Tag Archives: time

Moments of silence

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There was a time when moments of silence were golden. When being alone with my thoughts was quiet and contemplative. When no sound meant calm and inspired serenity.

Now I fill those moments. I listen to books, podcasts, and music. I avoid the silence because that’s when my tinnitus gets loud… and even if I wanted that silence, I wouldn’t get it. My tinnitus is a constant tone, for others it’s like crickets. For anyone who has it, it’s the end of silence.

But there is another kind of silence. It’s the quiet of the mind. It’s like an ocean without waves. This is even more elusive. It is the moments when our minds are not reliving the past or creating unlikely futures. It is when our minds are not thinking about our schedule, worrying about our responsibilities, or planning our next moment, meeting, or meal.

It is when there is nothing to do, but there is no boredom.

It is when nothing is pressing, and there is no need to rush.

It’s also when you don’t seek a distraction. But now the distraction is always there. It looks like Facebook or TikTok, Instagram or Twitter, YouTube or Audible, text or email, WhatsApp or Snapchat.

We have let technology steal away our moments of silence. We are robbed of those golden moments. The dopamine rush of the next notification is too great to resist, and too daunting to allow silence a chance. Silence is no longer a desired state, it is a state of absence to avoid, not a desired state of stillness.

Moments of silence were already elusive, now they are all but nonexistent. I even wonder if for someone younger, who spent their teen years with a smartphone, if silence was ever known, is ever desirable? Or is this just a nostalgic ideal?

It’s quiet now, but my tinnitus sings it’s ever present song, and I put on some background music. The silence is gone.

I think therefore…

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I think therefore I… reflect, plan, worry, and I delude myself. I think therefore… I am not. I am not existing in the moment when I’m not thinking in the moment. Instead I am creating an illusion of what was or what will be. This is not the counter argument to René Descartes’ “I think therefore I am”. It is a commentary on what we actually think about. Thinking about the past and future does not negate our existence, but thinking about anything other than the present moment is more about existing than living.

This is why there is so much appeal to exhilarating experiences. It’s hard to worry about anything more than the present moment when we are skydiving, bungee jumping, river rafting, rock climbing, dancing, playing music, having sex, or even playing a competitive sport. These moments demand our moment-to-moment presence, they give us the ‘I am’ experience of being the thinker.

But more often than not we are thinkers thinking about moments other than now, and thus not fully living. It’s a useful exercise to meditate, to take a moment to be singularly aware of the moment. To be present in the present. Here. Now. There is irony in the fact that not thinking and just being is to be more present, more in the ‘I am’ state, than when in a thinking state. I think therefore I am… distracted. Whereas when I focus on my current experience and I am in the present, then I am here, and I am now. I am truly living.

The time myth

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“The myth is that there isn’t enough time. There is plenty of time. There isn’t enough focus with the time you have. You win by directing your attention toward better things.” ~ James Clear

it doesn’t matter how good I get at managing time, I am still someone that could focus it better. I woke up at 4:52am this morning, 8 minutes before my alarm. My routine has begun: Wordle to get my mind going, writing (this), meditation, 20 minutes cardio listening to a book or podcast, 10 minutes stretching, 10-15 minutes of strength exercises, and in the shower by 7am. I could be done faster, but this is a great routine, and some days I can be up at 5:30 and still get it all done. Five years ago the only thing I did before heading to work was get ready for work.

So my mornings are routined, and while I could probably do things a little faster, I arrive at work feeling like I’ve already accomplished something good with my day. When I get home, that’s my down time. And some days I can’t get myself to do very much. Sometimes this is totally understandable. Two days ago I didn’t get home until after 7:30pm, after my PAC meeting. And yesterday I didn’t get my writing done in the morning, and had to run a couple interviews that went until 6:30pm, so on both days I basically did nothing beyond work late and catch up on things I missed.

Having said all that, there are definitely days when I can ‘direct my attention toward better things’. Things like getting home in time to go for a walk with my wife. Things like chores that get pushed to the weekends and make them feel like they go by too fast. Things like reading, writing, and being creative. Things that fill my bucket and make me feel like I’m doing ‘better things’ with my time.

Time is limited and finite. We spend a good bit of our time on earth unconscious, a fair bit of time sustaining, cleaning, and caring for our bodies. The time we have left need not always be efficient, but it should be well spent… And when it’s spent focused on a task rather than than being squandered, that’s when it feels like we are really living.

Now, not waiting…

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I was reflecting on retirement yesterday, and then today I listened to a podcast that mentioned we only live for about 4,000 weeks. We are lucky when it’s more, and when I consider that I’ve passed 2,800 weeks, it makes me appreciate all of the time I have left. This isn’t sad, it’s factual. And the fact is that every week, every day matters.

We’ve all had those weeks that fly by feeling like we’ve done no more than what needed to be done: Eat, sleep, work, repeat… with a few distractions along the way. And we’ve all had weeks that have felt special, even when the regular routine was all that was really done. What’s the difference?

Good conversations, acts of kindness, a delicious meal, a hug, a good laugh, or even a quiet moment of contemplation can help make an ordinary week a little more special. It would have been easy to use the word extraordinary rather than special, but that would be dishonest.

The reality is that it’s hard to live a life where every week is extraordinary. That said, it can be too easy to live a life where weeks just disappear, one less week to live, then another, then another. Every week doesn’t have to be exceptional, just well lived… well lived, not poorly wasted.

It’s fun to plan ahead for the future, but the time to enjoy life is now! Because we really don’t know how many weeks we have left, and so each week we do have is precious.

Attention to what really matters

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Yesterday I had a couple meetings that took me out of my school for most of the morning. I got back to my building and immediately started my lunch. It was about 20 minutes before teachers would be in the staff room and so I was there alone. A student saw me through the clear glass walls and asked to speak to me.

She was honoured with doing a speech at our district’s indigenous student graduation ceremony next week and she wanted advice. I invited her in, listened while I ate, and provided some initial feedback. She’ll work on it and come back to me.

Just as I was ending that discussion there was another student at the door. She invited me to see her Independent Directed Study final presentation the next day (today). I told her I’d love to see it and set an alarm on my phone to remind me.

What a productive lunch! Instead of sitting and eating alone, I got to spend time talking with students, and it was by far the best part of my day. I love that students feel they can come to me for help and want me to see them present. It reminds me of why I like my job, of what my job is all about.

It’s easy to get buried in the work of running a school. I can spend my entire day in my office and in meetings… doing important work that needs to be done. But if I don’t make time for students, if they only see me as a guy in my office too busy to talk to them, then I don’t know why I got into this position.

As I come off an extended leave due to a herniated disc, I’ve been absolutely swamped trying to get back up to speed. It’s easy to get lost in the work and to forget what really matters… our students. And if we can’t find time for them, they won’t look for us to help and support them. They won’t see us as part of their learning community. These relationships are key to foster, and moments like this lunch remind me that I’ve got to put the time in, or moments like this won’t happen.

The secret sauce of iHub – Time and Space, and Pace

Inquiry Hub (iHub) is a small school that runs more like a specialty program than a school. The backbone of the program (besides some awesome and innovative educators) is two courses we wrote: Foundations of Inquiry 10 – BAA Course 2018 &  & Foundations of Inquiry 11 – BAA Course 2018. Large high schools have a multitude of elective offerings that students can take, and we can’t offer them with our small teaching staff. Instead, Grades 9 & 10 take these two courses and then in Grades 11 & 12 students do IDS, Independent Directed Studies, where they develop their own year-long course.

Here  is a student, Thia, describing her inquiries, her ‘electives’, at our school:

You can see other unique projects on our student page.

I’ve been doing some reflection and our inquiry courses are necessary, but they not the secret sauce of our school. The secret sauce has two main ingredients: ‘Time and Space’ and ‘Pace’.

  1. We create the time and space for students to work on projects that they want to work on. Student are not ‘in front’ of a teacher who is ‘in front’ of the room all day. They have time and space to work independently and in groups. We create multidisciplinary projects and use an adapted version of scrum project management to get required content out of the way so that students have more time to work on projects they want to work on. They get the time and space to follow their passions and interests while at school.
  2. We provide support for students to help them maintain a good pace. The most important trait a student needs to be successful at our school is that they are self-directed learners… they know how to use their time well. However, most Grade 8 students don’t come fully pre-loaded with these skills, (in fact many adults lack these skills). So, teachers work as a team and our student services teacher connects with any students that are behind on work. She works with students to help them build in strategies that help them keep up and stay on top of work. This is essential in a school where students can have up to 50% of their school day without a teacher in front of them, directing their work/tasks.

Yes, the inquiry process is important. Yes, we can talk about their mindset and look at how we examine failure, but when I really think about what makes Inquiry Hub tick (again, besides the hard work of great teachers) I think that giving students the time and space to explore their interests while supporting them in keeping up a good pace, is what the school is really all about.

Time off stress

It’s accumulating. The work I need to get done is compounding as I take some time off. I’ve been taking some high strength meds and my mind is not always clear. Meanwhile email and work accumulates.

I’ll have to spend time catching up today even though I won’t be going into work today. I’m adjusting to the meds, I’m feeling more discomfort than pain, and I hopefully won’t sleep away the day like I did yesterday.

It’s challenging missing work, and impossible to let work go enough to take a day off without thinking about what I’m missing and what I need to do. It sometimes feels like it’s more work to take time off than it is to go to work while not feeling my best. My body is getting the rest it needs, my mind is just getting stressed about everything I’ve got to get done at work… and the email just keeps coming faster than I can deal with.

It’s really hard to take sick days completely off, work adds too much stress to time off.

Time in, time out

There is a certain wisdom that comes with age, with the passing of years and the recognition that more than half your life has passed. I’m not talking about how my days are numbered or anything like that, but rather that the time we have left is worth something. So how do we use our time? What do we put time into… and what do we get out of that time?

I have a good job that is in the service of others. I get good job satisfaction out of my work, but I also put a lot of my time into my work. I have an awesome family that I’d like to spend a bit more time with… and do, like our recent vacation to Spain. I have a small group of friends that I definitely want to spend more time with. I have a weekly walk and coffee with a friend, and I have regular events (plays & musicals) where my wife and I go out with 2 other couples we are close to. I have some awesome connections to my wife’s family and we meet for events like a dinner this long weekend. Beyond that I really don’t make time for friendships, and when I do it feels like an effort.

As I get older I’m seeing that the effort to connect with friends and family is vitally important. Vitally as in it fosters vitality. I spend so little time making the effort to connect to others I care about, but those connections are worth the effort. And if you don’t put the time in, you don’t get the reward out. My circle of friends is small, and I don’t want it any smaller. I need to make more time to connect to people whom I value… and who value me.

I need to make the time, because to quote a Canadian band, ‘They say, absence makes the heart grow fungus‘. If I don’t make the effort now, I’m probably not going to make it later, and friendships do not grow stronger out of time apart. New experiences with old friends: that’s what I need more of in my life. And these don’t happen unless someone is making an effort to connect… and more and more I’m realizing that I’m the one that needs to make the effort; to put the time in.

Time and attention

I feel like in the last 5-10 years i’ve seen a shift in how time and attention are spent. Distractions are everywhere, especially in our phones that are almost always within reach. Distractions take time. Distractions draw our attention. But what about when we aren’t distracted?

When phones with on demand social media, streaming movies and series, and time sucking games or scrolling are not what we are doing, what then? Are we being efficient? Are we dedicating time to the right things, the things we say are the priorities in our life? And when we do spend this time, are we doing so with our full attention?

That’s the key question: when I’m giving of my time, am I also giving of my full attention?

What, and more importantly who, deserves your full attention?

Capability and Time

This post is about General Artificial Intelligence, but I’m going on a bird walk first.

My dad has had a health setback and will be on a long road to recovery. I heard him talking about his recovery plans and I felt had to share a personal example with him. When I went through 6 months of chronic fatigue I finally found relief after I discovered that I had a severe Vitamin D deficiency and started taking high dose supplements. Here’s the thing, I saw positive results in just 3 days… I went from hearing my alarm and wondering how I could physically get out of bed, to feeling normal when I woke up in just a matter of days of taking suppliments. However, it took over 6 months to recover to the point where I could put my treadmill within 90% of what I could do before the fatigue hit me. My capabilities improved, but much slower than I thought would happen. We are good at setting goals and knowing what’s possible, but we often overestimate how fast we can achieve those goals.

But I digress (my dad’s favourite thing to say when he finishes a bird walks on his way to making a point.)

Chat GPT and similar language predicting software are still pretty far away from artificial general intelligence, and the question is: How far away are we? How far away are we from a computer being able to out-think, out-comprehend, and our problem-solve the brightest of humans? Not just on one task, like they do on competing in Chess or Go, rather in ‘general’ terms, with any task.

I think we are further away in time than most people think (at least those people who think that artificial general intelligence is possible). I think there needs to be at least one if not a few technological leaps that need to happen first, and I think this will take longer than expected to happen.

The hoverboard and flying cars in the movie Back to the Future may not be too far away, but the ‘future’ in the 1987 movie was supposed to be 2015.

Are we going to achieve Artificial General Intelligence any time soon? I doubt it. I think we need a couple quantum leaps in our knowledge first. But when this happens, computers will instantly be much smarter than us. They will be far more capable than humans at that point. So the new question isn’t about when this will happen, but rather what we do when it does happens? Because I’m not a fan of a non-human intelligence looking at humans the way we think about stupid chickens, or even smart pets. What happens when thé Artificial Intelligence we create sees us as stupid, weak animals? Well, I guess time will tell (but don’t think that’s any time too soon).