Twenty-five years ago I was a college professor who spent hours preparing classes, fearful that students would ask me a question I couldn’t answer. And when I started convening and speaking at conferences I was scared of being “on stage”, even in front of small audiences.
I could share reasons why I was this way, but the reasons — known or not — aren’t what’s important. I felt embarrassment and fear as a response to these kinds of situations. Emotions aren’t susceptible to logic.
The present—an example
On February 16, 2019, I unexpectedly participated in an Italian four-hour drag queen workshop. I say “unexpectedly” because, as twenty of us sat on a coach returning to Milan on the last day of the fourth annual Meeting Design Practicum, we had no idea of what we were about to experience.
“For those who have always dreamed of turning into Marilyn Monroe and want to dance with moves of Raffaella Carrà. For those who torment themselves to understand how they attach false eyelashes and want to know how to walk on heels. For all those who, with a serious but not serious spirit, want to experience a different way of being grotesque on stage.
Because nothing is impossible for a Drag Queen!”
I’d never done anything like this before. It was a tough stretch. Yet when it was time to share our “diva inspiration”, I was the first to step up and demo. (My inspiration was Rihanna in “Shut Up and Drive“, in case you’re interested.)
At the end of the workshop, each group member received another’s photo and we added a word that summed up our experience of this person.
I am proud that Stefano added “BRAVE” to mine.
Being out there
Also, these days I think nothing of dancing in public (it’s gotta be the right music though).
And I’m comfortable being in front of thousands of people at the largest events I facilitate.
Becoming brave
How did all this happen?
First, a reminder about emotions. Although we don’t like to admit it, they, not our reasoning run our lives. Emotions evolved because they have survival value. I mentioned fear and embarrassment earlier. Embarrassment is a form of shame. Feeling fear is helpful when you come across a tiger in the forest. Feelings of shame strengthen human communities by lessening the likelihood that members will do things they know are bad for others.
Our emotions handicap us, however, when they arise for reasons that are not related to their true survival roots. My feelings about dancing or speaking in public came from being taught when young to feel shame when I made mistakes.
My response to this was to try to be as perfect as possible. To try to hide the mistakes I inevitably made, and avoid situations where I might make them. Believing I wasn’t a “good” dancer, I avoided dancing when others could see. Worrying that I might be tongue-tied or incoherent when speaking, I’d practice for hours, reluctant to risk slipping up “on stage”.
It took participating in a couple of multi-day, experiential, large and small-group workshops, in 2003 and 2005, for me to see these limiting beliefs, attitudes, and assumptions I held about myself, and receive some experiences of what I could be like when freed of them.
The rest was practice.
Not caring about how others see me
Today, I don’t care what I look like when I dance anymore; I dance because I love to dance. I still feel nervous excitement right before I’m about to speak to or facilitate hundreds of people, but it vanishes as soon as I start because I love what I do and I’m not caught up in being flawless.
Today, when I have opportunities to do things I’ve never done before, I say “yes” to many of them. I love to learn, and I’ve discovered that I learn from trying new things and making “mistakes” along the way. [In fact, the most important learning occurs when you make mistakes.]
Becoming brave is a journey, and mine isn’t over yet.
1977: I earn a Ph.D. in applied elementary high-energy particle physics. Get a post-doc position and move to the United States. Work at major U.S. particle accelerators for a year. Leave academic research forever. Since 1978 — that’s 47 years! — every job I’ve had didn’t exist a few years earlier.
1978: I join the management of Solar Alternative, a solar energy manufacturing business founded the previous year. Five years earlier, there were no such businesses in the United States.
1983: I start teaching computer science using personal computers in the classroom. IBM introduced the PC in 1981.
1984: I begin IT consulting for clients using personal computers. Businesses didn’t start using personal computers until the early 80s.
1992: I organize a conference where there are no expert speakers available (it’s a new field, and there are no experts). Invent a way to make the conference successful based on the collective needs, wants, and experience of the attendees. (The conference has run annually for the last 33 years.) This is something new. Organizations hear about this and ask me to design and facilitate their conferences.
2005: I realize that the conference process I invented and since improved is incredibly popular with participants. I decide to write a book about it, and in…
2009: I self-publish Conferences That Work: Creating Events That People Love. (Five years earlier, self-publishing was a minor industry for vanity projects. Now it’s the most common way authors publish.) I quickly discover the size and interest of the meetings industry. In demand, I become a meeting designer and facilitator of participant-driven, participation-rich meetings. Yet another career that had not existed before.
A conventional career
My parents once suggested I become an accountant. I politely declined and continued studying physics. I have nothing against conventional careers, but my life hasn’t turned out that way.
Yet.
If I had to guess, it probably won’t.
And it probably won’t for you either.
Has the job you’re doing now just been invented? Share your experience in the comments below!
Do you have a perfectly organized life? Familiar with Kanban and Getting Things Done? If not, read on!
“The list is the origin of culture. It’s part of the history of art and literature. What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible. It also wants to create order — not always, but often. And how, as a human being, does one face infinity? How does one attempt to grasp the incomprehensible? Through lists…”
—Umberto Eco, SPIEGEL Interview, 2009
Managing my life
Are you blessed with a perfect memory? Me neither! To avoid unpleasant consequences, everyone needs a reliable way to keep track of things we have yet to do. As I age, my memory slowly deteriorates. But my life shows no sign of becoming simpler. There will be entries on my To Do list until the day I die.
Over the years I’ve tried many different methods to implement effective To Do lists and I’m sharing here the system I’ve used successfully for the last 11 years. I hope it will be useful information for anyone like me who has struggled to track and prioritize their personal life and professional work.
Creating a successful To Do list methodology
One reason it’s hard to track and prioritize To Dos is that we tend to pick an available tool without first deciding what To Do list methodology will work for us. So many tools exist—simple written lists, elaborate day planners, electronic devices, software, apps, etc. Most of them have built into them an implicit methodology for managing our tasks. Unfortunately, one person’s methodological meat may be another’s poison.
After much experimentation, I have settled on using a combination of Kanban and Getting Things Done methodologies to capture and prioritize my life tasks.
The simple yet brilliant Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology doesn’t prescribe a complete system for organizing your life. Instead, it encapsulates only the essential workflow processes you need to follow to clear and organize your work life, plus what you need to know in order to choose tools and procedures that work for you. Each person’s implementation of GTD is unique.
Kanban and GTD — a winning combination!
The essence of Personal Kanban is the creation and continual updating of three lists: To Do, Doing, and Done. Tasks migrate from To Do –> Doing –> Done as we work. Most practical implementations (including mine) add a Waiting For list to capture top-of-mind tasks that currently require action outside our control before working on them.
To these core lists, GTD suggests adding separate lists for each set of project tasks. So I have a Brattleboro list (things to do when I go into town). A Boston list (when I am at our apartment there). And a Book 3 list (for tasks remaining before I publish my next book) and lists for current client projects. I move tasks from these lists into and between the core Kanban lists through the review process. Regular review and updating of your To Do implementation is essential for it to be useful. Schedule reviews in a way that works for you. I like to review my Kanban/GTD implementation at the beginning and end of each day. Also, I review it whenever it’s not obvious to me what I should be doing next.
Implementation
Trello is a superb tool for implementing Kanban/GTD; check here for more information on how I use it. When I’m occasionally deviceless (yes, it still happens in this oh-so-connected world), I rely on good old paper and pen to capture ideas and build short, in-the-moment To Do lists, e.g., shopping lists. My manpurse holds a Levenger Pocket Briefcase, always filled with 3 x 5 cards, a Reporter’s Notebook, plus a variety of reliable pens, ensuring I can always fall back on a two-thousand-year-old method of making lists.
Conclusion
Amazing methodologies and technologies are available to us. Effectively planning and managing a complicated life can be easier and less stressful if you adopt approaches like Kanban/GTD and adapt them to work well for you. The choice is yours!
After dinner last night I heard a familiar sound — the growl of the UPS box truck driving up our 600′ rural driveway. I knew it was our regular UPS guy, the guy who’s been delivering for years, because if he sees I’m in my home office he’ll stop and do a tight three-point turn outside the entrance, rather than driving past to reverse by the garage.
I heard the van door slide back and went to the door to meet the guy I’ll call Roger. Roger is tall and lanky, has a sweet smile and disposition, and is open to talk if the time is right. Over the years he’s met me hundreds of times in that doorway. Mostly, he smiles and hands over the delivery, I thank him and wish him a good night, and he jumps into his truck, finishes reversing, and drives away. Once in a while, when the roads are bad, we talk about his day: how he’s handled the challenges of delivering along my rural town’s sixty miles of dirt roads plus the surrounding area.
For some reason I hadn’t seen Roger for a few weeks; the other drivers had been making deliveries. So I said, “Hey, you’re back!” as he strolled towards me, package in hand.
“Well, I’ve been off a lot; my mother just passed away,” he replied.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said. I stood and looked at him.
“Well,” he said…
…and he started to tell his story
Roger talked about his mom. He stood facing sideways from me, with an occasional glance in my direction prompted by my occasional responses to what he was saying. Once in a while, he’d swivel to face me, sharing something that was especially important. Then he went back to telling me about his frequent journeys down south to see her since she’d fallen and broke multiple bones in June, how his family had done their best to cope, and her eventual decline and death.
He told me about dealing with “picking up the pieces” now she was gone. The last time he saw her in the hospital, when she was “all scrunched up” and seemed out of it until he bent down and hugged her and told her “I love you Mom” and she opened one eye and said “I love you too” “as clear as anything” and then closed her eye and “was out of it again”. He told me much more than I’ll share here.
Roger talked for over ten minutes, by far the longest conversation we’ve ever had. Now and again he edged away during our time together. But he couldn’t quite get himself to stop what he wanted or needed to say.
And that was fine with me. I was in no hurry, and he wanted to talk.
At the end, I wished him well and he turned, got into his van, and motored off down my driveway.
After watching Hannah Gadsby‘s stunning show Nanette — which I highly recommend — here’s a small piece worth sharing.
Gadsby starts with Vincent Van Gogh, looking at how we’ve come to lionize the idea of misunderstood genius. “Born ahead of his time,” she says. “What a load of shit. Nobody is born ahead of their time—it’s impossible.” —Annaliese Griffin, Hannah Gadsby rewrites the way we tell jokes in “Nanette”
Do you ever feel that the world isn’t ready for what you have to say?
I do sometimes.
And when I feel this, it’s easy to wonder: perhaps I was born “ahead of my time?”
On September 6, 2017, Hurricane Irma tore across the tiny island nation of Anguilla. The hurricane destroyed every power pole. Irma tore the roofs off schools, government buildings, and the hospital. The Category 5 hurricane’s 185 mph winds and driving rain caused severe interior damage and destruction to most buildings on the island. After the storm, fallen poles, trees, and debris blocked every road on the island, and there was no power for weeks. Amazingly, only two people died.
Resilience in the Face of Disaster
Six months later, we are visiting; amazed at the recovery that has taken place in such a short time. Most Caribbean islands, such as neighboring St Maarten, remain heavily damaged. Anguilla’s 13,000 inhabitants have worked their hearts and bodies out to bring life here back to something approaching normal. Power has been restored all over the island, internet and phone is largely back, and the majority of the colorful beach restaurants and shops serving Anguilla’s crucial tourist industry have been completely rebuilt.
The few large resorts on the island will take longer to reopen, but the villa we have been renting for years here survived and from our veranda we continue to enjoy the panoramic view of waves crashing on coral reefs that separate us from 3,000 miles of Atlantic ocean between us and the nearest landmass, the coast of Halifax, Nova Scotia.
We are fortunate to be able to enjoy Anguilla again, but this disaster severely impacted locals’ lives. Tourism income vanished for months while the recovery was underway. Many are still without work while a few large resorts remain closed. Travel into the island is restricted due to serious hurricane damage at the two feeder airports SXM and SJU.
Tourist loyalty
Luckily, Anguilla has built an incredibly loyal tourist base, including people like us who have been vacationing here for decades. The stunning beaches, great restaurants, and friendly locals have driven us to help get this island back on its feet. We and many others have donated to relief efforts and brought needed school supplies in our suitcases. And we’ve donated time while we’re here to volunteer (in our case, in the schools and a community center).
Here are one visitor’s thoughts about what this tiny island means to him:
I am the kind of man who tries to always look at the bright side. It makes me happy to look at the world through positive eyes. I had to learn to look for gratitude in my daily living but it has completely changed my outlook on living and who I am. I start most days thinking of all that I have to be grateful for — but Anguilla is another story!
I am so lucky to get to even come here. I am ever grateful to the people who introduced me to this island thirty years ago and even more grateful to the wonderful warm Anguillans who have welcomed me back over the years. The people of the world could learn some good lessons in how to live their lives from the people of this tiny island.
This is the first day of our last week here! Why am I so sad? How many people get to come to a wonderful place like this in the dead of winter and go on the beach and in the ocean every day for six weeks? I ought to be focusing on that instead of having this mental countdown. I feel like a little kid, sad that the summer is over.
Would I love this place as much if I lived here? Maybe it is because I do leave and go home that makes it so special. My heart will ache when I step on the boat and I will be glancing back over here all the way over to the airport.
—Paul F. Phillips from the Facebook Anguilla For Tourists Group
Island love
There is a synergy at work here. The islanders’ friendliness, openness, acceptance of difficult circumstances, and hard work have led visitors to fall in love with this small, unique Caribbean community. We in turn are doing everything we can to keep Anguilla strong in the face of adversity. Together, we are striving to maintain something that is dynamic, special, and quite rare in this world: a special place for both locals and tourists to enjoy and cherish.
While exploring the New York City High Line for the first time in November 2017, I stopped for lunch in the Chelsea Market, passed the Apple West 14th Street Store, and on impulse went in to take a look at the Apple Watch Series 3 which had just been released. Though impressed while watching the original Apple Watch launch two years earlier, I was still wearing an inexpensive watch I’d purchased years ago in Zurich. This time I liked what I saw. Within 30 minutes I was the owner of a space gray 42mm aluminum Series 3. I added a space black Milanese Loop but passed on the cellular option.
As I write this, two months later, my Apple Watch has hardly left my wrist (you’ll see why later). Frankly, I’m surprised at its positive impact on my life. Let’s list the ways…
Fitness
From interviews conducted since the Apple Watch was released it’s clear that, originally, Apple had no firm idea about how it might be received or used. Today, the Series 3 upgrade and recent improvements to watchOS make it plain that Apple believes that fitness tracking is the key reason people buy their watches.
I am no fitness fanatic, just a guy in his sixties trying to slow down the effects of old age. But the Series 3 has significantly improved my ability to consistently carry out the modest fitness-maintaining activities I’d previously struggled to do on a regular basis. These days I walk, do yoga, and stack and carry a few cords every year for our wood-burning stove.
How it works
The Apple Watch’s basic indication of the amount of these activities is a set of colored rings that concisely display your desired daily levels of exercise, movement, and standing (i.e. not spending hours sitting in a chair without a movement break). Adding these to your customized watch face allows you to notice your progress every time you glance at your watch. The continual reminder, with the subtle motivation to close all the rings by the end of the day, really helps me to stay faithful to my modest daily exercise goals. Although I rarely have a problem taking breaks since my adoption of Pomodoro, I love how the watch buzzes my wrist with a little reminder on the rare occasions I’ve been too couch potato-ey (which means at 10 minutes before the top of every hour when it senses you’ve been inactive for 50 minutes).
For more precise tracking (not a high priority for me), the Apple Watch contains a good variety of fitness “workouts”. These monitor your efforts once the watch knows what kind of activity you’re doing, like walking, running, cycling, elliptical, and swimming (yes it’s waterproof). I do a lot of walking while typing at my treadmill desk, which means that the standard watch walking workout would be inaccurate since my arms aren’t swinging and my position doesn’t change. For fitness activities not included in watchOS, Apple has “Other” workouts that I can custom label (e.g. “treadmill”) and treat as if I was taking a “brisk walk”. (Apple recently introduced GymKit, which obtains accurate exercise information from certain next-generation gym equipment — i.e. not my ancient treadmill.)
Heart monitoring
A friend of mine was feeling under the weather recently. He finally went to the doctor where they discovered that his heart was beating abnormally fast — 130 beats per minute (BPM) at rest. He needed urgent treatment. The Apple Watch has an accurate continuous heart monitor that can be set to notify you if your heart rate remains above a given BPM while you’ve been inactive for 10 minutes. Graphs of your daily heart rate are available. They’re interesting to occasionally peruse and it’s unlikely that I’ll find myself in my friend’s situation without knowing about it right away.
In addition, I joined the (free) Apple Heart Study conducted by Stanford Medicine, which monitors my heart rate and rhythm. If an irregular heart rhythm (arrhythmia) is identified, the app will notify me. I’ll receive a free video consultation on my iPhone with the study’s board-certified, licensed primary care providers for further analysis. “In some cases, the doctor may recommend a BioTelemetry electrocardiogram (ECG) patch for additional monitoring. The patch will be mailed to you at no cost and should be worn for seven days. The ECG data gathered over this period will be used to determine whether atrial fibrillation (AFib) or another type of irregular heart rhythm is present.”
I appreciate the heart health monitoring that my watch provides.
Informing me unobtrusively via haptics
The watch generates different kinds of haptics. These are sensations created by tiny motors at the back of the watch that deliver real-time tactile feedback on the skin below. Haptics can feel like a gentle tap on the wrist or something more complicated. A consistent haptic indicates distinct notifications and situations. For example, if you’re walking to a destination in an unfamiliar city, Apple Maps can guide you there. Your watch can tell you when you need to turn left by playing two taps three times in a row, turn right by playing twelve steady taps on your wrist, and that you‘ve arrived at your destination by using a long vibration.
Unlike the beeps, rings, and loud buzzes from other mobile devices, haptics are unnoticeable by anyone except the watch wearer. Once I’ve set up my destination in Maps, I can walk there without ever touching or viewing my phone. If I’m eating dinner with friends I can choose whether or not to ignore a tap on my wrist. And if I want to see a notification, a discrete turn of my wrist towards me turns on the display. This is usually unnoticed by my companions and certainly less obtrusive than dragging my phone out of my pocket or staring at it on the table.
Haptics is a subtle new way to communicate. It has its limitations, but I find it a great improvement over the obvious intrusions of pre-Apple Watch digital devices.
Meditation
Last week I watched Walk With Me, a documentary about the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. I learned that his Plum Village monastic community rings “bells of mindfulness”. When residents hear one, they stop all conversations and whatever they are doing and bring their awareness to their breathing. I like to meditate, and the Apple Watch includes a simple app named Breathe that reminds users every five hours (default) to take a moment to relax and take deep measured breaths. You can ignore the reminder or take a few minutes to bring attention to your breath, guided by a lovely haptic that provides a sequence of graduated speed taps to synchronize with your in-breath.
Breathe
The default Breathe session is one minute of seven breaths. However, the iPhone Watch App can easily adjust this to remind a user to breathe mindfully as often as every hour and fine-tune the number of breaths per minute and the number of breaths per session. During a Breathe session, a pattern on the watch face expands and contracts to indicate in and out breathing, but I find the haptic feedback sufficient to meditate on my breath with my eyes closed.
One can, of course, simply meditate in the traditional way with no gizmo telling you when to mindfully meditate. I like the Breathe app’s periodic gentle reminder to check what I’m currently experiencing and the opportunity to center myself and help bring me back to living in the present. Rather like the bells at Plum Village.
Little things that Siri makes easy and routine
Siri is so easy to use on my watch that I now routinely do useful things that were too cumbersome when I had to find and talk to my phone. For example, I’ll lift my watch and say: “Hey Siri, start a treadmill workout for 26 minutes”. Or: “Hey Siri, how cold will it get tonight?”
Messaging “hands-free” has become possible while my phone’s still buried in my pocket. I say: “Hey Siri, send a message to Celia”, and dictate it after the “What do you want to say?” response. Siri’s voice recognition is very good so there’s rarely a transcription problem with simple messages. The first time I did this while driving, Celia was alarmed until she discovered I’d never touched my phone!
Setting timers and alarms
I frequently need triggers (aka timers and alarms) to remind me of future things I need to do. For example, take a break (as per the Pomodoro practice mentioned earlier), go to the post office before it closes, check the wood stove that I left on updraft, make a phone call, etc. I used to use small digital timers to do this. But with Siri on my wrist it’s simple to say “Hey Siri, set a timer for ten minutes”, or “Hey Siri, set an alarm for 12:30 pm”. Siri faithfully reminds me with a haptic tap when my timer or alarm is due. I can stop it with a single tap or pause/snooze it with a slide and tap or a Siri command.
Setting triggers via Siri is so easy that I set many more reminders than I did before. This enhances my imperfect memory and improves the likelihood that I’ll actually be doing what I’ve agreed to do when I need to do it.
Sleeping
I wear my watch pretty much all the time, including while I sleep. No, the watch has not become a fetish object or a substitute teddy bear, but I’m taking advantage of a sleep app Pillow to monitor my sleep. It’s a fully functional free app, though you can pay $4.99 (which I did) to unlock a few extra features. As I age, my sleep quality has declined (at least it feels that way). Pillow provides an interesting window into my sleep, allowing me to explore the effects of bedtime routines, medication, etc.
I’ve learned, for example, that I don’t sleep as much as I thought I did. Also, I hardly snore (the app includes optional recording of sound via the watch microphone). The pretty graphs of my sleep state aren’t totally accurate — I sometimes know I was dreaming when I woke but the app doesn’t think I was in REM state. But day-to-day comparison is enlightening and helps me improve my sleep hygiene.
Ergonomics, comfort & ease of use
I’ve owned quite a few watches over the years. Whenever I’ve looked for a new one I’ve had a hard time finding a watch face I like. My criteria seem simple. An analog face that shows all the numerals, a second hand, and a readable day of the week and date. Sounds straightforward, but less than 1% of conventional watches supply this combination.
This isn’t a problem with Apple watches, which come with plenty of customizable faces. I quickly created exactly what I wanted (see the screenshot). You can have multiple faces for different circumstances available with a swipe. The one I use handles what I need at a glance.
The Milanese Loop
After years of wearing leather bands that eventually distort and fall apart, I love my Milanese Loop. It’s the first comfortable metal band I’ve ever worn. The infinitely adjustable magnetic metal closure is brilliant and works perfectly. I bought the Apple version. Some of the imitation bands that cost a fraction of Apple’s price have good reviews.
Charging
The watch is charged magnetically and charging is quick. I pop the watch on the inductive charger a couple of times a day for 20-30 minutes. Even though I’m wearing the watch almost constantly (see above) I’ve never come close to a low battery situation. While we’re on the topic, the $7.95 Spigen S350 Apple Watch Stand creates the perfect travel alarm clock as long as there’s power near the bed. I say “perfect” because the stand holds the watch vertically in Nightstand mode, where the time display turns off until it’s tapped or detects even the slightest motion/sound, and you can easily set an alarm with Siri.
Ways to interact
There are multiple ways you can interact with the Apple Watch (tap, slide, force touch on the watch face; press, rotate the Digital Crown; press the side button; “Hey Siri”) that initially felt complicated. However, getting the watch to do what I want has become fairly intuitive, though I occasionally fumble for a moment.
Notifications are convenient and completely customizable. I appreciate the automatic “do not disturb” feature at night. It’s easily turned on with a slide and tap while meditating or doing yoga. Even the watch’s “flashlight”, though dim, has been useful far more than I expected.
Limitations
The watch requires you to own an iPhone. Most functionality is only available when the phone is within Bluetooth range. This is rarely a problem for me, since I tend to keep my phone in my pocket, but might be inconvenient for some. (The LTE cellular model adds phone-free calls and messaging, but battery consumption is understandably high if used extensively and, of course, there’s an additional monthly carrier fee.)
There are many other apps available for the Apple Watch besides the ones I’ve mentioned, but I barely use them. Yes, it’s impressive that I can squint at a weather radar map on my watch, but the small display area really limits its usability to viewing limited information, like a short message or tweet. It’s also quite hard to pick a rarely used app from the cloud of icons; it’s easier to have Siri do it (provided I can remember the app name).
Conclusion
The Apple Watch Series 3 is a fantastic device that has had many unexpected positive impacts on my life. I hope sharing them will help you decide whether a device like this is valuable for you.
“I know the world is crazy right now. I know it’s hard to find the good in the news but you won’t find it there because the news asks you to be only a passive consumer of the world’s pain and joy. What we need to do is rise from our seats and participate in the world as fully as possible.”
—Chris Corrigan, Pick up the unclaimed portion of joy
“…it’s the awareness of death — and not happiness or positivity or stoicism — that allows us to live fully in the time that we have.” —Stephen Jenkinson in the 2008 documentary Griefwalker
and
“…live your life as someone who has an enduring obligation to that which has kept you alive.” —Stephen Jenkinson, in an interview in The Sun, August 2015
I am working to establish a gratitude practice, which I hope will help me live more fully.
One of the hardest things for me to do is to shut up and listen.
“If I could give just one piece of advice to all medical students, I would say, ‘Show up completely, and then shut up for at least two minutes while the miracle in front of you tells you who they are and how you can help them.’ If every doctor did just that one thing, it would change medicine.” —Raymond Barfield, Professor of Medicine and Divinity, Duke University, from “The Miracle in Front of You”, January 2016 interview in The Sun
It’s hard for me to shut up and listen because…
…I get sparked by what people say and I want to respond.
…people often talk about their problems, and I love solving problems—even when no one asks me to solve them.
…I have a need for connection with others and want to share who I am, sometimes more than is best for our relationship.
Yet, when I am able to shut up and give the gift of listening, the odds that the person speaking feels heard increases.
And, when I am able to shut up and give someone sharing a problem the space to say fully what’s on her mind, it’s more likely she’ll ask me what I think, and then, perhaps, I can help her.
And, when I am able to shut up and connect with someone through listening well, I’ll usually end up connecting with him more deeply.
Finally, of course, when I shut up and listen well, I’m less likely to miss important information that I need or want to hear.
We can all—especially me—benefit from shutting up and listening.
Regular review and updating of your To Do implementation is essential for it to be useful. Schedule reviews in a way that works for you. I like to review my Kanban/GTD implementation at the beginning and end of each day. Also, I review it whenever it’s not obvious to me what I should be doing next.
After dinner last night I heard a familiar sound — the growl of the 
While exploring the New York City High Line for the first time in November 2017, I 
stopped for lunch in the Chelsea Market, passed the Apple West 14th Street Store, and on impulse went in to take a look at the Apple Watch Series 3 which had just been released. Though impressed while watching the original Apple Watch launch two years earlier, I was still wearing an inexpensive watch I’d purchased years ago in Zurich. This time I liked what I saw. Within 30 minutes I was the owner of a space gray 42mm aluminum Series 3. I added a space black Milanese Loop but passed on the cellular option.
I’ve owned quite a few watches over the years. Whenever I’ve looked for a new one I’ve had a hard time finding a watch face I like. My criteria seem simple. An analog face that shows all the numerals, a second hand, and a readable day of the week and date. Sounds straightforward, but less than 1% of conventional watches supply this combination.
Charging
How to live your life? 
One of the hardest things for me to do is to shut up and listen.