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.
I dropped my mom off for her first hair appointment since covid hit, and there isn’t a waiting room to hang out in… so off to Starbucks for a coffee and then a parking lot chat with Robert Martellacci from MindShareLearning.ca.
I recently revived my podcast. I’ve had conversations with Kelly Christopherson, Jonathan Sclater, Joe Truss, and Dave Sands. Because of COVID-19, I can’t sit next to people to interview them for my podcast. I couldn’t do that for Kelly in Saskatchewan or Joe in California anyway, but for sure that would have been the preferred approach to interview Jonathan and Dave. For all 4 of these interviews I used Zoom, and Dave and I were talking last week about the idea of also putting the podcast out on video. So, here it is, my podcast with Dave Sands in video form.
Description: This is the video version of Podcasting Pair-a-Dimes #28 with David Truss. My guest is Principal Dave Sands. We discuss 7 tips to help parents, who are supporting their kids learning at home (as a result of remote learning due to COVID-19). The 7 tips are:
Manage Expectations
Make a Schedule
Minimize Distractions
Learning occurs everywhere
Set daily and weekly goals
All screen time is not created equal
Model learning.
I think this topic is relevant almost everywhere in the world right now, and I believe that we discussed some great tips for parent, not only when dealing with their kids learning at home, but also in general to support their kids success at school.
I very rarely read or listen to a book, or watch a movie more than once. Atomic Habits is a book that I listened to twice. I also subscribe to James Clear‘s 3-2-1 weekly email, one of only 3 weekly email lists that I subscribe to. I listen to James last night on the Sam Harris podcast and stopped long enough to tweet this quote:
“A habit is not a finish line to be crossed, it’s a lifestyle to be lived.” ~ James Clear
My daily writing and meditation, my workout routine, my getting back into podcasting (trying to produce/create creative work)… these are habits I have developed or am developing. They don’t have an end goal. They don’t have a place where I can land and say, ‘Yes! I have arrived!“:
“A habit is not a finish line to be crossed, it’s a lifestyle to be lived.”
This is a time when more than ever we have an opportunity to do things for ourselves. I haven’t found my work schedule to be any less hectic at the moment. I still bring things home and fill my mind with the things I need to accomplish that don’t get done in a day. But I have more time at home to do things I felt I didn’t have time for previously.
It’s a Saturday, and after writing this, I’ll meditate. I meditate after writing because when I meditate first, I get stuck thinking about my writing and my mind is too distracted to meditate. So, I reward myself after publicly sharing my writing with 10 minutes of ‘me time’… a simple way to connect two habits and make them easier to do. I’ll work out, and at some point today and I’ll play with making my last podcast with Dave Sands into a video podcast. This is something new that I want to play with. The first video will take a while, since I need to create a reusable intro. But, since I need to interview people from a distance, and Zoom creates a video recording, it seems like a natural progression from sound recordings only… and it’s creative… and it’s fun… and it makes me use my brain in a creative way, unlike Netflix or Crave.
People set goals all the time, but as James Clear says, goals aren’t enough. Every competitive athlete at the Olympics has a goal of winning gold, only one of them will achieve this. But the habits we build into our lives, those become the lifestyle we live, they don’t lead to a finish line target, they lead to a life well lived.
