Author: Merrill III

Screw Happy Fridays or Hip-Checking Maureen

Seriously, when folks say, “Happy Friday,” to each other in the work place, I wince. It’s like a tick: a minor spasm that causes my torso to bend over sideways, just enough to throw me off track during my hallway travels, often causing me to hip-check poor Maureen from Purchasing. I swear, it’s not my fault… I overheard somebody say, “Happy Friday,” which sparked a physiological chain reaction where I veer off-track like a derailed locomotive, coincidentally and repeatedly careening into poor Maureen from Purchasing.

Now, I know what you’re saying, “But Merrill, at the stand-up morning meetings that you run, you end them with, ‘Happy Friday,’ you hip-checking hypocrite.” Yes, you’re right, you caught me tricycle-red-handed, but only on Fridays: on Tuesdays, I end them with, “Happy Tuesday.” I do this for every day of the week! And what do I hear in return? Behold my uber-scientific research results…

Happy Monday: Groans and sarcastic chuckles.
Happy Tuesday: Crickets.
Happy Wednesday: “It’s hump-day!” and other commercial camel quotes.
Happy Thursday: “It’s almost Friday!”
Happy Friday: At least one “Woo-hoo!”

f rh. atrhoiu th 2390 fkn fj woij

Sorry, I just twitched.

The attitude of ‘HF’ (abbreviated to prevent tick-induced keyboard mishaps and wardrobe malfunctions) is reflective of our Western work-life modus operandi where you’re counting the hours until 5 o’clock, the days until the weekend, the weeks until your next vacation, the years until retirement – it reminds me of those jail cell scenes where another tally mark is etched into the walls of daily accountability amid discussions of longing for freedom – it’s fucking depressing!

That’s why I greet in the hallways and deliberately end the morning meetings with, “Happy Tuesday!” I’m trying to bring ‘future joy’ into ‘everyday joy’, and am inviting some smart-ass to comment, “What’s so special about Tuesday?” To which I’d reply, “It’s fuckin’ Tuesday! Why not celebrate Tuesday?” And if I can implant that seed to get somebody thinking critically about our perfunctory cycle, interrupting our cacaphonous ostinato like a zen koan, then I’m doing my real job.

Take a quote from Tribes by Seth Godin:

Set up a life you don’t need to escape from.

I get that not everybody has the means or cojones to quit the 40-hour exchange for ‘security’ so that they can travel the country, playing the piano at bars for local beer to then be able to travel the world, lecturing on the musical and zymological landscape of America (totally not my oft-stated retirement plan, nope, not me, y’got the wrong Merrill…) – I get that. Letting loose your true self and fulfilling your passions on a daily basis by crafting your own life is a big and brave leap, which is why not everybody’s a-doin’ it.

So while you’re on your path of getting there, most likely living the Monday-to-Friday slog of employment, please please pretty-please find a way to appreciate EVERY day, especially the ones that end in ‘y’. Do it for yourself.

Do it for poor Maureen from Purchasing.

Step One or Advice from Years of Chess

(Edit: replaced ‘Decide’ with ‘Choose’ for the emboldened passages – this was the intended word decision choice.)

Step One: Cut a hole in the box. Choose what you are going to do today.

Growing up, I was the chess geek of the city: I was the inter-schools chess champion for 7 consecutive years and intra-mural chess champion for 8 consecutive years, beating kids from older age brackets, beating chess coaches. I’m talkin’ shiny chess trophies, with pictorial evidence of me receiving them, a me with even shinier braces. I’m talkin’ exciting chess stories, of trash talkin’, of being behind in pieces and position yet squeaking out a stalemate (effectively a draw, psychologically a win), of rook sacrifices where I’d invite my opponent to find my trap only for me to unleash it anyway.

(I was so passionate, I’d study the tournament games of grand masters, and I’d cry when I’d lose a game. I’d cry like an early teenage wimp. It was all kinds of not sexy. I remember the first game I lost where I didn’t cry… I was confused as to why I didn’t… somehow… I came to terms with the fact that chess was just a game.)

Yeah – I was that kid.

So let me share with you a chess life lesson – you lucky people, you. Gather ’round, folks! Don’t be shy!

Off the bat, you have white and black pieces, where the white side goes first – this is usually seen as an advantage. Regardless of which side of the board you end up on, most popular opening moves involve securing the center squares, usually by putting pieces there, then defending them – think of it as a strategic land-grab. As you go about controlling the center, you cunning and greedy braces-laden skinny white kid (…with glasses), you end up opening up lanes of mobility for your previously land-locked little change agents.

And this is where the chess-talk stops. (I just shed a tear.)

By choosing to go first, you set the tone of the game your day. You choose where you want to go by giving yourself the mental space to get there (you probably can’t help a quick visualization of getting that thing done), inadvertently preparing the pieces required to get there (your subconscious works on the ‘how’).

Good morning.

Your move.

(I’m welling up here… somebody must be chopping onions…)

Let The Wookie Win

Have you ever completed something? Of course you have.

Do you know how good that feels? Of course you do.

So it’s no surprise that painting the last big room in your new apartment, followed by closing out your storage unit such that everything you and your new wife own is now under one roof, followed by capping off Netflix’s ‘House of Cards’ season all feels pretty freakin’ exhausting great! Everybody should get to feel this… more often!

So why don’t we?

At this point, I’m taken back to my Product Owner training, where (Scrum co-founder) Jeff Sutherland waxed poetic about… sports. So, with me please, imagine a sports team – your good ol’ neighbourhood generic sports team – it don’t matter what the sport is, just pick one – yes, any one, seriously – fine, curling – I picked curling for you – full-contact no-holds-barred curling.

Imagine that this team loses a match. Sucks, I know, but curling isn’t immune to losing. Think of what it’s like going into the next exciting match. Got it? Got that feeling? OK. Now imagine going into this next match, but having WON your previous bout. Got it? Got that feeling? Great – you’ve already visualized way more about curling than the average Canadian bear.

Gently slide curling aside for a moment, and apply these thought experiments to two completely different sporting and oxymoronic words: Scrum sprinting. By equating not finishing all the planned stories in a sprint to losing, and finishing all the planned stories in a sprint to winning, you get the feeling with which you go into the next sprint.

And it’s not just a feeling – there’s research to suggest that this kind of ‘failure’ prevents the team from improving, and that teams that finish early accelerate faster. Putting the ScrumOfOne hat back on, this means both not jam-packing your sprints with things to do, and preventing distractions from shifting your focus from getting things done.

Easier said than done? Well, I start with setting the bar lower, by setting myself up with fewer stories per sprint (the planned), and then leaving a buffer for things that come up (the unplanned). This is so common a tip in practicing Scrum that it is its own ‘pattern‘, where you can find more patterns here. These are ways to get started with Scrum and then get to Sutherland’s idyllic hyperproductive state. Interesting stuff, and it’s not too hard to see a ScrumOfOne corollary.

Learn Anything In 20 Hours

Not gonna lie… I’m totally lifting this from the description under a YouTube video…

Josh Kaufman is the author of the #1 international bestseller, ‘The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business’, as well as the upcoming book ‘The First 20 Hours: Mastering the Toughest Part of Learning Anything.’ Josh specializes in teaching people from all walks of life how to master practical knowledge and skills. In his talk, he shares how having his first child inspired him to approach learning in a whole new way.

Still not lying… this is a punt-post, as I direct you to this awesome TEDx Talk:

The First 20 Hours – How to Learn Anything: Josh Kaufman at TEDxCSU

No fibbing here… it’s 10,000 hours to master something, and 20 hours to learn something new.

Got 45 minutes a day for 1 month? …pants not on fire.

Channel Your Inner Tim Gunn

I don’t always watch Project Runway, but when I do, I drink Dos Equis I watch Tim Gunn. In terms of a competition show, it’s easy to see why it’s appealing – the fashionable hopefuls take on a new challenge with 30 minutes to design and at max 2 days to make the thing.

Yes, people get kicked off the island (it’s Manhattan!), people get immunity each challenge, people get prizes, and only 1 lucky winner gets to be called the next America’s Top Model American Idol Food Truck Foodie Trucker Apprentice Top Designer. So yes, there’s pressure, and people losing their cool.

And that’s where Tim Gunn comes in.

What makes this show different is that there’s this impartial person who’s EVERYBODY’S BUDDY – he’s not a judge (although, with the ‘Tim Gunn Save’, he can veto one elimination per season now), he’s a mentor. He’ll walk into the work room and work the room, going from bench to bench, asking each designer how they’re doing, hearing out his/her design, and giving feedback, be it technical, aesthetic, or emotional.

He’ll give hugs AND he’ll give tough love. He’ll give his opinion AND he’ll tell you to show the judges who you really are. Be authentic? We need to hear more of that message! Signature phrase? Make it work! TIM GUNN FOR PRESIDENT!

And that’s what Tim Gunn does.

And that’s what a ScrumMaster does.

She gives hugs AND she gives tough love. She gives her opinion AND she tells you to show the Product Owner who you really are. Make it work!

(Oh boy… and now to apply this to ScrumOfOne…) And this is what I do.

I give myself hugs AND I give myself tough love. I give me my opinion AND I tell myself to show me who I really am. Make it work!

Yes, you’re right – that doesn’t translate as cleanly, and maybe it’s partially because the notion of coaching yourself is inherently paradoxical. Balancing what you want (“More!” says the Product Owner) and what you need (“Less!” says the ScrumMaster) is why there are two different people taking on these forces in a normal Scrum team. This echos the struggle of an artist: More! / the drive to keep working on it until it is perfect, versus Less! / the need to stop working on it and then share it with the world. So, yes, you’re right – it’s not easy.

And that’s why I forgive myself when I fall off what feels like a ScrumOfOne Wagon. Moving, getting married, settling into a new home, plowing through a couple of Ruby books, getting sick a couple of times, closing out the storage unit, all in a couple of months, means I’ve been way more focused on the ‘now’, and barely looking into the ‘next’ / short-term future.

So this is how I forgive myself for falling off the ScrumOfOne Wagon… by writing a blog post about forgiving myself. How self-serving. (Kinda like this whole blog. There. I said it.)

And this is where my inner Tim Gunn comes in.

I give myself a hug.

Thanks, me.

(I’m welcome. Now pull myself together and stop talking to myself. Make it work!)