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Helping Animals is Helping People

June 5, 2019June 5, 2019

Helping Animals and their Owners in Emergencies

That’s the mission of a non-profit organization for which I volunteer: the Washington Animal Response Team or WASART.

We emphasize the “helping animals” part a lot. Our stories include horses being rescued from sticky situations — sometimes literally if they’re stuck in mud, perhaps more metaphorical if they’ve fallen and can’t get up — dogs that have gone over cliffs or accompanied owners on a hike only to discover that they can’t make it back on their own, or livestock and pets needing temporary shelter during wildfires or other natural disasters.

These are our stories. They’re what we do. They’re what you think of when you think of WASART.

There’s another part of what we do that is perhaps even more important, albeit easily overlooked…

Bag Like an Artist

May 11, 2019

I’m naturally pretty good with spacial things — I can imagine how physical things are in relationship to each other, how things go together, that kind of thing.

That eventually served me well at my first job, as as a bag-boy at a local grocery store. Putting things in bags was one thing; anyone could do that. Putting them in efficiently, maximizing how much goes in, keeping cold things together, putting fragile items on top, making sure the bag wouldn’t weigh too much –leveraging my spacial reasoning, these were things that came naturally to me. They still do.

To me it was as much art as it was work.

Which is how work really ought to be; certainly the best work.

Showing Up is Over Half the Battle

May 6, 2019May 5, 2019

When we moved into our current home, over twenty years ago, we elected to enlist a service to mow our lawn and do some other basic maintenance on the large yard. We went through several services before finding one we would stick with for many years.

The most common cause of failure was actually very disappointing. While we expected the quality of the work to be the determining factor, it was something else entirely that had us more often than not looking for a new provider.

We ended up making our evaluation on what seemed the simplest of things: did they even show up regularly, as promised, to do the job?

Too many times the answer was “no”.

Life

January 5, 2019

Life is short. Death is capricious and random.

We had an unexpected death in our circle of acquaintances that drove that point home once again.

Right & Wrong

December 2, 2018December 2, 2018

A hypothetical conversation with a hypothetical friend about a controversial topic…

♣

Me: “If you believed CONTROVERSIAL POSITION^(*), then you would have no other choice but to believe CONTROVERSIAL RESULT.”

Friend: “No I don’t. CONTROVERSIAL POSITION is wrong.”

Me: “That’s not the point. I’m not trying to debate CONTROVERSIAL POSITION, I’m trying to point out the mindset of the people that disagree with you.”

Friend: “It’s simple: they’re wrong.”

“Get Up Early” is a scam. Do this instead.

December 2, 2018November 21, 2018

One of the currently popular so-called productivity hacks is to get up an hour or two earlier to get your best work done first thing.

It’s a scam. In fact, it’s the exact same scam as Daylight Saving Time. While it might feel like you’ve created this new magical time that was just waiting there for you to take advantage of with its additional productivity, it comes with a cost that no one talk about. Either you must actually sleep an hour or two less, or you need to compensate by going to bed an hour or two earlier.

Finding and Sharing Wisdom

December 2, 2018November 19, 2018

I’m reading Chip Conley’s book “Wisdom at Work” about reintroducing the wisdom of older, more experienced individuals into today’s fast moving and high-tech workforce. He coins the term “modern elder” for those with wisdom and knowledge to share with (typically) younger generations.

It’s great if you can have an individual to act as your mentor, which is exactly what part of this whole “modern elder” thing really is. It’s also cool if you find yourself in a position where you can act as a mentor by virtue of having experience that you’re willing and able to share in ways that are useful to others. I know I still, specifically, want both: even at 61 I’m looking for individuals from whom I can model and learn, and I’m looking for opportunities to share what I’ve learned with others.

Whidbey Island Visit

November 6, 2018

This blog post is as much a test of some new technology as it is … well, another blog post.

In recent months I’ve been playing with and expanding my photography skills. It’s nothing new, really, I’ve been interested in photography since my high school days.

In that regard I haven’t changed nearly as much as the technology has.

Why Listening, Really Listening, Might Be Declining

September 21, 2018

One of the comments made in Celeste Headlee’s book “We Need to Talk: How to Have Conversations That Matter” (or perhaps one of her videos) is that we may have been better conversationalists before the printing press was invented. Put another way, the rise of mass literacy may have caused us to become poorer listeners.

My sense is that it’s happening again.

Happiness is a Choice

September 12, 2018

I am constantly amazed at the number of people that choose to be unhappy.

And I use the word “choose” deliberately.

Weight Loss and Meditation

September 3, 2018

Don’t worry, I’m not about to tell you that you need one to do the other. Far from it.

But in reflecting on my goals and process I stumbled into a concept shared by both.

I don’t have name for it — or, rather, any name I assign seems too limiting — but I can describe it.

Writing as a Constraint-Based Creativity and Critical Thinking Skill

August 31, 2018

Placing sometimes artificial constraints on an activity is a fascinating creativity technique. The canonical example might be that Dr. Suess’ book Green Eggs and Ham was written on a bet — a bet that an entertaining children’s story could not be written using only 50 different words. That constraint led to one of the best selling children’s books of all times.

Constraints breed creativity. Create some limits, and see what you can accomplish within them.

The very act of writing is, itself, a constraint. What can you accomplish within the limits of language?

Everything is an Investment

August 25, 2018

“Mental models” seem to be the latest and greatest thing. Popularized by folks like Charlie Munger, Ray Dalio, and even the Mental Model of the Month Club, they’re essentially a higher level way of looking at life’s challenges, situations, and opportunities. The 80/20 rule, aka the Pareto Principle, is one example.

I recently realized that I’d developed a mental model of my own that helps me make decisions. I don’t have a fancy name for it, but it’s really nothing more than considering everything an investment of some sort. This, then, helps frame decisions based on expected returns.

Back. Up.

June 20, 2018

The moderator of one of the groups of which I’m a member posed the following (paraphrased) question:

“If you had a chance to send a message to 20,000 people in 100 words or less, what would you say?”

Took me about a second to come up with a two word response:

Back. Up.

There. 98 words to spare. (99 if I’d chosen “backup” instead. 🙂 )

Where I Find Positive News

June 9, 2018June 8, 2018

One of my hats is as the curator of the Not All News Is Bad web site and mailing list. Each day I post one positive story gleaned from recent news.

The criteria are rather simple: besides being relatively recent, the story should be something that most would agree is good news. At a more practical level it needs to make me smile.

Free Speech Has Consequences

June 2, 2018

The concept of “free speech” is more complex than most people realize. It’s much more than being allowed to say whatever you want.

Many people simply get that wrong.

Why I Stopped Reading “Enlightenment Now”

May 28, 2018May 27, 2018

Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker gained notoriety of late because of Bill Gates’ statement that it was “My new favorite book of all time.” Bill’s hard to ignore, especially when something reaches the top of any of his lists. I picked up a copy and dove in.

It’s a great book. Not sure it makes the “favorite book of all time” list for me, but even having not completed the book I can already heartily recommend it. And yet, I’m setting it aside.

Why? Because of something I stumbled across elsewhere, and the fact that I agree with the message behind the book.

Facts, Misinformation & Priorities

February 16, 2018

Fact check before sharing. It makes you more authoritative, and makes the world a better place.
Misinformation shared only serves “the opposition.”
Focus on what’s truly important.

My morning was derailed by three separate articles that really struck a nerve. The concepts are so simple and important, and yet so often ignored, I’m having a hard time thinking about much else.

We All Fear What We Don’t Understand

February 9, 2018February 9, 2018

We all fear what we do not understand.
― Dan Brown, The Lost Symbol

I suspect that this quote actually pre-dates Mr. Brown’s 2009 book, but the original source is proving elusive. A longer, perhaps more telling version:

What we don’t understand, we fear. What we fear, we judge as evil. What we judge as evil, we attempt to control. And what we cannot control…we attack.

The author seems to be the exceptionally prolific, and in this case insightful, Mr. “unknown”.

All I can say is that humans apparently don’t understand a great many things.

Habit Fad

January 28, 2018

Two days ago I wrote that I’d “techniqued” myself into inaction. I was trying to do so many things, seemingly all at the same time, that I could do none of them well, and some of them not at all.

There’s what I’ll call a fad right now that says improving yourself — be it your productivity, your accomplishments, your health, your whatever — is all about establishing the proper habits. There are a multitude of blog posts, articles, and books on how to go about doing that.

It has a fad-like feeling to me. It wouldn’t surprise me if a few years from now we’ll haved moved on to a different productivity or self-improvement ~~fad~~technique.

And yet, at a practical level, I’m paying attention. Fads often carry nuggets of wisdom.