Writing is my artistic expression. My keyboard is my brush. Words are my medium. My blog is my canvas. And committing to writing daily makes me feel like an artist.
It’s that time of year again when the ‘To Do’ list at work is growing. The last two days I’ve left work and then just kept working. I know that’s the time of year, but I also know it can keep going and that there is always more to do.
I try to use exercise and meditation to help me turn off, and I’ve moved these activities from morning to evening, but I’m not sure I like this strategy?
What do people do to ‘turn off’ work? What strategies allow a separation between work and home? I don’t mind taking the extra time at the start of the year, but I’ve had about 3 years of imbalance that have left me feeling like I am not doing this well.
Writing helps, it’s my way of unpacking ideas. What else do people do?
For a while now, I’ve been practicing time restricted eating, and it has really helped me control the amount of junk food I eat. It has also really helped me control my mood. I used to get ‘hangry‘… angry/upset when I’m hungry. It was so obvious, my secretary would tell me that I need to eat… she’d know if I missed lunch. Time restrictions forced me to find balance that I lacked, and this helped me level my mood.
I have not been doing time restricted eating over the summer and my eating has been out of whack! This has left me feeling low energy and lazy. I’ve been dealing with an upset stomach for quite a while. It had to stop. So yesterday afternoon I decided to try a longer fast, and I only had lemon and chilli powder water last night and today, other than small servings of maple syrup in my drink for dinner and lunch. Fasting with this drink wasn’t hard, and I’m breaking the fast tomorrow morning… but today my mood definitely went to hangry. My wife let me know that she really noticed it came back.
Now I need to cut out the junk and get myself back on track. I think after tomorrow I’ll stop eating breakfast. Or rather, I will break my fast later in the day. That’s what works to balance me during the school year, I’m sure that I can continue to enjoy my summer, and have delicious food, just start later in the day.
I won’t make long fasts like this a regular thing, but it has been a great kickstart to get me back into a healthy routine.
“Technological change is neither additive nor subtractive. It is ecological. I mean “ecological” in the same sense as the word is used by environmental scientists. One significant change generates total change. If you remove the caterpillars from a given habitat, you are not left with the same environment minus caterpillars: you have a new environment, and you have reconstituted the conditions of survival; the same is true if you add caterpillars to an environment that has had none. This is how the ecology of media works as well. A new technology does not add or subtract something. It changes everything.” ~ Neil Postman,Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology
A tool is just a tool!I can use a hammer to build a house and I can use the same hammer on a human skull.It’s not the tool, but how you use it that matters.
That’s how technology isn’t just ecological. Adding a caterpillar to an environment changes the environment, it changes the equilibrium in unforeseen ways, but ways that are inevitable based on all the moving parts seeking to find a new balance. The environment finds a new homeostasis.
Technology has bias. It has uses, and it has unintended uses. A technological advancement doesn’t just have unintended consequences, it also has unintended uses and misuses. When it is misused, the response is often an over-reaction. We’ve seen that in schools with internet filters, cell phones, and social media.
Technology also has bias in what we pay attention to. The idea of a multiple choice test is a technology that made questions about ‘the what’ of specific content more relevant than ‘the how’ and ‘the why’. It also invited teachers to develop questions and answers designed (on purpose and by mistake) to confuse the student… after all, it defeats the purpose of a multiple choice test to have only one answer be relevant, but only one answer is ‘right’.
A laptop in a student’s hands is a powerful tool for learning, and it’s a powerful tool for distraction. It’s a window into the world, it’s also a tool that can isolate students from their peers. It’s a way to transmit information to students, it’s also a way to give them voice and choice in a project.
In each of these cases, technology is disruptive. It alters the environment in unforeseen ways that do not move towards a new equilibrium. Technology doesn’t move the environment towards homeostasis, instead it undermines norms. It invites uses and misuses that are unintended or unwelcome, and that brings new concerns as well as new opportunities.
Technology doesn’t just change our relationship to the tool, it changes the relationship to our environment. It changes everything.
However, we can expect tools to be used in unexpected ways, and we can respond with intention and purpose, which is a lot different that anger and frustration.
We can ask ourselves what the intentions of a tool’s use are, and we can reflect on whether these intentions are being met. Technology will fundamentally change our learning environments, technology will support and/or undermine our intentions. We are better off influencing this bias thoughtfully rather than letting unintended biases undermine us. Hammers can produce some amazing work, or they can cause a lot of damage.
I remember a trip to the Cayman Islands with my dad. We were on the small island of Cayman Brac and we hired a boat to take us to see a shoreline that my dad wanted to explore. The boat wasn’t very big, under 25 feet long, and not designed for anything more than a day trip. The captain was a short, old man with a weathered, leathery face that made him look over 100 years old. He was letting me troll for marlin while we travelled. The waves were choppy, the boat bounced and swayed, and I had to keep my eyes on the horizon to keep from getting sea sick.
At one point I caught a barracuda and after I reeled it up to the boat, I couldn’t get it over the edge of the boat without standing up from my chair. The movement of the boat set me on my ass before I could take two steps towards the stern. The old sea captain put my dad’s hand on the steering wheel and pointed forward. He then walked to me, as sure-footed as if he were a young athlete on a flat track, picked me off the deck and helped me back into the seat. He then took my rod, walked back to the stern and got the fish into the boat. All the while, the boat bounced in the rough seas and this captain casually made tiny little shuffle-step movements with his feet, keeping himself perfectly balanced. This ancient-looking man had sea legs, he was as comfortable with the motion of the sea under his feet as we are on land.
This is my twenty second year as an educator and for the first time in years I feel like I’ve lost my ‘sea legs’. I’m struggling to find my balance. I’ve struggled with work load, and time management, and work-life balance before – I think all committed educators do – but this is different.
I recently discussed with Dave Sands that, “All screen time is not created equal,” but this is where I’m losing my balance. Beyond a daily walk, I’m spending every moment of my time in my school office or at home. During this time, I’m spending a fair bit more time online. When I’m at work, there is a constant flow of video conferences that interrupt any sense of work flow for my other tasks, and so days are very busy, but don’t always feel productive.
My online time at home flows from distraction, to entertainment, to work, to creating and writing, to news, back to work, and then back to news or distraction, with a daily workout thrown in. Recently, I’ve missed workouts, I’ve missed my daily meditation (3 times this month), I’ve spent more time writing (without writing much more than I usually do), and my focus seems scattered.
I need to rework my daily routine during this pandemic. It feels difficult because there is a constant flow of information that keeps shifting what things look like at work. There is also ever-changing news about how our social distancing expectations will change going forward. Metaphorically, the waves keep churning, and I’m struggling to keep my balance on the boat. I don’t have my sea legs. I’m going to rethink and reintroduce some of my routines that have worked for me before, and see if I can steady myself a bit.
The four burner theory, as seen in this video shared below, suggests that we never actually live a balanced life, and if we do, we can never really be successful in any key areas of our lives: Family, Friends, Health, and Work.
The theory suggests that we have a limited amount of energy to distribute to these different burners, and so we need to decide where best to distribute that energy. The video also suggests that we might want to distribute that energy differently at different times in our lives.
I agree with this video in that I have seldom found balance in my life and I’ve often put one of the areas ahead of others, reducing those other areas in time commitment and overall satisfaction. However, this year I’ve also realized something else… we don’t need to accept that the limited amount of energy we have is completely fixed.
Since the start of this year, I have instituted a self-care program that has really changed my ability to give more to all 4 burners, so by giving time to a 5th burner of self-care, I have more to offer. This vlog shared my healthy living goals for 2019.
Does this mean that I’ve suddenly found balance in my life. Absolutely not! I agree with the idea that balance is not fully achievable if we want to excel in different areas of our lives. But I don’t agree that our fuel, our energy levels are fixed. I think we all know this too. Every one of us have had times when we’ve felt down, and low in energy, when trying to be successful in one area means we have nothing left for the other areas of our lives. We’ve also had times when we’ve had high energy levels and things are going great in more than one area of our lives. The question is, are these differences ones that happen to us, or do these differences happen because we create them? This year, I’ve been able to give more of myself in more areas of my life.
By taking the time to listen to audio books, and to write; by exercising more consistently than I have in over 15 years; by reducing my unhealthy snacking; and, by meditating daily for almost 10 months now, I have felt more energized, more level-headed, and more productive in other areas of my life. That said, I’m the first to admit I don’t have everything under control, I’m not perfect, and in fact I’m still my own biggest critic. The start of this calendar year was so crazy at work, I had days I just wanted to run away and move to a remote island. There were weeks where my only communication with my wife were logistical. There were days where 20 minutes on the treadmill started with 40 minutes of procrastination. But as I approach the end of September, the craziest time in the school year, I feel more on top of things than I did a year ago. I’m enjoying my family time more. I’m seeing leaps of improvement in my strength and conditioning. And I’m doing things like this daily post on a Saturday morning, while my family is still sleeping. Sunday morning, when this post goes live, I’ll be having breakfast with a friend.
The reality is that we may never have balance, but if make taking care of ourselves a priority, we have more fuel to add to the other burners in our lives.
Yesterday I went on a little fishing trip around Alice Lake, just north of Squamish, BC. Spoiler alert, I didn’t catch anything.
Before I began, I did my daily meditation on a log that extended into the lake, then I started my walking loop on the shoreline trail. There weren’t many places to stop and fish along the trail, but I enjoyed the quiet of each stop. It was late afternoon on a cloudy mid-week day and so the parking lot was bare, and there were few swimmers in the lake or hikers on the trails.
Nearly 3/4 the way around the lake I saw a log several feet from the shore and parallel to it. The log served as a harbour from the wind that rippled the water beyond it. The contrast on the surface was stark. On the far side, the lake was rippled and murky. On the shoreline side the water was smooth as glass, a mirror for trees and the sky above. The log served as the dividing line, separating the two distinct surfaces as if the log were a rift between two different realities.
It didn’t seem real. One lake, two very different surfaces, a single log creating the separation. I began to think of how we can do this in our minds. We are surrounded by chaos, or distractions, or by the stresses of work, and yet we can tuck these distractions away, for a moment with loved ones, or for a favourite hobby, or for a quiet moment alone. We can compartmentalize moments of stillness in times that are not remotely still.
We are capable of this, but do we do it enough? Do we create the time and space for our minds, or parts of our minds, to be still?
Almost 2 years ago now, I had to seriously shift my attitude around online information. I was gullibly trying to read every tweet in my ’stream’ and diligently trying to keep my unread items on Google Reader at a handful. I saw these as pools of information and I wanted to hold on to the information that came into the pool. It was too much. The shift for me was seeing information as a river. Now, I’ll paddle along the stream, but when I get out, I don’t feel the need to pay attention to the stream of information that goes by. It has been liberating.
The key is finding balance rather than being inefficient as I tried to demonstrate in this 4 slide presentation I did for a Connectivism course:
That was the first assignment for the course and it helped me decide to drop out of the course as I tried to seek balance.
I think I’ve made a few points, but if I could make one more it would be that my life still lacks balance and I still spend too much time online… but 3 years ago I would have ‘wasted’ that same amount of time, or more, watching TV. In the wise words of the Comedy Network’s tag-line… to me my online life is ‘Time well wasted’.
~ The idea behind a post I’ve written in my head about 50 times… some day I’ll really expand on this idea on my Pairadimes blog.
The original post for the slide presentation is here: Connectivism, Relationships and Balance. But it is in the comments that the ideas behind the presentation really came out.
