Joyful Jubilant Learning

Viva la Difference!

After so many books in our Love Affair during March, we turn to links and digital learning. I have already written here about my Input-Process-Output (IPO) covering many of the tools I use. The tool set has not changed a whole lot since that time. Many of the links have been referenced in other posts this week, and those that weren't may still come as the month progresses.

I'd rather spend a few minutes touching on some of the ideas raised in the posts this week and especially what Voice Thread is doing for us. By the way, if you have not had a chance to listen and experience Voice Thread, please allow yourself some time to go and do that. I'll wait. Don't worry. I'll be here when you get back.

How was that?

I am at a loss for words. Yes, me. The one who always can come up with 2 cents. I am having trouble typing as there are tears in my eyes. Yes, really. All in happiness, joy and jubilation of course.

Karen wrote: "The tools are only as good as the connection."

JJL is one major tool. Look at the connections being made!

Joanna asked: "What difference does voice make?"

There is a statistic in the support industry about communications. As I recall 60-65% comes from body language, 20-25% from tone of the voice, and only 10-15% from the actual words being communicated. No wonder folks misinterpret what we write! No wonder our voice makes a big difference!

For me, voice brings us closer. The printed word can travel outside the body. Once printed it really can take on a life of its own. The spoken word comes from the body and until recently, stayed close to the body. You needed to be within hearing distance, 6-8 feet for a normal voice. Longer for a shouted voice.

Technologies like the phone, the iPod, and now Voice Thread let us extend our voices. The phone is great for direct one-to-one dialog. But alas our time zones and our other daily commitments interfere with making connections. The iPod or MP3 player is good for the captured voice (or music) to listen to on our schedule, almost anywhere. Voice Thread goes one step further, it allows for direct feedback. We are no longer limited to the written coment. We can add our voice.

On our time, we can join in the conversation. We can create a story.

We can each enjoy the experience of our accents, our points of view, our passions, more so than the written word would allow.

Bring on the April showers! I am ready.

I have heard voices! but these are the good kind!

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Steve Sherlock writes his 2 cents exploring the "good experience", "life long learning" and life in general, after handling the "before you blog" list his wonderful wife Dolores  provides him. Together, they are enjoying the empty nest while their daughters are away at college. His sherku and other poetry can be found at quiet poet. More information about his current home town of Franklin, MA can be found at Franklin Matters

Inside the Dark Tide

What do molasses, Italian immigrants, influenza, Prohibition, J Edgar Hoover, and good old New England weather have in common?

These are the main threads woven together to tell the tale of one of the major industrial disasters to have occurred in these United States. Stephen Puleo tells the story in Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919. In meticulous detail, the threads build upon each other from building the tank in 1915 to set the stage for the event itself on January 15, 1919, and through to the trial that rendered its verdict in April of 1925.

Dark Tide is the selection of the Franklin Public Library for this year’s On the Same Page program. Supported by a grant from the Library Services and Technology Act, a federal source of library funding provided by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, On the Same Page is a community-wide reading project designed to bring members of the community together around the ideas shared through reading the same book.

Dark Tide was a natural fit for my own evolutionary blogging journey and my entry for this ALAWB.

The story is centered on an enormous steel tank (50 foot tall by 90 foot wide) that held 2.3 million gallons of molasses weighing about 26 million pounds. The tank was located on the water front of Boston’s North End surrounded on three sides by a heavily residential area. The water front made an easy connection from ship to rail for the US Industrial Alcohol (USIA) company that built and operated the tank to supply their refinery in nearby Cambridge.

Here are some passages that I think will give you a flavor of the story that Stephen Puleo has crafted.

Molasses:

Frank Van Gelder transported molasses along the East Coast following the same route that captains before him had traveled since the early 1600’s. For three centuries, the molasses trade has been a vital part of the American and New England economy, as important as fishing or textiles, and a critical component in the country’s political and social development. The dark brown viscous liquid, a by-product in the processing of sugar cane, played a major part in some of the biggest events in American history: in the colonial discontent that lead directly to the Revolution; in the introduction of slavery to the New World and, thus, the Civil War; in the growth of rum and liquor distilleries throughout the United States, and the resulting Prohibition movement; and in ensuring the superiority of Allied firepower that would eventually lead to victory in the First World War/ It all started in Boston and New England.

Italian immigrants:

As Irish and Jews assimilated and earned more money, both ethnic groups moved out of the North End to better areas of the city, although small enclaves remained in the neighborhood until well into the 1930’s. … the Italian population in the North End continued to soar --- by 1910, after a decade of unprecedented immigration, the neighborhood’s population approached thirty thousand people, of whom more than twenty-eight thousand were Italian.

Armistice and Influenza:

The armistice had occurred at the right time for Bostonians, who needed a reason to celebrate after they, and much of the world, had endured a dreadful 1918 autumn battling an influenza epidemic that first showed up in early September. In a little more than two months, it had wrecked havoc of biblical proportions. When it was over more than five hundred thousand Americans would lie dead, and estimates ranged from 20 million to 100 million worldwide. More than 25 percent of the U.S. population became ill, and an estimated eighteen thousand servicemen died of the virus; the government estimated that it would pay the beneficiaries of soldiers and sailors a total of $170 million in insurance premiums.

Prohibition:

Now that the war had ended, USIA had to find additional sources of revenue to tide it over until the country could fully make the transition to a peacetime economy, and the demand for non-military industrial alcohol grew again. … Company executives decided they could retool the Cambridge plant’s manufacturing processes to produce grain alcohol for the rum and liquor industries. … But even this strategy represented a timing challenge, one to be managed carefully for the company to benefit. After years of momentum, it now appeared certain that a Prohibition amendment would be ratified shortly by three-quarters of the states and that an 18th amendment would be added to the U.S. Constitution, banning the sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages.

J. Edgar Hoover:

Four days before Christmas (1919), at 5 A.M., the Buford set sail from New York harbor for Russia, carrying 249 passengers, including renowned anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman. J. Edgar Hoover, who was special assistant to Attorney General Palmer, watched the ship pull away. Hoover had strongly advocated the Goldman and Berkman deportations, branding them as “beyond doubt, two of the most dangerous anarchists in this country.” The Cleveland Plain Dealer echoed the feelings of the vast majority of the general public: “It is to be hoped and expected that other vessels, larger, more commodious, carrying similar cargoes, will follow in her wake.

Franklin played a part in this story:

… Italian anarchist Luigi Galleani, himself awaiting deportation, delivered an incendiary speech in Taunton, Massachusetts. The next evening, in the nearby town of Franklin, four Italian anarchists, all ardent Galleanists, blew themselves up in what police believe was a botched plot to destroy the mill of the American Woolen Company where they worked and where a strike was in progress.

The weather:

On December 13 and 14, a vicious storm with gale-force winds pounded Boston. The newspapers called it a “superstorm”, the worst in a dozen years. Two massive fronts collided in upstate New York and dumped more than twenty inches of snow west of Boston as well as torrential rain and a driving sleet within the city. Trains were delayed and streets were rendered impassable due to flooding. Heavy wind knocked down electric power lines, chimneys, trees, and signs outside of store fronts.

Gee, just this past December 14th, a similar storm hit Boston and New England paralyzing it with almost as much snow. Are we really seeing the effects of global warming?

Has much else changed since 1919?

• Is the war on terror any different than combating the anarchists
• Molasses may have seceded its place of prominence; only to be replaced by another dark thick liquid (oil) which is wrecking economic and political havoc around the world
• War has moved from Europe to the Middle East and Africa
• The threat of a pandemic is real
• Immigration is still a major issue for America.

There is so much more to the story. As the Library holds additional events for On the Same Page, I want to participate. As the year progresses, I will share what I learn.

In the meantime, I would recommend that amongst the wonderful opportunities to read that we have, pick up a book of your local history.

• What can you learn about your area?
• What role did it play in history?
• Do you find any parallels to current events?

Recall that George Santayana wrote:
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." 

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Steve Sherlock writes his 2 cents exploring the "good experience", "life long learning" and life in general, after handling the "before you blog" list his wonderful wife Dolores  provides him. Together, they are enjoying the empty nest while their daughters are away at college. His sherku and other poetry can be found at quiet poet. More information about his current home town of Franklin, MA can be found at Franklin Matters

Help give mine back to me this Christmas?

Our family is experimenting with tweaking our Christmas traditions this year, thus far with terrific results.

Ma‘alahi Mele

I’d kicked it off by talking to them about a Hawaiian concept I have become very enamored of; Ma‘alahi, contentment within simplicity and ease, or to use an English expression, happily living a holiday where “less is more.”

My children are now young adults, still in college and without children of their own (we can wait!) and so to start our Ma‘alahi Mele (mele means ‘merry’) we’ve cut way back on the gift-giving this year, trading wrapped boxes of more ‘stuff’ for Faith, Family, Friendship and Food experiences instead – quite wonderful! Joanna has her P’s; we have our F’s!

I’ve been thrilled with how the entire family got on board with the idea, even after my son and husband realized I’d still get thank you cards for us to write for those experiences shared with others too :) We all loved not needing to do any obligatory gift shopping —it saved heaps of time, and best of all, it cut out sooo much stress!

We had plenty to do: Aggressive household cleaning became part of our holiday revamping this year because we are selling a family property on O‘ahu and had to clean it out completely over the past week. You’d think that would be a big bummer for the holiday as we all started our vacations, but donation visits to the Hawai‘i Food Bank, Goodwill, the Salvation Army and an O‘ahu shelter for the homeless proved to be so satisfying. When we arrived home three days ago I expected that we’d all gratefully rejoice that the deep clean was done, instead surprised with the exact opposite: Each and every one of us now sees our own home in a new light, and our holiday clutter-busting has continued in this unspoken agreement of “one down, one to go!” Dealing with stuff that is just sitting around can sure release a ton of energy.

A new tradition: Re-gifting our stuff

These Ma‘alahi Mele activities resulted in a gift-giving idea I thought I’d share with you.

Even though we remain happily committed to our no-gift-buying decision, we put up a Christmas tree as usual, mostly wanting to savor the ornament collection we’ve grown over the years. As I got ready for bed late Friday evening I stepped behind the tree to turn off the lights and found a wrapped gift there addressed to me from my daughter. I asked her “what gives?” and she replied that when cleaning her room she found a book I’d lent to her several years ago to read. She knew it had been one of my favorites, and thought that I’d enjoy rediscovering it again for myself on Christmas morning. I’ve given her many of my books to read over the years, and so I have no idea which one it is… such a mystery, and such sweet anticipation; Tuesday morning can’t come soon enough for me!

So this weekend, we are a family on an “experience gifting” mission: We are all silently, stealthily ‘shopping’ in our own home, giving each other a new appreciation for some old stuff! Following my daughter’s lead, we are wrapping up once-favorite, but forgotten things we believe had once been very much loved by our intended receivers. If we do notice that something is missing from a shelf or corner we are playing along with the game and not saying so (though there IS some hinting and hoping it is under the tree and not in a donation box or the trash!)

To look under our tree at this moment is to realize just how many blessings we have had over the years, for the gifts are steadily piling up now. Incredible.

What could you re-gift to someone in your family, pulling their old treasures from the lonely land of the forgotten?

~ Rosa Say, JJL Contributor, and author of Managing with Aloha Coaching.

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This is a contribution to our JJL theme this month, Learning to Give, and Learning to Receive.

Fill your stocking with some holiday cheer: Subscribe to Joyful Jubilant Learning so you don’t miss hearing from the rest of our contributing authors!

Happy Pumpkin Day!

This is one of my favorite holidays, so many ways to be creative and have some fun! This is one in a series of Li'l Hawks done by hawkstudios on Flickr.

Last year, Opus was Carmen Miranda, remember?

Enjoy your day, and if you have a moment, visit my Kākou in Pictures; it is a new learning of mine done as an October 2007 Flashback.

Happy Halloween!

~ Rosa Say, JJL Contributor, and author of Managing with Aloha Coaching.

3 Environmental Habits to Learn and Feel Good About

Thanks to the learning challenge which was set forth for us by Blog Action Day, I have learned much in October about the different ways we leave our footprints on the earth. Some things I’d call re-learning, others un-learning, and as always gets us charged up here at JJL, new learning. Here are three examples we’ve talked about ‘round our dinner table in this environmentally-flavored discussion.

1. We are re-learning Recycling

We realized that our family had gotten a bit lazy about recycling, and that some of the good habits we’d started years ago have been neglected in the name of ease and convenience. For instance, it’s a 30 mile drive from where we live to the nearest recycling center for our bottles, cans, and paper, and packing those deliveries into the car when we’re headed in that direction hasn’t been happening for quite some time now. We all recommitted to getting it done.

Further, it’s clear that because we don’t enjoy this chore, we’ll naturally cut back on producing much of it in the first place! It’s connected to the next thing on my list:

2. We are un-learning our Consumerism

Second, at the urging of Steve, Tim, and others, we’ve joined the mantra that “water from a bottle is passé. Importing bottled water consumes gasoline and wastes plastic, and helping reduce consumption of these fossil fuels speaks to a forward-thinking consumer.” This is a pretty easy one for us in Hawai‘i, where we have wonderful tasting water straight from the tap and needn’t even filter it. Bottled water is hereby banned from the Say house.

And that is but one example. Less materialism, less clutter, less cleaning around the stuff, less maintaining it all. Minimalist living looks more and more attractive to me every day.

3. New learning: E-Waste

It’s long made perfect sense that we’ll have less paper to shred and haul to the recycler if we don’t use it in the first place, and we have all groomed increasingly digital habits, reading the local paper and favorite magazines online etc. However my new learning has been in the call to action many Blog Action Day writers made in regard to keeping hazardous wastes our of our landfills. It had not occurred to me that we were swapping one problem (forest consumption in paper goods) for another (highly toxic e-waste) — yikes!

For example, cell phones are becoming an ever-larger factor in this ecological challenge, and “One in three Americans will replace their cell phones this year, adding to the 500 million unused phones currently waiting to be discarded or recycled.” This is what I’ve learned to do the next time I get another phone (these three tips are from USAA, my insurance carrier):

• Erase personal data. WirelessRecycling.com tells how to remove names and numbers before you sell or donate your phone.
• Sell your cell. Your wireless company may give credit on a trade-in; other companies do offer to buy old phones.
• Donate it. Some charities sell phones at good prices, others use them to provide 911 access to battered spouses or the elderly. I learned that Cell Phones for Soldiers collects and recycles them for cash, which goes to buy prepaid calling cards for soldiers.

And not just cell phones; think PDA’s, pagers, computers, and your digital cameras too.

As my title suggests, this is the kind of learning you can feel great about, don’t you think?
~ Rosa Say

More from the JJL Community:

• Did you see Joanna’s wrap-up for Blog Action Day? Click to: Learning from the Blog Action Day story
• Here is the official Blog Action Day Wrap-Up presentation: Blog Action Day 2007.

A Harbor in the Tempest

The land laid a gentle arm around his shoulder, the smell of autumn leaves and damp glacial rock cleared his head and the running creek soothed his raw, trodden upon and tortured heart.

Jimmy grew up in an alcoholic haze that surrounded his parents.  Most memories of childhood were banished into a caustic vortex.  Except for a few.  Time spent with his uncle, trips to grandma's and picnics in the park. 

Jimmy's uncle died, his grandma died and after the age of thirteen he never again picnicked in the park with his parents.  But he never quit going to the park.  He took his dog there, his girlfriends there, his wife there, his motorcycles there, his cars there, his girls there, played softball there, golfed there, drank and hiked there. 

The trails were Jimmy's brothers, the fields his sisters and the hills his parents.  The park was his family.  The park was also home to Jimmy's best friend, The Creek.  Over the eons, the Creek cut a gorge, flanked by the remnants of ice age glaciers, into the land.  American settlers came to the area in the late 1700's.  In the 1800's, they built feed mills by the Creek's waterfalls and a village near the land's highest point.

Although Jimmy eventually escaped from the monsters of his past, their tentacles still had a hold on him into his twenties.  They would thrash and beat his body, opening his mind to deal with a time since forgotten.  In the darkest moments however, the Creek was there for him.  It begged for him to sit upon a boulder, to deeply breathe in the air and open his heart.

And Jimmy did open his heart.  When he had to give up his dog, when he had to get divorced, when his grandfather died and when his friend died.  When the world weighed heavy upon his shoulders, when he needed her the most, the Creek was there, the Creek listened.  With each return visit, he learned more about himself, he learned to process the harsh realities of life and he learned to let go.

Looking back over the years, Jimmy realized that the Creek was a reflection of his inner soul.  And that by confiding and trusting in her, he allowed himself to help himself. 

The Creek provided lighter moments as well...

Once, one of Jimmy's daughters won a bag full of goldfish at the carnival.   Not wanting to keep the fish, Jimmy suggested that they flush the fish down the toilet.  He reasoned to his daughter that the fish would eventually make it out of the sewer system to the Lake.  She didn't buy it and was more than concerned for their safety.  Jimmy then asked if it'd be okay to release them into the Creek.  She agreed.  By this point the fish had taken up a few hours of his time, but he invested just a bit more and drove the fish to the Creek.  He spent a few more minutes looking for just the right release point.  He then set the fish free...only to have everyone of them eaten by bigger fish within thirty seconds.

Special thanks to Paul Hewson, Dave Evans and their friends for this essay's title.

The Spark

The Spark lit up Annie's eyes and the residual heat radiated warmth throughout her body.  Her smile leapt from her body and buried itself into Jimmy's soul.  The impact stunned him for a second, causing his mind to drift...

I am twenty-seven years old.  We first got computers at school when I was in the second grade.  In eleventh grade we had classes in Microsoft Word, Excel and Publisher.  My parents sent me off to college with a laptop to one of the most wired public universities in the state.  And now I use a computer everyday as an advertising account manager.

Annie is twenty-six years old.  She graduated from a two year community college and is one of our admin assistants.  How could she not have known...?

Every human being on this planet travels the road of life.  Sometimes we take others for granted.  Especially those of similar age and education who are traveling near us.  If we listen and open up our minds, perhaps there will be an opportunity for us to give the Spark.

Jimmy was helping Annie write an e-mail.  Looking over her shoulder, he instructed her to open up a new screen.  Annie clicked her mouse four times.  Jimmy was incredulous.  He gently asked her to close that screen and allow him to take over the mouse.  He directed the mouse to the new mail icon and clicked once, bringing up a new e-mail screen.

...the Spark lit up Annie's eyes and the residual heat radiated warmth throughout her body.  Her smile leapt from her body and buried itself into Jimmy's soul.

The Spark is the ever so slightest exchange of information that can awaken one's universe and bring gamma rays of delight to the other.

Unlearning how to deal with hard times

What do you do when hard times come? It is natural to resist them and try to escape as quickly as possible. But, I have discovered that trials make us travel the journey of unlearning even more than they teach us something new. So, I must embrace difficult times as they come and let them teach!

Yesterday was one of those days. My wife and I learned late Tuesday night that our 24 year old son had suffered a heart attack. After many tests on Wednesday, it was determined that the attack was neural induced. Today, he is undergoing other tests with that in mind. He and his wife are walking a trial-laden path this week. As they are learning a great deal, there will probably be some things that they will have to unlearn as well.

For my wife and me, we have to unlearn that fragility of life does not respect age. My wife's 82 year old dad is battling cancer again; this battle is something we expected. Joel's situation was one we had not expected. In both situations, we see again how fragile life can be for every one of us.

What do you do with your trials? From one "hiker" to another, let me encourage you to take full advantage of what trials can teach. There is so much we can learn and unlearn through them.

Learn from the Master: Blog for 1 Person

The "Master" you learn from is you.
The "1 Person" you blog for is you.

If you are a blogger, a writer, (or want to be) or keep a journal (or have been wanting to), this post is for you.

The Blog as Journal

I've been keeping a personal journal using TypePad, and it's become a terrific multi-purpose tool for me. It's been working out so well, I felt I had to share it with you as a suggestion to try. In fact, I have had this draft sitting here since this past May because my results were almost immediate, but then I kept doing it instead of blogging about it, and the draft scrolled down my posting page until it totally disappeared from view --- I had forgotten it was here until I told Joanna Young about it today within a comment at Confident Writing.

Joanna had started the conversation while reflecting on her recent "blogging holiday;"

"One of the things that you can do while taking a blogging holiday is take stock of the way that you read, and write, and comment and engage in this activity we call 'blogging.'"

She talks about routine, addiction, time, writing, focus, and purpose; great thoughts you can reflect on with her too. To save you from re-reading my comment there...

Back in mid-May, I created a brand new blog and simply called it "bJournal." It is password protected and not public, and I initially started it because after a lifetime of paper and then Word doc journals, I wanted to tag my morning pages and other private journaling with categories and keywords so I could better find those flashes of inspiration that can come from stream of consciousness writing.

Well it has turned out to be one of the best writing ideas I have ever had. I now use it for all my blog writing: The "noise" and private stuff stays there, and what is worth sharing and I think worth the value of my readers' attention moves to one of my "real" blog draft fields to be slept on and then edited in a more online-worthy voice of the Mea Ho'okipa. Blogging is very addictive, and what bJournal has done is satisfy the fix, while serving its digital archiving purposes for me, with the cleaning up of my act a true bonus.

I have had a goal to be a better commenter within the blog community and not an "airy fairy" one, and I now find I am putting comment drafts in bJournal too if I want to curb my first impulse in its writing and return to the blog later.

Now I will be the first to admit that there are times I cannot resist sharing the noise. This is a work in progress!

There is another thought that comes to mind with this.

Who is the "Master" and just how many blogging tools do you need?

Web-based Writing as Top-Shelf Toolbox

My dad used to say that the best tool in his beloved Craftsman toolbox was the box itself. (He meant the portable one you carry around with you - not the mega he-man garage models.)

He felt that there must have been some divine intervention in the mind of the guy who took it from prototype to its red stainless steel goodness, for the space between the top shelf and the cover when it latched shut most effortlessly, perfectly defined which tools any respectable common sense handyman would use most often, readily accessible to him. Far as Dad could see,

To use more than that; irrelevant and uncertain tinkering.

To skip using what was there in nearly every job; you're rushing and may have missed something.

When it came time to allow my brothers the learning privilege of using his precious tools, he'd simply open the cover, wait for them to make their choice for the job at hand, and then teach them based on the tool they chose, grilling them on why they did so.

I have now been blogging for three years, and TypePad is my Craftsman. There are twelve blogs on my TypePad dashboard, some public, some private, some mine, some hosted for clients, some at the invitation of others to guest author. I don't really think of them as for blogging; they are for writing as my craft.

The lesson I've been thinking most about these days, is another one from my Dad, about how there were times he just knew that an older once-cherished tool had to slip a drawer down to make room for a newer one, or just maybe, it had to be left in the garage.

Related posts: From the JJL Archives

• We all have magical powers. We call those magical powers ‘writing.’ The magic is within the written word.
• A Guide to Writing Well; this is a must for your del.icio.us tagging with writing how-to.
• Write to Learn; Slow, Steady, Sure. We need to keep learning connections intact, no matter what wizardry technology cooks up next, if we are to continually mentor new generations of lifelong learners. 9 very thoughtful comments in this conversation.

Advice from Starbucker: I offer this advice to someone reading this who's thinking about blogging - go to one of those services like Blogger, register, sit in front of your computer, and start pouring some of your life experiences onto the screen.  At worst, it's therapy. At best, it's a whole new wonderful world.
Read the rest here: How Do I Blog Thee? Let Me Start at the Beginning

International Day of Peace - 9/21/07

Please consider accepting the challenge as outlined by LJCohen

I have been giving a lot of thought to my place in the world. I am so fortunate--I was born in a time and place in which I have the gifts of food, shelter, clothing, and basic safety. And I can pass these gifts on to my children.

I believe that because of the accident of birth and the advantages I was given, unearned, that I have an obligation to give back to society. We do that as a family in the form of charity, volunteer work, and lifestyle choices.

In a few weeks, the world will be celebrating an International Day of Peace (September 21).

In honor of that day, I would like to challenge bloggers around the world to write a blog post titled: Giving Back, talking about what you are able to do in order to give back the world. This can include organizations you personally support, though I really want to showcase actions. Do you volunteer in community organizations? Your local school district? Regional, national, or international organizations? Do you maintain a community garden? How about simple things in your neighborhood like shoveling your neighbor's walkway when it snows because you know she can't? Picking up bottles and cans along the bike path to recycle?

Big or small, what do you do for your world?

Every action has an impact. Let's show the world how much a group of regular individuals can do.

If you would like to participate in the Blogger Giving Back Challenge, leave a comment here in this post with a link back to your blog, or send me an email. I'll work out the details of sharing all the blog links in preparation of post day, September 21st.

Please spread the word. You can make a difference. We can all make a difference.

--
Posted By LJCohen to Once in a Blue Muse: A poet's journal at 7/21/2007 02:39:00 PM

I have accepted this challenge.

Will you?

Go to Once in a Blue Muse and let LJ know!

Be Fiercely Selfish With Your Time to Learn

When I attend conferences I feel like I am on a seesaw:

Up: They inspire me. I key into presentations and conversations with people I am newly meeting. New ideas float to the top of my consciousness so I will pay attention and honor them with action.

Down: I watch the rest of the audience, and go crazy at the tragic waste of human intellectual capital. It is easy to pick out people who are there because they have to be, or feel they are expected to be, and now they've caved in.

Caving in~

Caving in is something I very passionately rant against in all my Managing with Aloha presentations, especially when we are talking about Ho'ohana, the Hawaiian value of worthwhile work, for when you ho'€˜ohana, you are fully present. The polar opposite of ho'ohana is caving in.

Definition: "Caving in" is giving up and then giving away more than you need to, continuing to give up throughout the entire ordeal. It is the half-empty viewpoint that it will be an ordeal, versus the half-full vantage point that it can manifest as opportunity.

Caving in happens something like this:

--- your boss says you must attend an annual conference to represent the company. You really don'™t want to go, but you know this is not a request you have the option of saying no to, and you go.

--- other than packing and tying up loose ends on what you leave behind, you don't prepare much more for the conference. You Google the weather so you'll know what to pack, and you might even visit a bookstore to grab some best-selling paperback for the travel time, but you ignore the conference agenda, figuring you'll deal with it when you arrive. You don't look up any of the speakers or the exhibitors, and you don'™t brainstorm a list of goals to achieve while you're there.

--- at the conference you sit in the back of the room, or wherever the nearest exits and/or refreshment tables are. A planter you can hide behind when you whip out your blackberry during boring presentations is considered a true find.

--- when a speaker does manage to get your attention, you sit back and listen expecting to be magically spoon-fed. You don't take any notes, and during the breaks you escape instead of engaging the person next to you in curiosity about their take-aways as compared to yours.

After the conference, you will probably be thinking to yourself, "I knew that would be a waste of time."

Well of course it was! You had caved in, and that "waste of time"€ became your self-fulfilling prophecy. Why not be fiercely selfish instead?

Own your time, and harness it for learning~

Know this: You are always in control, even when you are doing something for someone else. To think otherwise is a lazy, uninspired excuse, a fooling-yourself justification, and a cop out.

Every moment in time you find you are in, will be defined by the choices you make and the actions you take within that moment.

Even if you have to be somewhere, or attend something for someone else€™s agenda for you, why not milk it for all it can potentially be for you? You can reread my example of caving it above, and quickly pick out what I feel you can do instead.

What other ideas and suggestions do you have for each other JJLers? I know that the lifelong learners who read JJL do NOT cave in.

When you attend a conference, how do you milk it, and own it for you?

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Related articles:

• Take Responsibility For Your Learning by Sterling Frandsen
• Send that Blackberry to Solitary Confinement at Talking Story
• Own the time you DO have at Talking Story

What I Have Learned From Travel; Blooming

July 10 UPDATE:
Robert has posted the full list of entries at Middle Zone Musings - a wonderful 18 entries in all! I have also listed them in the extended section of this posting. Fringe benefit alert: Visiting them is also a great way to pick up the site feeds of those who would likely proclaim that writing is their Ho‘ohana (fulfilling work) … Robert’s group writing projects are proving to have a magnetic attraction!

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Preface; This is an entry for Robert Hruzek’s group writing project at Middle Zone Musings. Robert asks what we have learned from travel.

What I Have Learned From Travel; Blooming

When I first tell you what I feel I have learned from travel, your reaction may be, “Well sure, of course you learned that. Every person who travels learns the same thing. In fact, they know it before their travel even begins!”

Still, I’ll take that risk because I don’t believe it’s all that obvious, and I wish there were some sure-fire way to give everyone this learning;

Our world is a very, very big place of unlimited possibility.

You see, that unlimited possibility means that whoever you are, and whatever seemingly silly, preposterously huge dream you have, you can’t ever give up on the desire for it, even when it feels like you are stuck someplace with it burning a hole in your gut. There is always another place where you can try to make it get it to come true.

It may be around the corner,
it may be in the next town,
it may be on another island or another continent, but it is there.

Travel helps you get brave enough to cross that street,
or that interstate,
or that ocean to reach for that place where,
you eventually can arrive.

Travel unplants you when for some reason, you cannot “bloom where you are planted” as Mary Engelbreit made a licensing fortune in proclaiming. The ground may be much more fertile someplace else, and you shouldn’t rob yourself of the chance to find out. The unlimited possibility is not an “IF” but a “WHERE.”

Your ‘unplanting’ can, and probably will happen in several different ways. Travel is sensory goodness.

I believe in the profound teaching of in-person, tactile, and of-the-land sensory learning. It speaks to the spirit within us in a way that electronic and virtual learning can never duplicate. Those things are wonderful (and as you know, I sing their praises often), but my wish is that everyone could have both the in-person experience of travel and the virtual one.

As much as we love our islands, in Hawai‘i we call it “Rock Fever” when a person has not ventured across the Pacific Ocean to see, hear, feel, smell and touch the rest of the world at least once. It’s the kind of fever that makes you feel apathetic, lethargic, and all the other junky feelings that make you feel sick. Feeling sick is feeling less than whole, and I believe that not having traveled outside that confirming circle of comfort people call home will always keep you feeling less whole.

The world was created big, and you were created mobile.

I put in a LOT of miles, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I understand what a privilege it is that I can do so.

I love my Hawai‘i, I truly and quite fervently do. But I am glad she understands that I must leave her every so often so that when I return, I can be a better person for her. The world has a lot to teach me, and I have to travel to best learn her lessons. My goodness, there are so many of them!

And another thing: You can bloom while planted in more than one place.

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Related articles;

• Places, Feelings and Learning. Learning Serenity. This was written about a place-connected experience I had in Prescott, Arizona.
• The wonder of human artistry. If I did not travel, and bring my children with me, they would never know the artistry of Cirque du Soleil.
• Get the Most Out of Travel. I wrote this from a business perspective, while a guest author for Lifehack.org.

Pictures! This is what you could see if you came to my Hawai‘i! I would love to show her to you :-)

• A photo album: Hiking in Haleakala Crater on Maui

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Another way of looking at this, found on Flickr;

Commuters (NYC, June 2007)

Four rush-hour subway commuters on the downtown "A Train."
Two are tourists and two are die-hard New Yorkers.
Can you pick out who is who? Of course you can.

Cowboy learning

My son just finished an 8-day, 200 mile horse trek here in Oregon. He and a group of about 40 other people moved 50 horses from one Boy Scout camp to another so the horses can be used at summer camp (the camp is on Mt. Hood, so the horses winter down south).

I didn't go on the whole trek this year (I plan to next year) but I was able to join them for a good ol' cowboy campfire about halfway through the trek. After I arrived at the rendezvous point, we spent about an hour or so socializing, eating, and getting the horses settled for the night. Then it was time for the campfire.

During the campfire people shared songs, stories, and cowboy poetry. Everyone had a good time. The leader of the trek (who lives on the southern horse ranch) told us all kinds of things about cowboy life, the history of the area around us, and how important the horse was to the development of the U.S.A. Some of the boys chipped in and told their own stories (some they made up themselves, some memorized from a book, some they'd memorized through hearing and repetition).

This felt like a living example of "Talking Story" as related to me (and demonstrated) by Rosa Say. That campfire was just an awesome experience.

But what struck me even more was how much my son has learned about taking care of horses, working in a team, and taking care of himself. On that trek, he had to learn by doing and using the examples of the more experienced wranglers as his guide. At the end of the 8 days, he shared his own stories with the family. He is still telling us all kinds of interesting things he's learned, funny things that happened on the trek, and interesting people he'd met.

Sitting in an office (or on a plane) every day, I only catch a glimpse of this now and again, but I think there's something we can learn from the cowboy way. It sure seemed like a fun way to do hard work.

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Dwayne Melancon is the author of Genuine Curiosity, where he's always on the lookout for new things to learn.

What I've Learned About Productivity

Mark Shead over at Productivity501 had an interesting series of posts over the last week. Mark is a blogger who writes very insightful posts from personal experience about using technology to increase productivity. He asked over 30 bloggers the following three questions...

Question 1:
What is the single biggest way people waste time without even realizing it?

Question 2: 
What change has made the most difference in making you effective in life?

Question 3:
If someone were to read just one post from your site, which would you recommend they read and why?

This was very helpful and I learned a tremendous amount from the combined wisdom of the bloggers. With answers like Doing & Reviewing, Working on your most important tasks, and turning off the TV, you're sure to glean some very helpful information from this series

Today I would like to share with you my answers to his questions and give you a personal example of a process that can effectively increase your productivity.

The biggest time waster that I see everyday is people trying to Multitask. They will have a cell phone in one ear, while typing on a computer in front of them. While they are doing that the desk phone will ring and the cell phone is put on hold. Just then someone walks into their office and is told to sit down. All of a sudden a new e-mail pops up and grabs their attention. They have three or four tasks going on at once but their focus is scattered.

Have you ever been the person sitting in the room with this multitasker? Did you feel like you were important or did you feel like a third cousin twice removed? Studies have found that when we try to multitask (using the same part of our brain to do multiple things) we actually slow down. Since our minds can actually only do one thing at a time, we must put one thought on hold and switch to another.

This constant switching back and forth is inefficient because it takes our mind a while to get back up to speed once we switch tasks. It seems like it should work, but it actually slows us down and may cause us to forget things. It is also hard on relationships as we try to carry on a conversation while our focus is elsewhere.

I have been a multitasker for years but it has been increasingly hard to keep up with the barrage of new technology that is begging for our time. It used to be just the phone and snail mail, but then we added e-mail, cell phones, faxes, web sites, blogs, and a host of other things including the supposed savior of technology... the smart phone.

The more things I added to my life, the more stress and inefficiency they caused. I would get to the end of an incredibly busy day and have to ask myself... what did I accomplish today? The answer was always less than I expected.

The answer to this problem (And Mark's Question #2) is to work in a focused manner on one project at a time.  You turn off e-mail, let the phones go to voice mail, turn off your browser, and work on just one thing straight through. I've found that this works best for me in a 48 minute work period. I work for 48 minutes straight and then take a 12 minute break.

I use this technique every morning when I'm writing my blog posts and it has really helped me become more efficient. It used to be that the constant barrage of e-mail and browser seduction would constantly pull me away from my writing. Now that I segment my time, I'm focused just on my writing and I accomplish much more this way.

The 12 minute break is useful to start background projects that don't require my attention. Currently I'm washing clothes and running the dishwasher, but they will not require my attention until my next break. In my daily routine, I'm an early riser so I try to get two focused work periods in before I have to go to the office each day. Once I'm at work, I try to get at least one focused period in each day.

If you are interested in trying this technique, I have a post on my blog that explains the procedure and a printable goal setting toolkit that has some cards that are helpful for segmenting your time.

Remember... Get Focused... Get Productive.

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John Richardson has a personal blog entitled Success Begins Today where he discusses topics on success and personal development.

The First 14 Days: JJLN and Sense of Place

As a management and leadership coach, I have a favorite question for people. I ask it all the time, because it helps me meet them most quickly where they currently are. It gives me a sense of their growing place. This is the question:

What are you learning about right now?

In a single sentence, it is also the ho‘ohana (on-purpose, and on-passion intention) I have in being part of JJLN. To be more accurate, my own answer is my ho‘ohana;

I, Rosa Say, am currently learning about the capacity I have to dwell in a virtual community of like-minded, and aloha-spirited people. I am learning to find my wahi pono, my place of contentment within it. My goal, is to then connect it to nānā i ke kumu, where I can always go to a place of well-being, and “look to my source.”

This itself, is a kind of learning that is very, very exciting to me. I know that my “place” is changing, and I am ready to be okay with a new level of discomfort with that. The “good” discontent Tim Milburn had taught us about in JJL ‘06 is part of it.