Do external things distract you? Then make time for yourself to learn something worthwhile; stop letting yourself be pulled in all directions. But make sure you guard against the other kind of confusion. People who labor all their lives but have no purpose to direct every thought and impulse toward are wasting their time—even when hard at work.
~ Marcus Aurelius
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I maintained this illusion until, inspired by a stupidly expensive device that only does one thing, I taped my old phone to a bluetooth keyboard and began to write in offline mode. It was immediately a magical experience. It was so *quiet*. I could go on my porch and write and it was quiet. My thoughts got much larger because I wasn’t subconsciously afraid I’d interrupt them. I began to feel angry at my laptop. Why did it insist on hurting me so much? Why couldn’t it be pure like the offline phone/keyboard experience? Why couldn’t I just create things?
~ “Elizabeth” from, Turns Out Interruptions Are Bad, Who Knew? — LessWrong
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Don’t worry, I’m not getting on my soapbox about distraction and being used by your phone and the Internet and social networks. Nope, definitely not getting on my soapbox.
Today, I’ve gotten my ladder and I’m climbing on my roof to preach right over your head—you nice people in my front lawn, who are smart enough to be reading, reading stuff that has paragraphs, from a site on the open web, even if you only subscribe to the email because you haven’t mastered RSS—nope not preaching at you, dearest choir of mine, not today.
But you people in the back… Can you not see the Oxo® easy-grip handles that extendeth from thine brains?! Can you not see the unwashed masses of people who labor for Facelessco et al to write software that grabs you by those handles?
What say you? WHAT? …sorry you have to yell, I can’t hear you so well from up here on my roof… Oh, you cannot in fact see the handles? …well, have you tried looking in the mirror? …uh, hello?! Where are you going? Oh yes, definitely check that message, and scroll through Instagram and I’ll just wait here on my roof.
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On Castbox.fm — Cordelia Storm | Creating Community & Workability with Your Staff
How can leaders foster better communication and cultivate a healthy, effective team culture?
Effective leadership often starts with recognizing and challenging the automatic stories you tell yourself about others.
People’s concerns will tell you their commitments… People’s concerns are usually the pathway to understanding what they care deeply about.
~ Cordelia Storm (15:56)
The conversation explores the importance of reframing assumptions and biases that arise when working with teams or communities. One central theme is the way automatic labeling can create subtle divisions, which negatively impact collaboration. Addressing these issues through open communication and radical honesty can restore relationships and foster a healthier team dynamic.
A significant portion of the discussion focuses on creating a culture that encourages curiosity and trust. The conversation also touches on leadership development, using Parkour as an analogy for overcoming obstacles in communication and management. Additionally, there is a focus on larger cultural issues, such as using movement practices to address senior fall prevention.
Takeaways
Listening deeply — How reframing stories and assumptions about others can shape relationships and team dynamics.
Curiosity in relationships — Labeling people reduces curiosity and prevents deeper collaboration.
Commitments through concerns — People’s concerns often point to their deeper commitments and values.
Leadership development — Leadership programs can foster greater self-awareness and trust in teams.
Movement culture — Parkour principles can extend into everyday life, influencing communication and public health.
Resources
Cordelia Storm @coryjumps — Cordelia’s Instagram account.
Parkour Visions — A Parkour coaching organization where Cordelia Storm works as Program Director.
Art of Retreat — The Parkour leadership and education retreat where the conversation took place.
(Written with help from Chat-GPT.)
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It is fascinating that whenever two or more are responsible for something, usually nobody is.
~ David Allen from, Why things don’t get done
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The “doing” is always the easy part. How do you build an awesome wall? You place the first brick, then the next. Placing a brick is easy. The hard part is sitting down and imagining all the things that have to happen first—and realizing that the first step is to search online to find out where I can go look at bricks; Because I need to pick bricks first. I often get pushback when I ask people, “what’s the next action?” or “What’s the first step?” I get pushback because most people aren’t used to thinking about how to do things before they start. I mean really thinking about things, about what’s required to get things done, and what exactly does done look like?
We’ve been trained that if we’re the last one holding the hot potato, we get in trouble at the end. Once I create an environment where responsibility always comes with empowerment, resources, support, and, (if needed,) commiseration, then people can relax and think.
Also, put a date on that next action. No date? No commitment.
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Keeping track of project ideas, in my experience, is usually a waste of time. I used to fear that if I didn’t capture and review my sparks of brilliance I’d forget them and an opportunity for impact would be lost.
~ Cal Newport from, Deep Habits: Forget Your Project Ideas (Until You Can’t Forget Them) – Cal Newport
The reality, however, is that most people (myself included) have waymore ideas for things to work on than they have time to work. Forgetting ideas is not your problem. Having too many ideas competing for your attention to execute any one well is a more pressing concern.
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In the beginning I didn’t try to do anything with my ideas. Even though—my mom may disagree—I had mastered bathing and dressing, I was still under the false-impression that my mind was for holding ideas. It’s not good at that. Actually it’s terrible at that.
It took me a few decades to figure out— …honestly, I never did figure it out. Rather, I started reading a bunch of stuff about how to get my arse organized, and started to write things down. College helped. 43 Folders helped, a lot. Reading Getting Things Done made the final pieces click into place.
Whereupon I entered the Second Epoch of Craig. At this time I dutifully studied, and earned my title, Wizard of Process and Organization, with a specialization in Internet Dark Arts. Do not meddle in the ways of Process and Organization Wizards; we are quick to anger and you are tasty with ketchup. As you can tell, I completely lost my marbles in the process. Near the end of this Second Epoch I reach the epitome of my list-building, (and project management setups, and universe-domination plans.) I was completely drowning in over-planned, over-committed, over-stressed, over-organization.
Cue, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and the dawning of the Third Epoch of Craig. Wherein I straight-up deleted most of my lists of ideas and plans. The really important stuff continues to live in my level-37 wizard process-management systems. I know they’re working when I forget they’re working and yet things magically appear when I need them to.
Ideas are worthless. It’s execution, (plus luck, and timing,) that makes them valuable. I’ve a few ideas that I cannot get out of my head. Those are the ones I’m working on in an attempt to make them go away. But it’s a good day any time I can manage to just forget about some idea having blissfully done nothing with it.
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Sleep is primarily seen as a neurological phenomenon, and yet when deprived creatures die, they have a puzzlingly diverse set of failures in the body outside the nervous system. Insufficient sleep in humans and lab animals, if chronic, sets up health problems that surface over time, such as heart disease, high blood pressure, obesity and diabetes. But those conditions are not what slays creatures that are 100% sleep deprived within days or weeks.
~ Corey Brickley from, Why Sleep Deprivation Kills | Quanta Magazine
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I’ve said it many times here, and I will keep saying it: Sleep is the single most important thing. In your life. Literally. If you are not sleeping well, and long—like, 8 hours per night, long—you have a serious health issue; not sleeping well, and sufficiently is a serious health issue.
Listen to this podcast, Matthew Walker, Ph.D., on sleep – Part I of III: Dangers of poor sleep, Alzheimer’s risk, mental health, memory consolidation, and more.
Yes, insufficient sleep—not, “I don’t feel sleepy,” but not getting sufficient sleep—if you don’t feel sleepy… if you are not sleeping 8 hours… you have other problems which are affecting your sleep. Insufficient sleep has direct causal relation to Alzheimer’s. Scared enough to fix your sleep yet?
Listen to the podcast, then buy the book, Sleep Smarter. It’s an easy introduction to how to fix your sleep. Or, don’t sleep well, die sooner and get Alzheimer’s; it’s your choice.
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We are not privy to the stories behind people’s actions, so we should be patient with others and suspend judgement of them, recognizing the limits of our understanding.
~ Epictetus
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Today, two thoughts popped into my head in rapid suggestion: “Self-esteem box,” and “I’ve never pull-quoted Movers Mindset.”
Craig: So for me it’s I know if I go for a walk that’s almost, not always, almost always enough to make it so I can go back into the cave of ugliness and get back to work kind of thing. So what are some things that will help you turn that corner, brighten you up or energize you?
~ Brandee Laird from 46’30”, https://moversmindset.com/72
Brandee: Yeah, that’s a great question, because I do get very dark moods pretty often actually, because with compassion comes the pain of caring so much about all these people and all this situation, it feels very futile a lot of times, like what can I do to change this. Yeah, I get there and I have a few tactics, I basically build protocols for myself for when I get in those moods. So one of the first things I go to is my self-esteem box.
Craig: This sounds like a good idea.
Brandee: And my self-esteem box is digital, it’s a digital self-esteem box and what I have done, is I have taken screenshots and copy/pasted and just dumped in all kinds of nice things that people have said, either to me or about me over the years.
So I have this file that is just full of gratitude and compliments and just stuff that I have had to read over and over and over in order to actually believe it. So that’s actually more like last resort is the self-esteem box. If nothing else works, open the self-esteem box, look through here.
Craig: In case of emergency, break glass, right?
Brandee: Totally. Totally. So that’s something I think everyone could and should do that. I guess I’ve never really told anyone about that. But it’s a nice thing.
Craig: I think that’s a really good tactic. People talk about doing gratitude journaling, but the gratitude journaling. I mean, I know that you know what it is, but gratitude journaling is a process which you have to execute on the spot when you feel like you’re having a bad mood. But the idea of having a self-esteem box is a clever one.
Brandee: Why, thank you.
I think these two thoughts popped into my head as the photo-frame on my wall changed. One of the smartest things I’ve ever done is set up a digital photo-frame. I email it photos of things—you know, all those digital photos you never do anything with. :)
Anyway. I love love LOVE my photo-frame. It’s chock full of hundreds of great photos. It’s not quite a self-esteem box. But it generally has the same effect. Every single time I glance at it it makes me smile.
Meanwhile, ever since I had that conversation with Brandee, (in September 2019,) I’ve been toying with the idea of creating a self-esteem box. I’m not quite sure where to put it [digitally] though; Also, I really do not need to make up yet another system for myself for organizing and storing things.
But the idea keeps calling to me.
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It seems almost paranormal, but I think it’s just more of nature’s evolutionary fine-tuning. Being such social mammals, it would make sense for us to have an uncanny sensitivity for detecting, another person’s sentiments toward us, even when they’re not advertising them.
~ David Cain from, How to Get Rich in the Kindness Economy
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In recent years I’ve elevated my perception of the subtleties of interpersonal communication—everything beyond the spoken word—from one of those, “I don’t know how I do that,” skills to be something I explicitly practice and notice in others. This is one of the things which makes great actors and actresses: Their ability to produce all the subtleties makes them feel very real to the majority of people who do not detect subtleties consciously. (They of course feel very real to me too. I’m saying I now better understand why and what cues are causing me to feel that way.) This is a super-power. Once you are reasonably competent at detecting what is affecting you, you can then use that information intentionally.
There’s been an enormous amount of discussion recently about facial expression, masks, posture, and intention. In effect, a huge number of people are getting a crash master-course in using and detecting all this subtlety.
I think that bodes well for all of us.
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