Archive: Posts about Mixed Bag
December 4th, 2011, 7 Comments »
When I was in theatre school, I regularly participated in the ‘collective creation’ process. This involved collaborating with my fellow students to create a short play or scene. There were no directors or playwrights. Everybody contributed to the project, and we reached a consensus on what work to keep and what to throw out. The process was slow-moving, feelings regularly got hurt and the results were unilaterally awful.
The rise of the Occupy movement this fall reminded me of working on collective creations. Occupy Wall Street and its cousins around the world actively eschewed leaders, and relied on a community-oriented consensus model to reach decisions. This ostensibly leaderless approach got me naturally thinking about leadership.
In every project in which I’ve been involved–creative, corporate, volunteer, non-profit–there was always a person in charge. Whether or not that person had an authoritative title or anybody acknowledged it, they had final decision-making power. A group always needs to look to somebody to own big decisions. That’s what a leader is there for.
Whether we’re talking about theatre, an unconference or revolution, there’s always a leader at the heart of things. Like it or not, we’re a hierarchical species. It’s how we get stuff done.
Which is why I’ve been interested in the intentional leaderlessness of the Occupy movement. There’s a cliche about Generation Y that they were raised on teamwork and consensus building, where everybody got a ribbon on Sports Day and nobody counted goals at their soccer games. Does Occupy reflect these values? Or is it merely a coincidence? I suspect that, in truth, each Occupy protest had their fair share of leaders who, at the end of the day, drove and owned decisions.
Here’s another thing about leadership that I’ve learned over the years: most people don’t want to be leaders.
In rereading this little post, it seems like I’m rather aggressively reinforcing the status quo. A feminist reading of this post might accuse me of taking a very traditional, masculine line of thinking. I should emphasize that I’m not writing off other ways of organization, but I can think of very few truly leaderless projects. Can you think of examples?
UPDATE: A friend sent me this interesting article by Micah L. Sifry. It frames Occupy Wall Street as a ‘leader-full movement’. I’d need to read more about this idea to get my head around it. It’s a pity that, in the conclusion, Sifry demonizes traditional leadership by writing “a world of top-down leaders who use hierarchy, secrecy and spin to conduct their business”. He hasn’t earned that claim with evidence elsewhere in the article, and so it cheapens an otherwise thoughtful piece.
7 Comments »
December 2nd, 2011, 9 Comments »
A little over nine years ago, I started creating a list of 100 things to do before I die. I wrote up the initial 20. They look like this:
- Live in a house built to my specifications
- Play ice hockey (beer league will do)
- Live in a third-world country
- Completely research my family history
- Be interviewed on the CBC
- Own a dog
- Own another cat
- Own a hybrid or electric car
- Live by the ocean
- Drive across Canada
- Visit Patagonia
- Visit Vietnam
- See a play of mine produced
- Read 100 more of the books on Harold Bloom’s Western Canon.
- Work as a film critic
- Read Ulysses by James Joyce
- Build or skate in an ice rink in the Republic of Ireland
- Change careers
- Hike the Cabot trail
- Become passably fluent in French
I’ve recently been clearing out some storage boxes, random electronics (thank you, Free Geek Vancouver) and books. In an old notebook, I found these handwritten additions to my original 20 items:
- Visit Israel
- Visit Egypt
- Visit South Africa
- Plant a vegetable garden
- Kayak somewhere for at least a week
- Bike somewhere for at least a week
- Open my own business
- Not work for a year
- Get a Master’s degree
- Volunteer abroad for a time
- Work with animals
- Publish a book
Whew, that’s a measly 32 items. It’s actually pretty tricky to think of 100 things I want to do before I die. What does that say about me? Charitably, I’m a realist. Cruelly, I’ve got a pathetic lack of imagination. I’ve put my mind to it, though, and here are 18 more things. I reserve the right to include a couple that were definitely lifelong aspirations that I’ve achieved in the past few years:
- Publish a novel
- See the wildebeest migration at Ngorongoro Crater
- See my great uncle Ross’s grave in Kiel, Germany
- Walk Juno Beach on the anniversary of D-Day
- Become a patron of the arts (whatever that means)
- Catch a fish
- Catch a fish using a speargun
- Take a multi-day train trip
- Run 5 km without puking
- See the aurora borealis
- Learn how to competently play jazz guitar, in the django style
- Visit all of Canada’s provinces and territories
- See the Sahara desert
- Visit New Zealand
- Visit Seychelles
- Volunteer on an archeaological dig
- Take some singing lessons
- Spend 40 days totally alone, without any modern technology
Whew. Halfway there. And now, the complete list, with the ones I’ve actually completed. I’d better pick up the pace:
- Live in a house built to my specifications
- Play ice hockey (beer league will do)
Live in a third-world country
- Completely research my family history
Be interviewed on the CBC
- Own a dog
- Own another cat
Own a hybrid or electric car
- Live by the ocean
- Drive across Canada
- Visit Patagonia
- Visit Vietnam
See a play of mine produced
- Read 100 more of the books on Harold Bloom’s Western Canon
- Work as a film critic
- Read Ulysses by James Joyce
Build or skate in an ice rink in the Republic of Ireland
Change careers
- Hike the Cabot trail
- Become passably fluent in French
- Visit Israel
- Visit Egypt
Visit South Africa
Plant a vegetable garden
- Kayak somewhere for at least a week
- Bike somewhere for at least a week
Open my own business
- Not work for a year
- Get a Master’s degree
- Volunteer abroad for a time
- Work with animals
Publish a book
- Publish a novel
- See the wildebeest migration at Ngorongoro Crater
See my great uncle Ross’s grave in Kiel, Germany
Walk Juno Beach on the anniversary of D-Day
Become a patron of the arts
Catch a fish
- Catch a fish using a speargun
- Take a multi-day train trip
Run 5 km without puking
- See the aurora borealis
- Learn how to competently play jazz guitar, in the django style
- Visit all of Canada’s provinces and territories
See the Sahara desert
- Visit New Zealand
- Visit Seychelles
- Volunteer on an archaeological dig
- Take some singing lessons
- Spend 40 days totally alone, without any modern technology
I’m open to suggestions. What would you add to my list?
9 Comments »
September 19th, 2011, 3 Comments »
Julie is a bridesmaid at an upcoming wedding, and organized a stagette. They didn’t play many games, but they did play the one where you ask the bridge questions about the groom. In the case of this stagette, if the bride’s answer doesn’t match the groom’s, she had to take a drink.
Julie did a little research to see what kinds of questions were available online, and she was disappointed by the results. So she devised her own list. I thought I’d post it here for posterity:
The questions game
Here are 20 questions for the groom.
- What was the name of your first pet?
- What’s your favourite band?
- What’s your all-time favourite meal?
- What’s your guilty pleasure?
- What’s the best meal that the bride makes for you?
- Who’s your movie star crush?
- What would you say is the bride’s guilty pleasure?
- What’s your biggest pet peeve?
- What city would you most like to visit?
- What is your least favourite chore?
- Where was your first kiss?
- If you and the bride have a song, what is it?
- Who’s your favourite hockey player?
- What super power would you choose?
- How many countries have you visited?
- What’s your favourite movie?
- If the bride could throw away one thing from your wardrobe, what would it be?
- Where did you go on your first date?
- What is the bride’s favourite book?
- What’s the best trip you’ve ever taken together?
3 Comments »
August 25th, 2011, 7 Comments »
I’m not a productivity zealot. I have read Getting Things Done. I picked up a couple of habits from it, but I didn’t really deploy the whole GTD ethos.
I was recently thinking about the strategy and shortcuts I employ to make my life and work more efficient. I try a lot of different tools, tactics and tips, but these are ten that have stuck. If you’re a productivity fiend, you probably know all of these (except maybe #10).
- Make approval requests opt-out, not opt-in. When I require somebody’s input or approval over email, I always include a sentence like this: “If I don’t receive your feedback by end of day on August 28, I’ll assume you’ve approved this document as is.” This old trick from technical writing rarely fails to deliver the result you want.
- Train your colleagues that if they need something urgently from you, they should call you. Maybe it’s because I work in the technology industry with a lot of email-obsessed introverts, but people seem to expect a response to an email within a half-hour of their sending it. I prefer to maintain a healthily asynchronous outlook on email.
- Get the instant messenger gospel. I’m amazed by the number of workplaces where everybody sits in front of a computer all day that do not use an IM system. It’s also an excellent solution for distributed teams, remote working and people who hate the phone.
- Process every email as soon as you read it. If you can respond and archive it in less than two minutes, do so. Otherwise, I assign myself a task in my task management tool, associate the message’s URL (I use Gmail for my sundry email accounts) with the task and archive it. The email is no longer occupying space in my inbox, but I’ve got a reliable way to find it when I’m going to work on the associated task.
- If a task is too daunting, reduce it to smaller tasks. Are those smaller tasks too big? Sub-divide them again. Work gets done bird by bird.
- If you’re a somebody who likes notebooks and paper lists, consider implementing Kanban as a real-world, sticky-note-powered project management system.
- When I want to change a habit–eating, exercising, spending–I measure it obsessively. To apply a liberal arts interpretation of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, looking at something changes it. It’s rewarding to track the number of kilometres I walk, ride and run each month. Knowing how the number of calories in a slice of bread encourages me to mix up my daily sandwich for lunch. Related tip courtesy of James: wraps work like sandwiches, but with fewer calories.
- I find it quite useful to have my calendar emailed to me every morning (that’s another tip from James). I am less likely to forget about calls or meetings until my calendar displays a pop-up reminder ten minutes before the event.
- Deploy rigorous email filters. Lately I’ve been loving the Bulk feature in Gmail, which filters all my bacn out of my inbox. If an email is sent to more than you and a couple of colleagues, you probably don’t want to read it as soon as you receive it.
- Floss in the shower. Seriously. You know that 30 seconds or a minute at the end of the shower when you’re just standing there, reluctant to get out into the cold bathroom? Take that time and floss.
7 Comments »
August 3rd, 2011, No Comments »
I know this site has gone on kind of a summer hiatus, but I do have some thoughts on how to revive it to a level of at least one compelling post a week. In the meantime, I’ve been doing plenty of professional and personal writing elsewhere online. Here are a few recent items:
- What is Movement Marketing? – “Whether we’re selling snow tires or stopping climate change, word of mouth is a critical aspect of communicating not only with your current ‘tribe’ of supporters, but also for recruiting new members to your cause. ” We’re working with the excellent folks at Biro Creative on a number of projects these days. One aspect of that work is collaborating on some writing projects.
- Escapism For Canada’s Brunettes – “Her boyfriend, shirtless under an apron, greets her from the kitchen, where he’s cooking breakfast. He is ridiculously handsome, and has underwear model abs.” This is a look at “Being Erica”, my favourite new Canadian TV show I’ve discovered as part of my One Year, One Canadian project.
- Doing the Blogger Outreach ROI Math – “When I’m doing online outreach…I’m interested in two things. In the short term, I want to drive high-value visitors to my client’s site. In the longer term, I know a link will help continue to drive visitors, and improve their SEO ranking.” Really only of interest to online marketers, but it’s a post I wrote on Capulet.com in response to something I read on Kerry’s blog.
No Comments »
June 22nd, 2011, 11 Comments »
In my ongoing efforts to consume less Coke, I’ve started drinking more club soda. Or soda water. Or Perrier. In short, bubbly water. It’s a poor substitute for the demon nectar that is Coca-Cola, but, you know, all things in moderation.
After considering the financial and environmental cost of all those two-litre bottles of club soda, I thought I’d try an alternative solution.
I bought a SodaStream from London Drugs for CAN $99. It’s incredibly simple. It carbonates water, and doesn’t even need electricity to do so. The SodaStream uses canisters of carbon dioxide, each good for about 60 litres of carbonated water. The canisters are recyclable wherever I buy a new canister, which costs about $35.
It comes with two reusable plastic one-litre bottles. The only trick is that the water needs to be cold before you inject it with carbonation magic. I guess the process works better at lower temperatures?
So, $134 buys you 60 litres of bubbly water. That’s probably more than you’d pay at Save-on-Foods, but the price goes down to about $0.75 after the third canister. The sums are all pretty small, but it’s nice to be on the right side of them.
SodaStream, of course, wants to sell me a variety of foul-looking syrups to add to my soda. I’ll pass, as the whole point is to reduce my liquid sugar intake. I mostly stick with plain bubbly water. If I’m feeling really indulgent, I add a little lime cordial.
I’m not somebody who loves gadgets, and I particularly have no interest in kitchen gadgets. However, this device has improved my life by, what, 0.8%.
11 Comments »
June 9th, 2011, 2 Comments »
I was going through some storage boxes, and discovered it.
In 1991, my two classmates and I produced a yearbook video for our graduating class (at Sentinel Secondary School, hence the name). We sold it for $20 a tape, and probably netted $100 each at the end of the year. It did give socially-awkward 17-year-old me something to do at parties and sports events, instead of actually talking to people.
Yeah, I was a bit of a nerd in high school. This should come as a surprise to no one.
I remember my mother pointing out that we probably shouldn’t be wasting our money on business cards. After all, who did we have to give them to? She was right, but we got them printed up anyway. Totally worth it.
2 Comments »
June 8th, 2011, 9 Comments »
The ripping sound was barely audible, like a whisper in my ear. It’s as if my pants were saying, “I’m going to seriously complicate your afternoon.”
I’d just passed through airport security. Having slipped on my shoes back on, I looked around for a free chair where I could sit down and tie them. There were none. It’s a Barefoot genetic deficiency–none of the men in my family are good at tying our shoes standing up.
As I usually do, I hunkered down to lace up my shoes. That’s when the back of my trousers split–there’s no other way to say it–from belt to crotch.
I should interject, here, that I’ve actually lost weight in the past couple of months. So this was not a Darren’s-fat-ass problem, but rather a suit-pants-structural-integrity problem. That suit was neither cheap nor old, so I’ll be having a sharp word or two with my tailor.
My first thought was of my underwear. The trousers are charcoal-coloured, so the contrast could have been worse.
My next thought was that I was facing ten hours of travel across the continent, and my luggage had been checked through to Vancouver. This was bad.
My next thought was “Pants splitting? Seriously?” This is the stuff of Tom and Jerry. It’s up there among the great 20th century comedy cliches, right next to “stick finger in electrical outlet” and “football to groin”.
I finished tying my shoes, stood up, and put my back to the nearest wall. I subtly explored the damage, which was severe. I untucked my dress shirt and shifted my satchel to hang over my back. This, for the moment, protected me from any more immediate humiliation.
I made a quick, furtive lap around the retail outlets in my immediate vicinity. I wandered into the Harley Davidson store, checked out the generic duty free shop and poked around the Puma store.
Do you know what they don’t sell in airports? Pants.
Then I had my best idea of the week. I hustled over to the local Hudson News and Gifts, and bought myself a sewing kit. Then I retreated to the closest men’s room.
I spent the next 25 minutes doing the world’s worst sewing job on my trousers. Using what I believe is known as a basting stitch, I first sewed the outside, and then went back over it on the inside. This is the result (click for high-resolution repair action):
It wasn’t pretty, but you’d have look quite carefully at my butt to spot it. I silently thanked Carla, the Head of Wardrobe in my theatre school. She taught me the basics of sewing in first year university.
The worst part, as you might imagine, was spending that much time standing in my underwear in a busy airport bathroom stall. I’m surprised that I didn’t get propositioned or arrested.
To my relief, my poor stitching withstood two flights, a layover and a taxi ride home.
William Gibson once wrote that jet lag is the result of soul not being able to travel at airplane speeds, and you need a few days to recover it after you arrive. I feel the same way about my dignity.
Can I blame the Transportation Security Administration for this? They made me take off my shoes in the first place.
9 Comments »
