Author: Merrill III

Analyzing Blog For Direction

This blog post is like green tea: it’s good for me, yet to do it right, I’m not supposed to add sugar. So, behold… a treat that doesn’t go down the smoothest, although it is healthy. I mean, I could try to make this a fun read, but I won’t because… this doesn’t need it. This post represents the culminating bloggular goodness that I’ve thought about over two years ago.

I’m still analyzing what I’ve written via how I’ve tagged my posts, and today I cover the category of ‘direction’. Below are the summary points per post with this tag, which don’t include those that were also tagged ‘path series’, which I think I’ll cover another time.

  • Happiness: Become a heretic because initiative is happiness. Do something that excites me because excitement is happiness.
  • My Vision Sources: Study direction-related sources and derive a method for determining vision.
  • Create & Connect, Supply & Demand: Create something of value in which I am skilled, or is fully engaging, or elicits my passion, or is a combination of the three, then connect by sharing, teaching, or somehow helping others feel good.
  • Bow Ties & Shoelaces: Inner changes are reflected externally.
  • One Epic Thing Before You Die: Whatever this thing is for me, it’s the most cool/epic if it most aligns with my purpose / life path… now do it every day.
  • Don’t Label Me, Bro: Do more and more of fewer things, but more important things, and get better and better at each of them.
  • Style Over Fashion: I’m not looking for the fleeting & crowd-sourced, but the everlasting & self-sourced.
  • That First Tiny Step: What is that first tiny step towards my dream, something that takes almost no time and no effort that gets me that tiniest bit closer?
  • Soutata: Leverage my unique gifts and quit the rest.
  • First Do Cat Food: I have to get deck-clearing capability first before being able to think at the high level.
  • Always Be Outputting: Increase outputting by decreasing inputting.
  • Blogging Break: All advice about success are facets of the same gem.
  • Sum Of Your Parts: Grouping stories into releases per product (facets of me, each with a vision) leads to paths of punctuated evolution in each area of my life!
  • Life In Your Years: In the end, it’s not the years in my life that count. It’s the life in my years.
  • To Be A Better Person, Do Anything: I am defined by my ability to supply a demanded product or service, so do something, something impressive.
  • You’re Allowed: That awesome life I want starts with realizing… I’m allowed to live it.
  • Baconday: I’ve forgotten I enjoyed writing outlandish stories.
  • ScrumOfFun or Local Drummer Boy: I want to lower the barrier to entry for performing music.

Hmm… lots of good stuff. What happens if I try to mash most of ’em all together?

To be happy and improve my quality of life, leverage my unique gifts to do very well just a few purposeful things (everylasting, self-sourced), while quitting the rest (what I don’t do well and consuming in general), to take the initiative (aka being happy) every day and create something exciting (aka being happy), then connect with others.

I am actually allowed to be happy and live a big dream, so take a small step towards it, developing myself via one aspect of me at a time, doing low-level important things before high-level important things.

So what specifically brings me happiness? Writing outlandish stories. Lowering the barrier to entry for performing music.

Like I said. Culminating bloggular goodness. That last part is specific to me, but the rest respresents a study of how one can get some kind of life direction.

I’m sipping this slowly. It’s still hot.

Sleep Well

I recently talked with a guy who went through a break-up. He detailed how it was hard to adjust, but he didn’t lose any sleep over it – he truly feels the right decision was made.

This got me thinking: that’s what life’s about: go to bed each night and when you look back on the day, truly sleep well (let go, be at peace).

This got me thinking some more: that‘s similar to another way of thinking about what life’s… about: go to your death bed and when you look back on your life, truly die well (let go, be at peace). Time scales are different, and this has been explored almost two years ago.

Besides making this connection, I want to offer one more insight: add another time scale: the Sprintly time box. Thus, go to the Retrospective and when you look back on the Sprint, let go & be at peace.

Oh no… we can go one more round: one more time scale: now. Let go & be at peace at all ‘now’s. Maybe that‘s what life’s about.

I’ll sleep on it.

Analyzing Blog For Adaptations

Pokemon. I am a pokemon. A water-type, specifically. At least, that’s what I’ve been told by the 4th and 5th graders I used to tutor.

Now, I don’t know much about Pokemon, besides having to catch ’em all, but I assume that they’re thingies that evolve, much like real animals, like the jackalope. So in that sense, this ScrumOfOne-documenting blog has been tracking my evolution, specifically via posts that are tagged ‘adaptation‘.

Let’s see how I’ve evolved my very own ScrumOfOne. Below are the summary bullet points of each ‘adaptation’ post, linked and listed chronologically.

That last one is an idea I came up with for an Agile musical.

Annie is the ScrumMaster, but there’s now a new Product Owner in town for the team, and HER name is Annie. Their passionate personalities are pulling the town team apart. There’s a Jets vs. Sharks dance-off. Nobody’s doing any work ’cause everybody’s singing and dancing. In the rain. Watch as the daily stand-ups evolve into more animated states of disarray as the two Annies catalyze the letting lose of the team’s real selves. Listen as the demos and retrospectives reveal inter-personal conflicts in four-part harmony. Can everybody put aside their egos and celebrate their differences and save the town team in time for the big deadline? Can everybody really sing about software while dancing the fine line between comedy and tragedy? Is finding a working mode for developing code really a metaphor for personal growth? Does anybody truly become comfortable with the deeper Scrum principle of embracing change? Who cares! Find out, in “Annie Get Your Scrum”!

I crack me up.

Anyway, if we look over the adaptations for large themes, beyond how sleeping enough is good for me, we see variations of “do fewer things, and do more of those” (present tense) and “plan for fewer things, and do more in general” (future tense). Within those quantitative themes, there is a qualitative element where the things done are also more important, or otherwise of greater value.

These sound like balanced strategies for focus, while helping me truly become comfortable with the deeper Scrum principle of embracing change.

…

Speaking of ‘focus’, man, I’m having a hard time wrapping up this blog post… I finally have a vehicle for some lyrics I came up with a while back:

It’s a Scrum-but life, for us,
It’s a Scrum-but life, for us,
Our velocity’s not – so – sweet,
But our process can’t – be – beat,
It’s a Scrum-but life!

Maybe I’m in the wrong industry…

Analyzing Blog For Personal Favourites

I roll up to a seat at the counter of my favourite cafe/bookstore in Boston’s Back Bay, ordering a double cappuccino with a wink and a nod. I tear out a laptop from my purse gym bag. I open up that sucker, ready to bust out another blog post, and pause.

Aaaaand SCENE!

Now, imagine this happening over 100 times.

That’s a lot of double cappuccinos (usually followed by a beer and further followed by a large chocolate chip cookie). That’s a lot of sitting down in front of a glowing rectangle with the intent of not only creating some text associated with the exploration of applying Scrum principles to personal development, but sharing it with folks via Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. That’s a lot of pause.

The creative process for me, at least writing these posts, starts with bringing to the table (and propping up against the laptop) an external resource (a poem, a sermon, an inspiring quote, a passage from some book, et cetera), or a theme to explore (kaizen, retrospectives, product backlogs for ScrumOfOne, planning for less, and so on), or a story to tell (getting engaged, moving to a new apartment, lying about how I work for Taco Bell, yada yada yada). From here, it is never consistent.

Sometimes, I’m so excited to get into sharing this thing that I burst through the gates, typing at the speed of thought, usually running out of steam by the time some logical conclusion is supposed to present itself. Coincidentally, this is how I ran cross-country races in high school.

Sometimes, I’m torturously clawing through the empty virtual canvas, dragging myself away from the top of the page, weaving in the good bits of this thing I want to share until I can start getting into it properly. It is painful to watch myself do it… I’ll start way too many analogies that I don’t carry through the rest of the post… I’ll make you, dear reader, read through details that have little to do with the thesis or are entertaining in any way… I’ll spend way too much time on the introduction.

Aaaaand I’ve spent way too much time on the introduction.

Now, imagine that somehow Zeus smiles down on me from Mount Olympus and I finish a post where I deem it worthy of the ‘personal favourite’ tag. As part of learning and relearning from this blog, I’ve read over those posts with this tag, like the bear who went over the mountain.

Aaaaand I’ve started way too many analogies that I’m not carrying through the rest of the post.

If it is a personal favourite, it is because I am particularly proud of the post, and this evidently can be for a number of reasons.

So now that I have analyzed this WordPress category, what have I learned or relearned? I’m proud that I keep writing. I’m also proud that I keep exploring this niche intersection of software development philosophy and self-actualization. I’m also also proud that I am practicing what I preach, creating and sharing. I’m also also also proud that I can accept my own creative output, whether it’s a post where I smile, like this one, or a post where I cringe, like this one.

(And thus, I write about posts that are personal favourites via a post that is very much the antithesis of one. Ironically, this is the kind of self-referential self-amusement that would make this post a personal favourite. I think I’ve gone cross-eyed.)

Analyzing Blog For Tricia

This blog is all about me.

It always has been, and if you gleam something of value from it, then, you’re welcome: this experiment of applying Scrum principles to personal development is a fun and enlightening ride.

I’ve added metadata (which is nerd babble for ‘tags’, which geek babble for ‘adjectives’, which is dork babble for ‘words to describe things’, which is baby babble for ‘metadata’) to these blog posts to see what I can learn and relearn. Before I get to concrete Scrummy analysis, it’s interesting to note that…

This blog isn’t all about me.

Over the course of three years, I’ve inadvertently woven my private life into this public exploration, which we can now see since Tricia has her own WordPress category.

She is first alluded to in Short-Term Press Release, where I slip in that I’m a boyfriend. As a side note, this whole ‘husband’ thing is still kinda whacked – I’ve had way more practice as a ‘boyfriend’, but enough about metadata (which is nerd babble for ‘tags’, which is geek babble for ‘adje…).

She had indeed moved in by Good Enough, where we are “crafting this space”. This is also the first post tagged with ‘genesis story‘, where I talk about how and why this ScrumOfOne idea and blog began.

She added ‘fiance’ to her metadata (which is nerd babble for…) as per Engagement. The Boston Marathon bombings and the aftermath are also loosely documented here.

Together, we moved into a new place in Cambridge as per Hello Again, Genesis. Echoes of moving into the Boston pad as a single guy are heard.

She added ‘wife’ to her metadata (which is…) as per ScrumOfTwo, which expands on my Life Is Like A Burrito (.com!) bit.

Et voila! Thus, we find one sub-story based on perspective (right, sweetheart?), which is in itself based on, and just another word for, one more time, metadata (…).