Month: October 2012

That First Tiny Step

You have a dream. OK! Fine! You have a few dreams, but let’s pick just one. What’s it like? What are… the symptoms?

Hello, America. Do you suffer from something that is any or all of the following?

Well then, America, you have a dream!

Scrum is great for breaking down an epic-sized, daunting thing into a story-sized, conquerable thing, and then openly managing that. The ScrumMaster in me would sit you down, and after 5 seconds stand back up and walk with you to a whiteboard, since those are fun, then help you construct a Product Backlog based on your vision, prioritize that list, then draw a line in the sand on the whiteboard and bellow, “Behold, O America, for the next fortnight, sallyeth thee forth and kick ass,” while pointing to the stuff above that line.

Now, America, I do look forward to our date over Spanish lattes to bust through this in a fun-filled manner, sallyething thee forth ‘n’ all, but until then, ask yourself: What is that first tiny step towards my condition dream? What’ll get me that tiniest bit closer? What takes almost no time and no effort, yet dips my toe in the water?

This’ll of course depend on the disease dream. For me, that first tiny step was purchasing the following KORG Kaoss Pad 3.

Schuper Schweet, I know. How does this affect my dream?

  • It is still large – that’s how they tend to be.
  • It is not as far away, I just brought it closer.
  • It is clearer, since I have a tool with which to work.
  • It is still exciting – that’s how they tend to be.
  • It is less out of my league and more in my gym bag next to my desk in my apartment.
  • It is still possibly too awesome, and I’m getting a better handle of it, since this one piece fits in my hands.

Sallyeth thee forth and kick ass – take that first tiny step.

Style Over Fashion

As soon as I started pinning on Pinterest, I found myself browsing like a mother-trucker. Do you know how truckers of mothers browse? At first thoroughly. Antepenultimately rabidly. Penultimately unrelentingly. Ultimately embarrassingly: I browsed all of the Men’s Fashion section. It took a whole evening, but I powered through to its anti-climactic end, at which point I slumped back in my chair and contemplated the meaning of life.

Just kidding. I contemplated Fashion. And Style. And what it all means. And by ‘all’, I mean just those two things. I was struck down and dumb after the at times visually orgasmic click-fest because… because… wow, this is ultimately embarrassing… I felt like a fraud.

Why am I looking at Men’s Fashion? Seriously. Why the heck am I perusing all of it?

Check it out for yourself. You see guys in skinny jeans – not exactly flattering, in my opinion. You see guys in full-on mountain-man beards – something I can’t currently pull off. You see those shoes with the two buckles like you’re some modified Geppetto – I don’t make puppets. You see cardigans like you’re Mr. Rogers – I cried after he died, so no, they make me sad.

This is fashionable. It also makes me puke a little in my mouth. So unless I’m dressing up like a hipster for Halloween, it ain’t happenin’ – sorry ladies.

So if this stuff is fashionable, or so says Pinterest users, and it’s not clicking with me, then why do I continue to subject myself to shudder-inducing visuals?

I continue to veg out because I’m looking for what I like. So what do I like? (Do you even care?) You see Oxford wing-tip shoes with the thin laces. You see bow-ties. You see creative cuff links. You see other fun accessories.

So if this stuff is fashionable, too, and it doesn’t make me puke a little in my mouth, or anywhere else for that matter, and yet (stay with me, here) there is other stuff that does… it’s all fashion, yet it elicits two very different reactions. Why is this?

Enter the dragon the second word: style. I’m not looking for any ol’ style. I’m not looking for the currently popular style. And I’m definitely not looking for the slender part of a pistil – I’m not into plant porn. I’m looking for my style, the stuff that resonates with me, the stuff that feels like forms of me. I’m looking for… me. (Wow, that’s deep.) And I’m looking for me on Pinterest of all places.

Assumptions: I’m characterizing ‘fashion’ as ephemeral and ‘style’ as essential. Thus, I’m not looking for the fleeting & crowd-sourced, but the everlasting & self-sourced.

Are you looking for your style? Are you looking like a mother-trucker?

Visualizing Via Pinterest

Crap, I’m addicted. I mean, I was addicted, but only for the whole evening yesterday.

Pinterest is a site to post linked pictures, organized by ‘boards’. Simple. It’s popular enough that when you’re reading an article that features a picture, right next to those buttons where you can Tweet it or Facebook it (that’s a verb now?) or Google Plus it (Google add it?), you can now Pin it to a board of yours.

What’s so (P)interesting about this?

I now have suit coats because I wandered in Marshall’s and knew what to look for. I knew what to look for because between Sprints (during my Sprint Planning), I read over all of my Product Backlog. Sure, this takes a few minutes, but it’s worth it – it reminds me of the person I want to be via clear (and Independent and Negotiable and Valuable and ‘Estimatable’ and Small and Testable) stories to get there. One of those stories for an awesome me was amassing a collection of suit coats. This wish comes from what I think is a better version of “Dress for the job you want, not the one you have.”

Dress as the man that I want to be.

And how did this get onto my Product Backlog / master-list-of-what-makes-up-a-future-and-awesome-Merrill? I sat and thought, like Pooh Bear, and wrote it down. I visualized and wrote it down. What does Pinterest give me? A way to visualize (and find online or snap a pic of something) and pin it up. It’s a vision board. ‘The Secret’ by Rhonda Byrne covers this, where you work with The Law of Attraction to bring to you what you want, which only really works with some deliberate measure if you know what you want.

So, in the Scrum spirit of things, I’ll be transparent (shameless?) and share my Pinterest boards, so you can see how I use them as vision boards:

http://pinterest.com/mblamont3

Happy pinning!

Don’t Label Me, Bro

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages, and all the ships at sea, I present to you a classic. This quote is legen – wait for it –

We are what we frequently do. – Aristotle

DARY! How do you like them apples? This is a favorite of mine ’cause I come back to it when I find myself doing a lot of something I later somewhat regret (plowing through episodes of ‘How I Met Your Mother’), or when I find myself saying I’m something that I don’t think I am (as a Biomedical Engineer, I’m not researching commercially available tissue engineered skin equivalents, I’m testing medical devices), or when I find myself saying I’m something I later realize I actually am (I’m a blogger? I’m guess I’m right…).

It starts harmlessly. You meet a friend of a friend, or start chatting up your neighbor at the cafe counter. Eventually, “Hey man, so what do you do?” blurts out. You answer the question by sharing your day job (or lying) and possibly your hobbies or whatever you do in your down-time.

It ends harmfully. Stop right there. Take a step back. Listen to yourself answering that question. Those things you just said that you do? You are those things.

Picture it this way. Take those things, turn them into job-title-looking nouns, and then list them, comma-separated, below your name on your imaginary business card. You now have a few words associated with your name, letterally supporting your nominal identification. It’s one thing to think about the things you do each day and each week, but to take those same things and turn them into labels for yourself is like transforming the question, “What did you do Wednesday night?” into, “What kind of animal are you?”

After another look at those words below your name on your imaginary business card, how do they make you feel? Do you like them? Do you want them associated with your name? I mention labels, and I hear an instant backlash of, “You don’t KNOW me! I can’t be pigeon-holed into neat categories! I’m more complex than that! I’m more than that!” I’m sure you are. I’m sure you’re a great listener, a loyal friend, a fun-loving step-ish-mother to your fiance’s kid who you see every other weekend. But would you say you do those things with high frequency? Would you seriously say you are those things if you met somebody? Is that how you want to be remembered (besides smelling nice – it’s Vetiver by Givency)?

Those few words… if you don’t like any of ’em, what would you rather they be? Have an idea? I guess you better do that with some frequency. I’ll be honest, it’s harsher for me to read this than it is to write this. So now that I’ve found a life vector I’m happy with, I’ve refined my ‘product’ vision, written up ScrumOfOne stories that I’m getting done, and am focusing on the following platitude, which I’m taking on as more of a platypus an attitude:

Do more and more of fewer things, but more important things, and get better and better at each of them.

Those few words… how do you like yours?

How do you like them apples?

Supposing It Didn’t

I’m reading ‘The Te of Piglet’ by Benjamin Hoff, after thoroughly enjoying his ‘The Tao of Pooh’. Hoff is effectively teaching Taoism via Pooh and the gang, and though I found the first half of this book to be rather preachy, I’m getting to some really good stuff now. He starts his ‘The Upright Heart’ chapter with the following, taken from one of the Winnie the Pooh stories by A. A. Milne:

The wind was against them now, and Piglet’s ears streamed behind him like banners as he fought his way along, and it seemed hours before he got them into the shelter of the Hundred Acre Wood and they stood up straight again, to listen, a little nervously, to the roaring of the gale among the treetops.

“Supposing a tree fell down, Pooh, when we were underneath it?”

“Supposing it didn’t,” said Pooh after careful thought.

Piglet was comforted by this, and in a little while they were knocking and ringing very cheerfully at Owl’s door.

Piglet is a worrier extraordinaire. Sure, he is a Very Small Animal, and he seems to use this as a crutch, but I’m not going to address that. I read the emboldened (so yes, emphasis mine) exchange above and was blown away at the simplicity of Pooh’s response.

Yes, fear is wired deep in our brains, but as a species, we’re no longer under the threat of lions and tigers and bears (oh my). For the majority of us in the first world, we’re doing alright in the food-clothing-shelter department. If we follow Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, fear is now from other things… beyond physiological survival and security (job included) to social ideas like belonging. How social are these fears? Seth Godin in ‘Tribes’ argues that we are less afraid of actual failure than we are of consequent criticism! A stern talking to? This is hardly an imminent threat to the squishy ball of cells that is you.

Because the things we fear are in the future, we can choose to be afraid of them. Or not.

Supposing those mostly social fears weren’t to happen? How would you walk around then? What doors would you knock on?