Month: January 2013

Keep Showing Up

Some of us have a little voice. (Hi.) You know that voice. (Hi, again.) That little voice will show up at the most inopportune of times. (You’re welcome.) You start a creative endeavour, be it cooking, drawing, writing, dancing, coding, planning, researching, wood carving, and then you hear this little voice gently nudging you regarding how your time might be better spent on other activities. (Face it. You suck.)

An alternative, but equally effective route, does not involve this little voice. (…Fine.) You get down to start whatever it is you are trying to do, and you run into a creative wall, your equivalent of writer’s block. (Wood carver’s block?)

Either way, you’re not progressing fast enough and/or happily enough. This is usually a bummer because we walk into these endeavours thinking that all the creativity lives within us, and we’re just not good enough to let it out.

That’s one way to approach it.

Another way is to think about the creative process not as something that is in us like a personal characteristic, but rather something that visits us, a muse, or the original definition of a genius, which is a spirit; a person is thus not a genius, but rather, a person can have a genius. This means the creative process becomes a co-creative process, where you’d share the successes and failures of your outputs.

Elizabeth Gilbert, author of ‘Eat, Pray, Love’, talks about how the creative process is not rational in her TED Talk ‘Your elusive creative genius‘, such that we might as well think about it this way. We did, once upon a time.

So if the creative process is a two-part system, this means both you and the genius are invited to the party. If the genius is flaky, that’s not your problem. Your job is to show up to the party and create like it’s 1999. It’s kinda like that golfer aphorism, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” I like what Ms. Gilbert said:

‘Ole!’ to you, just for having the sheer human love and stubbornness to keep showing up.

Life In Your Years

Until I typed out my Blogging Break post, I didn’t really realize what this blog was about. It hasn’t been about applying Scrum principles to personal development, and then documenting my journey living this philosophy. Although that is how this started, it has moved into publicly scratching an itch.

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.

So every time a sparkle of this gem catches my eye, I can’t help but share. This past Sunday’s New York Times business section, in the Corner Office column by Adam Bryant, he interviewed Kon Leong, head of ZL Technologies, which archives emails and files. Leong gives advice to those graduating college.

If you experiment in different jobs and functions in those two or three years out of school, you will have a much better shot at finding your sweet spot. And the sweet spot is the intersection between what you’re really good at and what you love to do. If you can find that intersection, you are set. A lot of people would kill for that because, at 65, they’re retiring and never found it.

So don’t put so much emphasis on initial compensation. Don’t listen to all the harping from the family. Try to find your sweet spot and, once you find it, invest in that. You don’t want to get degrees just to do work you don’t really like. If you’re miserable, even if you make a lot of money, that’s still 40 years of your life.

Booyah! That’s powerful stuff, and I don’t think I’ve heard it phrased like that: you can’t get back that time. I like how Abraham Lincoln said it.

In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Life Is A Game Of Economics

A couple of days ago, over Spanish lattes, I waxed philosophical with a close friend. Both of us are Biomedical Engineers, and the only reason we became friends is because we arrived early to class one day, realized we never really… talked to each other, and then when it came up how we were both Business Administration minors, we figured, yeah, we should be friends.

The start sounds pretty superficial, yet our current conversations are anything but. A recurring theme from these caffeinated chats is how life is a game of economics. Let me repeat that. In bold.

Life is a game of economics.

Out there is a definition: Economics is the study of scarcity and choice.

Out there is a TED Talk: Bjorn Lomborg: Global priorities bigger than climate change – go watch it. This is one of my favorite TED Talks, shifting the discussion from global problems to global solutions, and then discussing how to use a limited resource, money (scarcity), to fully implement specific global solutions (choice). Here’s a hint for the rest of this post: take a shot every time he mentions prioritization.

Let’s think about scarcity as applied to what you put into life, and what you get out of it. ‘Scarcity Thinking’ assumes there is not enough in the world for everybody; it is fear-based.

Look at that guy over there. He’s so rich and cool and happy. He has it all. Why can’t I have it all? He sucks.

Scarcity Thinking is oh so negative, and is the opposite of what is espoused in ‘The Secret’ by Rhonda Byrne, which is ‘Abundance Thinking’. This reframes how we give value to reality via a mindset where there is enough in the world for everybody, including you; it is love-based.

Look at that guy over there. He’s so rich and cool and happy. He has it all. I might not think I have it all right now, but I will. He’s alright. (And so am I.)

These are two ways to think about what you get out of life, where the idea of there not being enough is a depressing thing. When applied to what you put into life, ScrumOfOne contends that indeed there is not enough, where this is both a realistic and empowering outlook. (Empowering? Yes. Stay with me.)

One more opposing juxtaposition: Scarcity Thinking for consequences of your life actions is fraught with limiting beliefs (heck, by definition). Yet when applied to the life actions themselves, it’s these same limiting beliefs that reflect the reality of what you can give at any one time; you only have so much time / focus / attention / energy / chi / cash / other resources.

Let’s put it all together. When thinking about your future (life outputs), think big: Abundance Thinking. When thinking about now and what’s next (life inputs), think small: Scarcity Thinking.

Let’s now think about choice regarding how to use the above list of what you have, which we’ll call funds: using the fund of cash, using the fund of focus, etc. (I’m phrasing this in an abstract manner to show they can all be thought of and treated the same way.) When you choose to use the money fund for a pair of shoes, you are also choosing to not use this same money fund for a fedora. When you choose to use the time fund for a few episodes of your favorite show on Netflix, you are also choosing to not use this same time fund for the latest movie in the theaters. Thus, the allotment of any of these elemental funds comes at a cost, which economists call an opportunity cost.

Every damn decision, every damn day, has a damn opportunity cost.

Let’s rephrase. Life is the result of not just what you choose to do, but what you chose to do in the context of what you chose not to do.

If you had an unlimited supply of time and money right now, an abundance of each elemental fund right now, you could end up doing all things. I’m not talking about how much of these elemental funds you could have in the future (nudge nudge, we’re practicing Abundance Thinking for that, remember?). I’m talking about right now. If you choose to buy a pair of shoes instead of a fedora, you are choosing a pair of shoes over a fedora. You might want to get both some day, but right now, you are choosing one first, over the other. Acting on your preference is acting out your prioritization.

That, ladies and gentlemen (girls and boys, children of all ages, and all the ships at sea), is the point of this post:

Life is a game of economics, a game of being comfortable with scarcity to make choices via prioritization.

How is this empowering? (Thank you for staying with me.) Once you realize you can’t do everything right now, this takes the pressure off; you can only ever do the next thing. That is what is under your full control: the now. Yes, complete small steps with the purpose of completing a larger step, enjoying the smaller completed accomplishments along the way, but realize the focus is on now and next. Embrace the scarcity of your funds right now, and make choices for now and next, using prioritization.

This makes me giddy because this life-level prioritization is a key component of ScrumOfOne, and it’s really been empowering me to find all this fun in the game of economics life.

Especially over Spanish lattes.

Sum Of Your Parts

You’ve heard how something is more than the sum of its parts? Well, so are you; however, it helps to think about you in parts. So let’s think about your parts.

No! Not like that!

Last week (I’m shifting to blogging just once a week for hopefully more quality per post), I mentioned the idea of partitioning out areas of your life, and then changing these one or two at a time. These are the ‘parts’ of your life. All the things (ah, those abstract things) you want to do in life will most likely be associated with one of these life areas.

Using Scrum terminology, and some fancy footwork, replace ‘things’ with ‘Backlog Items’ and ‘life areas’ with ‘Products’. Poof. Magic. Tell him what he’s won, Johnny!

You can now be thought of as a package of products, each with its own backlog.

Or not. You can think of yourself however you freakin’ want. I recommend you try it, though. There are awesome payoffs, especially if you’re curious about the Scrum way of thinking of things. Let’s use an example. Take a guy. Random guy. Let’s call him… Merrill. He’s quite a number of wonderful things:

  • Merrill, the physical homo sapiens.
  • Merrill, the financially responsible.
  • Merrill, the musician.
  • Merrill, the ScrumOfOne thought leader. (Whoa! Were those angels singing…?)
  • Merrill, the home dweller.
  • Merrill, the guy who gets paid to break expensive things at work.

He’s oh so much more than the above, of course, but let’s treat each of these ‘life areas’ as a product. Thus, there is a Product Owner for each product, prioritizing stories based on a vision. Sure, Merrill could set a vision for himself as a whole person, but just as you might do that for yourself, I’ll bet this vision would end up being phrased in terms of some area(s) of your life. Thus,

Awesome Payoff #1: One awesome vision per product… many products per you… many ways you can be awesome!

Does this connote a lack of direction and focus? Nay, fair citizen. Dreaming out a better you is now not just dreaming big, but dreaming multiple dreams, and only the dreams you care about. Merrill, the watch-maker, isn’t exactly a Merrill that Merrill particularly cares about, especially not relative to the other Merrills listed above, so the direction is now better defined. We can now better address each life area, I mean, product, via some familiar Scrum-a-licious ideas.

Awesome Payoff #2: Grouping stories into releases per product leads to paths of punctuated evolution in each area of your life!

In evolutionary biology, as most memorable childhood stories begin, this is the idea that covers how phenotypic changes might be observed with relatively low frequency, even though genotypic changes are constantly occurring. In words a little less Grimm, you can continue putting in work, under the hood, although you won’t really see results until enough of these new pieces come together to ‘release’ a new piece of functionality. You keep evolving, with something novel punctuating the journey every once in a while: punctuated evolution.

Back to the example of the purely hypothetical Merrill, in this case, the martial artist, a release might be to achieve a yellow belt in the martial art of karate. This involves a number of steps (find a dojo, set aside funds and time, enroll, stretch regularly, practise that first kata without stopping, then with good form) that eventually, once all these stories are complete, unlock an achievement. Each ‘release’ for this product represents a punctuation in the evolution to becoming a fifth-degree-black-belt-super-dude, in line with the vision of being able to fend off enemies from attacking my Merrill’s village using a fifth-degree-super-stare. Now to find matching shoes…

I, I mean, Merrill can work on this while working on another product, say, Merrill, the home dweller. If that vision includes waking up to a cove in Maine, perusing Craig’s List’s Down East section may be a story. See how this works? All the things you want to do in life turn into stories onto backlogs of your ‘productized’ life areas. Have one area in life you feel needs some work more than others? You can manage this in the context of seeing the opportunity costs in front of you: the other stories in the other backlogs.

Awesome Payoff #3: Reduced overwhelm!

Or not. Maybe seeing all the things you want to do in life freaks you out, or as you’re working living through sprints, you feel you’re not moving fast enough. Well, you can only move as fast as you can (Merrill’s not cutting any corners by buying a yellow belt, especially without matching shoes…), plus, you’re the ScrumMaster role, too, in this ScrumOfOne model of personal development, so you can work on being more efficient (mastering the ‘how’) now that you’re more effective (mastering the ‘what’).

This is why I say there will be fewer feelings of being overwhelmed: your backlogs are prioritized so you know you’re working on the most important thing now or next, and that’s the best any one of us can do: knowing that all parts of you are taking up space on this floating blue marble in a way that is most aligned with how you want to deep inside.

Awesome Payoff #4: A more wholly enjoyable now!

Admittedly gratifying payoff: This post closes a loop opened about five months ago.