Merrill III – Page 20

Play The Ball Where The Monkey Drops It

I’m reblogging a sermon… not because I joined a church this past Sunday and paid extra special attention… not because the title is so damn intriguing… but because the reverend was able to whip up a Forrest Gump-ism from a dare.

As an exercise to ministers-in-training, our reverend challenged her class to come up with a sermon out of a random word. To prove it could be done, she partook, and had ‘golf’ as her word. After googling ‘golf’ for some material, she proceded to share one of the best sermons ever, to which I won’t come close to giving justice.

Once upon a time, the English Empire annexed India. Not one to arrive at a colonialization party empty-handed, the English brought golf. The Indians brought lush jungle. Lush Indian jungles brought monkeys. Lush Indian jungle monkeys brought a curiosity for round white objects that flew through the dense jungle air. Lush Indian jungle monkey curiosity brought frequent relocations to freshly fired golf shots. Sometimes the ball would land in the rough, and the monkeys would pick it up and drop it on the green. Sometimes it would land on the green, and the monkeys would pick it up and drop it in the rough. They tried to control the monkeys, but to no avail, so the English & Indians wrote them monkeys and their monkey-ball behaviour into the Book Of ~~Life~~ Golf: Play the ball where the monkey drops it.

I couldn’t make this up.

I mean, I COULD… but my flavour would fold in a vast right-swing conspiracy and a tasteless bastardization of a Gandhi quote, which would go:

First, you they are annoyed by how you bugger up their sporting events. Then, they ignore you. Then, they laugh at you. Then, they fight you. Then, you win.

And isn’t this life? Sometimes, you do all the right things (great shot!), and walk away with nothing to show for it (damn monkey!). Sometimes, you make a right mess of it (hooked it!), and somehow it turns out better than expected (good monkey!). Reality becomes the resultant vector of both what you can and can’t control, and all you can do, is, say it with me: Play the ball where the monkey drops it.

It’s a pretty Buddhist idea.

It’s also a pretty successful Disney song.

Days Of Future Presents

There is a movie out now called X-Men: Days of Future Past. No, I haven’t seen it, so I don’t get if there’s something to the title beyond a convoluted curiosity, but that won’t stop me from bastardizing it to paraphrase this one quote by Alan Watts from a lecture of his that somebody entitled Life Is A Musical Play.

If you cannot live in the present, then you cannot enjoy the future for which you have planned.

This was said in the context of discussing how planning isn’t useless, but it is useless if you can’t enjoy the present moment. If you can’t enjoy the Day of Present Present, how can you enjoy the Days of Future Presents?

It’s an interesting consequence of what it means to “live in the now”.

One Hundred And Thirty

That’s how many posts I’ve written on this incarnation of the blog, current entry not included – and that’s how many I’ve almost finished reading and categorizing in the past week. Three years of blogging about my experiment of the application of Scrum to personal development has yielded that… I am still growing, and that… I am still dealing with the same stuff.

Check it. Here is the emboldened passage from the last post:

…planning for less to more easily ride the flow of life while making deliberate steps for personal development…

Here is the middle paragraph from the first serious post:

Thus, the balance of a game plan and reality results in a strategy that makes me feel less guilty for enjoying the weather while still accomplishing the most per time spent on these sprints: Ruthless Story Completion.

Fo’ realz, homie. I am still dealing with how to balance personal development with life’s dynamicity.

…

Hmm.

…

Let’s see what I can gather after a complete read-through of this blog.

Organizing All This Goodness

Have you ever apologized to somebody, and then, years later, apologized to them for the exact same thing? It’s kind of embarrassing. Good thing there’s comedian Louie C.K. to step us through what that would look like, in all its glorious awkwardness, in the third season of his genius show, Louie.

I have not done this.

I have, however, realized that I blogged about something that I had blogged about before, and am thus relearning, albeit with less bumbling social buffoonery than our modern-day Charlie Brown, how planning for less to more easily ride the flow of life while making deliberate steps for personal development is a modus operandi that seems to work for me. It’s like I already have the answers!

So what else have I written about?

Good question – I’m about to find out. Part of that effort is categorizing all these posts with the handy tagging that WordPress lets me do.

Let’s see what I’m able to learn.

And relearn.

Plan For Less

Lately, I’ve pulled off this seemingly impossible goal: complete all the things I planned to do per Sprint! My secret? Plan for less.

By planning for less per Sprint, yes, I leave myself open to do more and to go with the flow …of the day. This means a couple of things, and I think of it like an equation:

My Sprint Backlog = low number of planned stories + high number of unplanned stories

To get the most out of the planned stories, I have them associated with my Sprint Goal, which used to answer the question, “What is the exciting new thing I will share proudly with the world at the end of my Sprint?” and nowadays answers the question, “What do I want to make sure I get done by the end of my Sprint?” This sentiment is more practical, more self-serving, and way less stressful, ’cause all I have to do to accomplish this declarative Sprint Goal is one or two small and specific things. A few hours of focus effort, et voilà, I can proudly wave the flag of the Republic of Productivity (I hear David Allen is the Prime Minister).

To get the most out of the unplanned stories, I look in two places.

First, I’ll look at my Product Backlogs. I just look at the top, ’cause that’s where the high-priority items are. If there’s something there that is convenient to do, or that I’m particularly inspired to do, voilà, I cherry pick. These Product Backlogs then serve as reminders of all the cool and/or important things I want to do.

Second, I’ll look… around. I’ll look at anything that is not a list. Whether it is doing something spontaneous or living like a millionaire, most of my Sprint Backlog stories end up being emergent stories as of late. As long as I check in with myself often enough, I can maintain a level of strategic personal growth while embracing… life.

Folks, this is the most empowering version of my ScrumOfOne experiment I’ve found for healthily balancing the Agile constraints of personal development through Scrum, with the dynamicity of daily life.

…

I’m hesitating to press the ‘Publish’ button. This post just ain’t that funny… it’s not inspiring… it’s not captivating. While it’s unsettlingly dry, I write this because it is settlingly culminating.

Since I cut my Sprintly time-box in half, I’ve had more practice with performing the Retrospective and Sprint Planning per Sprint ‘turn-over’: it takes an hour and change. From the more opportunities to adapt, I’ve removed how I used to feel like a bum for not getting done the things I’d ‘commit to myself’ to doing, and actually get more stuff done. And I’ve been punting on this particular post for a while because this is effectively a report on research.

I used to do shit like this, and it’s been kinda sucky. Now I do shit this other way, and things’ve been way more rockin’.

Oh, that’s right. That’s what this blog is about. Where’s that ‘Publish’ button…