Author Archives: David Truss

Atomic Habits Lesson 9 – Find Your Tribe

A Shared identity is your identity, and your tribe can work together to build good habits.

Atomic Habits Lesson 9 – Find Your Tribe

https://youtu.be/V-HspKaeMpA

“You are the average of the 5 people you associate with most.” Quote via Tim Ferriss.

Atomic Habits Lesson 8 – Habit Tracking

After a story that compares gamblers to calendars, the question is posed: “How will you track the progress of your habits?”

Atomic Habits Lesson 8 – Habit Tracking

And remember, the calendar doesn’t lie.

Atomic Habits Lesson 7 – Rewards and Mistakes

Lesson 7, ‘Rewards and Mistakes’, examines two ideas. First, what are  positive versus negative rewards? And then, what do you do when you make a mistake?

Atomic Habits Lesson 7 – Rewards and Mistakes

Most people fall out of good habits after a mistake because they don’t have a plan…

If ‘oops’, then what?

 

Atomic Habits Lesson 6 – Make it Rewarding

We are about to pass the half-way point of these 10 lessons. I hope that you are finding them useful.

Lesson 6 examines how identity habits are much easier than motivation. If I believe that I am someone who regularly or always does something, that’s a lot easier than motivating myself, and trying to convince myself, that I should do that same thing.

Atomic Habits Lesson 6 – Make it Rewarding

 

 

Atomic Habits Lesson 5 – Make Habits Automatic

Lesson 5 is about reducing friction and habit stacking. How do you decrease or eliminate things that make your habits hard to get started, and how do you stack your habits so that they become an automatic process once you get started?

Atomic Habits Lesson 5 – Make Habits Automatic

This is the first ‘Storytime’ in the series, where I share a personal story. I share my fitness routine to exemplify how I use this lesson to my full advantage. My morning routine is automatic, and so I only have to initiate one habit and then the entire habit stack just gets done.

Atomic Habits Lesson 4 – Place Based Routines

Lesson 4 looks at designing and priming the location where you do your habits, so that the environment works for you.

Atomic Habits Lesson 4 – Place Based Routines

Reduce friction and distractions, do your 2 minute planning, and then get to it!

Atomic Habits Lesson 2 – Two Minute Planning

Creating Lesson 1 was a comedy of errors.

Version 1: I have Descript which adds captions, but I didn’t use it for my upload, despite knowing that I have a hearing impaired student at my school. That wouldn’t do.

Version 2: I added the captions, re-uploaded to YouTube, and only then noticed that the captions spelled James Clear’s last name as Clare. That wouldn’t do.

Version 3: I uploaded the 3rd version and noticed my cover title said ‘Identity based Goals’. The whole video is about Habits, not Goals. That wouldn’t do.

Version 4: Is live and good enough!

I’m going to focus more on just getting these done now, rather than changing minor imperfections. That said, I’m open to feedback.

Atomic Habits Lesson 2 – The Two Minute Rule.

This goes more specifically into Two Minute Planning. I’m not sure if this follows the true intention of James Clear’s two minute rule, but I think it works well for students to ritualize a good habit.

 

Atomic Habits Lesson 1 of 10

I’ve had this ‘in the works‘ for a very long time. Here is lesson one of ten:

Lesson 1, ‘Identity Based Habits‘, is the first of 10 Lessons based on James Clear’s book ‘Atomic Habits’. It was created by Principal David Truss for Inquiry Hub Secondary Students.

I will share all 10 lessons here over the coming weeks. Atomic Habits is one of the best books I’ve ever read, and I wanted to share what I’ve learned with students at our school. These students get a lot more unstructured time than most high school students, and developing good habits about using that time well is something that can drastically improve a student’s effectiveness and output.

I hope to help guide our students to better productivity.

Secret Origin of the Enneagram

The Enneagram.

A shape that has been around for hundreds of years. It has esoteric significance and it has been used as a model for personality types for years.

But something is missing… and that’s the origin of this unique shape.

Not anymore. Joe Truss discovered, or rather uncovered, the following unique origin story of the Enneagram. Perhaps the Sufis of the past knew, but this knowledge was lost: The 2-Dimensional Enneagram has 3-Dimensional roots. Enjoy this short video to learn more: Secret Origins of the Enneagram.

“The Enneagram is a 3-Dimensional structure which manifests through the vertices of the icosahedron.” ~ Joseph Truss

__

And if you think this is interesting, Joe has also uncovered the tetrahedral structure of our universe… if you know a physicist who can challenge these ideas, both Joe and I invite them to break this theory apart: We Live in a Tetraverse.

Please share with people whom you think might be interested.
Thank you.

Too many tools

I’m editing a video and I’m struggling to do it well in one place. I’m using Descript for most of my editing, but I wanted to put in a narrated slide show before the video and Descript wasn’t making the intricate edits I wanted without a major amount of effort. So, first I used Garage Band to edit the audio (after recording it on my iPhone). Then I used iMovie to put that together with the slide show (after making it in Powerpoint). Then I added the recorded slideshow into Descript.

I recognize my frustration is my own fault because I haven’t done these kind of thing in almost a year, and so now I barely remember the tips and tricks that used to come naturally to me. That said, I’m also frustrated because Garage Band and iMovie have had updates that put things in unfamiliar places for me. These updates seem to complicate rather than improve the user interface (UI). Meanwhile, the Descript UI seems improved, but it’s different enough from the last time I used it that I feel like I’m using it for the first time. Still, I could see myself eliminating the need for iMovie with the current Descript updates, so that’s one less tool I’ll use next time.

Most of my frustration is that I’ve spent over 15 hours doing about 5-6 hours worth of work. I spend so much time knowing what I want to do, and not knowing how, and then googling and watching YouTube videos that take 5-12 minutes to tell me 2 minutes worth of important information. I just want one tool to rule them all, and then I’m sure that I can get more done in less time.