tonygoodson

Take Me Home Country Roads

Visited my childhood last week.  Back to the country roads of Cheshire (nr Manchester, England).  So good to be back home (I keep expressing joy with song titles or lyrics!)

I'd started blogging/writing about my childhood in 2002, so it was good to revisit the writing in reality, 9 years later.  How was it?  Did reality warp or destroy the memories or writing?  I'd been warned that going back to London and Manchester, from Australia, things would appear much smaller than in my mind's eye.

In fact, on the whole things were the same or larger, such as the road in our street where we played football as kids.  What most struck me in going back to Handforth and into the The Valley behind our house where I played out my childhood, is the march of nature.  Nature is relentless, people aging, buildings and structures under threat from 50 years of nature knocking.

It's amazing how the acres of my green grass childhood are now overgrown with new and thick vegetation.  Rivers have changed courses over those 50 years.  And other parts have remained unaltered. Even the 1960s graffiti has survived. 

I can feel a novel inside me, set in the 60s with my childhood memories as the background rather than the theme of the novel.  But I don't yet know what I'd like to write about as the main them of a novel, with this childhood 60s stuff in the background.  A Kestype novel perhaps, Kestrel for a Knave?

I can't explain, just how green and beautiful Cheshire looks on a visit, after 9 years of living in Australia.  I'm happy to be living in Melbourne, a city near the sea (ok, Bay), but Cheshire sure looks lush and green.

My Productivity for 2010

My productivity for 2009 has been shocking!

Partly because I have some very big issues to sort out, which can be kinda distracting, and it makes it very difficult for me to concentrate at times.  Consequently, most of my good productivity systems collapsed in 2009.  My MindManager mindmaps, my Weekly Review, my capture tools and filing (not that my filing was ever any good!).

What I’m most struck by is the difficulty in planning and setting aside time for the thing I most want to do, Podcast.  Why is it, we have our dreams and we don’t fulfil them, even when we are able to.  I had a good crack at my dreams in 2009, but just couldn’t seem to keep them going.  Also, there are some things which happened, including work, which just needed complete narrow focus, to the exclusion of everything else, and sometimes, no time or energy for anything else.  And in the latter part of 2009, I really enjoyed my work.

And so to 2010, loaded with my iPhone, my Sansa Clip+ mp3 player, and my Dell Netbook.  I’ve stopped using my thin leather pocket Filofax for note capture and diary/calendar.  I’m currently using a cheapo spiral A4 book for capture, and no diary system, because my time has been in blocks of months.

Given that I’m on Gmail and iPhone, I think Google calendar and some kind of iPhone note capture would be nice.  Today, I’ve just created a simple shopping list on a Google Docs spreadsheet, and my Actions in columns, on another Google Docs spreadsheet, so that I can view them easily from my iPhone.  I’m having a play with a few iPhone productivity Apps but nothing has hooked me yet.  Dan Bricklin’s Note Taker to finger write notes on the iPhone, Evernote, iThought mindmaps, and gCalWall which produces a photo of your Google calendar and puts it up as the wallpaper.  Not long before that will be automatic.

My main obsession right now is listening to podcasts and audio books rather than producing podcasts and audio books! One may lead to the other.

Every decade for me has been significant in terms of moving onto the next decade, but this time, 2009 feels like it’s dribbling into 2010!!  Is it just me or did decade ends used to me more exciting!  And so, my productivity is dribbling into 2010!!

Cognitive Bias

Someone asked me recently “Hey Tony, what’s the best entry on Wikipedia?”  though he was probably joking, without hesitation I said “Cognitive Bias”.  He had a look and agreed with me.

So as a reminder to self, and a treat to anyone who reads this, go look at the list of Cognitive Bias on Wikipedia.  It has all the failings of human nature gathered together in one Wiki entry.

A cognitive bias is a pattern of deviation in judgment that occurs in particular situations (see also cognitive distortion and the lists of thinking-related topics). Implicit in the concept of a "pattern of deviation" is a standard of comparison; this may be the judgment of people outside those particular situations, or may be a set of independently verifiable facts. The existence of some of these cognitive biases has been verified empirically in the field of psychology.

Cognitive biases are instances of evolved mental behaviour. Some are presumably adaptive, for example, because they lead to more effective actions or enable faster decisions. Others presumably result from a lack of appropriate mental mechanisms, or from the misapplication of a mechanism that is adaptive under different circumstances.

Thanks Johnnie Moore

Cluetrain and Dreams Coming True

The one thing I forgot to ask Chris Locke about was Bricolage.  He wrote about it in his follow up book to Cluetrain, Gonzo Marketing.  I was reminded of that, because I bust a gut all day to get the interview I’d done with Chris, out.  Which meant adding some music.  And I’d been sitting on some music for over 2 years, Stereophile’s “That’s The Shit” I thought it was called Bass, oh well!

It’s great to collect something, and then use it 2 years later.  And I’ve had a dream to interview Chris Locke since podcasting started, so great to get it together and do it.  Who’s next?  I have a few on the list, and I added another person over the weekend, Neil Young (Man Citeh footballer).  Are you out there Neil Young?

What I’ve done over the last few months, is bring my big dreams forward.  Oh yeah, we’ve all learnt about goal setting and all that.  Have a dream and then put actions to achieve that dream.  Well it doesn’t quite work out, does it.  I’ll tell you why.  We keep doing all the short term stuff before we allow ourselves to do the big stuff we’d love to do.  Except there’s always small stuff that keeps on coming in.  So I switched things around.  I looked at what my big long term things are and made sure they’re the first on my list every day and every week.

In fact, I’ve not been very productive recently, but the big ones are happening. Someone told me recently that they can see a lot of the colour orange in my life.  So I used Orange as the main them for The 3 Moments website, and blow me down if the main colour for Cluetrain isn’t orange, and the RSS Feed logo is orange.

What are the big things you want to do in life?  That doesn’t necessarily mean a big house, Ferrari, and lots of money!! 

When you’ve cracked a big dream, it’s a bit like that time after the wedding, and all the guests have gone.  What now!  I dunno!!  Next guest to interview for a podcast.  Next project! Actually, come to think of it, there’s a few other shows I’ve been wanting to do, and now I have the platform. 

All Time Teams, I talk with people who name their all time sport teams based on how long they’ve followed their team.  I ran a pilot show in 2005 for an All Time Manchester United Team, so it’s a bit out of date now, but just have a listen, and if you’re a keen Man Yoo football fan it sounds great! Click here to download The All Time Manchester United Team 1968 to 2005.

Madman Across The Street, interview the people who are on our city streets.  Instead of stepping over them, find out what their story is, how they got there…3 Moments! 

Sustainability and Green stuff, still a subject we all know we should contribute to, but we can’t be bothered!  I have two pilot shows from the last 18 months that I must upload.

Thanks Cluetrain.

Guest Interviews - The 3 Moments

Ever since I was a kid watching Parky, then Russell Harty, and now Andrew Denton and Larry King, I’ve loved interviews.  Interesting people with interesting things to say.  Inspirations.  I like the Parky interview style.  The guests don’t have to be grilled or caught off their guard, or sensationalised.  Just conversations.  Interest and curiosity in the guest, and what they have to tell and teach us.

And not just the famous and the stars, but some of my favourites were Barbara Castle, Jonathan Miller, Peter Ustinov, Michael Caine, Bette Midler, and latterly, Paul McCartney talking about his ego.  That was Part 1.

Part 2 for me, came just before the start of podcasting, and in fact partly created podcasting.  The Chris Lydon interviews. Wonderful political and technological conversations published as mp3 files to download and listen to.  This coupled with Doug Kaye’s I.T Conversations, led to a world of mp3 downloads for me.  And still to this day, I manually download mp3s to listen to instead of using podcast software to automatically download to my laptop or mp3 player.

Since 2003 I’ve pondered who I’d like to interview.  I’ve never had the platform to interview anyone.  Sure I’ve podcast on The Productivity Show, dabbled, had some great guests, but I realise I want to go beyond productivity.  And I’ve feared and procrastinated for 5 years.  No longer.

It’s simple really. All I have to do is list the 100 people I’d most like to interview in the world, and invite them!!  Yeah sure, most won’t reply, or will say no, or it will become too difficult.  But you know what?  At least 5 will say yes, and it will be magnificent.

So I’m starting with a simple website, a banner, and name…The 3 Moments.  Why “The 3 Moments”?  Well, when I look at the people I’d like to interview, it’s about their journey, their highs, their lows, the ending of something and that “Oh Shit” moment, the Harrison Owen (Open Space Technology) writes about in his book Wave Rider, and how people deal with set-back and grief.  If you ask someone to draw a timeline of their life from birth to now, the chances are there will be two or three peaks/troughs, so let’s hear about those things, The Hero/Heroine’s Journey.

Build it and let them come.  So let’s see what happens. 

Learning to be a Creative Genius

Déjà Vu, I come here to write about 10,000 Hours to Become a Genius, and realised I’d already used exactly the same title when writing about exactly the same subject last November.

So let’s call this Part II.  I’ve realised recently that for 42 years I’ve been struggling.  Struggling to fit into an education and white collar working system that has a very narrow confine on what is intelligence.  And I’ve fitted in, I’ve had to, but at great cost to myself and talents.

At aged 6, I was highly mathematical, spatial, chess, sporty, but I couldn’t handwrite properly, struggled to spell, couldn’t draw well, struggled with English comprehension.  I was a classic geek, shy of girls (but loved them really), crap dancer.

My 10,000 hours of genius, didn’t go into a single subject but across a number of subjects.  Sport, Man United, Chess, Maths, Sport, Current Affairs, TV, General Knowledge, Newspapers, Encyclopaedias, Science.

That inability to write and draw, and remember language, has been a blight on me ever since.  I’ve been blessed with enough intelligence to survive it, but I shouldn’t have to survive life.

So now my oldest child has just come through being 6, and my youngest is fast approaching 6, I’m really attuned to what’s expected of them in education, and what they can and can’t do.  But here’s my own breakthrough and realisation.  Genius may not be nature.  It might be nurture.  We find our talents out early on for ourselves, or someone helps us.

I say this because, I’m noticing some things my kids aren’t learning for themselves.  That doesn’t mean they can’t do something, just that they don’t know how to.  Jay’s reading is great now he’s started school, and I should know, I taught him (proud Dad), but his handwriting and drawing are behind many of the kids in his class.  Mmm funny, but that’s me at school all over again.

Now, for the last few years, I’ve been looking for a cartooning book to help me learn to draw for when I’m training and writing on boards and flipcharts.  I made a concerted effort to find a book this week, for my sake and now for Jay’s.  And hallelujah, I’ve found it. 1001 Awesome Things To Draw.  A fantastic book.  Suddenly I’m a genius cartoonist (and so is Jay) just by following the rules.  Neither of us can naturally draw, but who can.  The untold secret is that many children and adults, learn to draw using the rules, without telling the rest of us, what the rules are.

It’s the same with Improv.  You may look at Who’s Line is it Anyway and Thank God You’re Here, and watch in wonderment at how those performers and comedians take on random situations and be so funny.  It’s rules based.  There are basic Improv rules, which if you follow with a few hours of practice, I’ll guarantee most people can get up there and perform very well.

 

And I’ve just bought a book on design and layout, How to Understand and Use Design and Layout. It’s rules based again, along with some artistic genius!  It’s taken me years to find a good book on Design and a good book on Cartooning, and now I can be an Artistic genius like the rest of you.  Now I just need to find those 10,000 hours!

Artist’s Way part V

So for the fifth time I’m going to do the Artist’s Way.  One of my favourite books, and great for getting your creativity flowing.  It means doing “Morning Pages” which means getting up early to write 3 pages of handwritten streaming consciousness, or whatever you can muster early in the morning.

12 Chapters, so that’s 3 written pages a day, 7 days a week for 12 weeks.  If you didn’t think you’re capable of writing a book, you have 252 pages handwritten if you do your morning pages every day.  That’s impressive.  Plus weekly homework and Artist exercises.  It’s mostly a lot of fun, and I highly recommend it, as do many people.

Daryl Cook is doing the Artist’s Way, so I’ve joined him.  Let’s see who cracks first.

10,000 Hours to become a genius

An interesting article by Malcolm Gladwell (Tipping Point and Blink) on talent and successful people, A Gift or Graft?

This idea - that excellence at a complex task requires a critical, minimum level of practice - surfaces again and again in studies of expertise. In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is a magic number for true expertise: 10,000 hours.

The article and Gladwell’s forthcoming book suggests that a minimum of 10,000 hours practise and the opportunity of being around in the right place at the right time in history will create giftedness, genius, and riches.

Bill Joy (Sun Systems), Bill Gates, The Beatles, all had the opportunity to practise for many years.  The source of their giftedness.

It’s a Nature v Nurture argument, and I would tend towards the Nurture.  It takes over 10 years practise at 3-4 hours a day to turn my kids into sports and academic stars!

Taxi Queues

Standing at Melbourne airport tonight, waiting for a taxi, set me wondering, like I’m sure many of you do, why they don’t redesign the road to let more taxis queue.

Given that Melbourne Airport doesn’t (can’t?) have trains or trams so there is limited public transport, you’d think they’d come up with a better bloody system for waiting for a taxi.  1 rank with 10 bays, and taxis queued up for 2 hours.  It’s all so serial, instead of parallel. Why not have three or four bays of 10 taxis each, that can all fill at the same time?  Maybe have each rank labelled for areas of Melbourne to go to, or a taxi sharing option.

It must be the same people who design new buildings with limited toilets for women, who are the same idiots that design airports with a rank for 10 taxis, a single road in, a single road out, 2 hours worth of taxis waiting, and 50 to 100 people queuing.  Does anywhere in the world have a better taxi rank system than Melbourne Airport?

The Spirit and Fun of Dance

I saw the most amazing thing today.

I was at my 6 year old daughter's dance concert in Melbourne City today, her group were on second, very cute.  But watching the other 12 groups come on stage, with varying ages up to mid teens, there was something missing.  They're not professional they're not perfect, but it wasn't that, I couldn't work out what it was, and then Something Happened!

This guy came on the side of the stage with a mic, and started talking to the audience about the next session, and then a group of people walked on stage varying from a very little kid, mostly children, teenagers, and a few adults, and they started to tap dance.  But with spirit, and fun, and freedom.  I can't explain the contrast but something special was happening in the way they were learning from each other, dancing with Grant Swift, dancing against Grant Swift, and dancing with us.

Where the previous groups were stiff and "on stage" these tap dancers had freedom.  I don't want to be too judgemental but it has the sprit of Improv, or what you see in most snowboarders, but few skiers.  A freedom of movement.

It was truly a miracle of community, and the word wasn't teaching, it was something else.  Maybe tap is easier than other dance, but most of the other dancers seemed confined, most of the tap dancer's weren't confined and you could see the joy and rhythm in their whole body.

And I am a dance expert because I watched almost all of So You Think You Can Dance 3 !