There will always be a need for doctors, lawyers and teachers, as well as plumbers, electricians, and carpenters. Technology will remove some of these jobs, or some aspects of these jobs, but they aren’t ever fully going away. Neither will the degrees and technical training needed. But this won’t be what most work and educational pathways to work will look like in the future. For most employees in corporations and stores, both large and small, the nature of work is changing. The idea that there will be manufacturing and office jobs that don’t involve learning and training and re-training is disappearing. Employees of the future will need to be learners. They will be learning on the job, for the job, or they will be looking for a job.

Piano keys

Tuning in

Yesterday the piano tuner came to our school for our piano’s yearly tuning. I asked him if he used a machine or if he tuned by ear?

”I use a tuning fork for the first note, then I’m good.”

Later in the day I was in my core fitness class and I was doing an exercise where I was supposed to be activating my gluteus (my butt muscles), but I kept activating my quadriceps (front leg muscles). The Physio at the class asked me to show her how I sit down, and it turns out that I don’t know how to go from a standing to a sitting position properly.

A little background here, I have a bad lower back, and deal with discomfort or pain on a regular basis. For decades now I’ve been compensating for my lower back by using it less and using my legs more. While this protects my back for working too hard at a given moment, it also limits my range of motion and creates tightness in my upper legs and lower back that makes things worse.

The challenge, however is that after decades of misuse, I have no idea what the sensation is to use the correct muscles? Essentially, I can’t ‘tune in’ to the feeling of what it’s like to do the right motion versus doing the wrong motion. As I’m being coached and physically guided to use the correct muscles, and my Physio says either, “No, you are still activating your quads,” or, “That’s good, you’ve got it,” my internal reality feels no different. I can’t distinguish what I’m doing differently.

While the piano tuner has spent 40 years finely tuning his ear to be honed to the sounds needed for his trade, I’ve spent almost as long dealing with a bad back and tuning out certain muscles that I should be using to help me be more mobile and agile. He has become an expert at doing something very well, while I’ve become an expert at doing something very poorly, and I am now a novice at doing it correctly.

Like with most things, it’s probably much easier to learn something correctly the first time, compared to unlearning and relearning it. But that process of correcting ourselves is seldom something we can do on our own. We can’t tune in if we don’t have that reference point, that tuning fork, that coach/mentor, or in my case physiotherapist. We often aren’t aware of how we’ve tuned out, and we need outside help to help guide us to tune in.

Where do you need to tune in more? Who are you going to get to help you?

speak-no-evil-monkey

Things I can not share

One of the most interesting thing about working as a principal in a school is that there are many issues that I’d love to write about… but I can’t. Scenarios can easily by attributed to actual people, students/parents/teachers/staff/colleagues, and that would be unprofessional. Sometimes that makes writing this blog daily rather difficult, because much of my day is broken up into a series of things that are too personal or too specific to mention. Even in explaining this, I started to write a few ‘for example’ scenarios and thought better of it after trying. I don’t have a right to share things that can affect other people’s lives in a negative way, but I also don’t want to sanitize my thinking around a topic and make my writing unauthentic.

An example of a story I did share pretty quickly was “I’m a mop not a sponge” but in that case I was still in the meeting when I asked both the student and the parent if I could share this story (without names) and got permission… and this was a positive insight the student had and shared with his mother and I. His use of a metaphor intrigued me, as metaphors often do. This was an easy story to tell. Other stories are much harder.

Many challenges in schools can be summarized as: a) Someone was treated unfairly; b) Someone felt that they were treated unfairly; c) A decision that affects more than one person was deemed unfair. Put another way: actions, perceptions, and circumstances in relation to fairness are imbalanced. The moment I dissect one of these scenarios on my blog, I have the potential to undermine any resolution that may have come out of it. I would be unfair and disrespectful to some of the people involved.

I often deal with challenging things that I’d love to share… things that have consumed my thoughts and my day… things that I reflect on and would love to write about… but ultimately things that I can not share.

All the world is a stage

I’ve done presentations to over 1,000 kids in a gym, and to more than 200 educators at once. I don’t mind getting in front of people to speak. However, give me just three lines to read in a play and I’m a mess. The idea of acting is scary to me. That I need to worry about what I’m doing to portray a different character as well as speak is all too much for me. I don’t like doing it, and part of that comes from feeling I’m not good at it, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of my performance.

This past week my youngest daughter was in a couple plays at school. I saw one of them twice and the other one three times. The kids did an amazing job! The plays where both comedies and the performers’ timing and delivery were excellent. This always impresses me, when I see young people putting themselves ‘out there’, on the stage, putting on a character that is nothing like who they really are.

Watching them reminded me of the Shakespeare quote from his play, ‘As You Like It’:

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.

We are in some ways always on stage; always playing a part. I have shared this on my online profiles for well over a decade now:

A husband, a parent… An educator, a student… A thinker, a dreamer… An agent of change.

These are different parts of my life that I play. I do my best to be authentic in all of them, and I value each of these roles a lot. It is interesting that I don’t mind the role of presenter, but I fear the role as actor. I don’t mind one stage, while I loath the other.

I think this is partly why I enjoy going to a theatre, and why I enjoy watching my daughter in her plays. She gets to shine somewhere that I would struggle. She feeds off the audience where I would fear their judgement. She thrives on the laughter and applause where I would be embarrassed by it.

I can see that my daughter and I look upon a stage performance in completely different ways. This makes me think about how different my perspective must be to others perspective on life… on performing on Life’s stage. How does the idea of ‘family’ or ‘learning’ that we each have affect our performance? How does our mindset affect our skill set? My idea of acting is so different than my daughter’s. She thrives and I cower. What happens to parents that see themselves as incompetent or students that sees themselves as a stupid?

We are so different in the way we can view the same world. If I say ‘think of a dog’, one of you might think of a poodle, another might think of a pit bull; one of you might think of a pet another might think of a bite that created a lifelong fear. Our perspective is influenced greatly by our history, and while we share the same physical world, our minds construct significantly different realities.

What can we do to help those with stage fright when all the world is a stage?

Having choice

There are billions of people in our world that are constrained by not having enough choice.

How many people in the world don’t have a choice of what their next meal will be? How much they will get? How nourishing it is?

How many children must work, and do not have the opportunity to go to school?

How many children do not have a choice of more than one thing to wear? Or are forced to wear something for religious reasons?

How many people pray to an unjust and cruel God, for fear of the wrath of their own family or community, (and not God), to ask questions?

How many people are not given the chance to speak out against their ruling government for fear of imprisonment or death?

Basic human and civil liberties are something that have improved over the past 50 years, and simple metrics like reductions in poverty and in deaths by malnutrition tell us this. But in an ever shrinking world brought together by the internet, inequalities are far more visible. And the sensitive nature of some of these topics are such that people speaking out can face ridicule, harassment, and might even fear for their lives.

Some people are given less choice about how they get to live their lives: The language they speak, their geography, their ethnicity, their gender, their sexual orientation, their parents, their social and economic status, all these can in some way limit or privilege the choices a person has. But for many, they are not limited in their ability to see what others have, and even show off, that they do not have. Affluence and privilege is flaunted openly and excessively. This creates an even bigger divide, because the rich and the famous so obviously have choices that others do not. Agency feels relative when comparing those who have much of it from those that do not.

How important is the right to basic survival (food and shelter)?

How important is the right to a good education?

How important are civil rights and freedoms?

These are all vitally important when they are not available, and easy to undervalue when they are readily available. When we are given the freedom and choices others are not, what is our obligation to speak up and to help the less fortunate?

What obligation should the wealthiest people of the world, those with the most choice, have towards those with less choice?

If you earned $1,300.00 a day for 2,000 years, you still wouldn’t be a billionaire. If you spent $36,000.00 a day for 75 years, you still would not have spent a billion dollars. How is it that the number of billionaires in the world are growing? What does this small group of people need this much money for?

Inequalities are so blatantly obvious in our world today. Some of these are being addressed in amazing ways, but globally inequalities are being exaggerated. Geography, wealth, culture, and history matter significantly and these all factor into the choices people have and, in many cases, the choices people don’t have. I think the most powerful choice we can make is to choose what we value, and devote time, effort, and compassion to those with less choice than us… and not valuing fortune, fame, and financial affluence. This is a choice we can all make.

3 ways that people are digitally evil

I’m a huge fan of Twitter. I think it is a tool that has a challenging entry point, but with a little help and advice, it can be a powerful place to learn and build a great PLN.

It can also be used for evil.

Now, to be honest, I don’t see this very often because I don’t look for it. I see a whole lot of good in my Twitter feed, but here are 3 ways people use Twitter that are digitally evil, and would probably be less likely to happen in a face-to-face conversation:

1. Ad hominem attacks.

Ad hominem (Latin for “to the person”),[1] short for argumentum ad hominem, typically refers to a fallacious argumentative strategy whereby genuine discussion of the topic at hand is avoided by instead attacking the character, motive, or other attribute of the person making the argument, or persons associated with the argument, rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself.

Examples include making fun of someone’s weight, looks, background, or social position, rather than looking at the actual issues. If you think about this, by attacking the person, rather than their ideas, you actually diminish the points you make against their arguments. Let’s say you hate the ideas someone is sharing, and you call them fat and ugly on Twitter. Would their argument be better if they were skinny and handsome/pretty? Are you suggesting their ideas are dependent on their size and looks? That these things matter? Should you be judged on the merits of these kind of arguments? It is hurtful and derogatory, and insulting not just to the person you are attacking.

2. Sarcastic questioning.

This is a passive-aggressive move. It is the asking of a question that your question already suggests you understand what’s going on, but you ask it anyway.

“Is it just me or… ?”

“Why is it that… ?”

“Why on earth would… ?”

“Can you believe that… ?”

These openings can be fun and lighthearted, or they can be accusatory and underhanded. I used this strategy above by asking, “Should you be judged on the merits of these kind of arguments?” But it wasn’t an intentional attack, it wasn’t comedy at the expense of people.

3. Full on rants.

I will confess to ranting against poor customer service in Twitter. I don’t do it often, but I’m also not guilt free. That said, there seem to be a subset of Twitter users that use it as a venue to regularly rant. This seems unhealthy to me. It is something I try to avoid, but often angry tweets are retweeted, and so I might see them not because I follow the person, but because someone I follow retweets this person.

—

Sometimes I think digital conversations give rise, and permission, for ‘inside voices‘ to be externalized. The medium allows people that may not normally have a voice to be heard, to speak to (or at least at) a CEO, politician, or movie star. A hashtag gives anyone an audience. Someone might only have 5 followers, but #companyname, #election, #event, or #movie will find them readers of their tweets. For those that already have a large audience, there is an even greater responsibility not to be intentionally evil.

I try to be thoughtful. I pause before tweeting a complaint or a rant. I think about the point I want to make… and I’ll still make mistakes. But at least I‘m making an effort not to be mean, and I unfollow people that don’t seem to have this kind of filter. I filter my timeline as best as I can from digitally evil people.

PS. That doesn’t mean I ignore people with different opinions, or shy away from good, challenging questions.

Being intentionally kind

Be intentional with your kindness:

• Look a person in the eye and smile, as you hold the door open for them.

• Turn and listen, after asking ‘how are you?’

• Say ‘please’ to start your sentence, rather than as an ending afterthought.

It’s easy to confuse politeness with kindness, but while kindness is almost always polite, politeness isn’t always kind.

Being present, recognizing and acknowledging the person you are with, and showing genuine appreciation, is kind.

There is no mistake that you are being both polite and kind, when you are being intentionally kind.

appreciation

Appreciating this moment

We have so much to be thankful for. So much to appreciate. And so much to offer to others.

A smile.

A nod.

A pleasant greeting.

A hand.

A hug.

A patient ear.

We have so much to be grateful for. We are alive, we have a new day ahead of us that is filled with potential.

Yesterday is gone. It lingers only as much as we allow it. It can weigh upon us, or it can lift our spirits. It can take possession of our attitude in positive or negative ways, or it can be released to give us the freedom to enjoy the present.

Tomorrow can be a prison of anxiety and worry, or a reason to be excited; something to look forward to. But tomorrow is best left where it is, other than when making concrete plans.

That leaves us with now. The present is our present, our gift of being alive. It lets us seize possibilities if we allow it. We are so lucky to have this moment, right now… Thank you for sharing your present with me, for taking the time to read these words. Thank you for the good that you do to support others. Thank you for being kind.

I appreciate the moments you have shared with me. What comes next? What will you do with the gift of time that you have? How will you share that time with others? What can you do to seize the present moment? What can you now give that will also give you joy now?