Posts (page 2)

I've been taking a picture of whatever I'm doing at 8:36pm every day now for almost 2 months now, and I'm still just as excited about it as ever.  Actually, a few things that'll be happening soon with a new iPhone app called Air Me will take this project to the next level.

When I was taking a picture at 8:36pm last night while having a catch-up-with-everything dinner with Kindra, she asked how long I plan on doing this project.  FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE.  Which is a pretty ambitious goal, considering that there are very few things we plan on doing for the rest of our lives, and most of them are pretty serious habits, like eating, drinking, sleeping.  Things that aren't required for survival include brushing teeth, getting dressed, hygenic things.  Getting married is a promise to do something every day for the rest of your life too, and therefore carries a huge weight of importance with it.

I love the 8:36pm project because it has constraints.  It's one picture a day.  It's at the same time every day.  It's a slice of life that I don't have much editorial control over.  Sure I could try to do something interesting at 8:36pm every day, but that's gonna require more energy than I have.  It's the every day that I want to capture, anyway, the act of living rather than the act of projecting a cool or interesting life to the Internet.  And it's interesting because when I tell people about this project the first response is also, "I could never do that because I'm never doing anything interesting at 8:36pm."  Exactly.  Or, maybe once in a while you are.  But in any case, we of the Internet Age are so used to filtering our experiences and only expressing the highs and lows for the most part.  Of course, even our highs and lows will bore most people, since we have such a high bar for being interested in anything, but I think it's interesting to go the other route.  Capture the ordinary, the repetitive, the mundane, the fact that you eat the same thing every day or see the same people.  Because there's something beautiful about not editorializing everything. 

It's a relief of sorts to not worry about being interesting.  Since the constraint is forced by a particular minute of the day, it's also not necessarily "your fault" for not being interesting.  Instructions on how to play are here, if you feel like joining up.

Had a fantastic weekend of sparkly birthdays, island bike rides, and general iPhone mania.

It's one year minus one day since Kellianne and I got engaged.  But we didn't post about it publicly for another 2 months.

The bike ride through and around Bainbridge Island was amazing.  It was a perfect day.  I can still summon the smell of nature and plants and water and air, and remember the quiet quiet.

Everything always seems to be happening so fast that it's good to be able to appreciate a moment unconnected from all the rest every once in a while. 

I've noticed a lot of different reactions to what can be vaguely labeled as "the future".  Obama, the gas problem, global warming, overpopulation, and, most recently, the path of technology and communication most easily pinned to the iPhone.

The anxiety comes from not knowing how we each fit in.  How does our own identity mix with the future?  Does it repel it?  Does it mix into it seemlessly?  Do you urge the future to arrive or push it away?

The younger generation is usually eager to bring the future into the present, and the older generation is usually eager to hold on to a concept of older days.  It's a generalization, but even when younger people push away whatever concept of the future exists, it's labeled as old fashioned.

What is the future, in a nutshell?  Change.

A new personality sees the world of change as a land grab, a place where old personalities haven't yet taken root, and where they can stake their own ground.  An old personality feel grounded in the present (or the past) and has more to lose by giving up that ground and rushing forward. 

There's always the chance that "the future" will be a fad, and people will need to rush back to the tried and true, where things were already well tested for security and stability.

Most of the time though, the future marches on, and the new becomes old and a new new becomes new.  And the old old is even older.

As each of us gets older, we should keep an eye on this.  When I was younger, I scoffed at the older generation that refused to learn about answering machines, computers, video games, movies, etc.  At some point, they had stopped rushing forward and had decided, I'm gonna live in 1975 for the rest of my life.  Sometimes they changed their minds and decided to catch up (maybe finally getting an email account, for example) but those of the older generation that continued forward are now on to Myspace, text messaging, and listening to Girl Talk.

Soon, these will be old and we'll be on to something new.

I want to keep rushing towards the future for as long as my bendy brain can handle it.  The future is exciting.  Even if it means giving up our cars and learning to ride bikes again.  Even if it means growing a garden and eating locally instead of eating mass produced food again.  Sure, the people who never bought into the car fad in 1910 might be able to scoff at us now for putting our hopes in such a futile movement, but they're dead.  And sure, the people who never bought refined or widely distributed food can scoff at us too, but is there really a joy in that?  Isn't it more of a sadness?  Life is a process of change, rushing forward, stepping back, and rushing forward again.  It's a dance, and just because the dance has a few missteps doesn't mean that the dance should never have been danced.

This week is the first week in human history that a beautiful computer has been available in our pockets, with access to satelites for location, beautiful interactive maps, every person we know, several ways to communicate with individuals and groups by voice, text, and email, a camera, access to the entire internet, a search engine to make it all easily navigated, and an excitement that this is the branch of the future that excites the people.  An idea masterfully executed to the scale of the Model T.

Can you imagine what it must've felt like when the everyday American realized that he could now cover hundreds of miles in a single day?  How about when they realized that they could now travel with their entire family to the other side of the world?  How about when they realized that we could call someone and talk to them from anywhere in the world?  How about when they realized that they didn't even have to be home to do it?  How about when they realized that all of the world's knowledge was available at their fingertips?  How about when they realized that they didn't even have to be home to access it? 

I bet they felt anxious.  Was this really happening?  How did they fit into these changes?  Did they accept them or reject them?

I think this is how we all feel now.  And how we'll feel for the rest of our lives.  But it's a rush.  Let's go towards it.

Wedding planning is coming into a new phase.  The first phase: location, date, caterer, florist, photographer, dj, and all that has been masterfully executed by Kellianne, and the second phase of finishing invitations, finding/making the right clothes, writing vows, and putting together a few special touches is now well under way.  I think phase two is where we really make sure the meaning of what we're doing is clear.  Pulling together traditions, families, friends, and lifestyles into a single event that has individual and powerful meaning is really important to us.  It's the whole point really.

And working on this now for several weeks (months to a lesser extent) is a really valuable meditation on love and the secret lives of relationships. 

I think this would be the great title of a book, "Why Things Don't Work."  And it would explain why advice, knowledge, wisdom, tricks, tips, and best intentions don't work.

To write it, first I would have to figure out why, exactly, things don't work.  It might have something to do with homeostasis, and the tendency for things to stay the same.  It might have something to do with entropy, and the tendency for things to fall apart.  It might have something to do with laziness, and the tendency to not have enough energy to do the thing that you want to do.  Because wanting doesn't really take as much energy as getting.  It might have something to do with ignorance, and not knowing how to make them work.

Who knows.  That's why there would be a book about it.  But who would read a book about something that seems so defeatist? 

We're trapped in our minds.  I researched the internet today for remedies for a bad mood.  I consolidated about 25 different lists of things, that all talked about how to get out of a bad mood.  The lists were highly redundant. 

Exercise, get enough sleep, talk to a loved one, read, listen to music, have sex, drink alcohol or caffeine, take a walk, eat a piece of chocolate (yes, this was on several lists), make something, wait for it to pass, take a shower, meditate, do yoga, make a list of things you're grateful for, play with pets and children, do someone a favor, clean, cry, take a day off or go on a vacation, avoid mood vampires, change your body posture, get off the internet.

Of course, there are key items missing.  The more self-indulgent ones, like:

Have sex, do drugs, drink alcohol, drink coffee, eat something filling, scream, quit your job, break up, get in an argument, move to a new city, shop, socialize with strangers, watch television, play video games, surf the internet, write in a journal, mope, complain, fidget, multitask, go skydiving, cut yourself, jump in a lake, blow something up.

There's more to say about this but I'm out of time for now...

There are a lot of moving parts in my life at the moment, I just need to get them down on paper so that I can make sure they're balanced.

Work at the Robot Co-op.  I've been there for about 4 years, we went from scrappy beginners to building a successful and profitable network of many social networking sites.  I work with friends.  We work 4 days a week, and work on a product about achieving your life goals.  It definitely makes achieving life goals easier when you are thinking about it every day.

Work at McLeod.  It's been around for a little longer than 1.5 years, and has continued to evolve during that entire time.  I'm still just as focused on making it a home for extraordinary living through art, technology, and collaboration as I was when it started. 

Becoming healthier.  Drinking less, doing slow weights once or twice a week, running with my Nike+ once a week, bike riding, and just thinking about health for the year of 2008 has gone a long way to living a healthier life. 

Getting married to the one I love.  Kellianne is the best teammate I could ever have hoped for.  She gets excited about the things that excite me, and I am excited about the things that excite her.  Together, we're stronger than when we're apart.  We're getting married on October 4th, and I think I just finished the wedding website but it won't really be launched for a couple more weeks.

Balancing friends and the social life.  I feel like I have great friends.  People who want the best for me, and people that I want the best for.  I made a book of friends to help remind me of the importance of long-term friendships, as well as new blossoming friendships. 

Continuing education.  In my continued self-education, I've been exploring a lot of self-helpy-like books over the last few years.  The recent focus has been on emotions.  In quick succession I've read Emotions Revealed, Mastery, and currently What Every Body Is Saying.  They are really exciting and I'm learning a lot about how emotions, body language, calmness, focus, habits, patience, and expression are all tied together.  I just bought Mastery for each of my groomsmen, as required reading material.  It's a great book.

In between the rest of life's events, I've been learning a lot about running a business, about managing personalities, about accepting people for who they are, about respecting people, about the law, about getting things done, about making it up and making it happen, about branding, about financial responsibility, about enjoyment, about the plateau and the dip, about rewards in themselves, about persistence, about self-medication, about sincerity and authenticity, about living a well-balanced life, and about finding work that one loves.

A lot happening in life this year, all moving ahead.  I am going towards it, and living it is the reward in itself.

I've been thinking about this sentence a lot the last couple weeks.  My father always told me to find work that I love, and my best friend's dad always told me to find work that pays well.  My best friend and I had a bit of a rivalry based on this dichotomy... love versus material success.  Both of our fathers were computer programmers, both successful in their fields, but with completely different reason philosophies.  In the end, I ended up wanting to be an artist and my friend ended up going to law school, so it plays itself out in a pretty cliched fashion.  Except then I joined the tech world when I realized I didn't like the self-promotional aspects of being a writer. 

Tangentially, another thing that my father used to always get on my case about was the difference between the meaning of "hard" versus "difficult".  "Surfaces are hard, work is difficult."  Haha.  So when I start thinking about hard work, I can't help but hear the nagging voice of "surfaces are hard" and feel pressure to call it difficult work instead.

The concept of difficult work has been on my mind because I've lately been feeling burned out on some difficult work in my life, and I'm trying to rally back to the point where difficult work invigorates rather than punishes.  Difficult work needs to be framed in enjoyment.  The work must be done out of love and enjoyment, rather than necessity or force.  It can be the same work in both cases, but done for different reasons. 

What is difficult work?

A) Work that hurts.
B) Work you don't want to do.
C) Work that you don't know how to do.

I just found this article ("Eureka! It really takes years of hard work") that mentions an acquaintence of mine, Scott Berkun, and his book that I interviewed a tiny bit for, "Myths of Innovation".  Debunking the idea that innovation comes in a brilliant moment of inspiration, thousands of get rich/thin/powerful/smart quick books quiver in their boots.  But, luckily for them, difficult work doesn't sell.

Difficult work means that a book isn't going to solve your problem, therefore why buy a book to try to learn this?  But I wonder if there are any good resources out there that generalize the anatomy of what good work is... a discovery process that leads to a learning process that leads to an action process that cycles back to more discovery, learning, and action processes.  In the meantime the ability to focus, notice distraction, and re-focus becomes essential.  Also, a reward and cost balance must be negotiated... you have to know why you're doing something, and know what it will cost to do it, and have resources to take on the unknown factors that will become apparent as the processes proceed.  Flow needs to be achieved.

The symptoms of true flow are outlined in the book, Flow, which is essential reading for pretty much everyone.  Here's the list, taken from the Flow wikipedia page.

1. Clear goals (expectations and rules are discernible and goals are attainable and align appropriately with one's skill set and abilities).
2. Concentrating and focusing, a high degree of concentration on a limited field of attention (a person engaged in the activity will have the opportunity to focus and to delve deeply into it).
3. A loss of the feeling of self-consciousness, the merging of action and awareness.
4. Distorted sense of time, one's subjective experience of time is altered.
5. Direct and immediate feedback (successes and failures in the course of the activity are apparent, so that behavior can be adjusted as needed).
6. Balance between ability level and challenge (the activity is neither too easy nor too difficult).
7. A sense of personal control over the situation or activity.
8. The activity is intrinsically rewarding, so there is an effortlessness of action.
9. People become absorbed in their activity, and focus of awareness is narrowed down to the activity itself, action awareness merging.

Not all of these symptoms are necessary for an experience to enter the flow state, but they're all present sometimes.

Another way of saying it might be to find work that requires you to pay a lot of attention to it.  And, that work, on some level, must be a reward in itself.  A learning experience, a growing experience, something that makes you feel like you belong in the universe.   An experience that becomes richer and richer as you dive into it.

Where to start?

A good place to start is at the discovery phase.  The task of finding difficult work that you enjoy is in itself a potential candidate for the difficult work.  Finding difficult work that you enjoy is in itself difficult.  So, the discovery process of understanding what you enjoy and why, what you love and why, could be the first piece of difficult work.

What is difficult in your life and do you enjoy it?  I know that we can't always admit publicly when there's work we don't enjoy, so you don't have to admit that stuff publicly.  But privately, admit what work you don't enjoy and set out on a task of finding out what you do enjoy.