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What I learned last week

What I learned last week (#100)

Quote I was thinking about:

The patterns of our lives reveal us. Our habits measure us.

Mary Oliver

Book excerpt that I enjoyed:

“Sometimes I think I became a better teacher and critic because I had to be detailed and systematic in my own learning. Someone once pointed out to me that the best NBA coaches—people such as Phil Jackson, Pat Riley, Gregg Popovich—weren’t the most gifted players. When I was a youngster, I saw both Riley and Jackson play, and I can attest that they spent most of the game on the bench. But the very fact that they had to fight for playing time, and work more tenaciously than their colleagues, gave them hard-earned insights that the natural-born geniuses never have to worry about. I feel the same about my own development as a musician. I learned slowly and carefully, and when (as I will often do in this book) I call attention to the ways an amateurish musician falls short, rest assured that I make this comparison with sympathy and a dose of self-recognition.” (Ted Gioia, How to Listen to Jazz)

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Art Misc Parenting Work

Big rocks first

I’m not sure how this became a longer thing than it is. Maybe that’s because prioritization, the subject of this piece, is a longer, harder thing to do than it seems at a distance. Anyway, this illustration started as a little morning drawing of an idea that I revisited from a book excerpt and grew into the series of illustrations below. It’s been a fun exercise in playing with a brush pen, seeing how I could talk about an idea thorough pictures, and put together disparate pieces of each into some sort of whole (using GIMP for image editing). Here are the different illustration “parts” explained with the compined composite I created at the end.

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What I learned last week

What I learned last week (#46)

Being a solo Dad was pretty great: But there is nothing like Mom getting home! While Kav was traveling last week I had a few things planned to keep the kids occupied, but Sam’s cold-from-hell ruined a lot of that. Fortunately it all worked out and there were plenty of toys, games, movies and crafts to keep us going, although Vivi did say she got “over Daddy’d” by the end of the week. 😂

My favorite book excerpt from the week:

Our first reaction to most of the statements (which we hear from other people) is an evaluation or judgment, rather than an understanding of it. When someone expresses some feeling, attitude or belief, our tendency is almost immediately to feel “that’s right,” or “that’s stupid,” “that’s abnormal,” “that’s unreasonable,” “that’s incorrect,” “that’s not nice.” Very rarely do we permit ourselves to understand precisely what the meaning of the statement is to the other person.

Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People

More thoughts on work life balance:

Buy this car to go to work, go to work to pay for this car

Metric

Working to live often means giving up your life.

I know this dates me, but I’m nostalgic for that atmosphere of repose—the extended family dinners, the spontaneous outings, the neighborly visits. We haven’t completely lost these shared hours, of course. Time-use studies show that weekends continue to allow more socializing, civic activity, and religious worship than weekdays do. But Sundays are no longer a day of forced noncommerce—everything’s open—or nonproductivity. Even if you aren’t asked to pull a weekend shift, work intrudes upon those once-sacred hours. The previous week’s unfinished business beckons when you open your laptop; urgent emails from a colleague await you in your inbox. A low-level sense of guilt attaches to those stretches of time not spent working.

I couldn’t agree more.

New productivity strategies: I’m enjoying (and trying the methods within) the often mentioned Getting Things Done by Steven Allen. Although it’s advocating for what some might at first glance seem to be a rigid way of operating, I am finding it more loose and freeing than I imagined. Why do we feel so good right before vacation: because we’re cleaning up and keeping things current. We’re closing down all our open loops, getting right with our commitments. Wouldn’t it be good to feel that way on a (somewhat) regular basis? I’ll try that kool aid.

Being organized means simply that where something is matches what it means to you.

The allure of country music: Maybe it’s due to living on a farm, but I’ve been dipping more into country music as of late. This was separate from learning about Ken Burn’s recent Country Music documentary. Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash and Hank Williams are regularly getting played in the office. Especially The Essential Merle Haggard: The Epic Years.

The power of the project table: I set this up last week and left it going all week so the kids and I could do some art any time we felt like it. It was magic. We made all sorts of random stuff, and a special creation being a set of signs for the home office.

Something awesome: Snoop has a full-time blunt roller on staff

Snoop said the full-time position pays “$40 to $50,000 a year,” which means it’s actually a real job, and my high school guidance counselor lied to me.

I was probably qualified for this job a long time ago, but I’ve sadly let my skills atrophy.