Category Archives: Daily-Ink

Asking your kids the right questions

Here is a long, but interesting article in the Atlantic, “Stop Trying to Raise Successful Kids“.

In it the authors, Adam Grant & Allison Sweet Grant, say:

To demonstrate that caring is a core value, we realized that we needed to give it comparable attention. We started by changing our questions. At our family dinners, we now ask our children what they did to help others. At first, “I forget” was the default reply. But after a while, they started giving more thoughtful answers. “I shared my snack with a friend who didn’t have one,” for example, or “I helped a classmate understand a question she got wrong on a quiz.” They had begun actively looking for opportunities to be helpful, and acting upon them.

This reminds me of a post I wrote 11 and a half years ago when my kids were 6 and 8, “Who have you help today?”

I used to ask my kids, “what was your favourite part of the day”, then I added “Who did you help today?” And as I mentioned in the post reflection:

It was only a matter of weeks before my oldest daughter’s ‘favorite part of the day’ was also the answer to ‘who did you help today’.

A question like this is so much more powerful than, ‘What did you do at school today?’, or ‘What did you get on your test?’, or ‘Did you have fun?’ Simply asking the question, “Who did you help today?” tells a kid what you value.

small changes can have a big impact

A friend of mine, Keith, was visiting this weekend and I went downtown to connect with him. We walked by the Starbucks I used to manage, a couple blocks from where he used to work, and he asked someone to take our photo in front of it. It brought back fond memories of us connecting at lunch breaks.

Taking this photo and looking inside reminded me of something I did while I was there. This narrow Starbucks on Hornby Street is near the law courts, the art gallery, and many office buildings. In the mornings the rush was crazy for about an hour and a half, then the store would quite down with smaller rushes at lunch and at the end of the day. One of the challenges this rush created in the mornings was that people would look in, see the lineup, then leave… hopefully to come back later, but likely we were losing customers.

Inside the store, we had our main cash register, then the pastry case, followed by a counter then the 2nd till for selling coffee beans. Back then the beans were not pre-packaged, we had scales and empty bags, and cupboards with different flavoured coffee beans in them. Generally we would run just one till, unless someone wanted coffee beans, but every morning rush we would have both tills open to maximize how many people could come through. However this created a huge problem for us because the line up would be 10-15 long for over an hour and a half, and navigating to the two tills slowed things down and created opportunities for people to butt in, although I’d say this was mostly done unintentionally. No matter how we managed it, at some point during the rush we’d be apologizing as we helped navigate who should be next, with the lineup going to two very different places, but the store being too narrow to really create two separate lines.

I spoke to my District Manager and told her I wanted to move the second cash register. This also meant moving the pastry case too, to make room for the two tills to be close, but also have a space in between them to serve two different customers. She understood the challenge and had it done to my requested specifications. In the following weeks the results were pretty impressive. During our 1.5 hour rush, we averaged between 45 and 60 more customers (15-20 more per half hour). We had many regular customers thanking us for the change. We also had less people walking by because we were busy, since they knew that the line up would go quickly.

The renovation was probably paid off in a few months, we dealt with less issues around managing the line, customers were happier, and all we did was move a cash register about 9 feet (2.75 metres). We can’t always make big sweeping changes but sometimes small changes can have a big impact.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place (and…)

The origin of the idiom ‘between a rock and a hard place’ can be found in ancient Greek mythology. In Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus must pass between Charybdis, a treacherous whirlpool, and Scylla, a horrid man-eating, cliff-dwelling monster. Ever since, saying one is stuck between a rock (the cliff) and a hard place (the whirlpool) has been a way to succinctly describe being in a dilemma. (source)

There is a simple strategy that I often use, both for myself and when working with students, that seems to help when I/they are stuck ‘between a rock and a hard place’. The strategy is to find a 3rd choice. The interesting thing is that the 3rd choice doesn’t have to be great, it can be worse than the other two, but it does something tricky to your brain. When you have to choose between two tough choices, you can think of it as a scale, and you weigh things on either side. The problem is that you think of one side and add weight, then you think of the other side and you add weight there too. Your brian does this indecision dance between the two tough choices, never really allowing you to pick one over the other.

Sometimes, by seeking out a 3rd option, you can discover something you would not have thought of when putting yourself in a dichotomy. However, if you are truly stuck between a rock and a hard place, you probably don’t have a good 3rd option and so the 3rd option is often even worse.

When you add a 3rd (undesired) choice, you can no longer look at the problem as if it is on a scale. The extra option becomes a comparison point for the other two choices. So what your brain does is that it weighs your original two options against the new option, instead of against each other. When this happens, one of those options will often seem better than the other, in a way that comparing just the two on their own didn’t.

When dealing with students, this also helps give them an ‘out’. Often a student is choosing between doing the right thing which is uncomfortable, or accepting a consequence. In this situation, it might seem logical for a kid to make the ‘good’ choice. However, an oppositional student, or a student that is embarrassed, might actually choose the more painful choice. It’s not like they are actually choosing it, they are choosing not to do the thing you want them to do as an act of defiance. A third choice takes away the oppositional response. Now they have to weigh three things, and the better choice looks significantly better than the other two.

So the next time you are stuck between a rock and a hard place, you can torture yourself with a tough and unclear decision, you can avoid the problem altogether (knowing full well that it won’t go away), or you can come up with a 3rd choice to help you decide… it’s up to you!

Staying ‘on brand’ while being digitally present

A few months ago, I shared a link on Twitter to an article about James Fridman’s Twitter Account. People send James photos to Photoshop and he changes the photos in entertaining ways. Like this:

And like this:

But the ‘Featured Image’ on the post I shared was of a girl in a bathing suit who James had done one of these photoshop requests for. I shared it and then I got a Direct Message from someone in my community that I respect, who said she was surprised that I would share something like this. In all honesty, I didn’t think much of it, so I looked at the tweet again and thought two things. First, that it wasn’t a big deal that I shared a photo of someone in a bathing suit because this was about photoshop humour. Then I thought, ‘Would I share this photo on its own if it wasn’t for the article going with it?’… and I realized I wouldn’t. So, I deleted the tweet and shared one specific tweet that highlighted James’ humour, like the two tweets above.

Yesterday, I got a phone call from my sister about one of my Daily Ink blog posts. She said to me that while she understood the point I was trying to make, I came off as a bit full of myself in an unflattering way. She was right. That wasn’t my intent, but I could totally see how it could be interpreted that way. I went back to the post and made some minor changes, which I think changed the tone of the post to one that was more about my intention as opposed to mistaken interpretation.

I share a lot online. If you were to look at 100 of my blog posts, here on Daily Ink, or on my Pair-a-Dimes educational blog, or if your chose to read 100 of my tweets, I think you could learn a lot about me. I think you could get a good sense for my character, what I stand for, and what kind of a person I am. However, if you chose to judge me on my worst blog post or my worst Tweet, well then I’m sure I wouldn’t look so good. I recognize that, and I’m happy to take a look at my worst blog posts and tweets, and change or delete them. That said, I know more will come later. If I’m going to share as much as I do, I’m going to occasionally share something ‘off brand’, something that doesn’t generally fit with my identity or at least my digital identity.

I touched on this a bit in my post, Ideas on a Spectrum, where I noted that there seems to be a culture of attacking a person based on not liking their opinion or a statement they share online. I on the other hand am fortunate to have people around me that are respectful and thoughtful. The person who sent me a Direct Message about my tweet could have said something in a reply, in a public setting, to me but instead chose to send me a private message. My sister could have thought, ‘Well, that’s not like Dave’ and then let it pass by, but she gave me a call and said, “I know this isn’t what you intended, but you should know that this is how I read it.”

Public comments can help too. I really appreciated Stephen Downes helping me identify the context of a meme that I shared as my photo to go with a post. See Once upon a meme where I discussed this. Stephen said in a comment that he wouldn’t be comfortable using the meme and named the meme so that it would be easy for me to find information about it. He gave me what I needed to be informed in a pubic, but very respectable way.

These are people I want in my lives. People who know me, or I guess you could also say, ‘know my brand’, and who help me stay on course. I’ll make mistakes, and because I share a lot digitally, I’ll be making those mistakes in public. I appreciate having a community that recognize that mistakes are mistakes, and who are willing to help me.

Playing it up for Halloween

I live in a house with three people that are passionate about musical theatre. They can all sing, and they are all natural on the stage. They can watch and re-watch live plays over and over again. As for me? I’ll talk in front of school with over 1,000 students, and I’ve presented to hundreds of educators, but give me 3 lines to memorize and act out, and I’m a mess. I’m robotic, monotone, and completely unnatural… and I hate it! I’ll happily go to see a performance, and I truly enjoy watching talented people perform, I just don’t want to perform myself.

Then comes Halloween. Once a year I put on makeup, and I go ‘full on’. I make the most of a fun day, I share my costume online, I take photos with my secretaries, my staff, and my students. I have fun, not because I’m in my element, but because I get to revel in the enjoyment of others, and be part of something I would usually avoid for most of the rest of the year.

It always turns out to be a wonderful day. Then I wash off the makeup, I put my costume away, and I happily wait another year before I do it again.

Happy Halloween!

In orbit around the sun

Yesterday was my sister’s anniversary, and that made me think about how many rituals and celebrations are based on one rotation of the earth around the sun: Birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, school years, mating seasons, and harvests… All these are based on our orbital geography around our galaxy’s star.

Earth orbits the Sun at an average distance of 149.60 million km (92.96 million mi),[1] and one complete orbit takes 365.256 days (1 sidereal year), during which time Earth has traveled 940 million km (584 million mi). ~ Wikipedia

We celebrate events based on yearly journeys of 940 million kilometres. That works out to over 2.5 million kilometres a day! Would this yearly trip have been as significant if the earth’s axis was not tilted, giving rise to the changing seasons?

Perhaps one of the most apparent factors contributing to Earth climate change is the angle at which the earth is tilted. This is the angle at which Earth’s axis of rotation is from the vertical, also known as Earth’s obliquity. Earth’s current tilt angle is approximately 23.5 degrees. The axial tilt angle affects climate largely by determining which parts of the earth get more sunlight during different stages of the year. This is the primary cause for the different seasons Earth experiences throughout the year, as well as the intensity of the seasons for higher latitudes. For example, in the Northern Hemisphere, if there were no axial tilt, i.e. Earth’s obliquity would be zero degrees, then there would be no change in the seasons from year to year. This would be because there would be no difference in the amount of solar irradiation received, year-round, anywhere on Earth. ~ Wikipedia

What would life be like if temperatures stayed relatively constant depending on your latitude? How important would birthdays be? Would our calendars be based on the moon? How important would the passing of a year be?

Enjoy your next orbit!

Too much choice

I’ve been thinking a lot about creative constraints recently. In the move to give students more choice and more freedom to explore their own passions and interests, we sometimes forget that constraints and limitations can help foster both creativity and work completion.

Tell kids to pick any topic to study and some will flourish while others will flounder. Tell kids they have a lot of time to work, some will engage and use it well, while others will squander that time. Tell kids they can present in any format they want, and some kids will be creative while others will choose the easiest path, (even if they love the topic they are presenting on).

We don’t always benefit from choice. 15 kinds of toothpaste to choose from doesn’t translate to us choosing the best toothpaste… and probably delays our selection time. Sometimes it’s easier if we have less choice or limits to how much time we spend on something. “Constraints aren’t the boundaries of creativity, but the foundation of it.”

When we put constraints on projects, limiting resources, time, scope, size, delivery, or focus, we might be restrictive and limit choice, but done with thought and purpose, we can also inspire creativity.

Cardboard, duct tape, and a maker mindset.

My daughter and I created this Buzz Lightyear backpack for her Halloween costume yesterday. Besides a small backpack hidden in a box, that functions as a working backpack, and serving as the straps to hold the pack on her back, the only other parts are cardboard, coloured duct tape, and a few photocopies of parts stuck on with clear tape.

Although we were following a very specific design, this got me thinking about rapid prototyping. It’s so easy to think up ideas and then create a mock-up these days. Cardboard is cheap, coloured duct tape is available in most dollar stores, and it only costs a few dollars for box-cutters that will outlast most projects. Parts can be printed on 3-D printers, or carved from small CNC machines if you have them, but they aren’t necessary. Lettering & logos can be designed and printed on coloured printers. Add a few things like coloured construction paper, markers, popsicle sticks, pipe cleaners, toilet/paper towel rolls, and recycled plastic bottles and caps, and the options to create are endless.

We should have fast-prototyping events at schools, and have containers to store accessories that are easily accessible for designing models. Then use these containers to put everything away when it is time to clean up. It wouldn’t be hard or very expensive to do this. The only safety concern would be the box cutters, but scissors could work too.

It’s not hard these days to promote a maker mentality in schools. What design projects would you want to do with students, given these few and affordable resources?

Love, work, and being human

This is a very powerful movie: HUMAN Extended version VOL.1

Most of it is subtitled, and so be prepared to read what you are listening to. Make yourself a coffee, or pour yourself a drink, sit back and step into the lives of some people that you would not otherwise get to meet. Share in the humanity, the struggles, and the hearts of some people from many walks of life that are significantly different than yours. What does it mean to be human for people that did not grow up the same way you did?

Here is the description:

What is it that makes us human? Is it that we love, that we fight ? That we laugh ? Cry ? Our curiosity ? The quest for discovery ? Driven by these questions, filmmaker and artist Yann Arthus-Bertrand spent three years collecting real-life stories from 2,000 women and men in 60 countries. Working with a dedicated team of translators, journalists and cameramen, Yann captures deeply personal and emotional accounts of topics that unite us all; struggles with poverty, war, homophobia, and the future of our planet mixed with moments of love and happiness. The VOL.1 deals with the themes of love, women, work and poverty.

This is a powerful look at love, at work, and at the heart of what it means to live life bound by geographical, cultural, and economical status.

The long format podcasts experience

I don’t listen to the radio in my car anymore, and I only listen to music when I’m with other people. If I’m alone in the car, even on my very short commute to work, I’m either listening to an audio book or I’m listening to a long format podcast.

What’s the appeal of the long format?

I have gotten very tired of the typical news-style interview format. That format is designed to work in one of two ways:

1. Three to seven minute interviews that focuses on one key idea, one good, quotable sound byte (and glosses over many other interesting and big ideas).

2. A panel discussion where discourse is trumped by arguments from the extremes with blatant disregard for anyone with a centrist view.

On the other hand, a long format discussion can go deep. It can meander to different topics. It can invite you in as if you are in the room with the interviewer and interviewee.

No one does this better than Joe Rogan. He has become a master interviewer! He is skilled at interviewing people smarter than us, and asking the right clarifying question for us to take the journey along with him.

I don’t listen to all his interviews (too many, and I focus on the interviewees I can learn a lot from), but I’m currently listening to his interview with Edward Snowden. At the time of writing this, the YouTube version has 7.4 million views, and several million more people listen to an audio version like me. As an aside, Joe Rogan is changing the way people listen to media. His podcasts routinely get more views than television shows and newscasts. And his unbiased reporting, not having to pander to broadcast networks, and advertisers that are restrictive, are exactly why he could get 3-hours of Edward Snowden’s time that the networks would never get.

What I like about his podcasts is that he can get guests like Peter Attia or Dr. Rhonda Patrick, and while they both have podcasts, when I listen to their podcasts, they get too technical and go over my head. Whereas, Joe will ask clarifying questions and help me take the journey with them.

Here are a few more longer format interviews/podcasts that are worth listening to:

1. Derek Sivers or Jamie Foxx on The Tim Ferriss Show

2. Stephen Fry or Yuval Noah Harari on the Sam Harris podcast.

3. And I’ll be going back to podcasting again, here are two of my favourites so far, Remi Kalir and Roy Henry Vickers.

The long format podcast is an engaging way to learn, and to pass time normally consumed with talk radio and annoying commercial interruptions. Give them a try!