Personal effectiveness

Why I’m not deleting everything

Monday, June 23rd, 2025 by Adrian Segar
Not deleting everything. A split-scene illustration: Left side: A young woman at a clean, minimalist desk, smiling after deleting everything, a blank journal open, no visible clutter. Right side: An older man at a warmly lit desk surrounded by open notebooks, a MacBook with folders visible, sticky notes with half-legible ideas—an atmosphere of quiet richness and depth. The older person is writing, calm and focused, not overwhelmed.
Two desks

Joan Westernberg recently wrote a post on LinkedIn that caught fire. In it, she describes deleting every trace of her productivity systems: all of her meticulously constructed “second brain”, her notes, saved articles, and to-do lists.  Surprisingly, she felt relief. No panic, no regret. Just clarity.

Here’s what she wrote:

‘Every note in Obsidian. Every carefully crafted “second brain.” Every Apple Note. Every to do list.

Every article on my “read later” list.

Every productivity system I’d built over years. Gone in seconds.

And I felt zero panic. Just an overwhelming sense of relief.

Here’s what I’ve learned about our obsession with “capturing everything”:

The Promise: Build a networked archive so vast it can answer questions before you ask them. Never forget. Never lose an insight.

The Reality: My “second brain” became a mausoleum. A dusty collection of old selves, frozen curiosities, and deferred thinking.

I was reading to extract, not to understand. Listening to summarize, not to absorb. Thinking in formats I could file, not insights I could live.

This is what I know about productivity systems:

→ Storing an idea isn’t the same as understanding it → A perfectly organized system can become a prison → Sometimes the map swallows the territory

My reading database had 7,000 items. It was a shrine to the person I imagined I’d become “if only I read everything.”

But I already know what I want to read. I know the shape of my attention. I don’t need a database to prove I have taste.

What deletion taught me:

Human memory isn’t an archive – it’s associative, emotional, alive. We don’t think in folders. We think in stories, connections, experiences.

The ideas that matter will return. Not because you indexed them, because they mattered. If they don’t, they didn’t.

My new system is no system:

– Write what I think (knowing it may disappear)
– Trust that important things resurface naturally
– One simple note called “WHAT” for truly essential items (a tip I picked up from David Heinemeier Hansson)
– Read what calls to me, not what I’ve obligated myself to consume

I don’t want to manage knowledge. I want to live it.

Six years sober taught me: what got me here won’t get me where I need to be next. Sometimes the most productive thing you can do is delete everything and start fresh.’

Her post resonated with many readers, especially those who felt trapped by their own systems of digital curation. She makes a case that obsessive idea capture can become a shrine to potential, not practice. A mausoleum of “old selves, frozen curiosities, and deferred thinking”, she calls it.

I understand why this resonated. We live in an age that encourages hoarding knowledge “just in case,” and makes deletion feel almost sacrilegious. I admire her courage in pressing the reset button.

But I want to add a caveat—one rooted in the experience of a different phase of life.

Joan, you’re a lot younger than me

I’m 73. To my younger self’s surprise (and delight), I’m still doing meaningful creative work. In fact, I’d argue that much of what I do today—writing, designing participatory events, making sense of complex systems—is deeper and more insightful than what I was doing at 33 or even 53.

But here’s the difference: I no longer have the memory I once did.

When I was 25, newly minted Ph.D. in hand, I could rely on my brain to hold onto what mattered. I remembered most of what I read, heard, and thought. The shape of a complex idea, the key insight from a book I’d read two years ago, or the name of a colleague I’d encountered once at a conference—I could retrieve these easily.

That’s no longer the case.

My memory today

Today, I need external systems to support my memory. Not because I’m overwhelmed or addicted to productivity, but because I can’t trust my mind to hold onto things I suspect I’ll need later:

  • A really tasty chicken recipe that I stumbled across in a sea of thousands.
  • A blog post draft I wrote in 2016, containing a story that haunted me.
  • A compelling idea buried in an article I saved four years ago.
  • A line from a book that sparked a potential tweak for one of my facilitation methods.

These days, without some kind of archive, such ideas often disappear—not over decades, but in minutes or days.

Here’s the thing: I’m not managing these notes. They don’t clutter my attention. I’m not poring over them obsessively. I’m not trying to optimize recall or catalog my intellectual life.

I just want to be able to find what I once valued if I need it again.

And fortunately, that’s easier than ever. Storage is cheap. Search is fast. My notes in Joplin and Apple Notes, along with well-named files and folders on my Mac, sit quietly, searchable in seconds. Ready, should a long-lost idea come knocking again.

Capturing them guards against another reality: websites rot. The online world is fragile. What you thought would always be there might vanish tomorrow.

So no—I’m not deleting everything. I’m not starting over.
 I’m simply acknowledging that my brain has changed, and that one of the gifts of technology is that it can help me keep creating with richness and depth, even as I forget more than I used to.

Joan’s insight that “the ideas that matter will return” is often true. But I would gently add that sometimes they return because you left a trail for them to be retrieved.

A gentle scaffolding

My system isn’t elaborate. But it’s enough.

Enough to support the creative work I still care deeply about.
Enough to help my future self rediscover what my past self found valuable.
And enough to keep me moving forward without obsessively cataloging what I’ve already done.

For some of us, there’s a season for gentle scaffolding—simple systems that hold what we can’t, so we can keep doing the work that still matters.

Tags: , | Posted in life lessons, Personal effectiveness | 2 Comments »

Planning vs. Worrying: Navigating the line between preparedness and paralysis

Monday, June 16th, 2025 by Adrian Segar

Planning vs. Worrying: A split illustration of a man sitting at a desk. On the left (caption PLANNING), he is focused and writing. On the right (caption WORRYING), he is sitting unhappily, head in hands.When we commit to a future action or outcome, we also implicitly or explicitly commit to the steps required to make it happen. This typically sets us down two paths: planning and worrying.

Planning involves strategy, sequencing, and intentionality. It lives in the thinking brain—the part that envisions steps, evaluates scenarios, and acts. Worrying, on the other hand, resides in our emotional centers. It’s a reaction, not a response: anxiety that we’ll forget something, mess something up, or fall short of success. As I explored in Unraveling the Confusion about Thinking and Feeling, confusing these two mental modes can muddle our judgment, especially when we mistake anxious feelings for useful thoughts. Noticing the difference helps us respond appropriately, not just react.

These two processes—planning and worrying—can feel similar, especially when we’re operating under pressure. But they’re fundamentally different in both mindset and effect.

What planning does

Planning puts us in motion. It focuses our attention on what we can do, not just what might happen. Planning creates structure and clarity, even if only provisional, and enables us to move from intention to implementation. It invites creativity: new ideas emerge as we map possibilities and prepare for uncertainties.

Good planning doesn’t ignore risk. It acknowledges that things won’t always go as expected, and it builds in options, flexibility, and fail-safes. As an event designer and facilitator, anticipating potential problems is simply part of the job. Contingency planning is not worrying. It’s thoughtful foresight.

What worrying does

Worry, by contrast, spins. It ties up our energy in emotional loops about imaginary futures. Worry shifts our attention from “What needs to happen next?” or “What might happen that we need to prepare for?” to “What if everything goes wrong?” While occasional worry can be a useful motivator—nudging us to act when we’re in denial or procrastinating—unchecked worry is rarely productive. It keeps us in our heads and out of the present moment, reacting to scenarios that may never materialize.

Worry can also masquerade as planning. But if you’re not making decisions, defining next steps, or clarifying outcomes, you’re probably not planning—you’re ruminating.

The tension between worrying and planning

Planning and worrying often occupy the same mental real estate. When we’re envisioning the future, it’s easy to slip from thoughtful preparation into anxious prediction. The key is to stay grounded in agency and action, holding the tension of uncertainty without letting it become fear.

For me, the trick is to treat each idea that arises, whether it’s an exciting opportunity or a potential disaster, as an invitation to design, rather than a reason to dread. What can I build now that will serve me later? What options can I open up that will make room for surprises—good or bad?

Of course, we know how unpredictable life can be. As the old saying goes, “Man plans and God laughs.” But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t plan. It means we should plan with humility, clear-eyed about what we can control, and calm about what we can’t.

Suggestions

Planning lives in the thinking brain. It builds structure, invites creativity, and fosters agency. It may include thinking about what could go wrong, but it doesn’t live there.

Worrying lives in the emotional brain. It loops around uncertainty and pulls us away from effective action.

Being mindful of the distinction helps us stay focused, calm, and prepared, even in complex or high-stakes situations. Especially for those of us who create experiences for others, learning to plan without falling into worry is a skill worth practicing.

The best antidote to worry isn’t ignoring the future. It’s meeting it with thoughtful design, flexible intention, and a willingness to adapt. In other words: plan like a pro, and hold the results lightly.

Tags: , , | Posted in Event design, Facilitating Change, life lessons, Personal effectiveness | No Comments »

Never Run Out of Ideas: Lessons Learned from Writing 1000+ Blog Posts

Monday, May 13th, 2024 by Adrian Segar

If you’d told me back in 2009 that by 2024 I’d have written over a thousand blog posts for this website, I’d have told you you were crazy. (I’ve published 827; the rest are drafts, but still.) I’d have thought I would have run out of ideas years ago.

Then the other day, I was flipping through Jerry Weinberg‘s book “Weinberg on Writing – The Fieldstone Method“. I remembered what Gabriele Rico, author of the best-selling “Writing the Natural Way“, called “One of the best lines of Weinberg on Writing, and one every writer should commit to memory.”

“I may run out of ideas, but I’ll never run out of new combinations of ideas.”
—Jerry Weinberg, “Weinberg on Writing – The Fieldstone Method“, Chapter 16, Putting Your Subconscious to Work

Jerry’s book uses frequent analogies to building fieldstone walls.

How not to run out of ideas: Stone Wall GIF by JC Property Professionals

Every stone-built wall is unique because you build it from a unique combination and arrangement of stones. Even using the same set of stones, you can build thousands of unique walls by stacking them differently.

The same is true of creating unique combinations of ideas. As Jerry said about his famous book The Psychology of Computer Programming, written over 50 years ago and still in print: “…it’s merely a putting-together of computers and people, two topics that had previously been considered separate”.

My posts, like conferences, are containers for ideas. Yes, I do have new ideas regularly! Yet, on review, many of my posts combine core ideas about meeting design, facilitation, facilitating change, consulting, personal effectiveness, the meeting industry, leadership, and marketing in novel ways.

“I may run out of ideas, but I’ll never run out of new combinations of ideas.”

It works for me!

Attribution: Stone Wall GIF by JC Property Professionals via GIPHY

Posted in Personal effectiveness, Writing | No Comments »

Do you have an unhealthy relationship with your career?

Monday, February 26th, 2024 by Adrian Segar

illustration of an unhappy young woman with a poor relationship with her career sitting at an office desk surrounded by piles of paperwork. Light illuminates her from a single window.Recently, I had a thought-provoking conversation with association maven and friend KiKi L’Italien. She said she had worked hard to avoid replicating in her marriage some unhealthy dynamics she experienced in her family while growing up. And she felt she’d been successful. But recently, she realized that she had incorporated these unhealthy dynamics into her relationship with her career.

Like me, KiKi’s had a rich and complex professional life. She has switched several times between working as an employee and as an independent consultant in the association field. KiKi told me that some aspects of her behavior working as an independent mirrored the dysfunction of her growing up. Though this was one of several factors leading to the decision, KiKi decided to embrace working as an employee once more for big red M, a company that is a good match for her passions and expertise.

This is the latest step along KiKi‘s journey. I admire the honesty, energy, commitment, and smarts that she brings to her life and work. I want to thank KiKi for her frank sharing that inspired the core of this post. Namely: we need to look not only at our family relationships but also our relationships with our career.

My relationship with my career

Each person’s past experiences and situations are unique. I, like KiKi, work to disentangle myself from what I was taught to believe when I was young. I also notice and review how I work and my relationships with my clients. Doing this reduces the effects of learned dysfunction on my day-to-day life.

For example, when I first started consulting I was scared of disappointing my clients. I (falsely) believed that if I didn’t do a perfect job I would fail in some way. Since I’m not perfect, this led me not to feel good about myself. So, in those early days, I put up with what I now know were unreasonable requests from clients. It took some years before I felt confident in saying no to some of these requests. Eventually, that progressed to breaking up with clients who ignored or did not want to accept my boundaries for a working relationship.

At times, KiKi and I have both chosen to work independently rather than being employed by an organization. This is a big, complicated decision.

I sometimes envy folks embedded inside organizations. They usually have access to resources that I could never have as an independent. As a consultant, I have less authority to effect change in an organization than anyone who works there. And, as an independent, I’ve sometimes felt nervous about the lack of a regular paycheck.

Then I remember that, as an independent, I have the freedom to choose:

  • whom I work with;
  • the kind of work I do and the way I do that work;
  • the power to determine my schedule; and
  • my ability to take breaks and time off when it’s best for me, not my employer.

Your relationship with your career

An unhealthy relationship with your career is different from an unhealthy relationship with your work. The former means your dysfunctional behaviors may affect:

  • the kinds of work you choose;
  • the quality of your work relationships at every job; and
  • your career path.

You have almost certainly experienced unpleasant situations at work. Some of them are caused by circumstances completely out of your control. But in some of them, you have played a part. Having an unhealthy relationship with your career means that you repeat dysfunctional patterns as you move or make decisions about moving from one work opportunity to another.

An analogy would be someone who is a “bad picker” of relationship partners. Over and over again this person chooses to have relationships with people. with whom they are not compatible for one or more reasons that ultimately sabotage each relationship. The same dysfunctional patterns repeat again and again inside each relationship because bad pickers are drawn to relationships that fulfill what their dysfunctional aspects need rather than what their authentic self requires and deserves.

Similarly, you may be drawn to work situations that feed your dysfunctional aspects, leading to repeated eventual dissatisfaction with each new work situation.

There’s no single “right” relationship

Exploring your relationship with your career can have a profound long-term effect on your life.

For example, noticing and responding to our relationship with our work and our careers influence how Kiki and I choose to work as an independent or employee. There is no single right choice for everyone. Although I haven’t received a paycheck for over 30 years, from 1983 to 1993 I was a part-time college professor drawing a salary while simultaneously pursuing independent consulting work. My friend, veteran event producer and educator Brandt Krueger, has a similar story to tell. Employed for twenty years, he eventually struck out as an independent for eight years, only recently returning to employment as a senior event producer at a large company.

What is best for KiKi, Brandt, and me is different. And that’s OK, and as it should be.

What’s important is to keep looking at our experience with everyone who is part of our world. That includes our family, friends, colleagues, working environment, and our career.

We need to keep noticing what’s happening, what’s working, and what isn’t in all these components of our lives. This crucial work allows us to reduce the distance between who we are and how we show up in the world. In the process, you’ll be working to minimize the unhealthy aspects of your relationship with your career.

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How to work with others to change our lives

Monday, December 20th, 2021 by Adrian Segar

How to work with others to change our lives

I belong to a couple of small groups that have been meeting regularly for decades. The men’s group meets biweekly, while the consultants’ group meets monthly. I have been exploring and writing about facilitating change since the earliest days of this blog. So in 2021, I developed and facilitated for each group a process for working together to explore what we want to change, and then change our lives.

Each group spent several meetings working through this exercise.

What happened was valuable, so I’m sharing the process for you to use if it fits.

The process design outline

It’s important for the group’s members to receive instructions for the entire exercise well in advance of the first meeting, so they have time to think about their answers before we get together.

Exploring our past experiences of working on change in our lives

We begin with a short, three-question review of our past experiences working on change in our lives.

These questions give everyone the opportunity to review:

  • the life changes they made or attempted to make in the past;
  • the strategies they used; and
  • what they learned in the process.

This supplies baseline information to the individuals and the group for what follows.

The questions cover what:

  • we worked on.
  • was tried that did and didn’t work.
  • we learned from these experiences.

We each share short answers to these questions before continuing to the next stage of the process.

For the rest of the exercise, each group member gets as much time as they need.

Sharing what we would currently like to change in our lives

Next, we ask each person to share anything they would currently like to change in their life. This includes issues they may or may not be working on. Group members can ask for help to clarify what they want to change.

Exploring and discussing what we are currently working on to change our lives

Next, each person shares in detail which of the above issues they are currently working on, or want to work on, to change in their life. This can include describing their struggles and what they are learning, and also asking the group for advice and support.

Post-process review

Exploring long-term learning is important. So, after some time has elapsed, perhaps a few months, we run a post-exercise review of the outcomes for each person. This helps to uncover successes as well as difficulties that surfaced, and can also lead to additional appropriate group support and encouragement.

Here’s an example — what I shared and did

Things I’ve tried in the past to make changes in my life that didn’t work

  • Trying to think my way into making changes w/o taking my feelings/body state into account
    e.g. trying to lose weight by going on a diet.
  • Denial—doing nothing and hoping the change will happen.

What I’ve learned about successful ways to change my life

  • Anything that improves my awareness of feeling or body state can be a precursor to change: e.g. mindful eating or emotional eating.
  • Creating habits: e.g. brushing my teeth first thing in the morning; setting triggers (calendar reminders, timers for meditation or breaks).
  • The habit of daily exercise and regular yoga improves awareness of my body state.

Three issues I worked on

  1. Tidying up and documenting my complicated life before I die.
  2. Meditating daily.
  3. Living more in gratitude; developing a daily practice.

My post-exercise three-month review

  1. I’m happy with the way I continue to work on the long-term project of tidying up my office, getting caught up on reading, and documenting my household and estate tasks. To help ensure that I work on it every day, I created a simple spreadsheet with columns for various short tasks that advanced my goals. Checking off time spent on one of these tasks each day shows me I’m making progress, and this feels good.
  2. I created a buddy system with another group member who wanted to meditate more. We send each other an email when we’ve meditated. This has greatly improved the likelihood I’ll meditate every day.
  3. After trying a simple daily gratitude practice, I decided to let it go for the time being until my daily meditation became a fully reliable habit. Sometimes, small steps are the best strategy!

Detailed instructions

Interested? OK! Here’s how to run this exercise.

First, explain the process and see if you get buy-in from the group about doing this work. It’s helpful to explain that each person can choose what personal change they want to work on. There are no “right” or “wrong”, or “small” or “large” personal change issues. Any issue that someone wants to work on is valuable to that person, and that’s all that counts.

I think it’s helpful for everyone present to participate, rather than some people being observers, but ultimately, that’s up to the group to decide.

Well before the first meeting, share the following, adapted to your needs, with group members.

Working together to change our lives – the first meeting

“We’ve decided to work together on what we are currently trying to change in our lives. As we will have about an hour for this work at each session, we’ll need two or more meetings for everyone to have their turn.

For the exercise to be fruitful, we will all need to do some preparatory work before the meetings.

Our eventual focus will be on what we are currently trying to change in our lives, and how we are going about it.

We’ll start with questions 1) and 2) below, which are about the past. Please come with short (maximum 2½ minutes total per person) answers to them. Please answer question 3) in 90 seconds or less. At subsequent meetings, we will spend much more time on questions 4) & 5).

Please come to the first meeting prepared to answer the following three questions:

==> 1) What have you tried to make changes in your life that didn’t work? What have you learned over the last 20 years?

==> 2) What have you learned about successful ways to change your life over the last 20 years?

Don’t include childhood/teen lessons learned, unless you really think they’re still relevant to today’s work.

Remember: a maximum of 2½ minutes for questions 1) and 2) combined!

==> 3) What would you currently like to change about how you live your life? (You might not be working on it. You can ask for advice if you want.)

Be as specific as possible in your answer to question 3). Your answer should take 90 seconds or less! (But we’ll provide more time if you want or need help clarifying your goals.)

Working together to change our lives – subsequent meetings

At subsequent meetings, we’ll each take turns to answer questions 4) and 5) below. You’ll have as much time as you need to answer these questions and partake in the subsequent discussion.

==> 4) What are you currently working on to change in your life?

==> 5) How are you going about making the changes you shared in your answer to question 4)? What are the struggles and what are you learning? What advice would you like?”

Running the meetings

At the first meeting, you’ll typically have time for everyone to share their answers to the first three questions. Keep track of the time, be flexible, but don’t let participants ramble. It’s very helpful for the facilitator to take brief notes on what people share. If there’s still time available, I suggest you/the facilitator model the process by sharing their answers to questions 4) and 5) and holding an appropriate discussion. Use subsequent meetings as needed for every group member in turn to answer and discuss these two final questions, and write notes on these discussions too.

The post-exercise review

When this exercise has been completed for everyone, I suggest the group schedule a follow-up review in a few months. If your group starts with check-ins, it can be useful to regularly remind everyone about the review and ask if anything’s come up that someone would like to discuss before the review meeting.

Before the post-exercise review, let group members know that the facilitator will share their notes for each person in turn, and ask them to comment on what’s happened since.

At the start of the post-exercise review, explain that this is an opportunity to share information — discoveries, roadblocks, successes, etc. — without judgment. It’s also a time when group members can ask for ideas, advice, and support from each other.

Finally, you may decide to return to this exercise at a later date. After all, there’s much to be said for working on change throughout our lives. The above process may be the same, but the answers the next time may be quite different!

Have you tried this exercise? How did it work for you? Did you change/improve it in some way? I’d love to hear about your experience with it — please share in the comments below!

Tags: , , , , , | Posted in Facilitating Change, life lessons, Personal effectiveness | No Comments »

Distracting ourselves from what matters

Monday, March 22nd, 2021 by Adrian Segar

distracting ourselves from what matters: an illustration of an old-fashioned scale with two pans on a balance arm. The pan on the right is heavier/lower and contains images of entertainment stars. The pan on the left contains an icon of a person bent over with the world on their back.We spend too much time distracting ourselves from what matters. Distraction is fine, up to a point. But when we spend two trillion dollars annually on entertainment, I’d say we are well beyond that point.

As Seth Godin puts it:

Marvel spent $400,000,000 to make Avengers: Endgame. Because there was a business model in place that made it a reasonable investment choice.

What if we wanted to cure river blindness or address ineffective policing as much as we wanted to watch movies? The business model would shift and things would change–in a different direction.

I’m not sure there’s an intrinsic reason that watching a particular movie is more satisfying than solving an endemic problem. We’ve simply evolved our culture to be focused on the business of amusement instead of the journey toward better. [Emphasis added]
—Seth Godin, In search of amusement

Seth points out that our business models have shifted away from those that satisfy needs, towards those that satisfy wants. These growing businesses make money by selling distraction from work, work that is needed to make things better.

Pandemic distractions

As I write this, the COVID pandemic has been raging for a year. We’ve had even more reasons to distract ourselves from the additional turmoil the pandemic has brought to our lives. Online streaming consumption has soared (while live event attendance has plummeted). The rise of online makes it possible to choose exactly the kind of distraction we want with a click or finger tap.

It’s hard to believe that in a (hopefully) post-pandemic future, we’ll spontaneously give up our newfound distractions. Especially since businesses are hard at work creating more distraction opportunities and temptations, making it even easier to avoid what matters.

After all, that’s where the money is.

Or is it?

A different choice

Each of us can make a different choice.

It’s going to need to be a conscious choice because businesses craft their distractions to be as addictive as possible. They will continue to do their best to make us want things that aren’t what we need.

There are so many unmet basic needs in this world. Here are some important ones:

  • Shelter
  • Food and water
  • Healthcare
  • Safety
  • Adequate income
  • Education

None of these needs are impossible to satisfy. The human race is capable of significantly improving access to all of them right now.

Working to meet these needs is a global effort. No one person can singlehandedly satisfy these needs. But each of us can do something.

You can make a difference

Individually, you can make a difference. Each of us has unique talents and energy to devote to issues that matter.

We can choose to distract ourselves a little less, and use our freed-up time to make the world a little better.

Because, for our world to become a better place, we can’t keep distracting ourselves from what matters.

You get to choose. Reduce weekly Netflix watching? Stop solving quite so many crossword puzzles? Don’t play Solitaire so often? (Those are some of my choices.)

Use your freed-up time to make the world a little better. (I choose to help run non-profits that provide support for healthcare and education, and to support other non-profits that work on improving the world.)

Make a conscious choice that works for you. One that supports a “journey towards better” for the world we live in.

Tags: , , , , , , | Posted in life lessons, Personal effectiveness | 1 Comment »

Have I Met You Before? Three ways to minimize embarrassment when meeting people

Monday, August 27th, 2018 by Adrian Segar

Have I met you before?Have I Met You Before? A photograph of the sailing regatta on South Pond in Marlboro, VT.

An embarrassing incident

I was hanging out at the Marlboro South Pond Regatta, a whimsical affair where local sailors of all stripes and abilities casually “race” around a few buoys in the lake, sometimes stopping to chat mid-race with each other or watch our beautiful loons. (They carry their babies on their backs — see photo!)

A man passed, and our eyes met for a moment. “Have I met him before?” I thought. “He looks very familiar.” But I couldn’t make the connection and said nothing.

A few minutes later, my wife, who was talking to a woman I didn’t recognize, turned to me and said, “You remember Lisa don’t you?” Memory flooded back, and I realized that I’d met Lisa in Anguilla 18 months ago when she and the familiar man, whose name I now remembered as Willy, had visited the island.

I felt a little embarrassed.

This happens all the time

As a facilitator of conferences and meetings, I meet and talk with hundreds of people every year. I used to be pretty good at recognizing people I’d previously met and was invariably able to remember their names, the circumstances, and what we talked about.

These days, my memory for these things…well, it sucks.

While I’m with people, I remember them well and can be with them effectively, using the information they’ve shared to explore new areas and deepen the relationship.

But within a few days, my recollection starts to blur. Circumstances, names, and details of our conversations disappear from short-term memory, and if I later see someone again I often can’t put them in context. A reminder brings my memory back, but needing one can be embarrassing. I don’t want to forget the people I meet — but my aging brain is less cooperative.

What to do?

I don’t want to fake remembering someone when I can’t initially place them. Having an aide with flawless recall at my side wherever I go, ready to whisper “That’s Merrigan Pertussis; you met her at the 2012 Nutrition for Athletes; in September you water-skied with her younger brother Placido in Ibiza” would be nice, but, unfortunately, is not an option for me or, I suspect, most people.

So here are three ways to minimize embarrassment when meeting people whom you might have met before.

1 — Rephrase your opening hello

My habitual opening remark on meeting someone used to be:  “Hi, good to meet you!” This is fine if you haven’t met them before. But if you’ve previously met them, they’re going to feel compelled to say something like: “Actually we met at the Bicycle Chain Association conference in Monaco.” Embarrassment ensues.

Instead, you can say:

“Hi, good to see you!”

See what I did there? Simply replacing “meet” with “see” removes any implication that this is the first time you’ve met. “See” is comfortably ambiguous.

This is a little sneaky, but it works. Of course, there’s still no guarantee that you’ll figure out in a timely fashion that you have met this person before, but at least you’re not giving your cluelessness away in the first sentence out of your mouth!

2 — You’re introduced to someone you may have met before, but can’t make the connection

If a third party introduces you to someone you might have met before, you can respond to the intro with:

“I’m looking forward to getting to know you better!”

This would be a weird opening sentence without an introduction, but it could be used as a follow-up to #1, giving you a little more opportunity for them to drop a clue as to when/how you previously met. Again, no guarantee you won’t be forced to ‘fess up.

3 — Be honest

“Our grosse conceipts, who think honestie the best policy.”
—Sir Edwin Sandys, Europae Speculum, 1599

Finally — and this is always an option, perhaps the best according to Sir Edwin Sandys — be honest. Simply say:

“I’m sorry, but you look really familiar. Have we met before?”

The familiar-looking person before you is then free to:

  • Share how you previously met; or
  • Tell you they think you’re mistaken; or
  • Admit you have met — but can’t remember how/when/where either!

Whatever happens, you’ve cleared the air and can move on with the most important part of meeting anyone: forming and growing a relationship!

Conclusion

I hope these simple ideas may help you reduce the awkwardness that you can feel on meeting someone for the first (or is it not the first) time.

Do you have your own ways to minimize embarrassment when meeting people whom you think you may have met before? Share them in the comments below!

[A hat tip to Mary Byers, who suggested #2 during a recent conversation, inspiring this post!]

Loon with babies photo attribution: Paul Bogart

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My treadmill desk — the next generation

Monday, September 4th, 2017 by Adrian Segar

My treadmill desk — the next generationI’ve replaced my treadmill desk with the next generation: a simpler, cheaper, and better alternative!

Five years ago I shared my initial and follow-up experiences with a treadmill desk. Since then I’ve walked over 1,600 miles while working, and have seen a clear correlation between my general level of well-being and regular use of my walking desk for (typically) a couple of hours a day.

Last week, however, I noticed that my upper arms were aching after using my desk. After a few days of experimenting, I realized that the height of the commercial plastic shelf I’ve been using since 2012 was causing my shoulders and upper arms to tense up while typing, leading to the achiness. Though this hadn’t happened before, I’m getting older and creakier and I needed to do something if I was going to continue to reap the benefits of my walking-while-working routine.

Googling “DIY treadmill desk” led me to the post How to Build a Treadmill Desk for Under $20! which acknowledges the original inspiration of Super Cheap DIY Treadmill Desk. Both articles described a simple, cheaper, and better solution to my problem.

Simple, because I could quickly build a better shelf myself.

Cheaper, because I used materials already in my possession. (But even if you bought everything, it should cost you less than $20.)

Better, because the new shelf:

  • rests on the arms of my treadmill at a perfect height for me to type with my forearms level, avoiding the scrunched-up shoulders my old desk required, and;
  • is twice as wide as the old one, giving me a place to rest reference materials right next to my keyboard while writing.

How I built my treadmill desk

Materials: a piece of plywood, two brackets, four screws, two hooks, one bungee cord.

Tools: saw, tape, pencil, screwdriver.

Time: about an hour.

Here’s the side view of my finished shelf. The brackets were only needed because my treadmill’s arms have a gentle slope. Some treadmills have horizontal arms, making construction even easier.

My treadmill desk — the next generation: a photograph of the simple, inexpensive, wooden shelf I added to my treadmill

Construction is so simple that these pictures and the referenced articles should contain all the information you need. Though I don’t regret purchasing my (now discontinued) commercial shelf in 2012, this homemade version is a significant improvement. If you have a home or office treadmill and want to work while walking, this is the way to go!

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How to get better at doing anything

Monday, September 12th, 2016 by Adrian Segar

get better at doing anything: a photograph of a 1937 metal WORKS PROGRESS ADMINISTRATION PROJECT plaqueHow can we get better at doing anything?

A lost tourist asks a native New Yorker “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” to which the local replies “Practice, practice, practice!”

Good advice. But if we want to get better at doing something, what should we practice?

The obvious answer is that we should practice improving what we are doing well. So we get even better at it.

My mentor Jerry Weinberg has a different suggestion.

“What are the basic skills required to be a good programmer?”

When this question came up on Quora.com, lots of good and useful answers were given, but they all seemed to be external answers. For me, with more than 60 years of programming experience, the one thing that made me a better programmer than most was my ability and willingness to examine myself critically and do something about my shortcomings. And, after 60 years, I’m still doing that.”
—Jerry Weinberg, What are the basic skills required to be a good programmer?

Being continually willing and able to notice our shortcomings and concentrate on working on them may be the most effective strategy we can use to get better at doing anything.

Image by Jonathunder (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

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My favorite to-do list manager

Monday, January 5th, 2015 by Adrian Segar

favorite to-do list manager: a screenshot of Adrian Segar's Trello To Do list

My favorite to-do list manager

I’ve lost count of the number of to-do list managers I’ve tried over the years. There have been so many. Most recently, Omnifocus and Wunderlist were my repositories, but I eventually grew frustrated enough to dump them; nothing I’ve used has eliminated the time-honored alternative of writing notes on scraps of paper that get scattered around my desk.

Until now.

I have been using Trello for the last six months, and I’m very happy with it. [Update in 2021: Six years later, it’s still my favorite to-do list manager!]

Here’s what I like about this nifty piece of software.

  • It runs on my desktops and mobile devices, syncing seamlessly between platforms. I can update my to-do lists anywhere. (Trello runs on Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer, iOS 7+, Android 4+, and, should the spirit move you, your Kindle Fire HD – 2nd Gen.)
  • It works flawlessly. (Wunderlist, I’m looking at you. I shouldn’t need to frantically email tech support when all my lists vanish. Yes, you did restore them for me which is very nice for a free service but…)
  • Trello can handle much more than to-do lists. I keep all my to-do’s on one Trello “board”, but you can easily create additional boards for projects that have more than a few associated tasks if that works better for you. (Or you could color code a project’s items so they stand out on your main to-do board. Or you could tag them. Or…)
  • It’s very flexible without being over-complex (Omnifocus, I’m talking about you.) I use a combination of Getting Things Done and Kanban methodologies, and Trello makes it a snap to extend the core Kanban model (To Do, Doing, Done) in any way you like. Each Trello board can have any number of Lists, and each list can hold any number of Cards, which are your basic individual action items.  For an example look at my to-do board above, which includes a set of three priority lists (cool, warm hot), a Brattleboro list (for things to do when I go into town), a Waiting list (off-screen) for things I’m waiting for someone else to get back to me on, as well as Doing and Done lists.
  • Moving stuff about is a dream. On a desktop device, drag a card with your mouse to where you want it. No delay, just drag it to a new list and it pops into place. On a touch-screen, use your finger to drag; it works the same way. Wunderlist sometimes had annoying lags  (“Did I move it or not?”) while Trello just works—Steve Jobs would be proud.
  • More features are available when you need them, but they don’t get in the way. See this intro Trello board that lists some of the things you can do that maybe I’ll want to do someday.

favorite to-do list manager

  • Trello is free for the functionality I need. If you start using it inside an organization, you can purchase Trello Business Class, which costs $5 per user per month or $45 per user per year and adds administrative controls and security (plus export in CSV format; see below). That’s how they make money. At the time of writing, Trello has ~5 million users.

See why it’s my favorite to-do list manager?

Any quibbles?

Of course—nothing’s perfect! (But Trello comes close.) The main thing that’s a little disturbing is that all your data is stored by Trello and if the company’s massive server cloud was vaporized you’d lose all your lovely to-dos. The free version of Trello only allows export to JSON, which cannot be opened by Excel, and you’d need to use a JSON->CSV converter to get your To Dos in a form that we mere mortals can view and manipulate. The only other thing I find a little clumsy is the procedure to add or change a due date for a card, though writing this article led me to discover a world of Trello shortcuts that simplify such operations. (Yup, more evidence that the best way to learn about anything is to try and explain it.)

Conclusion

Sign up today! It doesn’t cost anything, and no salesperson will call. Want to explain to me why the to-do list manager you use is way better than this? Type away in the comments!

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