Month: December 2012

Change Your Whole Life At Twice

You might get to a point where you ask yourself,

Where do I begin?

You’ve got all these things you want to do, all these things you want to improve, all these things you want to change, all these… things. So you take all these things, list them, prioritize them, stuff I’ve been blogging about (see here for more).

Somewhere in the middle of all that, and closer to the beginning of this process, you think about your life. You think about how to think about your life… and then get to a point where you ask yourself,

Where do I begin?

If you read Steve Pavlina, specifically his series on The Meaning Of Life, you get to a section called Transitioning. This is for when you have your direction determined and are then acting on plans and projects to ‘get there’. The stuff in that post is also great for when you might not be as uber-organized or crystal clear as you go down your life path (like me! like most of us! HIGH FIVE!):

Don’t change each area of your life in a month. Change some and keep others stable.

Sounds simple, right? Don’t change your whole life at once, or even at twice, but in stages. Sounds like a no-brainer, so where is the insight? Once you reasonably partition out areas of your life, make a concerted effort to ignore all except one or two of your life segments.

Doesn’t that feel better? It’s another flavor of the message of focus (the Product Owner’s job in the land of Scrum), this time applied to life improvements at a macro level. For me, this means that I will start this year focusing on implementing habits and practices related to two areas of my life: my body and my finances.

Aaaaand this feels odd. This feels odd because it ignores my love of making music, which I’ve realized is the thing that makes my heart sing, pun intended. This feeling odd might be a sign that my focus is wrong, and you right there, sitting wherever you’re sitting, are witnessing a mistake in the making.

Aaaaand this is OK. In a couple of weeks, the length of my Sprint, I’ll have an opportunity to change direction after giving this a shot. This is a beauty of Scrum.

Happy New Year.

(Oh, and don’t make any New Year’s Resolutions!)

Blogging Break

Hello, Internet. Are you celebrating the Extended Winter Solstice season? You bet your sweet tushie I am, too. So are the Mayans. So are the zombies. So are any number of over-sized monstrosities waiting to wreak havoc on your favorite over-sized metropolis. Enjoy the show. It’s a celebration. (And if you’re waiting for Jesus, don’t hold your breath – that’s happening in 2443, as per Futurama.)

I’m going on a sprint-long (or so) hiatus to finish up deciding on Christmas presents, purchase Christmas presents, wrap Christmas presents, give Christmas presents, receive Christmas presents, unwrap Christmas presents, whinny like a pretty pony with glee grunt like a caveman with cool indifference. This will take a little over a fortnight (or so).

As I look back on this sweet ScrumOfOne blog o’ mine, I grunt with glee (like a cavepony?) at how this writing endeavour has fulfilled one of its requirements, which was to document the evolution of my approach to and focus of ScrumOfOne. Starting over half a year ago, I pushed to publish a post twice a week (or so), where I over time shifted away from the ScrumMaster side of software personal development, to spending time talking about what is the Product Owner arena: setting the vision, prioritizing stories, and balancing a ‘forward’ motion with the flow of life, taking on more Taoist concepts as of late, and most recently reflecting on lectures by life coach Martha Beck.

From here, I have a couple of concepts I can’t quite comfortably reconcile, although MB’s work seems to have given me… an answer? The two thoughts:

  • There is an approach that feels very Western. Scrum talks about taking a vision for your product, or in my spin, your self, and implementing pieces of ‘potentially shipable’ functionality (new things that you are / have / can do) in a prioritized fashion. All this while embracing change (you don’t exist in a vacuum, life happens around you can’t help but interact with it) as well as practices that promote transparency, inspection, and adaptation. I am a Certified ScrumMaster and thus have a decent understanding of this philosophy.
  • There is an approach that feels very Eastern. Taoism talks about the essence of things, how we’re all one, and a bunch of concepts that sound quite deep. Applying some of these to personal development translate to getting out of your own way to discover your essence, and then do that, which will end up being without effort. This is doing without doing, action without action, or wei wu wei.

I am convinced that all the advice we hear about how to live a better, more fulfilling, more ‘successful’, higher functioning life are all facets of the same gem. This is what I’m trying to understand. And then apply. And then share.

I want to live it, to then give it.

There are 20 draft blog posts waiting to be fleshed out, and I can’t wait to dive in. After, of course, a break that will surely be relaxing (or so).

Day In Your Ideal Life

Ah, your ideal life. I hear this and what comes to mind is being white in suburbia in the 1950’s. Skinny black tie and possibly a pocket protector. Everybody is blond and blue-eyed, part of a four-person nuclear family with a dog, has barbecues with the neighbours, waves to the paperboy, and lives in a grainy black and white world. There’s a little Timmy thrown in there somewhere, too.

Ah, your ideal life. Your ideal life. The above was when things were run by rodents, and if that IS your ideal life then… mazel tov. Go get ’em, chinchilla tiger. Since it most likely isn’t, then I’d like to ask you to think about this concept. I’d like to ask you, but I won’t.

Now I will.

Think about your ideal life. From the time you wake up (what do you hear? who is next to you? what do you smell? what is outside your window? how large is the jail cell?), to the time you go to bed, step yourself through an ideal day. What are you wearing? What are you NOT wearing? What animals do you talk to? What people do you pet? Which cut of rare meat do you shove down your pie hole? How early in the morning do you get drunk? How many Twilight fan fiction stories are you co-authoring.

What are we after? Details! (When do we want them? Now!) If there is an event or period of day that you can identify in this day in your ideal life, describe every sense – you’ll be surprised what you can perceive; when I played chess as a youth, there was always this distinct smell.

From here, well, now you have a vision of yourself. Not just a painted picture you can frame, but an awesome and exciting virtual reality of your own creation. And now, well, go get ’em, gopher tiger. Sounds easy, yes no?

I’m getting this from watching more material by life coach Martha Beck. I’ve noticed she likes scarves and marmosets. More interestingly, I’ve noticed how well her models and specific actions for taking someone from good to great (this is the job of a life coach, versus the job of a therapist, who takes someone from broken to good) addresses well-researched western and eastern philosophies, including newer-fangled things like ‘The Secret‘ with a proviso. She is refreshing to watch, partially because she doesn’t take herself too seriously.

Where it takes me is to reassuring myself in the direction I’ve taken ScrumOfOne, at least for myself, where the focus is on determining the WHAT, the Product Owner stuff, before working on the HOW, the ScrumMaster stuff. This echoes how Scrum is done (by Sprint 1, anyhow). More on this shift in focus in a later post.

Bag It, Barter It, Better It

The blog title brought a strange sense of levity to me, like a cool, lavender breeze combing away how some things on my to-do list are such a freakin’ drag – ugghghhgghgh! (Yes, that spelling is accurate.)

I got this from life coach Martha Beck (she is damn fun to watch, FYI), and Oprah.com‘s covered it, so that right there is validation for this being a pill of goodness for your wretched little wonderfully fulfilling life.

What you do is take a thing on your to-do list, something you don’t like all too much, preferably something that, when you look at it, makes you sneer with the disgust that matches the subsequent churning in the gut of your gut, producing a little cloud of taupe emotions. You get the picture.

Look this item on your to-do list dead in the eyes. Then tell yourself:

I don’t have to do this. I choose to do this.

Whoa! What’s that? Choice? Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus choice. Unless, of course, that item on your to-do list is something like “remove the plastic bag wrapped around my head”, at which point you have larger issues, and, yes, you have to do this, for your physiological survival to get more things done from your to-do list. From here, decide to bag it, barter it, or better it.

Bagging it means totally scrapping it. To heck with it. Proclaim it unnecessary and heave a sigh of relief as you cross it off that list (some of us get a huge kick out of that simple act of crossing stuff out). This might not always be the best option, but isn’t it nice to contemplate it? What would happen if you don’t do this thing, realistically? Can you handle this? I bet you can. If you can’t, then there’s always…

Bartering it means, well, trading in some way. Can you pay somebody else to do it? Can you get somebody else to do it, and in exchange, you’ll make them an ice cream sundae? With sprinkles and everything? This is an option – you don’t have to do it yourself. Of course, maybe you do, in which case…

Bettering it means – ok, all these words are pretty self-extra-planetaryexplanatory. What can you do beforehand, afterwards, and/or during the completion of the to-do item that’ll just make the whole experience more palatable? Can you eat an ice cream sundae beforehand, snack on Long Island Iced Tea during, then do a victory lap with root beer floats?

You have things on that to-do list. How you do them is up to you. Remember, Virginia, you have choices.

Let’s Discuss Your Tombstone

Don’t think of it as morbid, but rather, an opportunity for everlasting graffiti! If you don’t want a tombstone, then for purgatory’s sake, please just play along.

In this scenario, we have words, literally etched in stone, associated with the remains of your body. Hence, much like pondering your legacy, let’s consider the few words associated with you. For a while, I wanted:

What does not kill you,
Only makes you stronger,
But what does kill you,
Only makes you dead.

The range of reactions to this spans from laughter to corn fusion confusion to head-tilted grimaces of condescension from an over-exerted yet lame attempt at wit. That last reaction is complex, but I pick up on all of it.

Lately, I’ve liked the following, from ‘Express Yourself‘ by Charles Wright and The Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band:

It’s not what you look like,
When you’re doin’ what you’re doin’,
It’s what you’re doin’, when you’re doin’,
What you look like you’re doin’.
Express yourself.

Funky, right? Just like the song. It was the first tune I starred when I started Spotify. I happen to really like this message; I feel power in it.

So, what are you doin’? And would you want it on your tombstone?