Category: outside resource

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!)

Of Gems and Chunky Bacon

I swear, I’ll return to a regularly scheduled blogging! Maybe with tales of woe, tales of “d’oh!”, tales of “whoa!”, and tales of dough. Gluten-free, worry not.

But not before mentioning how, like, OMG, holy cow, I’m reading a strangely compelling book.

It’s a picture book with a deeper hue of the child-like humor found in the epic series Captain Underpants. Take burnt sienna. Now dunk it back in your local toaster, set to 11. Crisp-eh-licious.

It’s a story that folds in The Isle of Dr. Moreau with cartoon foxes. One part starmonkey, five parts chunky bacon.

While I wait for an Amazon-sourced and Cicero-serious book in dead-tree form, with content surely as dry as a witch’s tit, I bathe in the mobile bath of the Google-sourced and painfully playful online book, content as moist and dripping as… the outside of this Dunkin’ Donuts small iced coffee. Cream and sugar. OK, sure, and one blueberry cake donut, please. Just this once. Don’t judge. Thank you. Nah, keep the change. No, thank YOU.

Have you ever been inspired to create, but it involves learning a new skill? Like a computer programming language? Like Ruby? Where you hope to have fun while you’re at it?

Take a look:

Why’s (Poignant) Guide to Ruby
tenderly written and illustrated by why the lucky stiff

…It’s in a book. A Reading Rainbow…

All The Things In Two Minutes

Allow me to apply the wisdom of one article – How to Stop Procrastinating by James Clear – to ScrumOfOne, specifically the building of a Product Backlog. James recommends using the power of the ‘2-Minute Rule’, which has two parts. He starts the article with a reassuring introduction:

Most of the tasks that you procrastinate on aren’t actually difficult to do — you have the talent and skills to accomplish them — you just avoid starting them for one reason or another.

Part 1 – If it takes less than two minutes, then do it now.

Think about the list of stuff on your to-do list / personal backlog… can some of them be banged out in a couple of minutes? For me, some of them actually can! Visualizing their realistic ability to be completed while an 800m sprint is taking place is motivating.

Part 2 – When you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do.

Alright, how about things that take longer than a footrace? Well, much like a footrace, it starts with risking your own beheading as you try to win the heart of the fastest female mortal in all the land the first step. It starts with… starting.

So, back to your backlog… can you start some of those items in a couple of minutes? For me, these larger items seem more manageable knowing that I can get some momentum with a time-boxed amount of focus.

I like this exercise (“Can I do this, or at least get started, in two minutes?“) when thinking about the size of stories, as a factor for determining points (as an estimate of effort). If a story is too large by this measure, might it be too large to drag into a Sprint?

So there: now you only have to focus and really work for two minutes! Momentum carries you the rest of the way, and the things on your Sprint Backlog just got easier. All the things.

You’re Allowed

Bill Watterson is the guy who did those Calvin and Hobbes comics. He gave a commencement speech to Kenyon College in 1990. From it is an excerpt that made it onto some webpage that then landed in my Facebook feed. I can’t find that page, but I think I found the excerpt:

Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it’s to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential-as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth.

You’ll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you’re doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you’ll hear about them.

To invent your own life’s meaning is not easy, but it’s still allowed, and I think you’ll be happier for the trouble.

I especially like that last bit – establishing your own life’s path starts with giving yourself permission, sometimes permission to not climb the success ladder that’s such a sacred structure of our environment.

That awesome life you want starts with realizing… you’re allowed to live it.