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Video: On Gratitude and Hating Homework

It’s 7:30 a.m. I just woke up, and I’m wiped out. I had food poisoning yesterday. And it made me realize how grateful I am for how I normally feel. In the spirit of gratitude, I picked up this gratitude journal. It was a gift from my brother-in-law Devon, who’s a master of personal development and growth. Every day there are some questions you fill out.

Three in the morning:
1. I am grateful for…
2. What would make today great?
3. Daily affirmations

Two in the evening:
1. Three amazing things that happened today…
2. How could I make today even better?

There’s a bunch of information in the front of the book about how these questions are scientifically proven to help you live a better and happier life. And it’s making me wonder if these practices are something that I should be asking my coaching clients to take on. I notice that I really shy away from giving a lot of homework because I hate homework. I think that comes from a really self-limiting belief that I don’t do homework. In elementary school, I would be sent home with these little blue notes that I was supposed to give to my parents that said “ Guess whose goose is cooked?” And I would put them in my backpack, which was just a pile of disorganized paper, and eventually a stack of these blue notes would fall out and I’d give them to my parents. Luckily, my parents were pretty cool about that. I did well in school, but I wasn’t into homework.

This self-limiting belief is also rooted in scarcity. That there’s not enough time, that I don’t have enough time, that my clients don’t have enough time to do all of these things. And I don’t want to reinforce that in them. So I’m really going to pay attention now to how are my limiting beliefs about myself impacting the way I interact with clients, and am I challenging them enough? I think coaching is super powerful. I know that they see huge changes in their lives through the insights they get and the assignments I do give them. But in terms of habits and daily practices, I think I could really ramp that up. Because there’s so much evidence that these things really work: gratitude, meditation, exercise, getting enough sleep, drinking water first thing in the morning. It’s low hanging fruit. I’m inspired to make a menu of different habits I can offer my clients that they might volunteer to take on and check in with me about.

I’d love to hear if any of you have healthy habits or have worked with a coach or trainer or a program to develop them. There’s lot of tools and programs out there, and apps. I want to see what works for you. And I will check in and let you know what I’m doing.

Have a great Fourth of July!

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How to do lean startup: Sharing user feedback & release notes with your team

At Britely we aim to follow a lean startup approach of talking to users before, during, and after building every part of our product. A common challenge in startups though is that everybody is so busy building that very few people actually “get out of the building” and talk to users. So how can you get your team on the same page?

Continue reading “How to do lean startup: Sharing user feedback & release notes with your team”

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I want to share ideas more freely

…and so I am going to start writing MORE often LESS perfectly.  Not to imply in any way that I have ever achieved anything close to the P-word!  It’s an elusive self illusion maintained to protect the ego….   so I must let it go and practice what I preach and share my ideas before they’re “ready.”

I am going to start writing more PUBLICLY.  After half-reading The Artists Way by Julia Cameron, I always write my morning pages.  When I don’t write my three pages of drivel first thing in the morning,
I feel rushed and scattered, especially if my day is unstructured by meetings and teaching – and I’m sure it’s not just a scattered feeling but that it’s apparent in my behavior as well.  Because I have to manage my self, my projects, and my own time, I need to manage my mind.  So I write.

But because I’m kind of a scaredy-cat, I don’t share.  I keep wonderful private journals that nobody can read.

So now I’m going to start the habit of writing drivel that I share publicly in the hopes that what I learn and think day to day might somehow someday help someone someway.

I hope you enjoy and read and comment and share yourself.  Here goes.  Vanity, be gone.

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Open Notebook Science & Sharing the Messy Process of Creating

In searching for motivations / reasons / justifications for writing and sharing more freely, I’ve stumbled upon the idea of Open Notebook Science, a practice of the Open Research community and inspired by open-source programming and open innovation.  The Wikipedia entry explains,

The term Open Notebook Science was first used in a blog post by Jean-Claude Bradley, an Associate Professor of Chemistry at Drexel University. Bradley described Open Notebook Science as follows

… there is a URL to a laboratory notebook that is freely available and indexed on common search engines. It does not necessarily have to look like a paper notebook but it is essential that all of the information available to the researchers to make their conclusions is equally available to the rest of the world
—Jean-Claude Bradley

From a creativity standpoint, I like the idea that ideas get better by making the process transparent.  So many research projects and creative works don’t ever make it to print (or screen, or stage, or gallery…) but it’s ridiculous to think that nothing could be learned from seeing them. So why don’t we share all of our projects – done, undone, and wish I’d never done?

The problem is that the dirty laundry of one’s
failed or unfinished work is so much less fun to share than their neat and tidy Perfect Pieces.  More painful, more tedious, more revealing.

Good news is that we don’t know what projects are going to fail while we’re working on them.  They are still exciting and new – until they start going sour.  So to encourage the sharing of failures (important, because how can we learn if we don’t see failures?) we should encourage the sharing of PROGRESS and PROCESS.

The mess of the in-between is still beautifully optimistic and glittery with fresh enthusiasm.

To inspire you to share here are some photos of my messy work from before I really could call my dissertation a dissertation.

Open Research Notebook, 4 years apart (1)Open Research Notebook, 4 years apart (2)Open Research Notebook, 4 years apart (3)Open Research Notebook, 4 years apart (4)Open Research Notebook, 4 years apart (5)

The messy notebooks of artists, writers, and scientists have always been my favorite part of the world of academia.  It’s fair to say that I would never have joined the academic world if it weren’t such a perfect setting for scribbling quickly in my Moleskine(s).  (And it’s Awesome how when I trace back through old notebooks, I see that on those late and confused nights I was actually onto something that eventually became real.)