The project took longer than expected, but at least the house was clean.
That is the paradox of productive procrastination.
You spend so much time on avoiding the project that everything else gets finished.
Until the only thing that remains is that project.
And no excuses.
Not to mention all the time in the world.
It has been my favorite and most impactful memory in the pursuit of a master’s degree: At the end of every class, the instructor would ask each of us to write down our one take away from that evening’s session.
“What is your one take away?”
A remarkably difficult question to answer. It implies that attention was paid to the class session, that participation occurred, and that critical thinking was performed or is in process.
It is also an unbelievably easy question to answer, if you linger on the surface of what the question asks. Simply ponder through the previous session and find something, anything, and express it to the instructor.
I find that as I teach at the community college level, I am asking a modified form of the question to my students: “What is your one take away from this class that you’ll apply to your future?”
Often the answers revolve around the software program taught, a technique that is now in their arsenal, or things that the students think I might want to hear. But the question and the answer is not about me and what I may or may not have taught.
That is the beauty of the question.
It is about the revelation of truth inside the individual–acknowledged or ignored–as the question is answered. It is about the moment that the student begins to see that education and learning is not about a top-down hierarchical dissemination of data and information.
It is about critical analysis inside the human being as that data is analyzed, ripped apart, combined with other information, and integrated into his or her existence.
It is about the collision of interpretations, resulting in a greater understanding and the advancement of a field of study.
That is why the question is so beautiful.
“What is your one take away?”
The other night I was told my homework assignment (a one minute public service announcement using still, graphics, and titles only) was too hard and not liked. The interesting thing to me though was the more vocal the haters were, the better their projects were. This got me thinking: am I working hard enough on things that matter or am I spending too much time complaining that my life is hard?
Outside of teaching every weekday, I’m working on my master’s degree in Management and Organizational Leadership. I run a one-man creative business and I’m currently working on a few promotional videos, print materials, logos, websites, and a variety of other jobs. I’m married. I have friends. I’m working hard. I’m learning. I’m growing. And it hurts. I’ve gained weight. I’m exhausted. I forgot to make breakfast for my grandma this morning. I need more time in the morning to physically and mentally prepare for my day. But all of these side effects of hard work are worth it because the lessons I’m learning, the skills I’m gaining, and the people I’m interacting with on a daily basis are all reshaping me into a new person.
Am I working hard? Hell yes. But I’m intentionally working this hard because I want to be better at what I do, I want to give back to people that want to learn, and I want to be a more productive member of society.
There is a hidden quality in hard work, persistence, which pushes you through mental blocks such as boredom, laziness, and depression. I used to suffer from major depression, but as soon as I started working hard on things that mattered I found that the depression was gone. Hard work has been more effective than a pill and therapy was.
I used to be lazy and I used to be bored. I used to be overworked with trivial and small tasks. The work was easy. I was comfortable. But there was no reward. I had just enough to make me not realize I had nothing.
That is the main problem with not working hard. You are so numb with mundanity, that you don’t see the vultures circling your life.
If you want to see a living example of what hard work gets you, look at the work of Chuck Close. He started his career as a hyperrealist painter and after physical setbacks (including paralysis and blindness) as well as learning disabilities, he had to re-learn how to paint. Today, he continually redefines himself and the work he does by working hard and not waiting for inspiration (or easy work) to magically appear.
Here are a couple of quotes from the embedded video below. Read them. Watch the video. Then show up, be present, and get to work.
“Inspiration is for amateurs — the rest of us just show up and get to work.” — Chuck Close
“Every great idea I have ever had grew out of work itself.” — Chuck Close
This morning in my web multimedia class a student was having a difficult time coming up with an idea for the next class project: to tell a story with a main character, a beginning, a middle, and an end. While the objective of the project was firmly set and relatively straightforward, the initial process of ideation (generating ideas) was the main difficulty. As the student asked, where do I start? Here are three places to start with generating ideas.
For most of my class projects, I try to have enough information in the project objectives to hint at the project workflow. For this project, the storytelling component of the project was the crucial element, so let’s start with analyzing the different sequences of the storytelling process.
The beginning sequence introduces the character and the situation (s)he is in. Alternately, the beginning sequence shows what the character wants, but doesn’t have yet. The middle sequence is when the character goes after what (s)he wants or attempts to change the situation (s)he is in. The ending sequence is the resolution of the conflict the character experiences throughout the process of attaining what (s)he wants. A very basic outline of a story thanks to Steve Stockman’s informative book, How To Shoot Video That Doesn’t Suck.
How about an example?
Beginning sequence: An overweight man is sitting at his desk and sees a magazine cover of a man with six-pack abs. The man realizes that he wants six pack abs, so he gets up and leaves his desk.
Middle sequence: The overweight man begins the exercise process. He tries to run, but stops after one second. He tries to lift weights, but cannot get the bar off the floor. He struggles.
End sequence: The overweight man returns to his desk and throws the magazine cover into the trash and continues on with his day.
Breaking down this process even further, the consistent element in each of the storytelling sequences is a character. But how do you choose who your character will be?
Ask yourself questions. What do you like to do? Is there a specific genre that you like to read or watch on TV? Do you like aliens, astronauts, cowboys, swimmers, dolphins, fish, lobsters, or hula dancers? What about action? Are you active? Do you run, swim, hike, or sit in front of the computer all day? Are you adventurous? What do you dream to accomplish one day?
As you answer these questions and mine your personal preferences, you can start to develop and build a story around that character.
How about another example?
Beginning sequence: Several lobsters are in a water tank in a restaurant.
Middle sequence: The lobster next to the main lobster is selected and cooked. All of the lobsters are panicking. How do we save ourselves?
Ending sequence: The main lobster pretends to be Spartacus and liberates the remaining lobsters by breaking free from the water tank and crawling to safety.
Finally, a great place to generate ideas is by building a library of knowledge you can pull from and mash together. Collect books and movies, memorize moments in pop culture, read magazines, and watch YouTube videos. It is easy to build a collection of knowledge in today’s digital world using Pinterest and Evernote. You can also clip photos and typography from magazines.
The secret is having enough information in order to connect one idea to another. For example, applying the story of Spartacus to the world of restaurant lobsters.
How do you know you have enough information and when to stop collecting? You’ll never have enough. Just keep filing what you come across into your library. The more, the merrier. You never know when you’ll be able to use something as silly or serious as what you have just found.
There are a million ways to generate ideas and these are three simple places to start when it comes to the storytelling process. What has helped you in the ideation process?
Warning: An overabundant usage of the word awesome appears throughout this post.
I have a lot of titles and I want to be awesome at every single responsibility associated with each title.
As a student, I want to write awesome papers, which lead to awesome grades.
As a teacher, I want to give awesome lectures, expanding my students’ understanding of the material, ultimately leading them to an awesome creative and artistic pursuit of their awesome lives.
As a husband, I want to be awesome as I clean the house, cook dinner, vacuum, dust, and make sure that I am providing for my wife so that she can do the things in life she wants to.
As a creative business owner, I want to be awesome, which translates to an awesome balance in my business checking account, an awesome balance in my personal checking account, and a gold star for being an awesome husband.
In short, I want to be awesome.
Chances are, you want to be awesome too.
I see the desire to be awesome in my friends, my family, my students, on Twitter and Facebook.
But guess what?
You won’t be awesome at everything. You’ll be lucky to be awesome at one thing, let alone many. Because it takes daily hard work and practice to be awesome.
Malcolm Gladwell wrote in Outliers that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to master something (Chris’s translation: 10,000 hours of practice to be awesome).
Eric Idle told a story in Monty Python Live! about how Monty Python was invited to do improv on a TV show during their Canadian tour in the summer of 1973. They sucked at improv even though they were awesome at writing comedy. Idle explains:
We were dreadful. We would try half-hearted things until we thought, What are we doing here? Because that really is the difference between what we did and what other people do. We were really disciplined writers. Python is a writer’s commune. The writers dictated what was funny and only then did we cast it and only then did we rehearse it and learn it and so it’s all about the writing for us. There’s hardly an improv line in Python.
It was a full-time job, 9-5, for Monty Python to be awesome. They practiced their craft. They worked. They suffered. And subsequently, they had a lot of fun and still influence a portion of the population 40 years later.
You want to be awesome?
Practice.
Every day.
At all that you want to be and do.
Will you succeed?
Maybe and maybe not, but the truth is that you’ll be a better person for working hard at what you want. You’ll be better for practicing, succeeding or failing, rather then waiting for awesome to be handed to you or to magically appear in the form of inspiration or to appear at the top/bottom of your addictions.
I recently picked up Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World by gaming guru Jane McGonigal and never before have I read a book that has challenged how I view the world.
The primary struggle is found in the cognitive dissonance between the gaming statistics McGonigal presents and the (mis)conceptions I have developed over the years regarding gaming and gamers:
I developed the stereotype that gamers are lazy based on my own life. In 1997, I moved to Seattle and began studying at the University of Washington. I had aspirations to study Computer Science because I loved computers, games, and the web. However, being away from home for the first time and experiencing an academic environment that I was not prepared for, I lost interest in school and instead chose to play games. My studies suffered, I went from being a promising student and escaped into the world of Starcraft, Command and Conquer, and Diablo.
This gaming escapism was born out of a desire to avoid the harsh reality that I needed to work harder than I was ready to. But just because I was lazy doesn’t mean that all gamers are lazy.
The statistics are sobering: “WoW [World of Warcraft] developer Activision Blizzard currently reaps an estimated $5 million every single day in global subscription fees alone” (McGonigal, 2011, p. 53). Since World of Warcraft launched, the players have spent “a grand total of just over 50 billion collective hours–or 5.93 million years” (p. 52). 5.93 million years is apparently the stated number of years that humans have been evolving, so in seven years, human beings have collectively played a game for the entire amount of time humans have been evolving.
I’m not entirely sure how to process the enormity of those figures. The “gamers are lazy” side of me shakes my head and says, “What if they devoted that time to fixing reality?” The optimistic wonderer in me says, “If they can do that, then surely something amazing could be accomplished…”
I’m still in part one of Reality is Broken and I am curious how McGonigal will illustrate how games can “fix” our broken reality.
Is gaming the solution?
Are there clues as to how we can reframe reality?
The answer is yes.
But we must first put to death our misconceptions of what reality is and what gaming is not.
I’m currently starting a class on high-performing teams and team coaching. What stood out in the reading in Leadership Team Coaching was this quote on core learning from author Peter Hawkins: “Unless the team is learning and unlearning at a rate equal to or greater than the rate at which the environment is changing around it, it cannot thrive.”
This is the most critical attribute for a web designer, graphic designer, director, photographer, or creative of any type in today’s economy. To not only learn new technologies faster than your competitors, but to unlearn what has been deprecated.
Waiting instead of learning and unlearning will only result in one thing: being left behind.
“In addition to our personal and lifelong contributions, our world is brought into being by the changes that occur in it, changes that accelerate as we speak. The result is a mixture of involvement–plus discovering the external facts, the data the world sends to us, the changes that we makes as cultures and as individuals, changes made by science and technology, and change caused by political action and by wars. What puts it all together in one comprehensive mix is of course the adaptation of which living beings–especially humans–are capable.” – Peter Koestenbaum, Practicing Organization Development: A Guide for Leading Change
I am completely intrigued by the process of modern politics: Look good, promise everything, say nothing, and attack the opponent.
I don’t often share what I think, but here is a cartoon summing up a few thoughts regarding the Romney/Obama debate.
I have friends on both sides of the “color” divide (I’m not talking race). They regard “their” candidate with religious fervor, holding them up as the savior of the people. But ultimately, the only difference between “the candidates” is the color of their tie. The results will be the same until we the people realize that change does not come from an elected politician or an official political party. It comes from the convictions of individuals, exercised for the benefit of those around them, in order to create a more humane and beneficial society for all.
I’ve been impatiently waiting for MUSE’s new album The 2nd Law for a few months. It is officially out today in the UK and tomorrow in the US, but I have been streaming it on iTunes for the past week, pre-ordered the digital download a month ago, and salivated over the teaser tracks and videos for the past few months.
Now that it’s the day before the release, I asked myself, why does new music come out on Tuesdays especially when our digital society is no longer bound by physical distribution and delays in the collection of purchasing statistics?
I asked the almighty Google and what was returned was an article from NPR.org, Why Albums Are Released On Tuesdays In The U.S., giving two primary reasons:
I like the tradition of having new music released on Tuesdays. It gives me something to look forward to, but I also recognize the need for change as physical products are eliminated.
The music industry is in a perpetual state of change, yet they appear to be living in a world of delusion, fear, nostalgia, and tradition. They will continue to exist, but they could have more.