goals | Learning is Change

Question 76 of 365: How can we demonstrate progress?

Published on March 17, 2010, by Ben Wilkoff in 365 Questions, Uncategorized.

: Image via Wikipedia

My daughter has decided to start screaming every time she goes into her room for a nap or bedtime. It isn’t that she doesn’t want to be there, it is just that it wasn’t completely on her terms. And, doing things on her terms is everything. As any parent of a three year old knows, control is the name of the game (every game).

And yet, we are making progress. I know that she understands just how much she can push before Time Out happens. I know that she is slowly starting to figure out the expectations that my wife and I have for her. Even if it is sometimes hard to see, the progress is there. She is an older, wiser, more interesting person every single day. She has good days and bad in terms of what she needs to control, but more often than not, I feel a progression is in effect. We are heading toward figuring everything out, toward co-pilot status.

Anyone on the outside, however, would probably not see the progress. Anyone who observes us out at a restaurant would see that snapshot in time and consider my daughter to be unruly at any given moment. I have become frustrated when I too can no longer see the progression. When I lose sight of the trajectory toward better behavior, I get angry with her. When she says my name for the 40th time when I am trying to put her back to bed, I use a voice that is much louder than it should be and I say “WHAT?” as if I don’t really care what she needs. This frustration shows my lack of understanding in those moments that progress is being made.

And that is the way I feel about many big projects I work on (non-child related). I get so wrapped up in them and so frustrated in the minutiae that I can’t see that we are making progress. I get so caught up in what other people are seeing as progress that I can’t take stock of what conversations are actually going to lead me to success.

I think that the biggest problem is in not being able to lay out a progression for others, not being able to take concrete enough snap shots so that I can always get a glimpse of where I have been and where I am headed. I want something that will allow me to not only chronicle everything that has been done as I would in saving documents or creating a great wiki of all of my ideas. I would like something that does a full on save state of my brain (or of my daughter’s mood and disposition toward authority) so that I can explore each part of it and see how each idea and part of the project developed. I want the ability to do a Apple Time Machine effect for my projects, where I get to go back to that moment in time and figure out just what made it so successful.

Which is, I guess what I am trying to do with Open Spokes. I’m trying to give people the ability to record videos of their ideas as they occur and then iterate off of them. I guess I am working to create a platform for exposing progression and learning. I’m designing the space for progress to become concrete.

And in that sense, I want to take what is great about blogs: regular posting with the ability to see what has come before, hyperlinking, and creating new ideas.

I want to take what is great about podcasts and vlogs: Reflection, ease of use, and conversations had in natural voice.

I want to take what is great about wikis: Collection of knowledge, editing and revision, branching off into new areas as you uncover them.

But, I want it all to be seamless. I want everyone to be able to participate without needing to know how to collaborate. I want Open Spokes to be the place where I could actually brainstorm solutions with my three year old daughter about her defiance over time. I want it to be the place that my projects can get answers for why they seem stalled or uninspired. I want to see progress, always.

And I think that is where we are headed.

Shame from the past helps make us wiser today: Terry Pluto’s Messages of Faith (cleveland.com)
How To Get a Baby To Fall Asleep (Older Than 3 Months) (howcast.com)
A bedtime story for network admins (crunchgear.com)

2 Comments.

Question 74 of 365: What do we do with another notch in the belt?

Published on March 15, 2010, by Ben Wilkoff in 365 Questions, Uncategorized.

: Image by Flyinace2000 via Flickr

I turn one year older today.

And as my brother’s fiance kept telling me, all of the special birthdays are gone. All of the ones that mean something in and of themselves. No bar mitzvahs,quinceaneras, driving privileges, voting abilities, or drinking allowances left (not that I had all of those). Each year only serves as another notch on the belt. And I am okay with that.

Just as it has been for a number of years, I have resorted to thinking about my age in my own terms rather than the ones prescribed to me. I no longer rest on my age to progress me through life. I no longer count on society to push me into being an adult. I choose my own milestones, and I celebrate them as frequently as possible.

And the notches aren’t the same anymore either. I believe in the power for a single event to change my life, for a single decision to set in motion the rest of a year or longer with both intended and unintended consequences. The notches I make now aren’t the small notches that time makes. They are big and unmistakable. They are ones that speak to where I have been and what I have done. I burn my notches as if I were branding or I cut them deeply, with precision, knowing that I can never take them back.

So, this year, I am working on a few notches that will set in motion the next few years of my life. And no longer being bound to measure my life in years, that feels pretty good.

As I look back on what I wrote about my intended notches in 2006 I notice a few things:

1. I will have a child. (Two, now)
2. I will have a master’s degree. (Nope)
3. I will have a book published. (Working on it. As I type, in fact.)
4. I will have a salary that makes my family’s life comfortable. (I hope so.)
5. I will have a cd pressed. (Totally fallen off the radar.)

And that is the funny thing about notches. Until you actually make them, they aren’t worth a whole bunch. They are the same goals that everyone else is making. They are the same aspirations that drive millions of people to go after more experience. Yet, until you have them accomplished, until the strange and finite events have transpired, they don’t really exist. They aren’t really yours.

So, while it may be a small notch today in getting one year older, know that much bigger notches are coming. And when they do happen, I will be taking the careful time to make them known through the careful process of scraping off the top layer of leather and watching the shavings fall to the ground, then digging in deeper and making exacting cuts against the well-worn grain until I can see through to the light of day, my knife having done an admirable act in connecting me with the other side.

Oh, and I’ll probably write about it too.

4 Comments.

Question 26 of 365: Is treading water dangerous?

Published on January 27, 2010, by Ben Wilkoff in 365 Questions, Uncategorized.

: Image via Wikipedia

As far as metaphors go, there are no greater cliches than using treading water to represent staying in one given place in your personal or professional life. However, every once in a while, the metaphor is warranted, so I hope you will not begrudge me using it. I use it now not to describe whether or not treading water is lame or counterproductive. I think that it is fairly obvious that not having a direction or reaching for something is a universally panned activity. At the very least, we pay lip service to trying to find your passion, and swimming against the current as if they were they were virtuous in their own right.

My invocation of this metaphor is much more centered on the idea that treading water is quite probably dangerous in addition to generally being a bad tactic for achieving what you want in your life.

Imagine for a moment that there are two people in an office. This office has a number of IT professionals, trainers/teachers, management, and support staff. It is generally a high functioning office in that people show up to meetings on time, everyone seems to like each other enough to be civil, and people get paid on time. The first person in this office does not blog, tweet, podcast, post status updates on facebook or connect with anyone on LinkedIn in a professional capacity. The second person does have this kind of connected online presence. Both get a decent amount of work done within their teams and they have been reviewed well in the past few years. Up until this point, there is very little difference between the two of them.

I would like to make the case that the person who does not have an online presence is treading water. While he may be advancing his career, there is no record outside of the office that this is the case. His general direction is measured based upon exactly what the company’s general direction is. So, while the company may be moving forward (perhaps even as a result of his efforts), he is still really in the exact same spot within the company. The ocean waves are moving, not him.

I would also like to make the case that the second person has a direction. Through her daily tweets and weekly blog posts, she is reflecting on what has transpired within her job. She is asking questions and finding answers for what is going on within her profession. Her forward momentum always outpaces that of the company. Even when the company has a major setback, her network keeps her legs churning and her arms moving through the water with intense energy.

So, why is the first person dangerous for treading water?

This first person is dangerous because you can’t tread water forever. Eventually you have to reach solid ground or you will drown. This person is even more dangerous because he will drown others while he is trying to stay afloat.

If you have no external voice through a modern network, you are easily outsourced. If your company doesn’t know that losing you will have the effect of losing all of the experts that go along with you, you are sunk. If your work stays within the confines of the company, credit is easily obfuscated.

Treading water isn’t a strategy for the future, it is simply a method of keeping your head above water. The danger of not posting or preparing a presence online is that you cannot represent yourself or your company to the people that need to see it. You cannot be an advocate for the things that your school district needs in order to to keep on working. In essence, if you are not sharing what it is that is important to you and your office, you are going to bring it down. If you have other competitors (and you are kidding yourself if you think you don’t), they will win. If you can’t place yourself into the great evaluative system that is the web, there is little chance for people to see that you have any value.

While this metaphor may be wearing quite thin at this point, I think it bears repeating. If you are treading water in your job or in your life, you are a danger to yourself and others.