Category Archives: Daily-Ink

Not Ready, and Ready

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I’m not ready to connect AI to my email, to have it view my calendar, to let it automate my communication, or write for me unsupervised. I’m not trusting AI to organize my life in any way.

But…

I am ready to share all my health data. I’m ready for AI to know everything about my health that I can provide it. I want to get a DEXA scan and share it with Chat GPT or some other tool for feedback.

Analyze and diagnose me, but don’t run my life.

That’s my current line… let’s see how it changes in a year.

Time perspective

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The older you get, the faster time flies. I don’t think it’s anything magical, it’s simply perspective. To a 10 year old, 5 years is half of a life. To a 60 year old, 5 years is 1/12th of a life. To a kid waiting for dessert, 5 minutes feels like forever. An adult is practiced at waiting and doesn’t mind a break before dessert.

Yet, even though I know it’s just perspective, I can’t help but be amazed at how quickly time flies by. It’s like I’m on a merry-go-round that is speeding up by tiny increments… completely unnoticeable at any given moment, but clearly obvious when seen over longer periods of time.

It’s a reminder to appreciate the current moment even more, because the next moment goes by more quickly. Appreciate the now, it’s gone soon enough, and it’s being replaced by ever shorter moments later.

Cross pollination

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Do you know what’s really hard to do? First, choose an area of your life where you really have your ‘stuff’ together. Then take those same skills, habits, and discipline and apply it to another part of your life. It should be easy, or at least easier than it is. We should be able to recognize what makes us extremely effective in one aspect of our lives and simply apply the same strategies elsewhere.

What prevents this? Is it motivation? Is it the fear of starting? Is it that we recognize the effort is more than we are willing to put out?

Whatever the reason, it’s sometimes important to remember that it is easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than it is to think your way into a new way of acting. Start with the action. Do the things you already do elsewhere in a new area of your life. Start with small actions, but the action itself is the start. Not the thinking, not the planning, not the talking about it… the doing.

Apply action, and the good work and skills you’ve developed will indeed cross over.

First Day Jitters

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Across Canada there are countless students starting their first day of school today. Some students are excited, some upset to see the summer end, and some thrilled to be seeing their friends again. There will also be many who are nervous, apprehensive, and scared, especially those transitioning to new schools. Moving up a school level is a right of passage every child experiences, and this challenge is met with many different emotions.

Think of how different this experience is for students. Some are leaving friends they’ve gone to school with since they learned to read and write. Some are hoping for a fresh start. There are so many emotions being felt. Nervousness and the jitters are probably felt by most, even for those happily looking forward to the new school year. And all these different students, with there different hopes and expectations, will be met by teachers having similar thoughts and emotions, only tempered with the wisdom of age and experience.

The first day is filled with potential. It is the start of a year more significant than the start of the calendar year. The new school year brings jitters, but it also arrives with hope; with promise; with an opportunity to be great.

Wishing all students, teachers, and school leaders a fabulous year ahead. Make it a great year.

Awful(ly funny) voice-to-text

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I hate the iPhone voice-to-text. I’m never ‘going to’ say ‘gonna’. And I definitely didn’t intend to send the following text to my wife:

“Yes, chat later I’m in the middle of sex right now. No problem for me to come.”

Context: I was at the gym working out, and my wife was going to run an errand later, and was asking me to help. I was in the middle of a SET!

Not 20 minutes later I was trying to tell my wife we could meet a friend at 11 but instead of, “Tell him eleven, maybe?” Voice to text changed it to, “Tell him I love him, maybe?” At least I caught this one before hitting send and corrected it.

Perhaps I need to enunciate my words more clearly. But dang, I’m so grateful that the first mistake was sent to my wife and not a colleague at work. I think my voice to text mantra needs to be, ‘Speak, EDIT, then send’ from now on!

Fun encounters

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Got to see a band of grads from my school perform at an event this evening. A couple weeks back my wife and I took her parents to a coffee shop where we ran into a student we both taught in middle school about 20 years ago.

It’s wonderful seeing former students in our community. In fact, that’s my favourite part of living in the community where I’m an educator.

Seeing students grow up outside of school is a wonderful thing.

OneWord: Pause

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In 2020, I appropriately chose a #OneWord of Resilience. For 2021 I chose Thrive. In January of 2023 I chose ‘Many words, not one word’, and these were: Consistency, Efficiency, Positivity, Vocal, and Gracious.

I’m not waiting for January to pick a new word. The school year starts on Tuesday and I’m picking a special #OneWord to focus on for my final year before retiring. This word is Pause.

The inspiration came on my weekly Coquitlam Crunch walk this morning. The past few weeks were prime blackberry season. They have been ripe for the picking, delicious and abundant. But last week it really seemed like the season was at its end. Today on our walk they were very few on the nearby branches and none were the large juicy variety that we could pick to our heart’s content just a week or two before.

Just like that, the season was over… Or so I thought. At the top of the trail we take a small detour loop through a more wooded area and just as we were about to get back on the main path, we passed a section that was filled with ripe berries ready to be picked. I grabbed one and kept walking. Then I stopped. I paused. I told my buddy to hold up. We paused our fitness trackers and spent a few minutes picking and eating blackberries.

A delicious pause in our day.

And there you have it: Inspiration for my last school year. Pause.

Taking the time to sneak in a final moment to enjoy the last of the blackberry season was my literal example of ‘stopping to smell the roses’. And that’s what I plan to do all year. Pause and appreciate, pause and celebrate, pause and experience.

There is a lot I’m going to miss when I leave this job, what I don’t want to do is miss things while I still have time to enjoy them. I’m going to seek out opportunities to take pause in my day and truly experience the things I cherish.

Met in the middle

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My buddy Dave has been on an amazing fitness journey, and has lost a bunch of weight while also building muscle. I’ve been on a journey to add healthy weight, lowering my percent body fat, while gaining muscle. At the start of this year we joked that we were going to meet in the middle, with his weight going down and mine going up.

Before heading to work this morning we went to the gym and worked out together. Then we took turns stepping on the scale. I weighed over a pound more than him! We did it, we met in the middle. Well, almost in the middle… Dave covered a bit more of the gap. Still, this wasn’t a real goal, just lofty target we put out into the universe. Now we are there. Next steps are for both of us to make gains together.

Finding time

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A buddy of mine from Ontario is in town for a couple days. He texted me saying he had Thursday morning available. The bad news, I have a 9:30am appointment. The good news, I get up at 5am to start my morning routine and he is on Ontario time so he’ll be up early too, here on the west coast.

So I’m meeting him downtown at a restaurant that opens at 7am. We’ll have almost an hour and a half together, then I’ll drive back uptown to go to my meeting. Easy. Sure, I’ll miss a workout, but I haven’t missed one this week and so I’m due anyway.

The most important thing is that I get to spend precious time with a friend that I rarely get to see. That doesn’t happen often and so the fact that I’ll spend about the same amount of time driving as I will with him doesn’t matter. Too often we bend over backwards to make work commitments and don’t think twice about cancelling or postponing opportunities for personal commitments.

Not me. Not today. Today I get to make the visit happen. Is it a bit rushed. Yes, but it’s short notice and that happens. The point is that it’s important to make time for good friends… especially those that we don’t get to see all that often.

Experience is something you get right after you need it.

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Ever notice how many jobs say, “Experience required”? Who are all these experienced workers looking for new jobs?

How many jobs want you to have a degree first? I understand a doctor, nurse, lawyer, architect, or engineer needing a degree, but how many corporate jobs really need a prospective employee to have a degree?

I love the quote, “Experience is something you get right after you need it.”

At some point in your life you are going to learn something on the job. You are going to figure it out either just when you need to… or just after you’ve messed up the first attempt.

Hiring is going to change. You aren’t going to see companies focusing on degrees and academic accolades. Instead, you’ll see people with micro credentials or niche skills being hired because they have learned skills that directly relate to the job expectations. Or you’ll see jobs being offered on a trial basis and companies willing to hire based on characteristics like flexibility, ingenuity, and creativity. ‘Come try this out for a 3 month contract, and we’ll see if you’ve a) Got a good head on your shoulders, and b) Fit with our community and values.’

Don’t worry about experience, you’ll get on the job. Just come with the right attitude and an affinity for the job. The first time you try something, that’s when you’ll get the experience. Before that, it’s not schooling or past experience, it’s evidence that you are a learner and you are willing to put in an honest effort. That’s what will get you hired.