First week of practice teaching

My first week of practice teaching is done! One more to go. It's been quite fun. I love teaching. And I'm at the school, in the classroom, of the teacher who inspired me to take Montessori training in the first place, because of how amazing she was as a teacher. Her classroom management, the level of discipline she expects and instills, with love, is hard to believe. She's not tyrannical at all, but she has sky-high expectations for the students, and she doesn't compromise on anything. How she manages that... I want to learn. But she has the other skills to back it up: she's good at training other teachers and assistants, she knows how to structure classrooms and rules to create the atmosphere she wants, and she even teaches and instills positive values in the students, coaching them as complete humans, concerned not just for academics but all areas of their personality.

The most striking thing is how peaceful the classroom is. And how advanced the students are. Many (most?) are a grade level or two above where their age would indicate. They work with true, serious diligence. But they love it. They are curious, they love to be taught new things. Whatever school they go on to, they do well at. Many end up at the very top of their class, because the expectations they're held to here, the work ethic, is several steps above anything at other schools. But they have fun too. Last Friday was pajama day, and they got to read (which they love) and play games in the afternoon. Nobody is pushed beyond their limit, it's very carefully calculated, to be beyond their comfort zone, but within their capability. She keeps a careful eye and doesn't allow anyone to coast. But she also loves and respects them, and they know it. They are not afraid of her, they love to come to school. She often has a serious voice when they are doing something wrong, but she's never actually angry.

She runs a top notch elementary classroom, and she runs the school, and she never seems stressed out. The class functions well enough that she can get work done in the classroom. And the class is well behaved enough that she's not exhausted at the end of the day. If anything, that's the biggest miracle of all, since I've never taught anywhere or seen anywhere that felt like I wouldn't be exhausted at the end of the day. I'm not sure I would have believed it was possible, if I hadn't seen her class.

I recently picked up a magazine (a special edition of the harvard business review, on learning) that had an article about how to learn experts skills, and I'd like to apply that to her and her skills. I want to absorb them all like a sponge. Unfortunately, that's not what my assignment is about so I have to put that on the back burner, but it's been a fantasy of mine to have her as a mentor, since I met her. She's been willing to help me via telephone, but I've been so busy and exhausted with my job I haven't found much time to reach out, and there is something added to actually getting to be there, to observe and analyze first hand, that you can't get from a phone call.

In any case, I'm here now and it's great. It's much more fun than just observing, which is what I did last year.

OK, that's all for this week!

The Global Unity Gathering in brief

I have two posts to write (last week and this week)n and some other correspondence, so these may be more short posts.

I'm considering switching platforms to something where comments actually are functional. currently it seems they don't work.

A lot has happened. I went to something called a "Global Unity Gathering" and met Sai Maa, an enlightened master, and devotee of Sai Baba, someone I feel a lot of connection to and respect for. She was fascinating. A great sense of humor, very down to earth and practical, and yet also very esoteric. There was a tremendous transformative energy around her and all she did, as well as the familiar reality and probability warping magical field I've felt around other great saints and holy places and just in general around places and people of power. And there was something about her that was totally indescribable. More than indescribably, beyond understanding. Some.... something, that I couldn't pin down. I've read and heard that it's futile to try and understand enlightened people, when you're not enlightened yourself. Perhaps this was part of the mystery that was being talked about. She was very much a person, she had an extremely strong and specific personality. Perhaps more of a personality than most people have. Like she was painted with brighter colors. At the same time, there was something...colorless. Something beyond the human personality, like the pivot around which the wheel of creation turns.

It gave me a sense of relief. I'd always worried that enlightenment meant you were just a non-responsible bliss lump, without any personality or fun to be had. But this person was clearly having tons of fun, and their personality wasn't erased in the slightest. It was if anything more clearly expressed. And yet there was also very clearly that...something...that was not personality, was not moved. It was kind of like a paradox: how can you have a personality and also be enlightened, beyond personality. It doesn't make logical sense. But you can see someone living it, and that experience provides the answer, where pure logic and reason cannot.

Like ... I think it was Einstein?... saying 'a problem is never solved from the same level of thinking that created the problem.

And, it is clear from how she talks and behaves, that enlightenment is not some kind of boring end of everything. You can continue to learn things, grow, help people. It's very much a relief. I don't know why she happened to be the one who demonstrated these things for me, I think that has more to do with me than her. I've interacted with some other people who I think are enlightened, but she specifically had been given the thumbs up by Sai Baba, who I particularly trust, for a bunch of reasons that I won't get into in this post (or perhaps ever, on this blog...) In any case, it's a relief.

More than that though, it was an amazing experience. I am an adherent to the "proof of the pudding is in the tasting" philosophy. Test things and people out for yourself, rather than just taking other people's words for it. And I got to do that at this gathering, and my experience was remarkable. The energy and clarity and vitality I felt, a few days into the gathering, was top notch powerful and transformative, and one experience near the end, was one of those rare, heart opening, tears streaming down in gratitude and love spiritual experiences that always seem to be related to
God and devotion and growing tangibly closer to God. Or more accurately, becoming aware of God's closeness and love. I can count on one hand the number of times I've had experiences like that. I can describe them all in detail, because they are indelibly etched into my heart.

So, good times. Oh, and I met some wonderful people there. I shared a room with one guy who was a long-time devotee, and who had some fascinating stories to share. Some little miraculous syncronicitys occurred with him as well, but I'm out of time. You'll just have to ask be about them in person if you want to know ;D

The quiet voice within

OK, I'm on a role with small tasks that need doing. I've got one more big one that I'd like to do today, but I'm not sure it's actually going to happen.

I was recently hit again with the fact of my own mortality. Someone I love... actually, now that I think about it, two people I care about, have cancer that has a scary prognosis. I hugged one recently and they said, "treasure every day." Anyone can say that, but it hit especially hard, coming from them. We should all, always, be treasuring every day. There's not good reason not to. It doesn't cost you anything but awareness. But it is so easy to grow complacent while the sand in our hourglass slips away, never to return. Especially when we think we have a lot left. It can be a useful thought experiment to step into the viewpoint of someone who thinks they might not have much left.

What's really important to you? What is the good life, as Aristotle might have said. I have part of an answer, for myself. In spirituality I found an answer that satisfies me. God realization, Self realization, as the ultimate goal of human birth. I think, if I'm striving for that every day, I'm doing alright. But what does that mean? That's the part that so many people argue about. And that everyone has to find an answer for themselves, or else be ever uncomfortable, since other people's answers will end up chafing like clothes of the wrong size. What's good for one person may not be good for another. It's your own inner voice of truth that is the only truly satisfying one to listen to. Sometimes others will say things that remind you of what your own inner voice is quietly saying, but ultimately it's you who feels good about what you're doing or not.

I'm trying to live with truth, with love, and with a bit of play and laughter as well. I'm trying to do what is right, for my position in the world. Playing my part in the grand drama/comedy of life.

But it's easy to forget to even check in with yourself, about what your own quiet voice of rightness is saying to you. Sometimes, I even find it a little frightening, the thought of looking, maybe finding that the right action is something I don't want to do, because it's scary or uncomfortable or difficult. But ultimately, it has always been massively for my best and the best of all involved, as far as my limited ability to perceive is concerned, when I follow that inner voice to a tee. I've been trying to remember that, as of late, but it is so easy to forget, with all the distractions of the world constantly going on. With exhaustion, and the demands of work etc., to take that moment to stop, get quiet, and ask my inner voice of wisdom, "what should I be doing now?" (and then wait for an answer)

Oh, and sometimes there is no answer, it seems. Or put another way, the answer is, "you could do lots of different things, you choose what you want to do, and I'll let you know if that's ok." Rather than "here is the one pathway that is ok to take."
This is not a magical predictive voice of prognostication, it's just... you could probably simply call it your conscience. The feeling of what is right and wrong, devoid of outside ideas about right and wrong that other people have tried to put onto you.

When I ask my students, "is that a good thing to do?" they almost always know the answer, even though they may not be listening to it. If even little children have this faculty, one could assume adults do as well, though it may have gotten covered over with the over-thinking complexities of adult-hood. or atrophied through disuse. Sometimes we get good at lying to ourselves or justifying our actions, and we drown out that quiet voice, but it's still there, available if we choose to listen.

Live wisely, live well
With love,
Isaac

Becoming more job-datable. Prioritizing organization practice. Practicing gratitude.

My desk is now mostly clean. I've got spots for everything to go, so I can quickly put things away. Except all my papers. I have yet to figure out a good method for dealing with them. I just end up having a bunch of papers spread out over my desk, reminding me of various things, and I want all of them there, reminding me.

I guess the reason is simple, I don't yet have a todo list system that I trust I'll look at regularly, or that will show me everything important I need to do at a glance. This is a systems problem, not a physical problem. I still haven't refined my system for dealing with various kinds of work, todo's lists of info, etc. I'm sure I could, given time, but I don't have the time I used to, back in the day. When was the last time I had an abundance of time... I think the main one was back in New York, after my acting conservatory ended. I worked as a freelance writer, and was experimenting with life-coaching, and started doing my early morning routines. It was wonderful. Before the life coaching, I was researching, reading, and journaling, trying to figure out what I really wanted to do, as a life work.

I tried a lot of different methods. I worked through an array of exercises with the "what color is your parachute" book and a bunch of other books. I made lists of the things I loved to do, the things I was good at, and where they intersected doing something that the world needed/I could get paid for. I prayed, I looked at astrology, I took signature strength tests, I tried to access my intuition. Etc.

I've narrowed it down to a point where I'm not desperately searching, and I'm starting to focus more on the skills needed, the 'improving yourself' section. As I improve with those skills, I'll have more of what Cal Newport calls, I think it's "career capitol" that is, having unique and valuable skills, which you can cash in for more ideal jobs. More autonomy, mastery, connectedness, in your work. Going back to the dating thing, that equates to being a 'good catch' I guess. You've got options to choose from. And while you still need to choose an option that really matches you, and not just the job that looks best on paper (or person that looks best on paper), there is at least the option or possibility of that choice, once you have the career capitol (or datability?)

I waited a while, to start dating, until I was ready to put in the time and energy. In the same way, I'm not looking for a new job now. I'm working on building my skills. But one of those primary skills is how to do the job well and not burn out.

This makes me think of the "date a book" analogy from some reading curriculum I was shown. The idea for finding a book you liked, was to date a bunch of books. Have coffee with them, get to know them a bit, then decide which you want to go steady with and finish.

In any case, this go derailed from my original thought train which was simply: I don't know if I currently have the time to refine my work-stream process, unless I set it as top priority for a while.


Anyhoo: happy Thanksgiving! a wonderfully named and non-denominational holiday. What better theme for a holiday than gratitude! sitting down and listing 5 things you're grateful for and really feeling it, is one of the better ways of increasing happiness in your life. Even just doing it once a week has significant benefits to you're well-being and perceived happiness. Give it a try. You can do two things at once, by saying something you're grateful for, to the person you're grateful to. You feel good, and they get to feel good. That's a gift that doesn't cost anything this holiday season, but has a high likelihood of making someone a little happier.

I'm grateful for all the support, love, and laughter I've received from friends and family over the years. I'm grateful for the guidance and magic that the universe has provided. I'm grateful to have such wonderful friends and family in my life. I'm grateful to have food and shelter and safety in this uncertain world. I'm grateful for all the opportunities I have to serve others, and to continue to learn and grow.

Happy holidays, may the warmth of love from those closest to you surround and nurture you, as you do so for others.

-Isaac

A job that feels as good as my relationship?

Once again I have two blog posts worth of blogging to do. The weather is quite beautiful right now. I don't mind the cold so much, as long as there's sun. It's the cold and grey that really gets to me.

I keep trying to make Saturday mornings my work time, but I just can't get myself to work Saturday morning, after working so hard all week. I need to call up my montessori mentor and talk with her. I distinctly remember her saying, "if you're teaching montessori and your coming home exhausted every day, you're doing something wrong" which is both discouraging and hopeful. Discouraging because it means I'm doing something wrong, hopeful in that it's possible to teach and not be utterly exhausted at the end of the day.

I feel like this is my one big mid-term goal I'm working on. I've got my long-term goals: become a world class teacher and spark hearts alight. Enlightenment. (I aim high because why not?). But slightly more short short term is this issue of feeling overwhelmed with work, always behind. If my track record says anything, its that I can set a goal for myself, and if I keep working at it, eventually I'll achieve it.

These days, I often think about how wonderful my relationship is, and how that was something I was working on for a long time. What were the factors that made it finally click? I certainly worked on myself a lot, trying to become someone worthy of a really good relationship, but that wasn't enough. I eventually had to extend my work out to setting high expectations for what I wanted in another partner as well, and decide I wasn't going to settle for less than a great dynamic between us.

Perhaps that's the way it works with most things in life: whatever level we set our expectations at, we tend to settle at that level and no higher, because higher would require more time and energy, but often most of what is necessary is just saying 'no' a bit more until something comes along that is a strong enough yes. When you have a clear enough idea about what you want, it becomes easier to say no. Often we just say yes because we think that's the best we can hope to get, and it becomes a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.

I'm sure there are things that it is truly unreasonable to expect, but I feel like as long as what you want is kind and respectful to others, there's no harm in wanting the best. Perhaps part of the trick is making sure what you want is actually something that will make you happy. Often we want things that do not actually make us happier. Then even if we do get them, we end up disappointed.

But a relationship full of warmth, respect, friendship, and play is most certainly a genuine source of long-lasting happiness.

I think getting what you want is probably both: setting really high expectations and goals, and then knowing that you're going to have to work really diligently in order to make it happen. And then there does also seem to be an element of magic that can happen too. I think it's true, the universe, God, whatever you call it, helps those who help themselves.

In any case, I'm trying to figure out how to apply that now to job and profession. I like my job, but it's definitely more exhausting than I'd like, and sometimes more discouraging. But I imagine a job that fits as well and is as joyful as the relationship I now have, and think, well, if I could do it in the area of relationships, why not in the area of work? And I think how amazing life would be, if that were the case. I know it's possible, and I've set my sights on it. It may take a few years, but I have faith I will achieve it. It's hard to stop someone who is willing to keep experimenting and trying new things and never gives up. Eventually they're gonna get through.

OK, that's all for... last week. I Feel pretty talked out, so I suspect my second post may be a bit of a cop out 😄

Spacy Sunday

There is something that happens when you stay up really late -- I shouldn't put this on you, mysterious reader -- something that happens to me: I feel like I'm ten feet away from everything, watching. The word 'spacy' probably comes from this experience, because I feel like I'm floating in space, watching the world through my astronaut helmet. Then there's the stomach stuff. My digestion gets all weird, I feel just slightly nauseous and don't' want to eat, but then also worried that the spaciness is from not eating anything.

In any case, Friday night I did that and I'm still feeling a bit of it. There is kind of a lot going on in my life right now, on many levels, but I don't feel confident in my ability to skilfully describe it with proper discretion. I'd say there's too much going on. I only have so much awareness juice and time juice to put into things, and if there are too many things, each glass only gets a few drops. I think I've made this analogy before. Brain fog again. I think I need some time off, and I'm kind of going to get it, soon. come the holiday season, I'll be doing a lot of work, but it will be of a somewhat different nature. Practice teaching in an Elementary classroom. Rather than lead teaching a Primary classroom. And I'll also have some longer breaks. Hopefully I can get some of the built up work done then. It feels like I need the first day of the weekend just to decompress, and then Sunday has to be shared between the class I'm teaching, chores, and a little time for whatever project is on fire and due immediately. It feels cramped. I'm repeating myself a lot. Spaciness. I think I'm getting better at doing stuff? In general? But it's hard to tell, because if so it's happening slowly, and there are ups and downs along the way.

OK, I'm late enough for my next thing that I can stop doing this thing. Have a good week!
-I

Entirely unproductive. Grit, Naughty Cats, Warren Buffet.

There's an apocryphal story that--if I'm remembering correctly--has Warren Buffet giving his driver or pilot life advice. The pilot/driver wasn't sure what he wanted to do with his life, and Warren said write down a list of the top 25 goals/wishes he'd like to achieve, then pick out the top 5. Then, consciously ignore all the rest. The idea being if you try and do to many things you end up finishing none.

I did that a week ago in hopes of clarifying my goals and got a good start, but did that instead of writing a blog post, apparently, since I am once again writing last weeks post today (as well as today's post) ... But that might have been two weeks ago? Time blurs together. Someone asked me on Monday how Friday went, and all I could come up with was, "I don't remember. I guess fine?" When things reach a certain degree of overwhelm, there are less resources to reckon time with.

Someone earlier this week, who didn't know me that well, implied that they thought I should be able to find 3 hours in my weekend to catch up on an online course I'm taking, and I became a bit indignant. But looking back at my weekend, I guess the fact of the matter is I did have that time. That and time to spare. Saturday was spend in almost entirely unproductive activities. Part of this, perhaps the main part, was that Late late Friday night was spend it entirely unproductive activities (after I got back from games night with friends. Games night I consider highly productive in that it's deeply recharging, giving me play and deep chill time with some of my best friends.)

Me and my girlfriend are having some discipline issues with one of her cats, who has decided getting up on the counter and chowing down on whatever food is there is a great idea, despite frequently being squirted for doing so. But I suppose I can relate. Sometimes, because of patterns, because of the environment, because of who knows what, we find it almost irresistible to do things we know we shouldn't. I've read a lot of science (or, books that synthesize the science into layperson explanations) and it gives you sympathy for how addictive various things in our modern world can be, and how hard it can be to change those habits.

So you do them, and then get spritzed with a water bottle. Or feel bad the next day when you didn't get good sleep. On the plus side I did find a game that scratched my card-game itch. Hearthstone is kind of amazing. There are a million digital card games out there, but somehow Blizzard just does things better than anyone else. There's a certain amount of care that goes into their products. They are really thinking about the person who will be playing, and how to make the experience really fun for them. Whatever the medium, I always respect mastery or great skill. I aspire to have that some day.

There is a book by Cal Newport called, "So Good they Can't Ignore You" where he says beefing up your skills is much more important to job satisfaction than "Following your Passion." The title is taken from a Steve Martin quote, the idea being, just get so good they can't ignore you and you'll never be out of work. I think Martin had a passion for what he was doing as well, but the fact of the matter is there are lots of people with passion for something, but it's those that take the time, persistent effort, sweat and practice to become excellent, that get to do what they love for a living.

I think there is an element of matching job to person, where, if you want to master something, your going to be doing it a lot, so you'd better love practicing doing it for its own sake, or you'll never last. That's Angela Duckworth's book, "Grit" in a nutshell. "Grit" is passion and perseverance. Not the fireworks passion, but the steady burn, welding torch passion that you consciously hone through the ho-hum parts of the journey as well as the exciting bits. Hopefully making much of the ho-hum interesting in it's own right.

At the same time I don't think it's all blood and tears, I think the people who get really good at things, are practicing because they like practicing, even though it's hard and not flashy. That's really where you want to be, I theorize. Deliberate practice (the secret sauce to mastery) is not easy or fast, and so few people do it consistently. So if you can get yourself to be one of the people who does, you get your pick of jobs in your field. It's like the ultimate meta-skill for all skills.

Anyhoo, enough of this week-old post, time to write a quick new one.

Show up, do your thing, repeat = 90% of success

OK, on to my second post of today, this one actually for today. It boggles the mind, how many things there are to do. I keep circling around, revisiting all the time management theories and techniques I've been learning about, slowly integrating them more and more.

Some of them have to do with habits. What I mentioned in my previous post, about 'keeping up the streak' is something mentioned often in productivity books. the story goes that someone asked Jerry Seinfeld how he got so good, and he said he just got a calendar, and every day he wrote a joke, he drew a big red X on that day, with the intention of writing at least one joke every day. After a week, he had a whole line of red X's, and was feeling pretty good. After another week, it started becoming a bigger deal for him, he really enjoyed seeing all those X's in a row, and after a few months it had become like a religion. He got a lot of satisfaction from his unbroken streak, and it became inordinately important for him to keep it up. It was a small enough thing that it was possible to do it, no matter what else was on his plate, and it was fundamental to him becoming what he wanted: a great comedian. He didn't have to write a good joke, he just had to keep writing jokes.

There's another story in the same vein: an art professor, working with a scientist, tried two different approaches with his pottery students: with one group he said they'd be judged on just the two best pots that they made, from the whole semester. They were encouraged to work long and hard on just a few pieces, trying to perfect them. The other group, he said they'd get an A if they made 50 pounds of pots. When comparing the quality of the two groups, the 50 lb. group consistently scored better in quality. That is, thought they were just focused on churning out a lot of pots, they ended up making better pots overall. The lesson the books highlight from this study and others that do similar things, is that it's not important that you do something brilliant, it's more important that you do something every day. Just showing up consistently beats waiting for 'inspiration.' 'Inspiration' comes more often to those who are working their skills regularly, taking risks, experimenting, etc. They made more failures, but they made more successful pots, and they learned more about pot making, in the end. Same with Jerry. Most of the jokes he wrote got thrown out, but some got kept, and he mastered his craft, by practicing consistently.

There is much more to mastery than that. I don't think my once a week blog post is contributing much to my mastery of the form. For that I would need deliberate practice, where I am focusing on the elements of the skill that need improvement, and drilling them specifically, and it requires almost immediate feedback on my output, so I can correct and try again with that feedback.

In any case, I think the main point I was making is that the very slow incremental progress isn't discouraging. It's encouraging. It may be slow, but it's fairly steady, so eventually I will reach my goal, as I have with previous goals in the past. Though I do hope it happens more quickly than it has in the past or I'll be an old man before all my ducks are in a row. Thankfully, past experiences seem to indicate that in general I'm getting progressively faster at achieving my goals (though the size of them also seems to be scaling up.)

OK, that's unfortunately it for the week, I gotta go and get back to the rest of my list. My dear friends and family, I think of you with love and gratitude, especially at these times when I am also grateful for... I'm not sure what to call it, whatever grace has allowed me to become self-conscious and determined and focused enough to act with force and persistence and efficiency on my goals.

Love,
I

Keep up the streak

I'm two posts behind. I didn't do last week's and now I have this weeks due as well.

It's a beautiful fall day. Crisp but not too cold, blessedly sunny, beautiful brightly colored leaves falling in the wind. My room is finally, finally starting to look and feel not like a disaster. I'm only a few steps away from having a working inbox that gets checked regularly. I feel like I've been working in a deep hole for a while, and I've finally almost crawled my way out of it, onto neutral ground.

But that neutral ground is actually just a much larger hole that I can then start climbing out of. I suppose you could say that I'm getting close to the point where I can put out all the fires that are cropping up around me (and continue to crop up) and begin working on the longer time horizon issues that are just as important but don't demand immediate action. Like the pile of homework that's due next summer and refinements I'd like to make to my teaching process. I'm not there yet. And frankly there's probably a long way to go till I actually get there. But I can see the end goal in the distance at least. I can see that I've made progress, and that's encouraging. The main way I've made progress in my life is tiny steps, taken one after the other, that add up over a long period of time.

OK, I think that's enough for a short catch-up post. In good habit formation style, I set the bar for my weekly post extremely low, just one sentence counts, for my streak. I'm getting pretty flexible with the timing though...

In any case, I'm going to publish this and then immediately write another short one, for the sense of completion and satisfaction it gives me, to 'keep up my streak'.  ^_^

Saturday Morning, not watching cartoons

I'm a full week behind with my postings. I'm trying so hard to be really efficient and smart with my time, but there is so much important stuff that needs doing that switching into that mode ends up feeling like I have even less time. I hope, I think, If I keep at it eventually I will reach a place where the important stuff has mostly been handled, and I can take a bit more time for fun and rejuvenating things. But for now, the fun and rejuvenating things need to be just as much as necessary to be sustainable. Not more. (but not less either. Being exhausted is inefficient for intellectual tasks, so I try and avoid it if I have a choice in the matter.

I was recently reading about time management, and ran across a dialoge between Cal Newport and James Clear. Cal wrote "So good they can't ignore you" and "Deep Work" and James wrote "Atomic Habits" (Which is one of my favorite self-improvements books of all time. Not just the content, but particularly how he writes. If I ever write a book in that genera, I'll try and copy what he did that made the book so good to read.)

Among that and Al Druker ("the effective executive" and a huge number of business productivity books. He is like the grandfather of business productivity books) talking about doing the most important tasks first, I got to thinking about minimizing. Perhaps it's better, like Marie Kondo does, to focus on the most important things, and keep/do those, rather than focusing on all the things you want to get rid off, but whatever the case may be, it's becoming clear that because time is fairly inflexible, what you are managing when you manage your time, is priority and focus: what is it that you are choosing to do with your time. You can't make more of it. We are all equally rich/poor, in terms of hours allocated per day. Just about everything else is variable: energy, money, inherent qualities, circumstances. But time is somewhat egalitarian (minus lifespan considerations but those are somewhat unknown and unpredictable, when they vary significantly from the norm)

In any case, I'm doing my best to focus my allotted hours to useful, to the most useful, tasks that I could be doing. And I'm trying to be more mindful of what I'm doing, to avoid the trap of being productive with unimportant things. That requires additional focus though, because the trivial often is easy low-hanging fruit, something you can do quickly and feel accomplished about, and it's often hanging there, obvious, calling your attention to it.

A squirrel digs through a pile of mulch outside my window. My dear girlfriend is being a good aunt and taking her nephew to tiny music (I think that's what it's called?)

And I am starting in, a bit late, trying to re-establish my habit of getting important work done first thing Saturday mornings. Here we go.

Value over Time

I've updated my strategy a bit to be more in line with what I seems reasonable to me. I mainly just clarified for myself that I don't have to pretend I've already achieved my goal. I just have to have the goal and believe I can achieve it. (and if I don't believe it, I don't have to force myself to, I can just set a slightly more modest goal) This has scientific backing as an effective strategy set, whereas imagining you've already achieved the goal does not. In addition, I may try using mental contrasting and implementation intentions in a system with the acronym "WOOP" along with my own homebrew addition. Gabriele Oettingen is the one who came up with WOOP, along with her husband, who was responsible for the implementation intentions research. So, that's the current modification, we'll see how that experiment works. Hopefully I'll get a lot accomplished but not get sick from overwork.

I've already started and it seems moderately effective. Which is more than enough, if it is sustainable. The problem with most methods of change is they start strong but don't have maintaining power. Like a determination to lose weight or gain muscle that goes for a few weeks and then dies off. I'd rather go slow but continue on forever, than go strong and stop shortly after. I suppose the best would be both, but I'll start from the sustainable base, and build up intensity as that becomes habit.

As I'm researching and experimenting with time-management, I'm noticing that a lot of it is not exactly time management. Getting more granular about it, much has to do with priority management: what am I choosing to do? One of the biggest problems is not that I'm not getting things done, it's that I'm getting less important things done. There's a quote that's bouncing around in my brain from Peter Drucker, something along the lines of, "I've seen a great many people who are magnificent at getting the unimportant things done. They have an impressive record of achievement on trivial matters."

There is always a whirlwind of little things that need to get done, and there probably will continue to be, what you need, if you want to get important things done, is give those important things first priority, and then let the little niggling things fill up the extra spaces. There's some other advice I'm chewing on as well, but speaking of time management, that's all I have time for now.

I went to a wedding with my girlfriend, and the travel had a lot of issues, but we still had fun, so it looks like we travel well. Fall has come all at once. It's cold now. There is still so much to learn about teaching. And I need to get my practice teaching dates figured out ASAP.

Good bye, have a good week, and I hope you find some time for what is most important to you.
-Isaac

Quick-y

Well, I don't think last week went especially well. I got a lot done... at first, then several people asked me if I was ok, without me saying anything, so I guess I must have started looking haggard. Then I got sick. :C

I was never fond of the "I'm great and everything is perfect" affirmations when you didn't feel that way and you were essentially lying to yourself, or at least that's what it felt like. But it's much easier to think of it in terms of "this is where I'm going and I'm determined to get their" and keep that vision in mind as my inspiring goal. Feels a bit more grounded to me. I was never one for denying the reality in front of me. Though in the past I was never one for hope either, but that changed, and it was a change for the better. Hope is really useful for getting things done.

In any case, good night. just a short one because I've got things to do. Love to you, my friends and family <3
-I

Thought experiment

I posted a longer version of this on my more spiritual-pondering style blog, but I'll just give a quick recap here: I got to ask a spiritual luminary a question about what to do with feeling totally overwhelmed, not enough time or energy for everything. I will try to re-listen to the answer, since it was recorded with a bunch of other people's questions, but the points that stand out clearly are: stay in alignment (meaning, connected to source, spirit, whatever you want to call it. And being directed by That) and two, stop thinking the thoughts, "I'm too busy, I don't have enough time/energy" etc. because that creates that reality for me.

I also went into depth in my other post how something near to that kind of advice, one of the popular interpretations of "positive thinking" really irks me and strikes me as counterproductive lying to yourself, but I don't think that's what she meant. I think she was referring to the real thing, the fact that our perspectives are not absolute, and the meanings we give to things are kind of arbitrary, but very self-fulfilling. If you are able to "not take yourself too seriously" about your beliefs, it becomes quite doable, to simply drop the beliefs that are not serving you and replace them with ones that do. Henry Ford said it in a catchy way, (misquoting him) "whether you think you can, or you think you can't, your right."

She wasn't even saying to replace them, looking at my notes. Just to drop the ones that aren't serving me.

In any case, I asked and I got an answer, so now it's my job to give the advice a good solid try. This will be the starting date, and I'll be tracking things from here to see how it goes. So far, the morning has been very productive after the call, so a promising start, I guess. I'd like to keep you posted, for my own records, as well as your entertainment.

Two summers from now: my first break

And now for my on time post. My girlfriend got sick but I seem to be safe. I've been taking preventative medicine, and going to bed early, and on the weekend, sleeping in. I am tired. I'm feeling a bit better today. I had a class that's part of an ongoing series yesterday, that would have taken up my whole afternoon from noon to 5 pm, but I started it, and just couldn't bring myself to finish it then. I needed a nap, which turned into watching some anime. I felt a little bad about it, but I also felt like I should be allowed at least a few hours of relaxation and recuperation time. The class was emotionally and mentally demanding, and I need a break, not further exhaustion. But now it's just one more thing I'm behind on. And there are so many of those now.

I'm trying to transcribe the recorded conversation I had with a teaching mentor. I had recorded it on a livescribe pen, which is a device created by the devil to inflict psychological agony. I have never come across a more infuriating and non-functional software interface for something. Perhaps I've come across something equally janky, but it was so long agony I don't remember it. I do not recommend them. I just need to get this recording transcribed so I can delete it and give it away to someone I don't like. (joking. except for the getting rid of it part.)

I haven't had lunch yet, it's 2:41. I should do that.
This would be really stressful, but my relationship is great and that provides a kind of psychological cushion. I have someone I can come back to and be held by, when I'm feeling overwhelmed. Just in general, it makes me happier, more energetic, more disciplined. Which is good, because I need it, with all that I'm doing.

It's kind of frustrating, how easily and quickly my desk gets over-run with stuff. I really want a system that keeps it generally clean, but I don't quite have it there yet, just like I don't quite have the rest of my stuff organized enough to put everything away easily, there keeps being all these things that just don't quite fit, that I don't immediately know what to do with, and so I have to sit down and ponderously decide where each things goes, rather than being able to mindlessly sort them quickly.

I could work on it and get better at it, but that itself takes time, which is precious and keeps being taken by fires that need to be put out immediately.

There is satisfaction in my job. Second year teaching is definitely less stressful than first year teaching, I feel like I have some ability to understand what is going on, what the kids and class need, and to adjust things to make it happen. But I don't yet have the systems in place to make it happen efficiently. I'm having to create all those systems, experimenting, learning, adjusting.

The weather is beautiful. There are wonderful friends around. I look forward, not to next summer, which will be just as busy as the previous two, but two summers from now, which will be the first time I can actually breath and get well and truly caught up on things. It feels kind of far away right now...

Week Late Post

I'm real real behind on my posts. I basically missed last weeks post. I'm very busy. things are going well, I suppose, but there is so, so much I want to do, and I have time for almost none of it. I think I said that last time, it's still true. I tried to get myself to do stuff Saturday, but I just couldn't. I needed a break. I work early in the morning, through the day till 4, and then keep working a bit into the evening. I just need a day to take a break from all that. Sundays I'm back at it, I'm teaching a class in the evenings and I try to clean up and keep things from becoming a mess in my room and with all my papers. etc. laundry, that kind of thing. It's to much, but even too much is not enough. I'm making forward progress, but it's slow. It's like walking against a blizzard, where the wind is blowing so hard you're almost at a 45 degree angle, leaning into it, just so you aren't blown over backwards. There is new stuff added every day, that is the wind blowing against me constantly, and the steps forwards are the longer-term positive things that I'm doing.

I understand why my teaching mentor said to stay with an age for three years before deciding to stay or switch. I can see it taking a full three years before things are automated enough that I have some idea what it would be like to do, long-term. But I've already pretty thoroughly committed to my age range. I have both a masters and will soon have an AMI certification for elementary students. It seems silly to not end up with that age range. like buying a nice car and then leaving it in the garage.

For my own completionist sake, I'm going to end this post and then write another one, so I technically continue to have one per week.

trying hard to get back to zero. work, not enough work, and more work.

OK, almost back on track.

I spent... how long have I been doing this... well, I was doing normal upkeep, cleaning, laundry, from maybe 2 to 4, and then going through my over-stuffed inbox until now, 8:30. This doesn't mean I did everything in my inbox. No no no, that is an entirely different step. I'm just trying to process it, for now. things that need to get filed, get filed, things that need to get done, get put in a location where I can look through them, either entered onto my computer todo list program, or in a bin with a sticky-note that tells me what needs to be done with them.

I am sad. I had this beautiful three day weekend, and I spent most of it just doing fun, playful things. I perhaps needed that, but I really wanted to get a whole lot done instead. I got... some stuff done. I'm still getting some stuff done. But not nearly as much as I would have liked.

I suppose I must be gentle on myself. But I'm not really being hard on myself about it. I just feel a bit anxious. like I'm not well prepared. That is maybe sadly inevitable though. I think I have a fair idea of how much time it would take me to feel well prepared, or at least reasonably prepared, for life to go on, and I'd put it at about two weeks of hard work. Maybe two and a half. If I was really pushing it, I could maybe get it all done in one and a half.

I need to be more of a machine in how I get stuff done. I'm trying to facilitate that by what I'm doing right now, organizing and setting up next actions with all of my todo's, so when I actually have some time to do it, I don't need to waste it trying to remember what I have to do or decide what the next step is.

I must say, as I get close to an empty inbox, it feels reaaaaly nice. papers filed, room cleaned, next actions clearly delineated. It makes for a clearer mind. Simpler. Over the summer, I had a tremendous amount of work, but I was able to do it pretty efficiently, because it was all very easy to put into todo lists and just go through them, checking them off as I went. I saw how long things were taking, I saw how much time I needed to finish them, and that itself created more motivation to keep working. I'd like to create that for myself, in a non-artificial way. School kind of does that for you, which is nice for getting an exceptional amount of work done, but in real life, you have to make your own assignments and rubrics, most of the time. One of those useful meta-skills we never bother to teach, for some reason.

OK, I'm... not sure if I'm going back to work or straight to bed so I can get up super early and get some more work done then. In any case, time to stop talking/writing.

to my dear friends and family, I love you deeply. to people who I don't know who have somehow found this, um hi. Have a nice week. and any other category of friend, may you have an excellent week. ^_^

-I

Busy, Finding time to save time. The first day of school.

Again I am incredibly behind on my blog post and as usual it's because things are crazy busy. It's a different kind of busy than that of my summer. The summer was a soul-crushing amount of work, but it was very orderly. I had a clear list of assignments, I could input it into my todo list software in a matter of maybe 15 minutes, and I was good for the week. It was an incredible amount of work that kept me busy night and day seven days a week, but eventually I got the hang of how to do it more efficiently, and though it was still night and day 7 days a week, I at least was able to go out to lunch on the weekends and take a walk every now and then, and I didn't feel like I was being ground down into a paste by the weight of things.

This busy is different. My desk is covered in layers of things I have to do. Like a sedimentary rock, with the oldest stuff on the bottom, and new stuff continuing to pile up faster than I can take care of it.

And it is such a diffuse cloud of things. I keep trying to write them down, but they are in very diverse categories. Most but not all of them are school related, but they vary from researching songs to planning lessons to practicing lessons to buying roles of felt and neutral cloth from walmart and making lesson tracking sheets. And then there are other things as well, the usual din of life.

The first day of school with students was yesterday, and it went well for a first day, I think. Perhaps even very well? but I'm still leary of how things are going to continue to go, forwards from here. My list just gets added to, as I see students interacting and think of more things that should be done. I'd love to have a few hours just to sit down and writing it all out into my todo list and then sort it and date it if need be so it's easy to review and find. But I'm deep into firefighting mode, in that there are immediate things that need to get done right now. And so I don't have time for the longer-term planning. This always frustrates me, because what this means is something to the effect of:

I could do things three times faster, if I just had the time to stop and plan. But I don't, because I have so many things to do, that I need to do right now. so it takes three times as long, so I don't have any time to stop and plan. And the cycle thus self-perpetuates. I need better routiens, better habits, and that would make me more efficient, but again, finding the time to install those habits is hard, when I'm all in a tizzy. And by the end of the day I am totally exhausted. I'm no good for the higher order planning that is needed.

On the plus side, I think the anxiety is waking me up really early, so perhaps I can start chipping away and planning at 5 am, which may be the only time I have that I can do this. My girfriend will be gone for a week, so I can just go to bed at 8 or something and get up at 4. We'll see if I actually stick to that plan once it's the weekend... But I sure hope so. Maybe I'll post a big sticky-note reminding me, front and center on the wall in front of my desk.

OK, that's certainly all I have time for, gotta get back to all the other stuff I've got to do. I think I started working around... 5:20 this morning? and it's 6:40 now. Perhaps I'll go for my morning 15 minute run soon. I had to spend a good 10 minutes folding clothes just so I could sit down at my dest. And kept getting distracted by other stuff that needed doing. That's one of the problems of this lack of order and system, continual distractions by other stuff that needs doing. I've set the goal though, of order and more spaciousness with my time, and I have faith I'll be able to achieve it, like I did over the summer. (thought that wasn't a lot of spaciousness, time-wise, but it was enough for comfort, at least.)

Until next time, take care and don't forget to enjoy life, even if it's crazy most of the time.

-I Out

cockroach poo, decision fatigue, NASA mandatory napping policy

So tired. Setting up classroom. Decision fatigue. Cleaning super duper gross, cockroach poop under sink areas. Disgust/horror fatigue. moving stuff all day on my feet: physical fatigue. Just want to rest. But I have too much to do, so instead, I'm switching to other activities that I need/want to do, that are different. Like catching up on my blog.

I'm doing so much. I'm doing way more than last year, it feels like. That seems obvious, because I am capable of more, I can predict more. One would expect that. Still, it feels like a lot. However, there's a part of me that feels more comfortable than last year. I've been gaining lots of skill and knowledge, in specific, but I feel like I've also been gaining skill in general, at being able to handle larger workloads. Still very much in process of learning, but I definitely feel like I'm making progress. Getting more efficient, and more willing to take action and take risks.

I think that's all I'm going to write for this week. This is already almost a week late, like the last one. My brain is almost blurry. No, it is full on blurry. My body doesn't want to move. I need to take it easy. maybe I will take a short nap. cat naps when you're really tired are one of the best things ever, for me. Just short ones, no more than thirty minutes. I wake up, and it's like I've had a good nights rest. If you go over thirty minutes, you start getting some sleep hangover, that grogginess that takes a while to shake off, so I usually play it safe and set the alarm for a few minutes before the half hour mark. I think I heard about this study and experiment via a story of a NASA person who had his team take strategic 27 minute naps at certain points during the day/

also, in the science literature about mastery, the people who perform at the top of their fields, sleep around an extra hour, mostly as naps. it helps recover after the intense focus required for deliberate practice, and sleep can actually help you consolidate learning.

OK, goodbye for the week. next week on Wednesday, school starts for real. I feel like I could do with another week and a half just to prep, both physical classroom and planning. Why is there never enough time? I feel like that shouldn't be so inescapable. It's not a law of physics. There must be some way to do things so that it feels like you do have sufficient time.

Until next time, take care and keep napping ;-)
-IO

Moving on up, moving on in. PD with a PhD: Wee!

I'm waaay past my due date for this. I need to post something or it will be next week already.

Why am I so delayed? well, I've gotten back home, and I'm moving in with my girlfriend. 🎊

Moving, organizing, is exhausting work, and if it's not done then everything else takes three times as long, because you go to use something and you have to spend several minutes searching for every little thing. It's also draining, because everywhere you look there is something wrong, something calling out for your attention to fix, so it becomes exhausting to try and concentrate, continually ignoring these little calls to action. And finally, it's just exhausting, being in a space that's messy. Then there's decision fatigue: what do I bring over, what do I leave? where do I put it? etc. etc. And it can be frustrating as well, just wanting to be done with it so I can get on to all the HUGE amount of other work that needs doing, but to do that in a horribly messy space is like trying to work while a kid is continually trying to distract you the best they can. To just ignore that takes a tremendous amount of effort, like a scratch that you are continually fighting not to itch.

I'm making progress. I just have to remember my KonMari training, putting everything of the same category together, that lets me not have to expend so much brain power, and I'd already done that to a large degree.

Then, school starts up with professional development on Monday. there's something almost a little perverse about PD for teachers most of the time. When I would like nothing more than every available second to be doing all the things I know would be most effective to be preparing myself for class, I'm instead subjected to a training I had no say in choosing, for a full day, and in terms of usefulness, almost none of the trainings I've had at any of the schools I've been at have actually translated to improved performance, even if they are eminently practical, (which is also not all the time) because for something to be actually adopted requires systematic follow-through, feedback, and support throughout an extended period of time. It seems almost funny, how so much teacher training seems to ignore basic pedagogy. I don't mean to slight the presenters, often they are very knowledgeable people, with useful things to share, but one day of it is like reading a book on cooking and thinking that makes you a great chef. It's not true, no matter how good the book is, if you don't practice, the knowledge stays in the book.

I've generally enjoyed professional development. the presenters are interesting, fun, insightful. but have I become a better teacher because of them? unlikely, or if so, to a very small degree, just because of this lack of follow-through. Teachers are really busy, you can't expect them to carve out the time and energy for follow through on these things, unless you help them, give them specific chunks of time where they don't have to work on other things, and some additional coaching, if they are learning a new skill. otherwise it's just... kinda PR, I think. "we're developing our teachers" we get to say, but in terms of measurable outcomes... I'm skeptical.

I talked with one teacher who had just one experience with professional development that she said was really useful. It was a regular meeting, I don't recall how often, once every couple weeks, maybe once a month. the teachers got together with a PhD in teaching methodology, he gave about a 15 minute presentation on something, and then asked what issues the teachers were having, and did trouble shooting with them, or if there were no issues, asked about things they wanted to implement and helped theme design an implementation plan or just helped them design it. It's so simple it almost makes me cry. He was giving small bite sized useful bits of info, at regular intervals, mostly tailored to what the problems the teachers were dealing with, with the ability to follow up with them on how the implementation was going and thus help them trouble-shoot it.

we kind of do something like that among my colleagues, just as a regular part of our week, not as a special PD thing. which makes me proud of my workmates and structure, but we're not paying someone for that, we're just doing it.

Not to mention I've spend almost the entire summer working like a dog at PhD levels of intensity, taking a teacher training. (That I'm paying for out of pocket) That's about two months of PD, I'm good for now 😅

OK, time to go-go. It's already time for a second post, for this weekend now. Oy!

anger, peace, change

wrote a super long ranty post that I could never post.
I'm angry about how long it took me to put together my album today
I'm angry about something else that's probably not appropriate to talk about on a public forum because I'm trying not to talk poorly about anyone. (if you know me well enough to know about this blog, it's almost certainly not about you. this wasn't someone I knew.)

I'm a little worried about my anger. It leads to the dark side, yoda says.
In any case, it's kind of unusual for me, and I don't like it. It's not helpful. Anger can let you know when your boundaries are being crossed, but it can also be destructive. When you unleash it onto the world, you're the one who ends up getting it back, many times over. Maybe not in the form of people yelling at you, but certainly it causes negative effects.

I think a large part of it is I'm trying so hard to do... kinda everything. A lot. And there are only so many hours in the day. So when something gets in the way, it's really frustrating. Like being late for a meeting, while a loooong line of ducklings are slowly crossing the road.

when things are in the way, it makes you want to bash them out of the way. But when it's people, if you try and bash them out of the way, they bash back. Verbal hits, in this day and age, more than physical.

In any case, ultimately most of my anger is about trying to change and control the world, being not ok with what is, and trying to fight it. The solution is trust and acceptance. One of my favorit personal growth teachers had a phrase she would repeat to herself often: "surrender, trust, accept" (not sure if it was in that order, or if order mattered). If you can do that, anger cannot control you. And from that peaceful base, change can happen much more deeply and profoundly. Think Martin Luther King or Gandhi.

So, perhaps that is my test these days: intense dedicated activity, without the clenching attachment that leads to frustration and anger.

a super long post/rant about training teachers

I suppose I should post something, anything, since it's already getting late into the week. I don't have the time or energy to do something long or involved. It's interesting why. I actually have more time now than in the past, in terms of school, since I have the day off, after test day yesterday. But I don't really have the day off, I'm about to get lunch and head back over because I might be behind on practice hours.

In any case, I took the little bit of time I had to study intensively on a non-school homework topic that I've been really interested in for a while. Perhaps some would find it strange that after a long bout of intense intellectual work I'd take a break by doing some more intense intellectual work, but I have penchant and love of research, especially research that can be practically applied.

I have a lead on something that might be very helpful for people who want to change when change is hard. And in researching that and how to be effectively trained in that, I ran across some information that triggered a deeper and longer lasting obsession, that started somewhere around the time I started taking classes to be a teacher.

This obsession, which seems rational to me, has to do with teacher training. It blows my mind that there has not been systematic research into what methods of teacher training are most effective. It just seems insane. Or perhaps there is good research out there, but it's just remained in obscurity. My guess is there are small pockets of good research but they probably need more funding to be conclusive.

I suppose it's also possible that it's difficult and hotly debated, what constitutes the good student outcomes that would have to be measured.

In any case, it kind of enrages me, that there are so many institutions training teachers, which I see as one of the most important jobs, and they are doing it based on... I don't know what. unscientific theories, philosophies, feelings. I think we have pretty robust research on what leads to learning, though unfortunately a lot of that focuses on the stuff that's easy to measure, like test scores, and not on some things that may be more important, like social, moral, and deep learning outcomes.

But I don't think it would be too difficult to test really, I think it's possible, and I think the results would be damming. In fact, I think that's why I got into a huff in the first place, was looking for research on what was good training, and finding basically that research shows most of the methods used for training teachers have little to no impact on teacher effectiveness. They are nice theory, nice curriculum. Nice ideas, that if applied correctly, would yield good teaching. But the fact seems to be that telling people, even in detail, what good teaching is, does not yield good teachers.

From my informal and super brief review of the science of obtaining mastering or at least high proficiency in a skill, what is needed is repeated practice, with clear, measurable feedback, and mentoring by experts who can observe the trainee practicing the skill and give directed advice. There are other things that seem to help as well, practicing the various teaching and managing skills in structured peer groups with review and feedback, but the basic idea is the same.

And in just about any training program you can think of, the amount of that you get is tiny. Even my graduate program, which had a lot of time practicing, had very little of that time monitored in a way that I could get immediate or prompt feedback either from a mentor or form some kind of rubric that I could be scored on objectively, while teaching. My overworked, lovely professors only had time for that occasionally.

I could have tried to do a self assessment rubric myself, but I had no time. I was learning theory stuff and writing papers and losing sleep over how stressful student teaching was.

I think if you would look at Finland, or some country like that, you still wouldn't find an answer, you'd just find that it was a highly respected profession, so they had pick of the litter for teachers and so they could get people who already just happened to have the skills and drive necessary to be good.

That's not fair. If you have the desire to teach, you should have the chance to be trained in a way that gives you the skills for effectiveness, in teaching and in creating an environment that doesn't cause premature greying. It's not magic, it's technique and skills and knowledge.

Innate predisposition may get you the gold medal in the Olympics, but good training will get 99% of the population to competition level in their local town or state.

well, I was going to write something short and that did not happen. I'm very... um. "passionate" about this subject.

I really hope someone else does the obvious thing of observing, analyzing, and breaking down all the skills of the most effective teachers and then goes about designing a program that trains people in those skills in a way that is tested scientifically for effectiveness. You know, just following up with the graduates of the program, and determining that there is a large impact on teacher performance, and student performance, because of the training.

Because if someone else doesn't do it, then maybe I'll have to, and it sounds like way too much work, and I'm certainly not the best person for the job.

I'm looking at Gottman's work as a template: he very carefully observed and coded the interactions between couples, determined the "masters and disasters" in relationships, and determined the key factors of each group. They he went about trying to teach people how to avoid the behavior of the disasters and learn that of the masters. And he measured the results of his attempts: at first he was not very effective, but with help and experimentation, he got to a place where he was quite effective.

By the end, he could tell with about 90% accuracy, from something like a 15 minute conversation between the couple, if they would divorce, stay together, or grow emotionally distant but not quite divorce. And he had a short seminar that had some of the highest rates of marital relation improvement and maintenance of improvement over time, of any program out there. Perhaps the highest? I don't know, but it seems likely it was the highest and longest lasting for such a short intervention/training.

On of the things he discovered in his research was that a significant portion of the common knowledge about the field (of relationship advice) was wrong. Just simply wrong, but nobody had taken the time to research stringently the advice they were peddling. I think there's a similar issue with educational systems. especially in the gap between research results and actual implementation.

Well, I've gone on way too long now.

Normal disclaimers apply to the above stuff: I'm just an armchair philosopher, actually putting it into practice is way more challenging. There are a lot of wonderful people who also care deeply about this, doing huge amounts of work and pouring their heart into training new teachers. And I'm sure some of them are doing a great job, though it's impossible to know who, because we're not following graduates of teacher programs around and measuring their increase in effectiveness.

But I do know there are a lot of very wise and kind expert teachers, who are training new teachers, since those are the kind that I looked for. I know they've got good advice too. I just don't know how much of it will actually translate into me moving towards mastery in teaching. That has to do with deliberate practice, measurement, feedback, in a loop, ideally according to a plan that has been honed over time based on objectively observed outcomes that account for other variables skewing the results. That we don't have, as far as I know, and I think the world would be a better place if we did. Maybe it exists as individual consultants?

anyhoo, goodbye! this conversation can't end in my head because I don't have an answer, but it has to end on paper so I can go about the rest of my crazy day, week, and year.

the end

Ramana Maharishi, Quote, Awarness-fluid.

"If everything is important, than nothing is important."
-me


this is an Isaac-ism that I've had for a while. It refers to the fact that if you have, say, 10 habits that you want to establish, you won't have the energy or time to establish even one of them, whereas if there is just one your working on, you've got a good chance of eventually getting it set.

If you have a room cluttered with objects, the important one's get lost in the mass, and you don't notice them, and so they don't get utilized enough.

If you're trying to practice twenty self-improvement techniques, then you end up learning none of them. Etc. It applies in a lot of different fields. If you give your employees a huge mound of tasks to do, saying they are all top priority, then none of them get done as top priority. I've heard the term, "addition by subtraction" and it's a bit similar. It's like you get one cup of attention fluid (I think of it as clear, but a bit more clingy than water, like quicksilver, maybe a bit syrupy, and slightly iridescent, like soap bubbles) and if you're trying to do a million things, each of them is a cup that just gets a tiny bit of the attention liquid. And... I don't know, I'm stretching this analogy, but maybe it's more like a bunch of plants, and they need attention-water to grow, and if each plant gets a few drops, they all die or at least wither. You need to choose a few important ones, and make sure they get enough. then if there's any left over, you can decide where it goes.

Anyhoo, that's what I was thinking about today.

Also mulling around the idea of making writing/creating a more regular habit (which would mean, a shorter habit.) but this concept is giving me pause, before I add yet another habit to nurture. Right now I'm quite busy with my getting lots of school work done habit, and one more spiritual habit, that would require a post of it's own. I'll give the sneak peak by referring to a great Indian saint named Ramana Maharishi, and one of the things he gave most importance to, which was the question, "Who am I?" for me, that takes me to really powerful place, not even intellectually, but a direct experience, and so I find it extremely potent. That's my one thing, spiritually speaking, right now (that I'm adding. I have a few things already established as a habit, that get to run on auto-pilot.)

OK, I think I'm done for today? Oh, I'll try and give a few bullet points of general life stuff:
- practice written and spoken exams coming up along with the submission of my first album (subjects are broken up into three ring binders and submitted once we get all the presentations)
- so I'm working on preparing for that
- I realized that one of the must useful things I've been doing to help motivate myself to get things done on time or early, is making a checklist of all my assignments. It feels really good, getting to check them each off, and I can record how long they take, to continue to hone my methods
- the method I've tried out, has been super effective. Along with setting aside some hour+ chunks of time each day to get some work done over the week, it's resulted in a much more manageable workload over the weekend. Which is good, since I've got a bunch of extra things to do now, like organizing and printing out my album (and doing some hand numbering of the pages, unfortunately)
- relationship with my girlfriend just continues to grow and deepen. It's hard to think about it as a new relationship, as we've sunk to such a deep level of comfort and intimacy so quickly. It is a shining star in my life and gives me the emotional support to keep plugging away relentlessly at the homework

OK! Done for the week, unless I start doing more frequent, super short things. (seems unlikely, so dont' get your hopes up.

awareness fluid ;-)

Death the greatest teacher. daydreaming for maximum performance. our robot overlords.

I am bowled over with gratitude. It is the end of the weekend, and I am actually almost done with my homework. It only took all weekend, and I had time to run other errands, I even had time to leave my room. My brain doesn't feel like melted plastic.

How did all this happen?

I gave myself time to do nothing.

I will explain. I didn't exactly have time to just day-dream, but even those of us who are most busy, still need to go to lunch for at least a few minutes, travel from point A to point B, etc. And during that time, most of us are absolutely terrified of having nothing to do. It didn't used to be this way. There has been the option to disappear into a good book while you ate for a long time, but never have such intense levels of distraction/entertainment been available, as now, with the advent of the smart phone. People can't just sit down and focus on eating their food and ponder over their life. Or, well, they can. But they don't.

It's like a monster in the closet, people are afraid, maybe even a bit terrified, of just being with themselves, without something to distract them. But like the monster in the closet, if you actually do just sit down with nothing strongly pulling your attention, you find that you don't curl up into a dehydrated husk and start smoking. You're ok. The fear is more in the approaching the thing, not the experiencing of what's actually there. again, like the monster in the closet.

"Ok, here we go again with the technology bashing" you might be thinking. And your right! technology has emotionally and intellectually crippled and isolated us and cut us off from the juice of life. But it's also offered us the possibility of a greater quality of living, objectively speaking, than we have ever had in recorded history, as well as the potential for an incredible level of knowledge sharing and communication and organization, and economic and educational  equality.

Of course, how much we make use of that is dependant on squishy, human factors, and so very little of the potential for good is being utilized. Mostly we use technology for surfing porn (about 30% of total Internet data transferred.) or non-pornographic distracting/entertaining videos (maybe 50ish percent is stuff like YouTube and netflix)

though I suppose those info graphics are measuring data, not time. Perhaps there is a lot of erudite reading going on to, and it just takes less bandwidth.

anyhoo. Human nature. Great potential, often unrealized.


the point I wanted to make, with a specific illustration from my own life, was the Archimedes, eureka type moments that come from those precious opportunities we have, to take a break from our intensive work, and let our mind relax and drift. these are often the moments when we have breakthroughs, make new and novel connections, solve problems we've been banging our head against.

If we flip on our phone the second we're free of work, we deprive ourselves of the breathing room to do that. to day-dream, invent, and also to take a step back to look at the overall direction of our life, and make the big, life-steering decisions that can lead to much more satisfying lives.

While I was doing that over lunch, not listening to an audio book, just trying to remember to chew enough times before swallowing, and letting my mind drift, I had a eureka moment with my homework: as I've mentioned just about every week, the shear volume is a bit soul crushing, or at least body and brain crushing. I've been continually measuring, reflecting on my process, and trying to streamline and improve things in various ways, repeatedly prototyping new protocols and testing to see if I can somehow reduce how much of my life it takes and how painful it is.

I've made steady progress on that front, but there was really no way to condense the actual actions down very much. I could do the bare minimum, but I had to balance that with not shooting myself in the foot for exams, because this material is supposed to make that much easier, and it should, if done well.

I know there are some (many?) students who basically sit in class all day, and work on their homework. I've been alittle tempted, but I tried it once, and it was impossible for me to task switch fast enough to capture the notes and stuff that the teacher was doing, with any depth of understanding, and lots of stuff was missing altogether from my notes and consciousness. Granted, some of what I missed were just aside the teachers made, but those aside are half of why I'm there, if I just wanted the facts I could have gotten them from teachers who weren't as good. I want to soak up all the wisdom they have to offer, and I don't have time to marinate in it now, so I just have to capture it for later review.

but I had a brainstorm about the things I could be doing while the lecture was going on, without missing anything extra. at least while the specific presentations were being given, it little extra work, to just record down what was being said, in abbreviated form, and that's basically what the presentation summaries and chapter summaries are. I realize I could probably do that, do a passable job, and not be zoning out on the lectures. I needed to switch back and forth between a few tabs to try and capture asides they made, and I've missed a few, but I've gotten most of the extra notes, especially since they tend to come before and between the actual demonstrations.

I've also started spending some of the break-time in between class segments, filling in a few more details, summary type things that are easiest to do when the info is still fresh in my mind, that would take twice as long to do at the end of the week, when I have to fully re-read everything to get the gestalt of it so I can summarize. Granted, that would be better for memorization. But if they wanted me doing that they should have given me a non-ridiculous amount of stuff to do.

as is, with this new strategy, I've cut down probably... at least a third, maybe a full half, of the amount of time these take, and it should say something about how overwhelming that was, that it still took me working an hour or two every week day, and some break time between lectures, and most of Saturday and Sunday, to finish things.

But I'm doing it with actual breaks in between, and I'm taking care of other essential things too. Life has much more balance to it.

So: I'm super grateful to the universe

And: I'm super appreciative of the power of empty time, not filled by distractions

I'm sure you could do that in a not particularly profitable way, I was kind of day-dreaming about my work process, reflecting on what I'd been doing and wondering what else I could do. So that's semi directed. Your results may vary.

But I feel like another important thing that could use some daydreaming time, is reflecting on how one is living life, in general. I frequently pose the question to myself: how am I going to look back on this (my current way of living) from my deathbed? will I be satisfied with how I lived, or regretful. I think the overwhelming majority of us, as Thoreau put it, "lead lives of quiet desperation." We are unhappy, our lives feel meaningless, and the fear and distraction during all idle moments is to avoid facing this simple truth. Avoiding it will not solve it.

But perhaps some focused daydreaming, some good questions, will begin to.

who said that quote?...
ah, good ol' Marcus Aurelius: "it is not death that men should fear, but never having lived"


I have some cool pictures I want to post, but then I'd want to talk about them and it would take too long. Hmmm, ok, lets see if I can do it in under 5 minutes...

from Gottman institute:
book : seven principles for making marriage work
card deck: 52 questions to ask before marriage or moving in
both: cat approved

a baby pepper I found inside a pepper plant. I find the colors
and shapes deeply, deeply beautiful, aesthetically pleasing
I could stare at it for a long period of time
it's even more pretty, in real life and even closer up,
which is how I looked at it. Some things give me
the tingles, just because of how aesthetically pleasing they are.
makes me think of the potion shop I visited saturday
but that story will likely never be told on this blog
simply because I don't have time.
short version: it was really aesthetically pleasing, too.

hmm, 8 minutes (have I mentioned I'm almost obsessively tracking my time, to try and manage my efficiency and reduce time waste?) a bit longer than I hoped for, especially for two little pictures. As I thought, hard to keep myself from talking when a new subject comes to mind.

anyhoo, I hope your lives are filled with meaning and time to pause and daydream constructively about what is most important to you, big picture. Even ten minutes can make a difference. even five.

have a nice week ^_^

melted plastic. request to the universe. catch 22's.

my brain feels like a plastic toy that's been torched with a flame-thrower. Like it's melted and partially deformed. I gratefully got two extra weekend days this week, which I gleefully spend relaxing, getting some much needed supplies, and cleaning up and organizing my room. I got a teeny bit of work done as well, but really, not that much. So this weekend was a lot like any other weekend, for the actual Saturday and Sunday.

I'm at peace with the crazy amount of work I have to do, but I will never think it's healthy. My body, my brain, are sluggish, exhausted. Like working out too much, but mentally. It's also too much of the same kind of task. I can understand the necessity of it. The school is trying to cram a lot into a little amount of time. And they're trying to do it with a large number of people, at a reasonable cost. Given an infinite number of resources, it could be done much more ideally, but the real world has constraints.

It's hard to think much, about other things. When I think, I think deep, and that takes a large chunk of time usually, as I research and think and research some more. But even ten minutes where I'm not focused is a good thing. I need to remember that. It's important to have time to let your mind relax.

There are many stories of inventors that devised various ways to catch themselves at the edge of sleep, because of the creativity that happened at that juncture. The story of Archimedes is the classic example: working for a long time on a really difficult problem, and then when he finally relaxed, the answer came to him. You sometimes need that open, relaxed state for new connections and combinations to be made, for things forgotten to surface.

and you sometimes need a lot of time to redesign your systems so that they are more efficient, which then gives you more time. a sad catch-22 when you don't have that time to redesign in the first place. This is where a lot of people find themselves: constantly running to keep their head afloat, doing things inefficiently, thus making them have to keep running forever, though if they only had the time to stop and think and plan, they could reduce the craziness.

I'm trying to take that time, in little bites, as I can. I've figured out a few little ways to save a bit of time, and I've identified some of the problems that are taking up too much time. But I still haven't found any big things.

But I think I'm ready to tell the universe, "hey, I don't want to work this hard. this is too much. I don't know if you need to change the work your giving me, or the way I approach it, but I want it to feel better, and take less time, so I have more time for other important things in my life."

hmm, lets end on a positive note. I got a lot of incidental todo's off my list with the long weekend, my relationship is still wonderful, just keeps being that way, deeper and deeper, and because of it, it's the most pleasant "away from friends and family, working" time I've had thus far in my life.

I feel confident that if I just take the time to sit down, clear my mind, and get clear on what I want, I have the tools to make it happen.

OK, that's all I have time for, see ya next week. Hope your summer is less busy than mine.

too many papers

The grindstone sharpens, expertize and 30 year novices, habits & addictions for good

This must needs be a short post.

One of my fellow students and I had the following exchange:
Me: this insanely heavy workload, it's just, wearing, on me
Them: I find it sharpens me.

This person had grown up going to a Montessori school, so part of me was a little angry and wanted to be mad at them because they already had all the training to be disciplined organized and use their time well, right from the beginning, they didn't have to painfully, slowly unlearn bad habits and force themselves to learn good ones, like I had, struggling for years. against the flow. They had just gotten it and absorbed it, when it was easy to form habits.

But then I thought, being angry/jealous is dumb and hurtful, so I decided to feel happy for them and appreciate their strengths instead, feeling gratitude for my own gifts. Much better strategy if you want to be happy and successful yourself. I almost immediately then realized it was a wise perspective, and decided to apply it to myself:

Having a heavy workload is a stretch, a challenge, that is not easy for me, and the only way we can grow sometimes, especially when we hit a plateau, is to stretch ourselves outside of our comfort zone. This is why many doctors (It depends the field) are not any better after 30 years of practice, than new doctors. They are not doing deliberate practice: effortful, focused work to improve specific things, that is actively measured and reflected upon.

This is my greatest nightmare as a teacher: not that I will fail some particular kid, of course I will make mistakes, but that I will fall into a rut and not get noticeably better, year by year, or the progress will be minuscule. It is a very real possibility, it happens all the time, and I refuse to be a part of it.

Within the book, "Moonwalking with Einstein" about memory training, there was a section about... ah, what's his name...Anders Ericsson, who is a leading researcher on what makes experts, experts, and how they get that way. He is the one popularized by Malcolm Gladwell's "10,000 hour rule" (which Anders points out is a gross over simplification and not really true. Just made for a good read. Tut-tut Gladwell) And his wisdom is perhaps of greater utility than the memory techniques. He is the one I'm getting this info about stagnating and how to keep growing, from. And he's the one I'm going to refer to, to make sure I don't stagnate, and do eventually attain expertise in my field, or even just make sure I'm not stagnating, and growing at a good rate.

Well, I've talked about, like, one of the several things I want to cover. Lets see if I can just bullet point the rest:

-addendum to habit formation: you don't have to be super duper regular forever, just long enough to set the habit (which can be a while) once that's done, it's a bit like an addiction: an alcoholic can never go back to drinking like other people do. Even after 30 years, there are still remnants of those grooves in the brain, and it's much easier to re-start the addiction than someone who's never been an alcoholic. Addictions are very closely related to habits, and habits work similarly: once you've established a habit strongly, even if you get out of it, it's easier to get back into it, even if something made you slip out for long enough that it's not an active habit any more.

-My solution for the too much work need to rush but hate rushing dilemma is: find ways to be efficient without rushing. rather than trying to do a lot quickly, try and do a manageably small amount, well. Another older friend of mind told me this story when I was bemoaning how messed up I was feeling because of all the work and rushing and rushing-rage: The busiest man he knew was a kind of monk, and when my friend was with the monk, he felt like he was the only person in the world, the monk gave him his full attention, and the monk said, when asked, that was how he dealt with all is work: "when you're in front of me, your the only thing in the world. as you as you leave, I forget all about you." I think something like that is a good approach to take. extreme focus on the one thing in front of me, and then let it go when the next thing comes up.

The key for me, I think, that I need to work on, is setting the parameters of that deep dive, before I actually begin work, because once I'm in it, it's really hard to come out partway through. I need to set the goal properly small, before-hand, rather than try and crunch a giant amount of work into a small space. Work isn't really that flexible, you don't get that much more done, by rushing, you just get a bunch of lower quality work. At least, that's my experience.

OK, done, send to the presses.

Anger, guilt, meaning, and perspective.

I feel like I need to write a response to my last post. Like an apology. I am in general strongly against venting negativity, and it shows how bad I'm doing that I not only felt so angry but let it pop out somewhere public. Normally when I'm angry I'll go and tree preach or write in a private journal or something and be done with it.

My general policy is not to put down anybody ever, and I have not been following my own policy recently, and I feel really bad about that. I think my close friends would agree that it's been pretty tame by normal world standards, but it's pretty low for my own. I don't think I need to apologize to anyone who reads this but perhaps just in general to anyone I may have spoken poorly about. I'm really fond of all my main teachers, from my masters, and from the Montessori training I'm doing, and I can't find any fault in the care and diligence they put into teaching my and my classmates and I'm pretty certain I wouldn't be able to do a sixth the job they did/are doing.

This doesn't change the fact that I'm frustrated with teacher training programs, but the problems are more systemic. Even really good teacher trainers end up severely limited in what they can do by time and money and applicants.

I talked with the lead teacher, and now have a better understanding of the purposes of the homework I'm doing, and so as I do it, I'm approaching it in a less careful and meticulous, but more useful way, and that feels a lot better. It has the definite purpose of preparing me for the exam, in that I'm creating study cheat-sheets, and am doing a first pass at memorization by reading it and then trying to recall it without looking back at it. The quiz and recall method that is far more effective than just reading something a while bunch of times.

In addition, I'm adding my own spice to it, by then looking over the handout and seeing what parts I missed, and adding them in with asterisks, reminding me of the parts I'm liable to forget or mix up the order on. That's all familiarizing me with the presentations in a useful way, it makes sense.

It's way too much, but the trainer admitted as much, and he didn't say it then, but I can guess that the reason is because we are trying to cram things in to a shorter time period than they deserve, because people can't afford to pay for longer schooling or take more time off. To do this right, it would be maybe a year and a half and then another half-year of practice, something like that. That would be more like the ideal rate to absorb things and not be unhealthy and overly stressful, which it certainly is. But it's not just about the ideal method of teaching, it's about the practicalities of life. It's expensive enough as it is, without tacking on more time. So while I think it's a bad idea, it might be one of those, "least bad" kind of answers. If the training were perfectly tailored for maximum learning, maybe 90% of the people who wanted to do it, wouldn't be able to, because of time or money.

So, I get it. I get it all. Here's the real problem:

I hate rushing, it's like poison in my system. When I feel rushed and worried about the time, I go from being really sweet and easy-going, easy to forgive, relaxed and understanding, to this fire breathing monster. The contrast is stark. Normally it's extremely difficult to get any kind of rise out of me, even if I find something reprehensible, I'm able to put myself in the other persons shoes and understand where they are coming from.

When I am rushed, when I feel like I've got a million things to do and they're all do in 4 days and I've got 6 days worth of work to do, I start getting pissed off at the most silly trivial things. Finally I understand road rage. That slow man crossing the road throws me into paroxysms of vitriol, technical difficulties that take extra time to solve become the devil incarnate, mocking and tormenting me. Each new irritation makes me more susceptible to the next, until I am seeing obstacles everywhere, and each of them makes me want to scream and curse.

I'm exaggerating only moderately. The other horrible thing about this state, is I just feel bad. I end up hating everything. The pleasures of the world turn to ash in my mouth. All I can taste is the bitter hot bile of my frustration and impatience.

It saps my energy, it saps the joy from my life, it makes the world grey. with splotches of red.

There are more issues with this rushing hurried state: I hurt myself more often, I make mistakes I never would otherwise. Talking poorly about others being one of the bigger one's I realized I was doing recently.

In any case, I've decided that I refuse. Nothing is worth that. I will work hard and long, and perhaps still curse my slave masters for the backbreaking, eye-strain inducing labor. But not seriously, because ultimately I signed up for it, I chose it and continue to choose it. Now that I have an understanding of the purposes, I can work on not doing more than is actually useful, and doing what is useful, in the most economically beneficial way. Understanding the purpose means I can do it for myself, not for some shadowy creature that demands random, torturous, incomprehensible actions of me, that feels a lot more empowering.

My dad suggested I just not do some of the work, or do it poorly. Sorry dad, I'm probably not gonna slow down much or get much more free time. Maybe a little bit. But I just don't like doing a poor job at things. It almost feels like I'm incapable of it, in some ways. If I'm gonna do something, I'm gonna do it well. Hopefully I'll be doing a bit less work because I'm working on focusing on just the effort that is useful. But I can't really short-change it, and still graduate. If I slack off now it means even more work later down the line. I can't control how much time it will take, beyond a small percent, but I can try and control how I'm spreading out that work, and the process of doing the work, and hopefully make that less stressful.

So much of our experience of life comes not from the direct experience, but from the story we tell ourselves while we do whatever we're doing. Am I getting my toe stubbed! Dang it! Anger! Am I getting cut open with knives for a surgical operation? Thank God for modern medicine! Anger or gratitude, depending on the story around it. So I'll try and tell a good story, and I'll try and do it in such a way that it is a good story.

OK, that's all.