Envision Presentations

What to Do When Words Don't Work

2012-02-15T09:36:00.000-08:00

Recently Nancy Duarte featured Dan Roam on her blog and had him speak about his new book Blah Blah Blah: What To Do When Words Don't Work. In it, he discusses the two different minds that we have - the verbal mind and the visual mind. The verbal mind is all about words and grammar and it does really well in school. Schools are built for the verbal mind to excel, but they are difficult for the visual mind to navigate. What Dan does is to build a bridge between the two minds.

The problem has been that the Verbals have been in charge, only allowing the Visuals to work in a small sector. Verbals are CEOs and they allow Visuals to be in marketing or advertising, but it's always on the Verbal's terms. Visuals are expected to either get in line or get out of the way.

Dan shows, in the video below, how grammar is both a visual and a verbal construct. It's not just about one or the other, but ways in which both types of people can communicate together to make something more meaningful.

Are you a Verbal or a Visual?

Dan Roam - Vivid Grammar from Duarte Design on Vimeo.

Note: the book link earns me a small commission on any purchases made. I haven't read the book yet, so I make no endorsement.

Standing Desk - Week 1

2012-02-13T10:17:00.000-08:00

This is my (messy) standing desk.

I spent one week (four day actually) getting accustomed to the standing desk setup. You can see my configuration pictured on the right. The TV/second monitor swivels depending on the time of day. During work hours it extends my screen space, but in the evening, it's our primary source of entertainment.

I found the lap-desk at Goodwill and it puts my computer at the right height so that my elbows are at 90 degrees when I'm typing. That meant, though, that I needed to adjust my typing habits. I've grown accustomed to resting my wrists the laptop below the keyboard, but when my arms are at the right position, that hurts my wrists. So there's another habit I'm changing.

The size of the TV isn't too bad since it sits at the back of the desk and I have the laptop at the front of the desk, the tops of the screens are about the same height from my perspective. It's a little too low, but because it's a dual use item that's going to have to remain the case for now.

My biggest adjustment has been standing. I opted to stay with slippers, working on the theory that my feet are the best design for supporting my body and the slippers don't interfere with the way my feet work. Shoes force feet to conform to a certain orientation. I gradually ramped up the standing from one hour on and one hour off, to 1:15 on 0:45 off, 1:30 on 0:30 off and on Friday 1:45 on and just 0:15 off. That makes today (Monday) the first day of all day standing. I'll sit for lunch and other breaks, but my work will be only standing.

I already mentioned that one benefit I'm feeling is being physically tired at the end of the day, which has helped with my insomnia. I also feel like I'm taking a break when I'm done with work, which is a good thing too. Overall, I'm loving the standing desk, but I'll keep experimenting to see what's working and what isn't.

Do you have any thoughts or questions?

Standing Desk - Day 3

2012-02-09T09:16:00.000-08:00

I've been through the first two days of the standing desk experiment and am writing at the cusp of the third. Based on some good advice from several people on Facebook and from the article on Lifehacker, I've been gradually phasing into the standing desk mode.

On the first day I stood for an hour and then sat for an hour. At the end of the day I was definitely tired of standing. It didn't help that we went to rehearse with our community choir that night so there was more standing in store for me. So when day two rolled around, I was a bit on the tired side, but I still upped the standing from one hour to an hour and fifteen minutes. I also dropped the sitting time to just forty-five minutes. Again, at the end of the day I was tired of standing and ready to sit, but it wasn't unbearable.

My tiredness is mostly in my feet and back. But it's not too different from when I've worked standing jobs in the past. It's nice that I get to transition into things though. One of the issues that I had to address is the height of my second monitor. My main computer is a laptop, so I placed that on a portable lapdesk with legs that increases the height perfectly for me. But the monitor was still at desk level, which was too low and placed my neck in an awkward position. I found a five inch riser for the monitor which brings it up enough so that the top is at the same height as my laptop screen from my perspective.

Another issue that I'm dealing with today is that I have grown accustomed to resting my arms on something. When sitting, I'll rest my arms on the desk, but that doesn't exist in the standing position so I have been resting my arms on my wrists on the keyboard of my laptop. At the end of the day yesterday it was to the point of begin painful. So, this morning I'm having the force myself to keep my wrists in the correct neutral position. Even as I'm typing this I can feel the muscles getting tired from the unaccustomed work, but it will be better in the end if I don't develop a repetitive stress injury, so I'll tough it out.

What else do I have to discover? Today I ramp up the standing to 1:30 and sitting to 0:30 and by Friday I'll only be taking 15 minute sitting breaks. The plan is to start on Monday standing all day.

What thoughts do you have? What questions do you have?

Standing Desk - Day 1

2012-02-07T11:16:00.000-08:00

After a conversation with my friend, Jason over the weekend I decided to try out a standing desk. I've been freelance writing for 19 months now and doing it full-time for the last 15 or so. It's awesome to be able to work from home and have a flexible schedule, but that means that I'm sitting down most of my day.

According to several studies, sitting for long amounts of time is detrimental to your health. It slows the metabolism, decreases circulation, harms posture and is linked to the onset of diseases like diabetes and cancer, even in people who regularly exercise when they aren't at work.

So I'm about one hour into the first day of standing at my desk. Yesterday we found a perfect folding desk at Goodwill that sits on my regular desk and puts my laptop at the right height for typing, plus it has enough space for my mouse and a cup of coffee.

Today I'm going to stand for an hour at a time. One hour on and one hour off. It takes time to build up the endurance to stand all day after sitting so long, so I'm not going to over do it.

My big issue right now is my external monitor (which is also our 32" TV). It sits too low when I'm standing, but I don't have a good way to raise it up right now. Currently I'm using a book under the stand to tilt it so that it's angled a bit. We'll see how that works out.

Have you tried a standing desk? How did it work for you? Do you have any advice for me?

How to Run a Not-Boring Meeting

2012-02-06T10:55:00.000-08:00

The word "meeting" can, unfortunately, carry similar connotation to the words "punishment," "prison," "torture" and "boredom." The problem is that too many meetings conform to the negative stereotype, so when it comes time for you to host a meeting, people will automatically think of it in terms of their negative past experiences. We aren't so different from Pavlov's dogs in this respect.

However, you can use a few bits of neuroscience to transform your meetings from torturous into productive and even fun.

John Medina, Doctor, professor, author (of Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School) and brain scientist, suggests using three truths about the human brain to make your meetings better. I've covered Brain Rules on this blog several times before, so you might be familiar with some of this material.

Start with vision. Too often meetings start with a look at the minute details of a situation, but that's not how the brain works. We need a vision of the overall importance of something so that we can fit the details into that framework. Always start your meetings with a vision for what might happen in the future. If you start with the details, they will be lost as people try to figure out what you're point is. If they don't have exactly the same vision as you or if they can't fit the details into a vision, you'll lose them.

Use 10 minute segments. Our brains can hold on to an idea for about 10 minutes. After that we need another hook to re-connect with what's going on. The hook can be a joke, a story, a video clip or anything else that connects with your topic in an emotional manner. You'll notice that great speakers pepper their presentations with hooks that keep people engaged for long periods of time. If you go past the 10 minute window, people will start mentally dropping out until you give them another hook to latch on to.

Show them something old and something new. Our brains match patterns very well. It's how we recognize faces, voices and just about everything. We quickly decide if something is a part of a schema that we've seen before and then we classify it according to that category. So, you should ideally show people how your topic fits into an existing pattern and then show them how it differentiates from the existing pattern.

The basic meeting outline would be: Cast a vision for what you want to accomplish, give an emotionally charged example of the vision and then for no more than 10 minutes look at the details of how your topic fits into an existing pattern. Then have another emotional break and spend 10 minutes examining the deficiencies of the existing pattern. Finally, one more hook and then 10 minutes of how your topic is a new and different pattern from what people have experienced before.

What have you done to run great meetings?

What's the most boring meeting you've attended and why?

Free eBook, The Marriage Challenge

2012-02-03T08:54:00.000-08:00

My eBook on marriage is free today through February 6th. Yesterday, the first day of the promotion, it was downloaded 661 times and jumped up to #435 on the Amazon Best Seller list. It's also at #2 on the Marriage Best Seller list.

I'd love it if you would download the book and share it with your friends and family. You can get it here (and it's free!).

Draw to Search for Images

2012-02-01T11:11:00.000-08:00

My rendition of the Earth from space.

What Google thinks my rendition looks like.

If you're looking for that perfect image, sometimes you can imagine it, but you can't find it online. Along comes the "Unofficial Google Image Search by Drawing" site. It presents you with a palette and colors and you can draw what you want to find. It's a wonderful idea, in theory. When I tested it out, however, it didn't work so well. You can see my drawing of the planet on which we resided. Not bad for using a mouse and doing it in just a few minutes (I think). But Google thinks it looks like a pie chart or the Soviet sickle and hammer. Not very helpful.

However, you can also click the "Webcam" link on the page and snap a shot from your computer's camera. I did that of a picture of the planet and Google was able to interpret things much better. But that begs the question: if I can take a picture of it, why do I need to search for a picture of it?

Webcam picture of the Earth from space
(note, it's of another picture, my computer wasn't in space).

Since this is a proof-of-concept, I think it's OK to cut them some slack. It's a cool idea and as it gets better this could offer great ways to search for images.

How would you like to search Google?

What makes it easier for you to find just the right picture?

How Google interprets the webcam picture (much better).

How to Make Charts and Graphs Exciting

2012-01-27T09:45:00.000-08:00

Most charts and graphs are boring. Maybe not to you, since you made it and you're excited about the numbers, but everyone else sees it through a fog. They see the jumble of information and struggle to comprehend the point of all the data. In the end, it would be better to not show them a chart at all, rather than show something as incomprehensible and boring as the picture to the right.

What's wrong with it? First, there's too much information to digest in too little time. Your brain takes about 3 seconds to gather in the data and if it's not apparent in that time, you will shut down. Sure, the chart is clearly labeled and each line has its own color, but the three second test shows that it's a jumble. It takes a long time to get oriented to what's happening.

Second, the point of the chart isn't clear. You shouldn't show a chart in a presentation unless you're using it to make a point and you can't make a point if it's not clear. Using the same 3 second rule, how would you determine the meaning of a the chart above? In that short a time, all I can see is that things changed over time. But, looking at the chart to the left, in 3 seconds I can tell that there's been a dramatic drop in foreign investment by the United States. The point of the chart is clear and stunning, in just a short amount of time.

Finally, there's no emotion. Communication is, partly, about sharing data, but that data is carried in emotional word and images. What emotion do you want your chart to evoke? If it's boredom, go with the first chart. But if you want to inspire, frighten, encourage or reprimand people with your data, there needs to be a clear, emotional punch to your data. The second chart has a clear statement of what the data shows and then it has a quote explaining what's happening.

Tips:

Remove clutter, a cleaner chart is easier to digest quickly.
Highlight your point visually, if other data should be ignored, remove it or fade it into the background.
Use different methods for visualizing data, steer clear of the line, bar and pie charts when possible.

Check out a masterful presentation of data by Hans Rosling on CNN.

*Note, that the data needs to be analyzed in detail, but that should happen before you give the presentation, then if someone wants to see all of the data that went into your charts, you can have it available and let them know why you drew the conclusions you did.

Can Congress Learn from SOPA/PIPA?

2012-01-25T10:19:00.000-08:00

Senator Ron Wyden from Oregon shared an article through Wired.com yesterday. In it he says:

Some businesses lament this fact when bad reviews start costing them business. But smart businesses recognize that even the bad reviews are an opportunity to understand their audience and improve their products and those that have gone the extra mile to understand the internet have, in many cases, found success.
But up until last week, Washington hadn’t learned these lessons.

This is a valuable point. Negative feedback online isn't necessarily a negative thing. It shows what is getting people's attention and gives you an opportunity to grow and change. He concludes with:

If members of Congress better understood the central role that the Internet plays in their constituents’ lives – the hub through which Americans work, communicate, share, learn, create and enjoy entertainment – they would understand why their constituents fought so hard to protect it.
If members of Congress better understood the digital world, they would know that downloading a digital good from a foreign site is no different than importing goods from a foreign country and if we accept that principle, we can do more than combat online infringement, we can work to promote our digital industries and tear down barriers to digital trade just as we do for any other American-made product.
When members of Congress better understand the Internet they will see it as a world of opportunity to create jobs and foster innovation, to improve education and economic mobility, and most importantly to cultivate the sort of government our founders intended in which we hear and learn from our constituents. Congress ignores this opportunity at their peril.

He gets it. He understands what's happening and why this is such a big deal for millions of people. Because of that, he proposed a new bill before Congress known as the Online Protection and ENforcement of Digital Trade Act (OPEN) which amends existing laws about copyright and trade to include the Internet. You can see a comparison between OPEN, PIPA and SOPA below.

Picnik is Shutting Down

2012-01-23T11:54:00.000-08:00

The online photo editing tool, Picnik, is closing down as of April 19, 2012. Google advises that you "take heed" and find another online or desktop based tool to do your editing. I put together a list of some great alternatives here.

Have you been using Picnik? Are you sad that's it's closing?

Victory! Now What? Next steps for SOPA and PIPA

2012-01-20T09:56:00.000-08:00

Due, in large part, to the wide-spread protests and blackouts that happened on Wednesday, the Senate has delayed a vote on the Protect Intellectual Property Act so that the bill can be fixed. The delay is a good thing, it's a sign that the thousands of websites and millions of signatures on the petition (4.5 million at last count), have had an effect on Congress. Great job, the Internet! Way to take a stand for your rights.

Now what?

Piracy is still a concern for Congress, especially due to the pressures of the music and movie lobbyists. Both bills still exist, they've just had the votes delayed. Without a viable alternative that meaningfully addresses the issues of foreign piracy of US intellectual property, something like SOPA and PIPA will rise again (or the very same bills with altered content).

The key concerns are that offshore companies can pirate US property with impunity since our copyright laws don't apply and our law enforcement has no jurisdiction. The proposed solution of SOPA and PIPA was to remove the sites from search engines and lists of websites (called Domain Name Servers, or DNS) in the US. But the real kicker is that there was no due process, no threshold and no mercy. Any site that infringed in any way that a company could complain about could be de-listed.

I would like to see added to PIPA and SOPA the qualification that the site in question must exist for the sole, or primary purpose of violating copyright law and/or be primarily used for that purpose. The recent shutdown of the US-based Megaupload speaks to the proper way to identify a site that is primarily used for piracy. Sure they are a file sharing site (not illegal), but their business practices involved encouraging pirates with bribes and driving traffic to downloads with pirated content for the purpose of generating more ad revenue. There is a clear case of a site being used, primarily, for piracy of copyrighted material. The case was established by the Department of Justice and all of the paperwork has been filed (all 72 pages of it).

But how does this address foreign sites? Well the US is a member of an international treaty called the Berne Convention (and the World Intellectual Property Organization Copyright Treaty which caused us to create the Digital Millennium Copyright Act) which is designed to protect copyrighted works, as of 2008 there were 164 member countries. So, we have the channels in place to identify sites that are primarily for the use of pirating material and to gain the aid of other countries in shutting down sites that are violating copyright law.

I'm not directly opposed to the means by which SOPA and PIPA propose to block pirate sites, my main opposition is to the lack of due process and participation in the international community that already exists to address these issues. Within the DMCA, is a "Safe Harbor" clause which allows for websites and ISPs to take down infringing content and avoid liability. Don't punish the sites, punish the infringers.

What do SOPA and PIPA accomplish?

2012-01-18T11:18:00.000-08:00

I remember a while back when we subscribed to both cable Internet service and television. The budget got a little tight, so we decided to drop the TV. Through the course of the conversation with the person at the cable company, they informed me that I would have to pay a $20 disconnection fee. I asked why, since I wasn't disconnecting my service, just stopping the TV side of things. They said that without a blocker installed, I could, potentially, get free cable TV. So, they wanted to charge me $20 for the privilege of not getting free cable.

Wait, what? No.

I said, "It's not my job or financial responsibility to ensure that you don't give away your product for free. If you don't want me to have free cable, that's your problem, not mine."

The charge was removed.

I bring up this story because it makes me think of the issues underlying SOPA and PIPA, which are laws before the House and Senate respectively. They both provide the ability for the US to block websites that host pirated content. That seems pretty innocuous at first, but you must keep in mind that the entire site would be blocked for the posting of one piece of copyrighted content - by anyone, not just the owner of the site, but any user-generated content. Think of YouTube, Wikipedia and blogs where content is created by everyone. If anyone messes up, the whole site would be gone.

Now, whose responsibility is it to protect this content? To me, this seems similar to the cable company wanting me to pay for their inability to restrict my TV access. The MPAA and RIAA are two of the main sponsors for SOPA and PIPA, they are also the organizations who have sued individuals for hundreds of thousands of dollars for piracy. It's primarily their concern, so the primary burden should be on them. They don't want to cut into their profits, so they push ISPs and the government to do their job for them.

We already have anti-piracy laws on the books. The MPAA and RIAA are already successfully prosecuting pirates for huge sums of money. They can already take down US sites that are found to be pirating content. What more do they want? They want the ability to restrict the access of all Americans to any website that they deem to be pirating content. Also known as censorship.

Whose job is it, anyway?

How to Get Your Ideas to Stick

2012-01-17T09:16:00.000-08:00

Ideas fall like snowflakes on a ground that must be ready for them to stick.

I sit watching the snow fall out my window and I'm frustrated. It's been snowing, off and on, for the last two days, but the grass is showing green and the streets are clear. We are at that magical temperature where the snow falls and melts on contact, and we've been at that temperature for days. Just to the north there are people getting inches and inches of the stuff. To the east friends are posting pictures of snowmen. But here I sit with nothing.

Sure, I'm a kid at heart. I want a snow day. I want to play in the snow. I'm from the wet, temperate Pacific Northwest where snow is a rarity. It dominates the news coverage and thrills the school children (and me). So it's much more frustrating when the snow is falling, but not sticking. Big, fat flakes melting away into nothing.

Sometimes I feel like my ideas do the same thing. I fling them out with abandon. I create and share, but then nothing sticks. I've worked hard to produce the exact conditions necessary to make something new, new words, new images, new ideas. And the ground isn't ready. The ideas don't stick.

If snow could have feelings, it would be tempted to give up. To move on to places that are more ready to receive it. The mountains love the snow, but, if the snow works extra hard the aggregate affect of millions of ice crystals can change the temperature of the ground. One flake melts, but the temperature drops a fraction of a degree. A thousand flakes later, the ground is cooler, maybe even cold enough.

Your ideas may appear to melt on contact. You might feel like the ground isn't ready, like you should just go somewhere else to share. But what if you stay? What if you keep sharing? What if, like snowflakes, your ideas actual help to get the ground ready to receive more ideas?

Beg the Question

2012-01-13T10:46:00.000-08:00

Look for the question that lies behind overt statements. Especially right now as election season is gearing up toward its most rancorous, there are a lot of bold statements being bandied about.

Health care.

Bank bailouts.

Iran.

Jobs.

Debt.

All of those topics have myriad points of view from which they can be approached. Politicians will make strong assertions about them one way or another. But under those assertions lies a question that is driving the discussion. If there wasn't a question, then it wouldn't be an issue that people are talking about.

Religion.

Faith.

Women.

Homosexuality.

Money.

So many issues are really questions, at heart. As you sit in church or school or at work and you hear bold claims. Ask yourself, what's the underlying question that makes this issue something to be discussed. When you start dealing with the questions, instead of the supposed answers, then it's possible to find some common ground and, perhaps, move toward some real answers.

As long as we remain unaware of the questions that are driving everything we say and do, we'll be unable to provide any real answers.

Start a Conversation with Your Sermon

2012-01-11T11:55:00.000-08:00

Preaching isn't very popular. At least not among the younger crowd. There's this idea that preaching is inextricably tied to declarative truth which doesn't leave any space for differences of opinion. Since one person stands up and says words for an extended period of time, that precludes anyone else from sharing what they're thinking during that same time. Especially if that one person is also the lead pastor of the church and is in charge of the rest of what happens there, then it can seem rooted in authoritarianism.

The problem that most young people have with this is that they don't want to be told what to do. This is more than just the rebellion of youth, it's a shift in thinking away from trust in a central authority and toward trust in a community of peers. Both the Tea Party movement and the Occupy movement are essentially anti-authoritarian. They want the community to decide what is best for the community.

So, in that climate, what role is there for preaching?

It can function as a conversation starter. If the tact of the preacher is to provide information and context and then leave the conclusion open, that allows the community to work through the implications. It's not that preaching is dead, just that preaching as if the pastor has the final say on the interpretation of God and scripture is not popular with younger people. And why should the preacher assume that they have the right interpretation? The major concepts of theology have been debated for millennia with no conclusion in sight. It's a better choice to invite people to conversation instead of inviting them to share your pre-drawn conclusions.

How can you create space for conversation? What sermons have been most successful for you? Which ones have flopped?

Tolkien didn't get a Nobel Prize due to Poor Story Telling

2012-01-09T14:41:00.000-08:00

JRR Tolkien was denied the Nobel Prize in literature five decades ago, the reason of record: "the result has not in any way measured up to storytelling of the highest quality." His friend and professor of literature, CS Lewis, nominated him for the Lord of the Rings trilogy. However, when the committee reviewed the work, along with that of Robert Frost and EM Forster, among others, they were all found to be lacking (or written by people who are too old), so the prize was awarded to Ivo Andrić. Unless you're a literature major, you've probably never heard of him. Whereas the losers are world renowned (some of them, at least).

Fifty years after the prize is awarded, the records of the Nobel committee's reasoning become available to the public. Swedish reporter Andreas Ekström has taken it upon himself to look through the documents when they are declassified. This year he found Papa Tolkien's name on the list of losers.

Prizes and accolades are nice, but art is meant to be shared. Since becoming the biggest loser in 1961, The Lord of the Rings has risen to be the most loved book(s) in the United Kingdom and perhaps the best known fantasy work of all time. Too bad it's not very well written.

What have the critics said about you?

Jumping the Shark

2012-01-05T10:18:00.000-08:00

Are you jumping the shark? Portland pastor, Bob Hyatt asked if Seattle pastor, Mark Driscol has "jumped the shark" with Real Marriage: The Truth About Sex, Friendship, and Life Together*, his new book with his wife, Grace.

The reference is to the episode of Happy Days when Fonzie jumps a shark (literally), which has come to mean when a show, or anything else for that matter, abandons its core success and begins a downward spiral into oblivion. So when Starbucks coffee started selling instant coffee, that might be considered jumping the shark, or when Porsche made an SUV for soccer moms, or you can fill in your own thoughts.

It's almost inevitable that a brand, show, person, church or pastor will be tempted to jump the shark. It's so much harder to keep doing the same thing and continue being successful. Rather, if you keep doing the same thing, you will limit your success. You will only reach a limited number of people if you keep doing the same thing. You can branch out and do something different to reach a new audience. But you run the risk of jumping the shark.

Does your new message flow naturally from what you've been saying all along? If you were to poll 100 people on the street, would they choose your new path based on what they know about your organization? Do you have any credibility to speak to this new area? Are there any sharks involved?

What have you seen that looks like shark-jumping?

*Note, if you purchase the book through this link, I earn a small commission. I haven't read this book and I can make no endorsement of it.

What's the Difference between a Wish and a Resolution?

2012-01-02T11:47:00.000-08:00

It's the time of resolutions. The year is new and so are our hopes for the future. Now is the time when we reaffirm our goals and plan to do better. The problem is most of what passes for a resolution is actually just wishful thinking.

A wish is a stated hope that things will be different in the future. You can wish to win the lottery or to have magic powers just as much as you can wish for losing weight, biking more and working less. Cross your fingers, close your eyes and hope, but the likelihood that you'll work less is about the same as you getting those magic powers.

A resolution is a stated course to act differently in the future. When you resolve, you commit to do something different, which is specific and active. Look at the picture here, this is a typical list of resolutions, but only one of them is close to being actionable. Losing a specific amount of weight is almost a resolution, but it's still more a wish that things will be different rather than a plan of action to make things different.

If your "resolution" has the words "more" or "less" in it, then you might as well wish for that unicorn, because you are as likely to get it. Get specific, make a SMART goal, and know how you are going to act differently tomorrow to achieve your goal. Instead of saying you want to work less, say that you will work no more than 40 hours a week. Don't say that you want to ride your bike more, instead say that you will ride for one hour a day, five days a week. Don't say that you want to have a better marriage, get a book with one conversation a week to help you do it. Know, specifically, the individual actions you're going to take to achieve your goal and you can keep your resolutions.

What advice do you have for keeping resolutions?

New Book Available

2011-12-30T09:15:00.000-08:00

My wife and I collaborated on a book entitled The Marriage Challenge: 52 Conversations for a Better Marriage. It's not in the presentation subject area, but it's close to my heart.

From the description:

Marriage is hard work, but worth it.
The challenge is to stop trying to avoid the frustration, pain and discouragement of marriage. Too often we focus on how to not be a bad spouse, how to not hurt feelings, how to not get in trouble. But then our focus is entirely on what NOT to do.
Instead, shift your focus. Look at what you want to do, embrace the joy, encouragement and challenge of marriage. This book offers one conversation a week, for an entire year, to help you move toward a better marriage. You can’t change everything about your marriage overnight, but, working a bit at a time, you can improve your marriage.
One hour a week for a conversation with your spouse can change your marriage from what not to do, into what you’ve always wanted. It won’t be easy, but it will be worth it.

You can get your Kindle copy now and physical copies will be ready as soon as I can review the proof. Take a year to improve your marriage, it's one of the best resolutions you can make.

How to Set and Keep New Year's Resolutions

2011-12-28T09:40:00.000-08:00

Some three hundred sixty-two days ago, you, along with most people, were contemplating a new year. This beast known as 2011 was yet to emerge, all unknown and full of mystery. In you annual attempt to prognosticate and self-motivate, you declared resolutions, items on a list that would define your coming annum.

Now, at the end of that solar-circuit, how did you do? How successful were you at keeping the resolutions you made in the hoary days long past? Do you even remember what they were?

Spend some time thinking about the goals that you failed to achieve. What kept you from them? How did you fail? Was it forgetfulness or through trying and faltering?

Think about the resolutions you kept. What made you successful? Was it through your effort? Did you have any help?

As you consider your next year, think about what can make you successful. Your failures and your successes from the past can both inform your future. You can also practice SMART goals to help make things realistic and achievable, or you can set some DUMB goals if you want to do something huge and audacious.

Revisit your resolutions throughout the year. If you set your goal in January and don't do anything with it, you'll forget about it within a month. If you've ever belonged to a gym, you've seen this phenomenon. The first week in January is packed, the second week is, if anything, even busier. But by mid February, the place is clearing out again. If you don't remind yourself of your resolution, you won't keep with it any longer than a month or so.

Break the larger goal into smaller goals. If you resolve to lose weight, set a monthly goal for how much you want to lose. If you want to improve at your job, gain a certification every three weeks. Do things in discreet steps so that you can look back and see the accomplishment.

Refine your goals throughout the year. The brilliant idea you have at the beginning of a year may have no bearing on your life in June. Things change and so should your resolutions. Let them be fluid enough to incorporate your changing life. You might move during the year or find out you won the lottery or lose your job or all of the above. A good resolution will bend with the circumstances of your life.

What resolutions did you keep from last year? Which did you abandon? How will 2012 be different?

What Drives You?

2011-12-26T12:27:00.000-08:00

There is something that draws you onward. Some force or desire pushes you to get up every morning and keeps you working each day. What is it?

If it's just money, then you'll do anything that will get you money and the quality of a job will be determined by the amount of money it pays. But it's not just money, otherwise you'd do some illegal stuff and make a lot of cash.

If it's just power, then you'll do anything that will get you more power. Stepping on anyone who gets in your way will be a part of the job. But, it's not just power, otherwise you'd sacrifice all your relationships in the pursuit of more power.

It's not just success, otherwise you'll drop anything that prevents you from being successful. The quality of your work will be determined on how often you win or get promoted. But it's not just success, otherwise you'd avoid all risks that might cause failure.

So, what drives you? Sure, money, power and success are all a part of the business world, but they are not an end in themselves. There's more out there, more to do and more to be than just one who follows the carrots that are dangled.

Merry Christmas

2011-12-25T14:01:00.001-08:00

Merry Christmas!Please enjoy a song that my community choir performed for our Winter concert series.
Susani e Tanti Anni Prima from Rebecca Ronshaugen on Vimeo.

30 Seconds Worth of Advice on PowerPoint

2011-12-22T11:04:00.000-08:00

This blog about presenting has gotten away from presenting, specifically. That has a lot to do with where I'm at now, professionally. I'm writing technology articles and working on getting some books published (you can buy my book that's already out if you want). So I'm not spending as much time creating and giving presentations. But I did have occasion to share with a friend recently some of what I've learned in my journey toward becoming a better presenter. I was a bit surprised by how things compressed into just the most important elements.

So, here's my 30 seconds worth of advice on PowerPoint:

Use PowerPoint as a visual channel of communication to back up what you are saying. Don't use bullet points, don't read from your slide and don't turn your back to your audience. If you have more than one sentence on a slide, it's too much. You can give your audience a handout after you present, but while you're speaking, they should focus on you. Sum up your main points, express that with a full-screen picture and type a simple caption.

That's about all I can say in 30 seconds. What advice would you give in a half-minute? For PowerPoint? For your area of expertise?

Seek Failure, Eschew Mistakes

2011-12-19T11:09:00.000-08:00

There's a difference between mistakes and failure. Failure is trying something and not succeeding. Mistakes are errors in judgement, execution or practice. You can fail without making any mistakes, but mistakes will compound failure.

If we fail and learn from it, then we have grown and the work was worth it. But if we persist in our mistakes we develop habits that lock us into more mistakes.

Seth Godin says:

We need a lot more failures, I think. Failures that don't kill us make us bolder, and teach us one more way that won't work, while opening the door to things that might.
School confuses us, so do bosses and families. Go ahead, fail. Try to avoid mistakes, though.

How can you fail today?

How Would You Reshape Your World?

2011-12-16T10:35:00.000-08:00

It seems like most people feel stuck; as if we're not able to affect the world around us or our place within it. I think one of the main draws of the democratic form of government is that it provides the illusion of control without any of the responsibilities of power. But that's not really the point I'm going for here.

Your world is the way it is because of a lot of things that happened to you. You didn't choose your parents or the country in which you were born or where you went to school as a child. You were affected by the choices of others for most of the first 10 or 15 years of your life.

But it seems like we've let that become our conditioned response. We learned that our lives are determined by the choices of others and so we continue in that path, similar to the way we learned how to eat with a knife and fork and we continue that habit. But that's not our only path. We can reshape our own worlds, if we choose to.

But choice is risky. Choice involves pain, effort and an ineffable quality of courage. When you choose, you are standing out from the world that is affected by choice. Certain things are supposedly set in stone, you don't have a choice. You are supposed to go to school as a child and then on to college, after that you get a job, get married, buy a house, have kids, get old, retire and then die. Only two of the things in that list are beyond your ability to choose. Do you want them all?

Every so often I'll just rearrange all the furniture in a room. Not because the old way was bad, but because I need something new. But when I rearrange the furniture, every option is open. I might move the bed into the living room or the dining room table by the front door. I love stripping things down nothing and then rebuilding them in a better way. It's a simple thing to do with a room or a document, but a life is much more difficult.

Over the last two-and-a-half years my life has been chaos. We've been homeless, unemployed, underemployed and overemployed. We sold everything we owned and left everything we knew to head out into the world. We gained amazing friends and were deeply hurt by people we cared about. Today there isn't much less chaos, we still don't know what the future holds for us. I have two degrees that I'm not using professionally and Andrea has a degree she's not using. We're both certified to teach English, and we're not doing that.

I imagine the first sailor who lost sight of shore relying on a lodestone to guide him. The odd rock is pointing unwaveringly to the north, but with no land in sight, the rock is pointing at nothing. It's a terrifying experience to step out into the unknown, to make a choice when you don't know the consequences, but within that choice is life. And death.

What choices would you make to change your world?

How to Make Everything You Do Worth More, Instantly

2011-12-14T09:41:00.001-08:00

Appreciating things like art has as much to do with our expectations about the object as it has to do with the actual qualities of that thing. Using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging to detect neural activity, researchers have found that the stated details about something have a greater impact on how we appreciate something than the actual thing itself.

In one experiment they showed subjects both authentic paintings and copies, before the image was displayed, an announcement was made indicating whether it was real or fake. But, half the time they switched the labels so subjects were looking at a real painting, but told it was fake. The difference was all in the label and not in the real thing. Again wine connoisseur were given sips of wine while in an fMRI and told the price of the vintage. They weren't told, however, that the same wine was reported to have different prices so they stated a preference for the more expensive wine, even when it was exactly the same.

The consistent factor here is the orbitofrontal cortex, it lit up when the expensive wine was tasted and the authentic paintings were viewed. This region of the brain is most often associated with reward and monetary gain. People perceived the label in the same way that they would perceive any other reward, so they assigned greater value to the thing. Value that wasn't inherent merely attributed, yet the brain filled in the gaps and acted as if the object were just as valuable.

So, say good things. Charge more money. Act like what you do is valuable. If you deprecate your time, effort and output verbally, then others will do the same mentally. But, if you assign labels of value to what you do, others will perceive it as valuable.

What ways do you devalue yourself and your work? How could you change that?

Why Printed Books are here to Stay

2011-12-12T09:59:00.001-08:00

The ebook will kill the printed book. Right? That's the way that this is all going to work. Video killed the radio star and the circle of life continues. Soon, libraries will be nothing more than electronic repositories of information and books will be antiques and decorative accents. Right?

The problem is that video didn't kill radio, email didn't kill paper and the internet didn't kill, well, anything that it was supposed to (I guess the internet is a big failure). Rather, the addition of electronic versions of the physical media transformed the system. Clive Thompson over at Wired says "In a precise parallel to the office-printing boom, print-on-demand is creating an odd new phenomenon . . . social publishing." So the electronic metamorphosis of books is making more books possible, not fewer. Books can be printed in tiny batches and tailored to small audiences. Special introductions or chapters can be custom written for each audience and unique titles can be printed that would never capture the interest of large publishers.

What do you think the future holds for books and ebooks?

The Waiting is the Hardest Part

2011-12-09T09:07:00.001-08:00

Waiting is the point where your decisions are tested.

When I wanted to propose to, who is now, my wife, I called her dad. We talked on the phone for a few minutes and I stumbled and fumbled through my request (I was nervous). At the end of the conversation he said, "I'm going to need to talk it over with my wife and pray about it. Can I call you tomorrow?"

I didn't sleep much that Saturday night and the next day church was a blur. After church, Andrea decided that we should go Christmas shopping (it was, coincidentally, December 9, 2001) and so when her dad called me back I had to put him off for a while until I could get home and have the conversation without Andrea overhearing.

Finally, almost 24 hours after I asked, her parents granted me permission to propose. I waited all of three days after I had the green light.

It's in the moments after we've decided on a course of action, but before the results are known to us that our will is tested. After you've applied for a job, after you've submitted the query letter, after you uploaded your artwork, only after you've stepped out and then begun the interminable process of waiting, do you realize the true import of your decision. Your mind is wracked with all the ways that things could go wrong, you imagine every failure, in excruciating detail. The reality will never be as bad as your imagination.

Waiting is a discipline. Tom Petty was right, the waiting is the hardest part.

Does Anyone Care about Your Work?

2011-12-07T09:09:00.001-08:00

A drop of water, over time, can change the face of the earth. If the water drops, consistently, in the same spot, nothing can withstand it. Stone will melt away in the face of the onslaught. But it will take time. If the water stops or moves, the progress is lost. It's the consistent action, doing the same thing in the same place, that has the aggregate affect.

Your work is like water. You may want to come in like a torrent and push everything around in a rush. You may see the end that you want, the stones worn down to nubs by your effort, but it won't happen quickly. Even a torrent takes time to build and grow into a raging storm before breaking forth in a flood, and torrents are rare. But drops of water are common. They are everywhere, all the time.

As you create, stay consistent. Keep your message the same, keep your work flowing, maintain your pace. Just keep doing what you're doing. At this moment it might feel as if you're shattering against the rock. Everything you do is broken by the act of sharing it, or worse, it's ignored altogether. But keep doing what you're doing. Your consistency will build an audience. Your work will carve a path. Your time will yield results. Eventually.

How do you stay consistent when you can't see the results of your hard work?

6 Ways to Save Time Every Day

2011-12-02T08:43:00.001-08:00

As a writer and a "computer guy" there are some tools that I use on a constant basis because they make me faster and more efficient. As with most things that are familiar, it's difficult for me to imagine what it's like to not know about these tools or be able to use them. Recently I was helping someone with a computer issue and I suggested using "Ctrl+F" and received a blank stare in return. I can't count the number of times I use "Ctrl+F" on a daily basis, so I was shocked. So, here are the productivity tips and tricks that I use all the time.

Ctrl+F - This is the universal keyboard shortcut to open the "Find" menu, whether it's in Word, Adobe Reader or your favorite internet browser. Press this key combination and then type the word or phrase that you want to find in the document. You can quickly get to the relevant part of the text without having to scroll through the rest of it. Just hit "Enter" to move to the next successive match in the document.

Aero-Snap - This feature of Windows 7 (also available in Windows XP and Vista with an additional program) lets you drag a window to one side of the screen and it will snap to cover half of the screen. Drag another window to the other side and you have two windows that fill the screen area perfectly. Especially when I'm writing articles from a detailed source, this is very helpful.

Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V and Ctrl+Shift+V - The first two are the universal keyboard shortcuts for copy and paste. I'm constantly copying links and titles for references and then pasting them into my articles. The last shortcut is to paste without any formatting. So if you want to quote something from a site or document that has formatting that will conflict with your current document, use Ctrl+Shift+V to paste in just the text by itself without any formatting.

Phrase Express - This is a small program known as a text expander. If you've ever written documents in a program like Microsoft Word, you've used a text expansion tool. Word will automatically replace commonly misspelled words for you, and it allows you to set up rules for expanding abbreviations, if you want it to. Tools like Phrase Express take that show on the road. You can have the same text replacement features in any program on your computer. Since most of my writing is happening in a web browser, this is hugely important to me. It also has the ability to show me the last twenty items on my clipboard so I can go through and copy a bunch of information and then paste it all into my document at one time rather than having to switch back and forth for each copy and paste actions.

Google-fu - There are lots of power search tools that let me get right to the resources I need. Google allows you to tailor your search using text modifiers. So, if I want to search for an exact phrase, I enclose it in quotation marks. If I want search within a site, I type "site:TheURLoftheSite.com" after the search string. If I want to search for only PDF files, then I type "filetype:pdf" after the search string. This is a useful way to find the manual for a product that may not be listed prominently on a website.

Drag-and-Drop Search - Google Chrome has a feature that I use constantly. You can highlight text on any site and then click and drag that text up to the tab bar at the top of the window. A little arrow will appear to let you know what's happening. If the arrow points directly to a tab, then releasing the mouse button will start a new search for that text on that tab. If the arrow is pointing between tabs, a new tab will be created at that spot for the search.

NaNoWriMo Wrap Up

2011-12-01T10:33:00.001-08:00

At 8:30pm last night I clicked over 50,000 words for the month of November. I've been working on a novel for National Novel Writing Month and it has been a rewarding experience. I've grown to like my characters, and I'm surprised when they take the plot in a direction I didn't imagine. I'm caught up in the story and I want to know what happens next. I suppose that's a good sign.

As of this morning I'm at 53,292 words as the story continues. I expect that I'll finish up somewhere between 70,000 and 100,000 words when it's all done. Then comes to process of editing. For some reason editing is never as much fun as the writing, but without editing the writing is nearly worthless. Think of it like a sculpture. The artist sees the shape in the roughly cut block of stone, but it's not until all of the details have been carved that everyone else can perceive what the sculptor saw all along. Editing makes it possible for the world to see what you see in your writing. Creative processes are not just about making something new, but making something new that is also refined. Ideas can't stand alone, they must be supported by diligent revision and editing.

What have you been creating? How will you refine it into something great?

Use your Money to Send a Message

2011-11-28T09:40:00.001-08:00

The American people will spend an estimated $500 billion this holiday season. That works out to an average of $1,667 per person or $5,000 for a family of three. That's a lot of consuming. It drives up stock prices and employs people all over the world, just to facilitate our consumption.

Consuming isn't bad. We all do it and we should do it. We eat, have clothes, enjoy entertainment and activities. Those are good things and we should enjoy them. But they are not the only good things that exist.

Consuming isn't bad, but consumerism is. When the consumption of things drives us and dictates how we live, then we have a problem. Consumerism and materialism cause us to look at things before people and entice us to pay for a cheap item even when it might harm someone. Consuming doesn't have to equal consumerism any more than eating has to become gluttony (but that's another problem we face this time of year).

It's not realistic or helpful to try to eschew all consumption. We aren't made for that and we can't sustain it for long. Rather, we need to change our attitude towards consuming. Buy things that are produced locally. Buy from people you know, if possible. Find a local artist and commission a painting of your family. Attend the local craft market and buy handmade clothes or toys. Shop at a local, independent retailer instead of at a big-box store.

If we can shift just 10% of the holiday spending that will result in thousands of new jobs, in our towns with our neighbors. The reason is that locally spent money stays in the local economy. Every dollar spent at a local, independent retailer has 2 to 3 times the positive impact on the local economy as a dollar spent at a non-local retailer. The movement is known as Shift your Shopping. Are you willing to make a small shift to help your neighbors and your community?

How to Turn Black Friday into Green Friday

2011-11-25T10:25:00.001-08:00

The day after Thanksgiving is often called Black Friday. The ostensible reason for this moniker is that many companies move from being in the red financially to being in the black. The start of the holiday shopping season is hailed as the salvation of many retailers. But with the recent Occupy movements and the earlier Tea Party protests, it's clear that there is wide dissatisfaction with the status quo.

So today and this holiday season, I challenge you to use your money ethically. Spend where you know the employees are being treated with respect. Buy items that don't damage the world. Purchase using financial institutions that aren't using bailout money to pay huge bonuses to executives. Do a bit of research before you decide to buy and discover what your money is funding.

If you don't want business that abuse people, don't give them your money. If you don't want banks that take bailouts, don't give them your money.

When the flashy ads come on your television and entice you to buy inexpensive gifts for your family, pause. Think about how the products are affecting not only your family, but the people who made them and the people who sold them to you. We're all in this together and we can make a difference together.

Here's a list of the most ethical companies in 2011 and you can use buying guides to evaluate the products you consume.

The Ethisphere list (linked above) is copied below:

2011 WORLD’S MOST ETHICAL COMPANIES:

Aerospace Indra Sistemas Rockwell Collins Inc. The Aerospace Corporation	Apparel Adidas Comme Il Faut Gap Patagonia Timberland
Auctions eBay	Automotive Cummins Denso Ford Motor Company Johnson Controls
Banking Australia and New Zealand Banking Group National Australia Bank Rabobank Standard Chartered Bank The Westpac Group	Business Services Accenture Dun & Bradstreet Noblis
Chemicals Ecolab JM Huber	Computer Hardware Hitachi Data Systems
Computer Software Adobe Systems Microsoft Salesforce.com Symantec Corporation Teradata Corporation	Construction and Engineering CRH Granite Construction Parsons Corporation
Consumer Electronics Electrolux Ricoh Xerox	Consumer Products Colgate-Palmolive Company Henkel AG Kao Corporation
Diversified Industries General Electric Co.	Electronics and Semiconductors Freescale Semiconductor Premier Farnell Texas Instruments
Energy and Utilities Encana Statoil NextEra Energy, Inc. Northumbrian Water Vestas Wind Wisconsin Energy Corporation	Engineering and Design AECOM Technology Corporation CH2M Hill Fluor Corporation
Environmental Services Waste Management	Financial Services American Express Housing Development Finance Corp NYSE Euronext The Hartford Financial Services Group
Food and Beverage General Mills PepsiCo Solae Stonyfield Farm	Food Stores Kesko The Co-Operative Group Wegmans Whole Food Market
Forestry, Paper and Packaging International Paper Stora Enso Oyj SCA	Health and Beauty Natura Cosmeticos
Healthcare Services Baptist Health South Florida Hospital Corporation of America Premier	Hotels, Travel and Hospitality Kimpton Hotels Marriott International The Rezidor Hotel Group Wyndham Worldwide
Industrial Manufacturing Caterpillar Deere & Company Eaton Corporation Milliken & Company Schneider Electric	Insurance Aflac Incorporated Sompo Japan Insurance Swiss Re Wisconsin Physicians Service Insurance Co.
Internet Zappos	Media, Publishing and Entertainment Thomson Reuters
Medical Devices Becton Dickinson Royal Phillips	Metals Umicore
Real Estate British Land plc Jones Lang LaSalle Unibail-Rodamco	Restaurants and Cafes Starbucks Coffee Company
Specialty Pharma Medicis	Specialty Retail Best Buy Co. Hennes & Mauritz Sonae Target Ten Thousand Villages
Staffing Manpower	Telecom Hardware Avaya Inc. Cisco Systems Juniper Networks
Telecom Services Singapore Telecom Swisscom T-Mobile USA	Transportation and Logistics Autoridad del Canal de Panama East Japan Railway Company Nippon Yusen Kabushi Kaisha UPS

How to Recharge your Creativity and Refresh your Spirit

2011-11-21T09:37:00.001-08:00

I spent the weekend on a spiritual retreat. It's something that I've done in the past and I've been wanting to do again. I finally found the time to get away from everything for a few days. It was incredibly challenging at the same time that it was reinvigorating.

One of the main challenges was the cold temperatures. My fingers are still stiff from spending about 40 hours outside when the temperature didn't get above 40 degrees. I huddled around the fire, and the first night I did so underneath an umbrella since it was raining too. But in the midst of the cold and rain, I had time to completely unplug. I didn't have cell coverage out there, so I couldn't be posting my experience on facebook. I had no entertainment, no distractions (except for the cold and wet) and no more excuses.

It was time for me to have all those thoughts that have been building up over time. Time for me to sit and ponder the ponderables. I prayed, sang a bit, thought through ideas, discarded those ideas, picked them up and thought through them again.

I hiked, stood by the lake, slept late and just enjoyed my time outside and away from it all. I need that time to reflect and rejuvenate. In the future I'll probably rent a cabin, or at least take more firewood. I was pretty cold. But it was worth it for the time I got to spend away from my normal life. It was a Sabbath time for my spirit and my creativity.

How do you refresh?

Why Siri is Cool and How the iPhone can Make You Cool

2011-11-16T09:58:00.001-08:00

Siri is the wildly popular voice recognition app for the new iPhone 4S. But like so many things that Apple does, it's not new. There has been voice recognition, on smartphones even, for years before Siri. But the difference is that Apple has polished the idea to a gleaming shine and shared it as a key feature. Something that has been a forgotten benefit on other phones is taking the lead on the iPhone. Siri isn't cool because it's unique, it's cool because it's well executed and well promoted by a company that is known for offering cool stuff.

The iPhone can make you cool, but owning one isn't the first step on that path. I don't care what phone you have. I don't choose to use an iPhone, but that's not really the point. It's the principle of the iPhone that needs to be grasped. Apple and the late Steve Jobs took ideas that were already in existence and brought them together into a device that was scrupulously tested and polished. It looks good and it performs well. But when the iPhone came out it didn't offer any apps. Not one. They didn't add that until they knew they could do it well.

Look around and see what already exists. Put things together in new ways. Polish ideas until they shine.

How to Win National Novel Writing Month

2011-11-14T09:09:00.001-08:00

November is, among other things, National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short. I've been participating this year and I'm 21,500 words into a 50,000 word novel. The goal is less about creating high-quality work and more about establishing the discipline of writing. It's not terribly difficult to write 50,000 words in a month. It breaks down to 1,667 words a day, which you could do in just over an hour if you type 25 words per minute.

A novel in 30 hours. It doesn't sound too rough. Most jobs are 40 hours in a week - you can do 30 hours in a month. But there's something intimidating about the act of writing. Pulling a world out of nothing is thrilling at the same time that it's terrifying. A cadre of what-ifs plague you as you slog through the task of writing. Put them aside and just write.

So, here's how I plan to win at NaNoWriMo this year:
- No editing allowed - I do not go back and re-read what I've written. I don't edit as I'm typing. I just keep going. If the sentence is terrible, it'll just have to stay that way until December. November is for writing not editing.
- Rough outlines are helpful. I took an idea from a friend and wrote a title for each of 30 chapters. The title gives me an idea of where the story is going, but it doesn't constrain me. So far I'm only on chapter 8 since I had more than 1,667 words in the earlier chapters.
- Shut up and listen to your characters. They have a lot to say about how the story progresses. The attitude and history that you create for the characters should inform how they respond to a situation which will drive your story forward naturally.
- Sit and write. Set a schedule, make a routine. Do whatever it takes to make that hour for writing your novel. That time is sacred. It's on your schedule and cannot be interrupted. This is what you do.

What tips do you have for winning at NaNoWriMo (or just for writing or being creative)?

Repackage, Re-purpose and Renew; How to Recycle Ideas

2011-11-09T12:10:00.000-08:00

You might be sick of saying the same thing over and over again, but chances are good that people who listen to you haven't even begun to get the message yet. You've spent countless hours mulling the ideas that you speak and write about before sharing them with the world. You've polished, practiced and edited the concepts so that they are precise, concise and insightful. You've shared those gems with the world and then . . . who knows, maybe something, maybe nothing.

The temptation is to then move on to the next idea. The previous one is done, used up and over so you need to get on to the next thing. Creative types tend to feel that way. There's this pressure that we put on ourselves to do something that has never been done before and to never repeat ourselves. But here's the problem, most people don't get your message the first time around. You may have ruminated on the ideas for weeks before they came out and were shared in your latest sermon or blog post, but your audience has never heard this before. It's all new to them. You're familiar (and even sick of) with the idea because of all the time you spent with it, but your audience doesn't have that same luxury.

Repeat your ideas to cement them in the mind of your audience. A rule of thumb is that you should repeat an idea once every thirty days if you want your people to remember it. This is especially true for things like a vision or mission statement that needs to guide every activity of an organization. However, this principle can also be applied to every idea that you have to share.

Think about sitcoms, they are trite little bits of dramatic fluff that persist on television with, essentially, the same plot and same characters. The same ideas are repeated ad nauseum and they continue to be successful. There is an audience that's hungry to hear the same message. If you want more proof, just look at the fact that the band Nickleback keeps selling albums. Every song sounds the same (at least to me) and yet they keep making money off of it. There's an audience that doesn't get tired of the same sound.

Whether it's the same people or different people hearing the idea for the first time, you can repackage your old material and use it again. Don't repeat it wholesale, but take those ideas and weave them into new work. Let the inspirations for past sermons or articles continue to inspire you in the future. If you approach the same ideas again, you'll bring what's changed in yourself to the table and what comes out won't be the same was what you shared last time. You're different, your understanding of the idea is different and your audience is different. So, why not use the same idea again in this wholly new context?

How do you recycle your ideas?

Inspiration versus Routine

2011-11-07T12:14:00.000-08:00

Inspired creativity is an intoxicating joy. That moment that extends endlessly when you lose track of time and just create is as beautiful as it is elusive. Yet that's what often drives us to create, the Greeks anthropomorphized it and called it a muse. For some reason, the creative pursuits are still viewed through the same lens. Inspiration comes from some source and is implanted in the artist, writer, preacher or whomever. Then the creativity must come out. It bursts forth in a flurry of action that results in amazing work.

The truth of the matter, is not far off, but worlds apart from that idea. Inspiration does strike, seemingly from nowhere, and creative people do throw themselves into the fray, wresting order from the chaos with no thought for time or space. But the inspiration doesn't come apart from preparation. It may happen once or twice, but the sustained practice of creativity as a vocation doesn't exist apart from routine.

The odd thing is that creative types tend to eschew routine as the domain of the working world. The clock-punching, time-keeping, results-tracking mentality that permeates most businesses is anathema to the creative, but at the same time it's the model for how creativity can be unleashed. Human brains function on routine, they attempt to create it at every turn. Routine gives the brain a rest from having to manage schedules and priorities; it can then turn to problem solving, which is to say, creativity.

Professional creators do their creating on a schedule. They write or paint or compose at a set time in a set place. The space, the time and the rhythm of the activities all queue the brain that it's time to create. It can offload the processing for all those other things and focus on the task of creating.

If you are serious about being a creator, then you need to set a routine so you can be inspired.

What routines help you to create?

Good and Perfect Just Don't Get Along

2011-11-04T09:31:00.000-07:00

Jim Collins wrote the book Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't in which he said "The good is the enemy of the great." Which is to say that settling for good-enough can keep us from ever achieving anything great. However Voltaire said: "The perfect is the enemy of the good." Which encourages us to give up the pursuit of perfection so that we can achieve something of worth. So, who's right?

Can't it be both?

Collins is talking about building a lasting impacting business. When businesses settle for good-enough solutions, they begin a process of decline that undermines everything they do. Even when individuals settle in a professional sense, they devalue the creative work that they're doing. Good robs us of great.

However, when the pursuit of greatness paralyzes us and keeps us from moving forward at all, then we fail. If we have to be perfect before we'll attempt anything then we'll do nothing. More than that, if we apply our professional standards to every area of our lives, we'll suffer burnout and depression. We have to be able to let things that are not important be done in a good-enough manner. Perfection isn't necessary and it robs us of the chance to be good.

With whom do you tend to agree more, Voltaire or Collins?

Writing is like Breathing

2011-11-03T10:42:00.000-07:00

You must breathe. It's involuntary. Your body will do it without your permission, however you can choose how you breathe. You can breathe deeply and slowly, raise your chest and fill your lungs. You can inhale the scent of flowers or gasp for breath after a fit of laughter. How you do it is up to you.

If you're a writer, you must write. It will happen. But how you choose to write is up to you. Will you gasp out memos and emails? Will you sneeze text messages and Facebook updates? Or will you slow down and gather in the perfume of prose, well crafted? Will you close your eyes, raise your chest and fill yourself with meaningful words?

9 Reasons to Be Creative

2011-11-02T06:00:00.000-07:00

Creativity is a uniquely human characteristic, well, kind of. When God created humanity in his image, he gave us the ability to be creative. It's a part of who we are, because of who God is. No animals are creative. They may show the ability to figure out tools or communicate, but they don't create for the joy of creation. They don't make art or write music. People do.

You should embrace your creativity.

1. Because it's what you were made to do. You're created in God's image with the ability to create and make something that has never existed before. You can reflect God to the world by creating something that is wholly new and completely yours.
2. Because no one else can. There is nobody who can do what you can do. No one else in the world who has ever lived can create the things that you can create. It's not about having enough talent, it's about using the talent you have. Your words, your images, your lyrics and your melodies are unique. Share them with the world.
3. Because you have a voice. Michelangelo is credited with saying: "I critique by making something beautiful." Your creativity lets you critique, praise and shape the world around you. You can comment on politics, religion, art or your local parks department. Just let your voice come out in your creativity.
4. Because of those who have gone before you. Creativity isn't done in a vacuum. You're inspired and shaped by all of the people who have gone before you. The people who taught you your craft, the people who inspired you and even the people who discouraged you. They've all contributed to making you the creator that you are.
5. Because of the blandness of the world. So much of what's going on in the world today is repackaging. Movies are reboots instead of new ideas. Books are all about a topic that's popular (vampires or zombies) rather than what's good. In a world that sticks to the formula because it's safe, we need you to break the mold, because it's interesting.
6. Because of those who will come after you. The next generation of creators needs you to teach and inspire them to be creative. Just like you were inspired and taught, you need to share that with them. Give your creativity as a blessing to help the people who are doubting whether they can do it.
7. Because your heart demands it. You are filled with thoughts about how to shape the world around you. In little ways, or in big ways, your creativity reflects what's within you. Getting your heart out and expressed gives it power and stability. It allows you to interact with yourself in new and meaningful ways.
8. Because it's redemptive. God took ashes and brought beauty. It's not only creative to make something out of nothing, but to redeem what's lost. Take trash and make art. Take old words and revive them. Take your old experiences and redeem them.
9. Because it's prophetic. God didn't create us to sit still and be quiet. He gave us talents and skills to be used. He didn't put Adam and Eve in the garden to laze around, but to work. When we are re-united with God in the New Eden, we won't be there to sit around and be lazy. We'll be there with a purpose, with creativity and joy. We'll get to continue the very good work of God and keep making new and wonderful things.

Now, go and create!

NaNoWriMo, Writing and Blogging

2011-10-31T09:40:00.000-07:00

Once again I'm going to participate in the event known as NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. The challenge is to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. That works out to 1,667 words a day, every day ,for the course of the month.

I did it in 2009 and it was awesome. It started me on the path to becoming a professional writer. Not that I'm making tons of money, but since successfully completing NaNoWriMo I have published an article, a book and become a contributing writer for a content providing company. So I make my living by writing. That's pretty cool.

This year I'm upping the ante, so to speak. I'm going to continue writing for my day job (about 2,000 words a day) plus I'm going to try to get a non-fiction book drafted by the end of the year (goal of 1,000 words a day) and I want to edit a previously written work to be ready for eBook publishing by November 11th. On top of that I want to write another 1,667 words a day on a fiction book that's been trapped in by brain since the summer of 2010. I'm not sure what will give out first, my brain, my fingers or my keyboard.

I may be a bit less prolific in my writing here, but just know it's for a good cause.

Are you going to NaNoWriMo? What motivates you to write?

Preaching the Parable of the Good Samaritan pt. 5

2011-10-28T10:01:00.000-07:00

As Christians and Americans, it's out of character for us to ask for help. But it seems like that's what Jesus was teaching in Luke 10. When he was asked to interpret the command: "Love your neighbor as yourself." He came back with the story of the Good Samaritan. The key thing is that the Samaritan is the neighbor to the person who was robbed. So the question posed, "Who is my neighbor?" gets answered with the Samaritan. Essentially, Jesus is saying that loving your neighbor means being willing to be weak and receive help from them. Which shouldn't be surprising since he sent out his disciples without shoes, coats or wallets to beg and preach.

The question that remains, then, is how we can show love to our neighbors the way that Jesus teaches. What real, practical things can we do to love our neighbors?

Ask for help when you need it. If you're like me, you often try to do something on your own when it would be much faster and easier to just get some help. Knock on a door or ask someone passing by to help you carry in your groceries. Have a work day where you invite your neighbors to help plant your garden. Find out who's a mechanic on your block and ask them to help you change your oil.
Let other people be the expert. When a church is planning activities, they usually decide what they think the neighborhood want, so there are a lot of harvest parties in October, for example. What if we invited the neighbors to a planning session and asked them what they want to do? What if we asked them to help set up and tear down? What if we delegated responsibility to them (for their party)?
Support local charities. Your church can't do everything. But good is still being done in your neighborhood. Find the local charities that are doing things that you can't do right now. Maybe there's a homeless shelter in your neighborhood and you don't have the resources to run one yourself. Support what they're doing, help them with volunteers and even money. Don't worry about whether people are coming to your church, worry about whether or not they're getting the help they need.

What other ways could we show neighbor-love like Jesus taught?

You can catch up on the previous posts here: 1, 2, 3 and 4.

Preaching the Parable of the Good Samaritan pt. 4

2011-10-27T09:41:00.000-07:00

How can churches be weak as a means of showing love? If the point (one of them, at least) of the parable of the Good Samaritan is that we show love by being willing to receive help, then how can we love our neighbors today?

It's clear that Jesus sent out the 72 in the beginning of Luke 10 as shoe-less beggars, and that was his chosen evangelistic strategy. Do we dare do the same thing today?

Our modus operani is to swoop in on a community with all the money and all the answers. We have the big building, we have the food for the poor, we have the programs for the families, we have the well-produced worship service. We have people come to us for what they need and we become, in a way, a clearinghouse of services that people can receive.

This has been the mode of the church for centuries. The Catholic Church was, perhaps, the only stable institution in medieval Europe. If anything good was going to happen, it was going to happen because of the power and stability of the church. But, even after the break from Rome in the Reformation, most churches still hold the identity of being the place of power in a community. The building of a steeple is a not-so-subtle reminder to the surrounding people of where the power and the money are located.

But Jesus came along and called his people to eschew the position of power for one of weakness. Priestly robes were exchanged for beggar's rags. The disciples hobbled in to town after town searching for a person who would give them shelter and food. In exchange, they shared the message of Jesus. The news that the kingdom of God was near. I can't help but wonder if the means by which they went out was a stronger proclamation of God's kingdom than the words that they said.

How can you and your church be weak to show love to your community?

Catch up on parts 1, 2 and 3 of this series.

Preaching the Parable of the Good Samaritan pt. 3

2011-10-26T09:54:00.000-07:00

What do you do when the point of the passage is obscured by what people think it means? This week I've been looking at how to preach an incredibly familiar passage like the parable of the Good Samaritan. One step is to break through the blinders of familiarity and let people see the passage afresh.

People think that the Good Samaritan story is all about how we should show mercy to those who are in need. We should be like the Samaritan and, in fact, that's what Jesus says at the end. We should go and do likewise. But the expert in the law wasn't asking about showing mercy, he was asking the identity of his neighbor. More than that, the rest of the chapter (Luke 10) doesn't have much to do with being merciful. But, there is a common thread woven through the chapter that might give a clue.

The first part of the chapter details Jesus sending out the 72 to prepare the way for him. They are to go out without sandals, a cloak or a purse -- no coat, no shoes and no wallet. Most places today would refuse them service immediately just because of their appearance. They were going out in complete weakness and dependence. Jesus' missionary strategy was to send out homeless beggars.

Then, after the parable, we get the story of Mary and Martha where Martha is mad that Mary is not doing any of the work. Jesus tells Martha that Mary has chosen well and it won't be taken from her. Jesus tells Martha that effort doesn't necessarily make him happy, but relationship does.

I think the two threads of weakness and relationship come together in the parable of the Good Samaritan. The way the story is set up and the way that Jesus questions the law-expert make the Samaritan the neighbor to the person who was robbed. In answering the question of the law-expert ("Who is my neighbor?") Jesus makes him admit that it's the Samaritan.

Loving your neighbor, true relationship and with it true evangelism, come not from a position of power, but from one of weakness. We show love to our neighbor when we are willing to receive help from them. We engage in true relationship when we put people over tasks and things and we share the good news by being weak and relying on the kindness of others.

Is this a fair interpretation of the parable? Why is this interpretation often avoided or ignored?

Preaching the Parable of the Good Samaritan pt. 2

2011-10-25T09:41:00.000-07:00

If familiarity breeds contempt, then we must hate a lot of what the bible has to say. Yesterday I talked about the familiar interpretation of the Good Samaritan parable. But how do we get around the familiarity and get to the point that is actually being made?

I started thinking about how parables work and one of the main tools that make parables effective is the reversal of expectations. Another kind of lesson-story that uses the same device is fables. So I started the sermon by recounting Aesop's famous fable, The Tortoise and the Hare. The hare mocks the tortoise for being slow. The tortoise challenges the hare to a race and soon they're off. The hare runs far ahead and stops for a rest while the tortoise plods on. The hare wakes up and dashes off only to reach the finish line just ahead of the tortoise and win the race. That just goes to show you that rabbits are faster than turtles.

Changing the ending of the Tortoise and the Hare story brings about a sense of unfamiliarity. But that's the ending that people expected to hear. A rabbit is clearly faster than a tortoise. The fable gets its sharp point by reversing our expectations and creating a sense of disorientation. In the book, Made to Stick, authors Chip and Dan Heath refer to this as violating a schema; which means that standard expectations are exploded and replaced with the new idea. It's a very sticky way to communicate an idea, but it only works the first time you do it. When the fable or parable becomes the schema, violating it is difficult.

So, my first step was to make everyone aware of the schema, the presuppositions that exist around the parable of the Good Samaritan. We assume that the point of the story is to tell us to be good people and help those in need. We assume that we should mimic the Good Samaritan in the story -- and that is one of the points that come from the story. But the weird thing is that Jesus is using the story to answer a question - the question is "Who is my neighbor?" The words of Jesus at the end of the parable, "Go and do likewise." Don't really answer the question. They tell us that we should be merciful, which is good, but that's not the answer that the expert in the law was looking for.

We'll have to go back a bit to find the answer to the question posed.

How do you violate schemas to make points? What do you do when the violation has become the new schema?

(Note, book links earn me a small commission)

Preaching the Parable of the Good Samaritan pt. 1

2011-10-24T09:59:00.000-07:00

How is it possible to say anything new about the most familiar parable in the world? Yesterday I faced that question as I preached the parable of the Good Samaritan to the Oregon City Church of Christ. I was honored to fill in while the ministers were away and I continued their series on the parables of Jesus. I chose the Good Samaritan, in part, because I already have a familiarity with it, but that familiarity was the first hurdle I would face.

It's possible that the parable of the Prodigal Son is as well known as that of the Good Samaritan, but that's only to say that they are among the very few stories of Jesus that have infiltrated popular culture. It's common to hear a news story about a Good Samaritan who helps someone in need. There are hospitals all over the nation named after the compassionate deeds of a character in a story. We hear this message and have our immediate expectations about how it ought to be interpreted.

The Good Samaritan is obviously a story about why we should take care of people on the side of the road. We need to look after the weak and injured among us. Even a lowly Samaritan did the same and showed mercy on an injured, naked man. And we leave it at that point. Our familiarity prevents us from seeing any more than just the beginning of the point.

I believe that what we've turned into the main point of the parable is a secondary point and that Jesus was wanting to communicate something more by the telling of the story. But I'll dig into that a bit more tomorrow.

How do you deal with familiarity when you teach on common texts?

How to Be Successful when You're a Failure

2011-10-21T08:59:00.000-07:00

So there was the guy named Rob Kroese and he wrote a book. The book was about angels, the apocalypse and bad restaurants in Southern California. Rob submitted the book to a bunch of agents and the response he got was "are there any vampires in this?" Vampires were pretty big at the time (I guess it's zombies now). So without the requisite vampires, he decided to try the self-publishing route.

Rob used his blog to get a few hundred people to commit to ordering the book. Once he had enough interested people, he printed the book using Amazon's self-printing service which gave him access to the Kindle store. He sent free copies of the book to lots of top reviewers on Amazon and secured lots of high ratings (well deserved) and also put his book on sale for $0.99. So he sold a lot of books and got a lot of good reviews.

Amazon noticed his success and picked him up as a publisher through the Amazon Encore publishing house, so his sequel to the first book is all official and stuff. But he never would have had the sequel if he didn't reject the notion that he was a failure.

The short answer is that you can be successful on your own when other people label you a failure, but you have to work hard at it. Rob busted his butt marketing his own book to get to the point where Amazon took notice if his work. Not too shabby.

How have you been labeled a failure? What hard work can you do to change that?

(Note links to the books earn me a small commission and earn Rob some royalties)

How to Get Better at Everything

2011-10-20T09:24:00.000-07:00

Whenever I'm asked for advice on cooking, especially by younger cooks getting started, I say that you have to make bad food to make good food. I love making bread, but in learning how to make amazing bread I've made some inedible loaves. I learned from those experiences and applied that to future bread. The same is true with everything in the kitchen. I won't know what I should avoid if I don't make any mistakes. Every time I cook something (even when it's delicious) I'm always thinking about what I would do differently the next time.

When you're presenting, you need to have the same attitude. Make mistakes. Make them big and bold. I know how to put together a good PowerPoint presentation now because I've created some truly awful ones in the past. We're talking bullet points filling the screen and animations on every page and then, the coup de grace was when I didn't embed the font for the Greek words I put into the presentation. They just looked like misspelled English and made the presentation look even worse. I learned a lot from that experience. It was bad.

You can see it here:

Until Christ is Formed in You

View more presentations from James Wood

But that was four years ago and I've learned a lot since then. So much so that I won the Microsoft PowerPoint competition in the best use of graphics category. You can improve in your use of PowerPoint, or anything that you're working on. But only by trying and making mistakes do you learn to improve.

What have you learned from your mistakes?

Do it Yourself and Know what's been Done

2011-10-19T09:43:00.000-07:00

Pork Belly

If you prepare something from start to finish, you know exactly how it's been done and what it takes to do it. This is as true in the office as it is in the kitchen.

Lately I've been cooking a lot. I'm on a diet that restricts sugar intake so I've had to make some things that I wanted to eat. Did you know that most bacon is cured with sugar? That's tough because bacon is also delicious (and without the sugar, totally acceptable in small quantities on my diet). So, the solution is to make my own bacon. I ordered a pork belly from the butcher and created a brine in which to soak the bacon. Half of the eight pound belly is going to be pepper bacon and half of it regular. After three days in the brine, the belly is removed, dried and then cold-smoked to produce that distinctive (American) bacon flavor.

Brine for the Bacon Cure

I also took some time to make a cheesecake, from scratch. Another one of the diet restrictions is on flour (mostly I can't eat white things), so instead of a typical cheesecake crust, I processed some almonds into almond flour and then filled it with the sugar-free cheesecake filling. I topped it with a homemade chocolate sauce. It was incredibly delicious. The worst part was waiting for it to cool completely after cooking.

Orange Almond Cheesecake

The whole point is that when you do things from the ground up, you get to know what's in them. You know every last ingredient of your food, if you make it yourself. If you create your own presentation, you know everything that's in it. There are plenty of pre-packaged presentations that you can grab for a few bucks, but they are the same as pre-packaged food. There's a lot of empty calories.

Pre-packaged presentations ramp up the production values. They have tons of glitz applied to make them look "professional" but the truth is most professional presentations are simple and straightforward. Look at the famous Apple Keynotes for which Steve Jobs was so famous. They aren't filled with flashy animations, but simple pictures and text. The real power comes from the presenter knowing exactly what's next in the presentation and speaking to that point.

Cheesecake topped with a chocolate sauce

Don't look for the easy way out. It's only easy on the front end. The work you put in at the beginning will be rewarded at the end with a much better product, in no small part because you know every ingredient in it.

Learn to be a Lean Mean Fighting Machine

2011-10-18T08:48:00.000-07:00

The best fighters have, what appear to be, inexhaustible supplies of energy and motivation. Look at physical fighters like Bruce Lee or social fighters like Martin Luther King Jr. and you see a constant resolve that doesn't waver. They almost appear superhuman in their ability to press the fight.

It takes time, effort and energy to fight for what you want. It's not easy and it's not comfortable. It also takes endurance. Endurance that must be built up over time through practice. Dr. King didn't start his crusade for civil rights at the beginning of his career, but rather once he had developed some endurance in his life through pastoring and speaking. He worked with small movements first and then built up to the Million Man March. He didn't start at the end. Bruce Lee spent his life in training and preparing for combat. He worked, behind the scenes, more hours than we will ever know, to prefect that effortless, tireless appearance that he's remembered for.

Start with one habit, one trait, one practice that you need to develop in order to be the best at your job. If you need to get better at public speaking, go to Toastmasters. If you need to work on your writing skills participate in NaNoWriMo. If you need to learn how to use PowerPoint better, find some tutorials.

In the end, you won't have the inexhaustible energy if you don't practice being exhausted now. Push yourself to the limit in this moment so that your limits will be greater when you really need it.

What's your training regime?

The Craft of Writing in a Digital World

2011-10-17T09:01:00.000-07:00

Writing is now less important and more important than it's ever been.

Words are cheap. Words can be pulled out of nothing and transmitted around the world in a matter of seconds. Some truly terrible sentences are propagated and even celebrated through media like Twitter. The ephemeral nature of online communication translates into a lack of care in crafting the words and a lack of interest in how they appear. A text message or a Facebook status is here for a moment, but soon eclipsed by the next one in an unending procession. Why take time to word-smith chaff?

Words are eternal. Even in the digital age, especially in the digital age, words don't go away. The blog post you wrote when you first learned about blogging is still archived online. Google has been scanning books in an attempt to leave no words behind in the digital revolution. I've been reading a scanned copy of Les Miserables that I was able to download for free. The greatest works of literature are available in an instant.

What this means for the craft of writing has yet to be determined, but one thing it does not mean is that writing is dead. Writing is still a necessary skill and those who can write well are still rare treasures for society. However there is a much larger signal-to-noise ratio that is in danger of drowning out the good writing.

Writing well in a digital world means learning to write in the Facebook voice or the Twitter voice. They aren't anathema to writers, but rather a different form to be mastered. They don't preclude other forms in the same way the magazines haven't replaced books. The internet hasn't destroyed libraries. Writing in a digital age is still a craft to be mastered by those who have the talent and the time to develop it.

Painting didn't die out when new paints were invented. It wasn't destroyed when photography was created. The art form evolved to meet the new realities of the technology. Writing is no different. We have different paints and brushes with which to craft words, but we are still artists and there is still a need for our art.

Give up to Get More

2011-10-14T08:50:00.000-07:00

What you are unwilling to try is always impossible. Have you uttered the words: "Oh, but I could never do that." in response to the cool things that your friends are doing? You're right. You will never be able to do those things, unless you give up.

Give up the notion of the "American Dream" that somehow is supposed to guarantee everyone a job, a house, two cars and 2.5 children. Give up the idea of success that's based on working yourself into exhaustion so that you can retire and sit around doing nothing. Give up the concept of money as the only way to achieve your goals. Give up. Stop. Don't be normal anymore.

I can't tell you how many people have listened jealously as I told them about spending a summer in Ireland. Most often, the response something like, "I wish I could do that, that would be so cool."

Then why not? What's stopping you? We volunteered on a farm in exchange for room and board. We worked little side jobs for entertainment money and we just did it. It's not hard to live a life of adventure, it's just hard to give up the life you have to do it.

What do you want to do that's impossible?

How to Make Time for what You Want to Do

2011-10-13T09:41:00.000-07:00

We all crave more time for the things we really want to do, that project that we've been dreaming about or that vacation that we hope to take. All it takes is time.

There are only a certain number of hours in the day. And we are bound to use some of those hours to make money for living. We use other hours for sleeping and general life-maintenance. What we're left with often doesn't feel like enough to do anything else. We collapse into our chairs and watch some TV before stumbling to bed and then we rise to do it all over again.

Yesterday Lifehacker had a great article on the true cost of commuting. In which they point out that the real dollar value of driving just one mile to work adds up to almost $800 over the course of a year. So living farther away from work to save money on housing is often a losing proposition since the money is just evaporating into your transportation.

What was fascinating, though, was all of the comments from people saying that it was just impossible for them to change their commuting lifestyle. They have no other jobs, the housing is too expensive, they can't bike where they live, and on and on. But the real problem isn't any of those things. The real problem is that they aren't willing to give up.

If you want more time in your life you must give up. Give up the thought that you must own a home and have a "nice" car and have a "real" job. The needs of housing, transportation and income don't have to look normal. Like Dave Ramsey says, "I don't want to be normal; normal is broke." Normal is also time-broke. You have to give up being normal if you want to get your time back.

If you find a job that is 30 miles closer to your home you automatically save $24,000 a year in transportation costs. So if you have an average American salary of $40,000 a year and you commute 30 miles to work every day, you could get a job within walking distance making just $16,000 a year and still pay the rest of your bills. You could save an hour every day in driving time and work less to boot. But, you wouldn't be normal.

What are you willing to give up?

5 Ways to Learn a New Skill Today

2011-10-12T09:08:00.000-07:00

One of the biggest objections that I get when I advise people to add visual presentation to their presentations is that it takes too much time to use the software to create a good slide deck. They argue that the time is better spent refining the existing presentation rather than adding something new.

That's true, for the presentation that's due tomorrow. But, for the presentation after that, and the next one, it's the willful retardation of development. If you think that you should stop learning new skills and focus on refining the skills you've got, you won't advance in your career. You're done. Enjoy the coast to retirement.

But, if you're hungry to grow and to get better at what you do, you have to be adding new skills to your repertoire, almost constantly. It's not an option. The option you do have is to choose which skills to add. And, perhaps the most important, is the skill of learning skills.

So, how can you learn a new skill, today?

1. Become a Beginner
Try something that you've never done before. It's frustrating and confusing, but you'll be creating new neural pathways that will open your mind up to learning in general. Learn a dance or pick up a skillet and try to flip the veggies in the pan. You will fail, but that's a part of learning new skills. Be awkward and clumsy and figure out how to do something new.

2. Become an Apprentice
Learn a skill from someone who knows it well. Ask the computer guru how to use keyboard shortcuts. Check with your uncle who's a carpenter and get some lessons on finishing that old table in your garage. Mobilize the resources you have at your disposal and turn them into new skills. People are the best teachers and learning happens best in relationship. So, learn a new skill from someone you know and trust.

3. Tweak what You Do
Take a skill that you already know how to do and make it better. One example is in the video below. You already know how to tie your shoes (I'm guessing), but do you know how to tie them the right way? Terry Moore explains in this video how you can tie your shoes correctly and how it benefits. It's a small change, but even small changes help to re-form your brain into a learning machine. Plus your shoelaces will look better.

4. Get Stuck
Necessity is the mother of invention and it's also the step-mother of new skills. If you're stuck, your brain will start cranking in some new and interesting ways to help you find a way out. Think of it as the MacGuyver principle, you're locked in a room with a toothpick and some hydrochloric acid; now get out. One way to do this is to make a meal from only what you have on hand. Figure out how to substitute and fudge to make something that you've never made before. Force yourself into situations where you have to use your creativity to get out of it and you'll learn some new skills.

5. Learn the Principles
I love watching Alton Brown's Good Eats because he doesn't just give the recipe for some food, he gives the principles behind the recipe. Armed with those principles I can then apply them across a range of situations. Learning about the Maillard reaction (the magical moment when food turns golden brown) helps me to make not only better steak but also better toast, bacon, roasted squash and chicken salad. Every skill has an underlying principle. Understand what that is and you will have unlocked the door to that skill.

How can you learn a new skill today?

Creativity is Work

2011-10-11T08:11:00.000-07:00

I don't know why, but I've found myself answering the question: "How do you become a writer?" Technically I'm a professional writer at this point in my life. I make my living by writing articles for various websites. I didn't intend for this to be my job, but it's working for me, for now.

Part of the answer to the question of how I became a writer is that we had no other way of making money and we were desperate. We were living in Ireland for the summer of 2010 and we had no way of being legally employed. We were volunteering on a farm, but that only provided shelter and food for us. So I scoured the Internet for jobs I could do online from a trailer next to a horse pasture. What I found was writing how-to articles.

I'm with a major content provider (sometimes called a content mill) that connects writers with projects en masse. I'll tell you more about it privately, if you want me to. Basically I get to write the titles they give me and submit them online in exchange for being paid online. It's not a glamorous gig, but it did give us some beer money while in Ireland.

When we came back I started looking for other jobs, but I couldn't find anything that would offer the same pay and flexibility as I already had. So I kept with it. I'm now writing about 25 hours a week and that pays most of the bills that we have (along with my wife working too, it's not a lot of money). It may not be the highest paying job in the world, but there's one thing that it gives me that most other jobs can't: I work on the craft of writing and get paid for it.

Every day I have to sit and write about 2,000 words of text. Every day I interact with copy editors and receive critique on my work. Every day I comply with guidelines to get my work approved. Every day I hone the tools in my writing toolbox.

Being creative is like a muscle. If you don't exercise it, you won't have any endurance. But, if you do work it, even if the work is boring, treadmill work, the muscle gets stronger. You can do more and do it longer.

There's a heady rush that every creative person feels when inspiration strikes. It's beautiful. I had an epiphany last night as I was working on an outline for a new project. I spent a moment to just bask in the light of inspiration. But that doesn't finish the project, or even start it. The one thing I've learned about being a writer that it worth of being passed on to others is this: do it. Write. No excuses, no re-scheduling, just write.

How do you exercise your creativity?

30 years of rejection, one day of celebration

2011-10-10T08:39:00.000-07:00

His work took thirty years to be recognized as valid, but last Wednesday Dan Shechtman was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his discovery of non-repeating crystals. To those outside the chemistry world the actual work isn't terribly exciting, a scientist looked at some molecules through an electron microscope and saw something he didn't expect to see. Something that wasn't supposed to be possible. He saw crystals with a regular pattern that doesn't repeat. To put it another way, they are crystals that show symmetry when rotated one-fifth of a circle. That's not allowed.

When Dan shared his work with other scientists he was rebuffed. He was proposing that the very definition of what makes a crystal needed to be changed. Yet, he insisted. He showed the structure in different materials, he re-created his experiment and he kept stating what he knew to be true. It only took thirty years.

People like Dan are tough to emulate and easy to praise. His long-lived endurance in the face of the entire scientific community is beyond the limits of normal humans. We love stories like Dan's because it means that we might be right, even though everyone else says we're wrong. But we don't like the story that Dan had a year ago. That's the story of a man who spent twenty-nine years fighting for what he knew to be right, but without any fruit. That story is horrifying. That's the story we tell as a cautionary tale to college Freshmen who want to major in philosophy. You'll waste your life. You have to face reality some day. So many other people can't be wrong.

But what if they are?

What if you have the next revolution in chemistry locked in your brain? What if the next great novel is in there? What about the next great sermon? What if?

What if it takes you thirty years? What then? Do believe in it enough to keep going?

It's like Woodstock, but for word-hippies

2011-10-07T09:18:00.000-07:00

This weekend I'm headed to the Portland literary festival, Wordstock. It's the largest literary festival in the Pacific Northwest and it's held for two days at the Oregon Convention Center. I'm going, in part, to learn about the business of writing. I'm attending a workshop on that topic and I'm hoping to make some good connections in the business. I don't really know what to expect, but I'm excited to branch out in the community and learn more about what it takes to be a professional writer.

Have you been to Wordstock? Are you going?

Two Types of Creativity, Firefly Teaches Us about Productivity

2011-10-06T08:59:00.000-07:00

Copy Blogger had a great post yesterday about creative types as seen through Firefly, the short-lived series from Joss Whedon.

The captain of the ship, Serenity, is Mal Reynolds. He's cocky, cool and inventive. Mal is always cooking up a new scheme for making money and when things get tough, he improvises a way out. He leads with passion and inspires followers to do more than they thought possible. He can't be constrained by rules, so he flies out beyond the reach of the rules, yet his own code of honor guides everything he does.

Zoe Washburne is Mal's first mate. She served under him in the war and now she continues to take orders on the Firefly-class ship. She's loyal, calculating and direct. While Mal is pondering new ideas, Zoe is putting things into practice and getting results. When things get tough, she sticks to the plan and gets out through sheer willpower. She works best by taking Mal's crazy schemes and making something concrete out of them.

Typically creative types are either a Mal or a Zoe. Mals are the entrepreneurship that go out on the edge and push the envelope. Mals are Steve Jobs who was so good at challenging the status quo. Zoes are the doers that implement the dreams of the entrepreneurs. Zoes are Steve Wozniak who provided the technical skill to create what Steve Jobs thought up. Neither Mals nor Zoes work well on their own. They need each other, if possible, and if not, they need to develop the skills to compensate.

Mals need help sticking with one idea long enough to make it a reality. Too often they are moving on to the next idea before the first one (or dozen) are even over. They require the discipline to stop, wait and see if the idea will work before moving on to the next big thing. They need to devote time to production rather than just imagination. The great idea won't do anyone any good if it never exists. Specific blocks of time need to be set aside for doing the work.

Zoes need imagination sparkers. They are great at implementing ideas, but they need the kernel of the idea to begin with. Practicing brainstorming or finding good sources for new ideas in news sources feeds Zoes the new ideas they need. They also need to know when to give up, if an idea isn't working and can't be tweaked, it needs to be abandoned. Zoes are loathe to give up ideas at all, they will fight to the last. Zoes need to learn some people skills, the focus on ideas alienates people. They don't see why those around them are not doing the job and they don't take the time to listen. Zoes need to stop and listen.

Which one are you? How can you be better at creating?

The Pursuit of Not-Happiness

2011-10-05T09:34:00.000-07:00

What if the Declaration of Independence is wrong? What if, 235 years ago, when Thomas Jefferson wrote out the combined thoughts of the delegates gathered, they missed the point? At least in part.

The second paragraph starts:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

I won't get into the first two rights, but "the pursuit of happiness" seems to be, shall we say, a bit much. How is that so core to our country's identity that we had to include it in the declaration of rebellion against the British crown? Yet, it seems to be true.

Happiness is what people want. Commercials tell us that we're not happy without the product that they offer. The ratings for well-being for our country are based on how happy people are with the performance of the President or the stock market. Individual success is determined based on how happy we appear to be. We relentlessly pursue happiness, which stays always just out of reach. It's fleeting, like most emotions.

This pursuit, this American right, has crept in to religion. Doctrines are constructed from the Archimedean point of God wanting us to be happy. All else hinges on that one belief.

What if it's not true?

In an article at Psychology Today, Melissa Kirk reflects on the question: "Is happiness even the point?"

"It made me wonder if our culture's seeming obsession with the pursuit of happiness misses the point entirely. Not that we shouldn't seek balance, but happiness? Why is happiness so important, and is it, in fact, even sustainable? And if we were happy all of the time, how would we learn to surf the waves of our emotions, and to gracefully dance with our shadows?"

Happiness isn't an end. It's a waypoint on the journey, but so are pain, sadness, mourning, anger and all of our other emotions. We react to life, we learn, we grow. Sometimes we feel happy in all of that, but that's not the point. Just like sex isn't the point of marriage, happiness isn't the point of life.

How does it change our culture if we stop pursuing happiness? How does it change your day today?

Connect with People not Technology

2011-10-04T09:26:00.000-07:00

Today brings the launch of another iPhone iteration (the iPhone 5, if you're that far out of the loop), and it reminds me about how we ought to be using technology.

What happens is that we fall in love with our things.
"I love my iPhone."
"I love my Android."
"I love my TV."
"I love my computer."
Or, we end up hating the technology when it doesn't work right. Either way, we're connected to the stuff in an emotional way. That's because people are meant to create emotional connections.

Our brains are a mishmash of cross-wiring. We don't just remember facts, we connect all of our senses and emotions to the events surrounding those facts. We don't remember a person's face, but we have a complex web of feelings and impressions that surround that person in our mind. Human beings are, of necessity, emotional creatures. Our emotions work to help us identify danger or repeat good experiences. They connect us to community and protect us from isolation.

Unless we start applying our emotions to things instead of people. It's not bad to love the tools you use. As a carpenter about the difference between hammers. He'll pick the one he loves, the one that's served him well. The one that's on its third handle since he's owned it. But loving our tools over and above people is a tragedy.

All the technology that surrounds us gives us an unparalleled ability to connect with each other. We can text, Skype, Facebook and email all the time, from anywhere. But an ever increasing part of the emotions that we feel are being applied not to people but to things. We divorce humanity from technology and we lose the point.

I'm not saying we should get off Facebook or stop watching TV, but we should use technology with our eyes open. We know what it is and we know what it's doing. If we use it as a tool and we use it to connect with people, then it helps us all. But if we let our emotional connections stop with the things, we are impoverished.

When is PowerPoint Unnecessary?

2011-10-03T08:15:00.000-07:00

What if PowerPoint is not the answer to every preaching ailment and the solution to every communication problem? I recently came across this blog post over at Preaching.org entitled "Has PowerPoint become Unnecessary?" In it, Kent says that he has never seen any real benefit from including PowerPoint with his sermons.

"I can honestly say that the only thing that has been lost when the powerpoint wasn’t available was the time I may have spent preparing it."

PowerPoint is not always necessary with a sermon. For thousands of years, preachers communicated the gospel without the use of images or extra technology. It's not necessary.

But things are different. People are different. If anything, we are more visual now than we were just fifty years ago. Removing a visual channel of communication is, in my opinion, hurting the message of preaching. It's not necessary to the end product the way that scripture is, but it's important the way that a microphone is.

Looking at Kent's argument, in which he says that there are often technical difficulties and time spent in getting PowerPoint to work correctly, the same could be said for microphones and sound systems. The batteries on a wireless mic go out at the wrong time, the feedback is constant and unavoidable, the system is expensive and needs to be run by someone. It's all a headache that's added on-top of the task of sharing the word of God. But, it's necessary so that people can hear the message. We, as preachers, put up with the problems of microphones so that the congregation can hear the word of God.

Over time, something happens, we get used to it. It becomes a part of our preaching technique. We learn to use a hushed whisper, knowing that the mic will amplify it. We don't shout, because we know it will be to loud over the sound system. We know to get to the auditorium a few minutes early so the sound guys can wire us up. It's no longer a hassle, it's just what we do. And, without it, we could preach. Microphones aren't necessary, but they are incredibly helpful in amplifying the message we've worked so hard to prepare.

PowerPoint isn't necessary, but, it is very helpful in amplifying our message.

Bladder-based Decision Making Study Wins Prize

2011-09-30T09:33:00.000-07:00

It's that time of the year again, the Ig Nobel prizes were awarded last night on the campus of Harvard University. These prizes attempt to highlight the legitimate activity going on in the world that is too weird, marginal or funny to ever win a Nobel prize (the winners of which will be announced next week). So, this year some of the highlight winners are:

Peter Snyder, a professor of Neurology at Brown University was a part of the team of researchers that won the prize for medicine for their groundbreaking study of how the need to urinate affects decision making and higher cognitive function. According to the study, the greater the need to urinate, the more difficult it is to focus on anything else. Said Snyder, in summary of his magnum opus, "When you gotta pee, you gotta pee."

Also winning the Ig Nobel peace prize was the may of Vilnius, Lithuania, Arturas Zuokas, who addressed the vexing problem of illegally parked luxury cars blocking bicycle lanes. His solution: run them over with a tank. Problem solved, prize won.

How the World Sees PowerPoint

2011-09-29T09:39:00.000-07:00

Bob Bobberson* the creator of Dilbert has recently put all the comics online. But wait, there's more! For the low, low cost of electrons shooting through tubes at at 88 Mph, you can find the Dilbert comic you want. All of these hilarious panels are searchable. So you can search for PowerPoint comics (like I did) or whatever your silly heart desires. Enjoy.

*That's not his real name. It's something like Adam Scotterson or Scotts McMc. You can look it up with those electrons you're always bragging about.

Better Now than Never

2011-09-28T09:26:00.000-07:00

Jon Acuff, the mind behind Stuff Christians Like and one of the people who keeps Dave Ramsey online and organized. Yesterday he presented at The NINES and said some amazing things. The one that I took away and that I'm going to continue to ponder is this: "90% perfect and shared with the world is better than 100% perfect and still in your head."

That tells me to stop wasting time trying to perfect something when I can get it out the door. It won't change any lives as long as it stays inside my head. It won't make the world one whit better if I'm still agonizing over the last detail. My next book. My next sermon. My next blog post. My next job. My next . . . won't even exist if I try to make everything 100% perfect.

But, if I work hard and make things almost perfect and then share them, they can change the world. I still have to put in an effort. I still create a high quality product. I still polish my words and dress well for my interview, but I stop worrying about the last 10% and just do it.

Your school transcript doesn't show if you got a 100% or a 90%. It just says "A."

What do you need to share with the world now?

The Nines

2011-09-27T07:44:00.000-07:00

Today I'm participating in a live, streaming leadership event called The Nines. Leadership Network has collected nine minute videos for leaders all over the world and is showing them all today. It started at 7am Pacific time and it will go for about nine hours. You should join me in watching. It's free, and I'm sure there's bound to be something helpful for you.

The Dead Sea Scrolls Online

2011-09-26T10:35:00.000-07:00

It's time to brush up on your Hebrew (and Aramaic), the collection of writings known as the Dead Sea Scrolls are now available online for all to peruse. Thanks to Google and the Israel Museum, these ancient texts are searchable and viewable from anywhere in the world.

My one year of Hebrew education doesn't enable me to translate the text. It uses a different script style and lacks the vowel pointings that make reading Hebrew possible for me (and most non-native speakers). However, this treasure is available to anyone who has the time and ability to work through the text.

This is similar to the digital copy of Codex Sinaiticus, but pre-dates that text by as much as 800 years. The digital revolution is not leaving behind the heritage of a script-based world, but rather making them more accessible.

Repeat Yourself to be Heard

2011-09-23T08:27:00.000-07:00

I don't remember my mom ever saying this, but it's a cliché mom thing to say: "If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times..." I think this has something to do with the innate ability that moms have to know how communication needs to work.

If you're trying to communicate something to a large group of people, you need to repeat it at least once every 30 days for the message to stick. The more central the concept to the vision of the group, the more often it needs to be repeated.

So, if you want to change the core vision of your group. You have to repeat it every time you meet. Especially if you have a membership that fluctuates. Now, you probably shouldn't say exactly the same words every time, but you should focus on the same message.

Say, for example, that your church has a brand new vision and you're wanting to get everyone on board with it. You need to share that vision every week. Every meeting. But you don't need to just repeat it, you need to say it in a new way. So, if your vision is: "New churches in new places for new people." (this is the vision of Kairos Church Planting with whom I've worked extensively). You would say the basic vision every week, but then on one week you might tell a story about what "new churches" means, the next week you would highlight "new places" and then you could have a video clip of a new person for the third week. Just keep saying the same thing in different ways.

What message do you want your people to hear?

Always Be Learning

2011-09-22T09:02:00.000-07:00

When I was in computer sales there was a phrase that we were supposed to live by, three short words that were meant to sum up our priorities on the job: Always. Be. Closing.

The idea was that we should always be thinking about how we could close the next sale. That style doesn't really work for me, though. I'm not the kind of guy who wants to receive a lot of pressure from a salesperson, so I, naturally, don't want to be that type of salesperson.

Instead, I adopted the mantra: Always. Be. Learning. It worked well for me, especially since computer technology changes so quickly. I was always up-to-date on the latest developments in the computer industry and I could explain it to people in meaningful terms. I became the kind of salesperson who had the answers to any question (or I could find the answers in short order). My appeal to the customers wasn't based on my amazing charm, but based on the fact that I knew what they needed to know.

No matter what your job you can't stay static. You must keep learning and improving or you'll become obsolete. No matter what your passion, if you don't keep up with current events, you'll be left behind in short order. Always. Be. Learning.

I've been blogging here (consistently) for over two years now and I just learned some cool tricks about how to use social media resources to make my blog better and connect with more people. Thanks to my friend Breanna, the editor of Dollar Store Mom, I learned about the power of StumbleUpon. I had played around with the service years ago, but I was only looking at it from the perspective of being able to find sites that I wanted to browse. Now I see that it can be much more than that. I've only been actively using StumbeUpon for three days and it already accounts for 8% of my blog traffic - that's pretty significant.

What have you learned recently that's made you better at your job or your hobby?

Online Etiquette: Online in Person

2011-09-21T09:11:00.000-07:00

If you've ever been around more than one teen-type-human, you've probably seen something like this. They are all in the same place at the same time, but they're all doing something on their own mobile phone. They might be texting each other or they might be texting about each other. No one really knows.

Teens do what they do. Trying to force rules of etiquette on them is tantamount to reversing the tides. It may happen, but you have no power over it. However, the habits of teens can bleed over into the real world and infect the rest of us with poor habits.

How does it make you feel if you're having a conversation with someone and they stop in the middle to look at their phone? What if they interrupt your conversation to have a conversation with someone, either through a call or text message? I know that I feel less important than what's going on through the phone.

In some cases this is OK. For example, if several of us happen to meet in a coffee shop and we drift into a conversation, then it's not terribly rude to drift out of a conversation to attend to a phone message. If, however, you invited someone out for a meal or coffee and they proceed to ignore you in favor of the super-computer in their pocket, that, in my opinion, is rude.

To me, the standard should be presence. Ask yourself the question: How present do I need to be in this moment? If you could also be reading a book or flipping through a magazine, you don't need to be very present. But, if it would be rude for you to pull out a magazine and start flipping pages, then it would be rude to pull out your smart phone.

Another issue is the ubiquity of Google. Let me tell you, I love Google, but it can interrupt conversations terribly. If we don't remember the name of the actor in the movie as we're talking, it's just too easy to grab a phone and Google the answer. But that's the same as pulling out a reference book and looking through it. I'm not usually talking to people so I can get the most accurate information, but rather so that I can make a relational connection with them. Google will never be able to help me with that.

How do you deal with the ability to be online when you're face-to-face?

Online Etiquette: Facebook

2011-09-20T08:51:00.000-07:00

Oh irony of ironies. Right now, in an attempt to try to be more polite to everyone on Facebook, I will offend people on Facebook. I wonder if this is how Miss Manners felt when she published her first edition, knowing that the Salad-fork group would forever brand her a heretic? Alas, some things must be done for the greater good.

Joking aside (mostly), I think we need to develop some general rules for being polite to each other online. It seems that the standard view is: "It's my profile, I'll post whatever I want, you don't have to like it."

But what if we lived that way in real life?

"It's my house, I'll wear whatever I want, you don't have to come over."

"It's my cubicle, I'll tell whatever jokes I want, you don't have to listen."

"It's my car, I'll drive it wherever I want, you don't have to stand in the way."

We live by some rules; a few, small tidbits of etiquette help to keep our society from falling apart. More than that, those rules help us to develop friendships that can survive differences of opinion and preference. Because we don't take the attitude that our own desires are more important than the desires of other people. But for some reason that's all reversed on Facebook.

The one rule that we need to have on Facebook is the rule we need to live by in every situation: treat others the way that you want to be treated.

That covers a multitude of situations, but it does keep things focused on you and your opinion. So as I think of the rules that I would want codified for Facebook etiquette, I'm thinking about what annoys me or makes me happy online. I'm not thinking about the things that I do that annoy other people. I need to hear from others what rules they want so I can treat people the way that they want to be treated.

(My) Suggestions for Facebook Etiquette:

Post no more than twice a day

Keep posts about specialized topics to a minimum (sports, TV shows, children, etc.)
Comment on your own previous post if you have more to say about a topic, especially about a TV show or sporting event.

Have your profile picture show your face
Post primarily original thoughts and content

Avoid "Copy and Paste" statuses
Keep links, videos, etc. to a minimum

Don't allow your various applications to post to your profile (e.g. Spotify, eBay, YouTube), especially if you are working with the app a lot
Avoid spamming people with your events and causes, one or two updates is fine, but twice a day every day for a month is excessive.
Only invite people to your events if there's a remote possibility that they can attend

Take the time to go through your friends list and select the people to invite. Don't use the "Select All" button.

Don't post spoilers to TV, movies or books. C'mon, just don't do it.
If you link your Twitter and Facebook, don't use at-replies or hash-tags.

What did I miss? What am I totally wrong about? How have I offended you?

Online Etiquette: A Call for Suggestions

2011-09-19T11:02:00.000-07:00

I was listening to the Stuff You Should Know podcast the other day and they brought up an interesting idea. They were talking about how the internet works and the ubiquity of internet access through smart phones. Then came the lament for the loss of personal interaction since people whip out their phones at socially inappropriate times. They suggested a test to determine whether it would be rude to grab your device and check Facebook:

If it wouldn't be rude to start doing a crossword puzzle, then it would be OK to look at your phone. If you would feel rude grabbing a pen and the latest New York Times puzzler, then you should probably leave the phone tucked away.

What do you think about that? Have you ever been on the receiving end of rude phone use? How did it make you feel?

What other technology etiquette practices do we need to put in place?

Mental Fatigue

2011-09-16T08:51:00.000-07:00

Have you ever sat there, staring at your keyboard, hoping for the words to come? You might have something other than writer's block.

Recently the New York Times ran an article on the phenomenon known as decision fatigue. It's the effect you feel when you've made too many decisions or a decision that is too taxing. It's why you have such a hard time deciding where to go for dinner. You spent the entire day making decisions and one more just isn't possible.

When we reach decision fatigue we look for a way out. One way is to make any decision at all that will allow us to keep moving. These tend to be poor choices (McDonald's Big Mac instead of a meal at home). The other option that we'll choose is to not make any choice at all. We'll ignore the need to make a decision since we don't have the ability to work through one at this moment.

Mental fatigue is a real and demonstrable thing that we need to address. One of the main ways to fight decision fatigue is to stop and have a meal. In the research, a simple meal was able to reverse most of the effects of decision fatigue. We can also put our decisions where know we'll be most fresh to face them: right after breakfast, lunch and dinner. This might mean that you pre-decide what to do for lunch right after you get up in the morning. We can limit ourselves on what we have to decide. You may not need to make every decision on the project, delegate some of the decisions so that you have energy left for the ones that need your skills.

Decision fatigue can be especially difficult in group settings. If you have a meeting where people have a lot of decisions to make, provide snacks and frequent breaks. Make one decision at a time and then stop for a rest. It may seem wasteful, but the quality of decisions that come out will be much higher.

How do you deal with decision fatigue?