At 72 I’m running faster than ever

photograph of Adrian running faster than everOK, maybe the title of this post should have an asterisk next to it. A more accurate statement would be that I’m running faster than ever before— since I started running almost every day at the age of 65, 9 years ago.

I didn’t predict this would happen. When I decided in 2016 to start running on the dirt roads by my home, I was terrible at it. I couldn’t run up the first hill. After a few months, I could. My running slowly improved, and it eventually became an activity I no longer dreaded.

After a few years, the speed at which I ran my hilly, 2-mile route almost every day plateaued. I assumed that was it.

And I was OK with that.

Running faster than ever

Yet, recently, for some mysterious reason, I’ve clipped what for me is a significant amount of time off the route I’ve been running for years.

Running my 1st hilly mile in ten minutes is an excellent time for me. The best I’ve ever run it was nine minutes and 40 seconds. Yet, somehow, the last four times I ran the same mile, I took nine minutes and 30 seconds, nine minutes and 15 seconds, nine minutes and 20 seconds, and nine minutes and 25 seconds.

I didn’t even think I was running fast.

I don’t compete with myself (or anyone else). Sometimes, I take it easy by walking some of my route. At the end of last year, I twinged my knee and for six months ran slowly and gingerly. I wondered whether the warning pain would ever go away. Eventually, it did.

Running on dirt roads rather than smooth surfaces, and cutting way back when I feel twinges or pain have been helpful strategies for me.

Being OK with what happens next

I’m writing this post as an observation, not a cry of triumph. At 72, I’m well aware that if I’m not careful, my daily running could be cut short by a trip or stumble or just the slow inevitable deterioration of my body as I age.

Still, it’s encouraging that I can run a route that I’ve been running for five years at my age faster than I ever have before. What’s important is for me to be OK with the fact that my running is not going to continue to improve forever. It might be brought completely to a stop at any time. If/when that happens, I want to be OK about it.

For now, I’ll marvel at what my body seems to be able to do and enjoy, in the moment, my daily run.

Improve meeting session learning with this simple tip!

Want a simple way to improve meeting session learning? Provide a shared Google Doc where all participants can take notes, ask questions, and get answers!

A shared Google Doc is an easy, familiar tool you can use to facilitate and improve real-time conversation and learning around presented content. And when the session is over, participants have a convenient archive for reference.

The idea was sparked by discovering this deleted tweet thread.

improve meeting session learning

“I learned today that a group of students used a Google doc to take lecture notes–they all took notes simultaneously in a collective file.”

“As they took notes they would mark places they were confused or couldn’t follow the lecture–other students would see & explain, real time.”

“At the end of the semester, as they are prepping for finals, they have this massive document of notes, questions, & explanations from peers.”
—from a 2016 since-deleted tweet thread

Now this isn’t an original idea. I’ve used collaborative Google Docs at meetings since 2010 to collaboratively brainstorm and solve a problem, for scribing answers to The Three Questions, and to capture the pluses and deltas in a group spective. And a quick web search will discover numerous examples of teachers who use this technique in elementary through college classrooms.

Here’s an example from a community college class…


A group of us did something similar in 2014 when we live-blogged the PCMA Convening Leaders conference. Offering the same technique to all participants at meeting sessions may be new. (If it isn’t, let us know in the comments below!)

How to do it

Before the meeting

  1. Create a Google Doc for each session. Give it the name of the meeting session. Change the editing permissions of the Google Doc so that anyone with the link can edit it.
  2. Create a short link to each Google Doc. I use a link that combines an abbreviation for the event with a short version of the session title. For example, an “Improving Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” session at the 2022 XYZ conference might have the link tiny.cc/XYZ2022ImproveDEI.
  3. Add the session title and the short link to the top of the linked Google Doc.
  4. Repeat for all meeting sessions.
For meeting owners

Before the meeting publicize that meeting session participants can and are encouraged to create collaborative notes on each session. Right before the meeting provide participants with a list of links to the collaborative docs for each session. Also, ask session presenters to display the URL for their session’s Doc and encourage participants to use it.

For session presenters

Even if meeting organizers haven’t adopted the above approach, there’s nothing to stop presenters from incorporating this technique into their sessions.

After the meeting or presentation

Change the access for each Doc to “viewer” (people with the link can see the document but not edit it) and then make the session notes available appropriately. You could share them on a private website, email the Doc links to participants, or use any other distribution method that fits.

What do you think?

If you use this method to improve meeting session learning or have ideas on extending it, please share your experience in the comments below.

The first hill is the hardest

The first hill is the hardest: a photograph of a man running on a flat country dirt road. Photo attribution: Jenny Hill jennyhill [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons

At the age of 65, after returning from a meditation retreat, I started running daily for the first time in my life. And I soon learned that the first hill is the hardest.

Beginnings

It was summer, and I had no idea what I could do. So I began by exploring without expectations. I dressed in my regular sneakers, some shorts, and a tee shirt. I live in a rural town with 60 miles of dirt roads, so I ran out of my home and down the 600′ driveway. Wanting exercise, I turned left on the town road and started up the hill. Way before the top I was out of breath, so I slowed to a walk until I got to the top. I ran down some of the other side, decided that was enough for the first day, and turned around and retraced my path. I had to walk up most of my driveway.

The total run and walk was a mere mile.

I wondered if I’d ever be able to do better than that.

What happened

Each day I tried to run a little more, always slowing to a walk when needed. I began to go a little further, and eventually settled on a pretty route, all on dirt roads, with three hills to climb on the way. The distance is a little over two miles, with a 340 feet elevation change.

first hill is the hardestI still remember the day, several months after I started, when I ran the whole route.

I’ve been running it ever since.

It gets easier

As I write this, I have been running for five months. I continue to be surprised how my daily run slowly continues to become easier. I’m not trying to run my route faster, but occasionally I notice I’m taking a little less time on average. We’re approaching winter now, and I’ve purchased the usual runner’s accessories: nanospikes for running safely on ice, an orange vest for hunting season, running tights, a cycling jacket, and a balaclava and warm mittens for those single-digit days. I’m concerned about injuring myself. So I work to notice how my joints and muscles are feeling, not hesitating to slow down or even cut the run short if I have any concerns.

Apart from a handful of times when I’ve needed to get up early for a long plane flight and had no opportunity to run during the day, my run has become a daily practice wherever I am.

I feel great about that.

The first hill is the hardest

I haven’t experienced “runner’s high” and I’m not addicted to running. There are still some days when I’m reluctant to go out, because, after an easy lope down the driveway, the first hill is the hardest! When I start climbing it my body isn’t fully warmed up, and there are moments when I look up and realize there’s still a long trek (from my novice runner’s perspective) to the top.

And then I’m at the top, and I have a long descent to my turnaround point. Even though the first leg of the return is long and steep, it seems easier. I’m warmed up. I’ve run over half my route.

There’s no need to hurry.

Overcoming fear and improving with practice

How my running practice has developed reminds me of my changed attitude to public speaking. Decades ago, when I started addressing groups of people, I felt terrified. Just like my running, my first appearances were the worst.

Today, I regularly speak in front of hundreds or thousands of people, and feel, at most, nervous excitement. As with my running practice, hundreds of speaking gigs have changed my attitude and ability to put myself out in front of many people without worrying about what “mistakes” I might make or what might happen.

And, just like my running, I feel that excitement as I begin. The first hill is still the hardest. But once I start, I’m into the flow of the event and the worst is over.

Photo attribution: Jenny Hill jennyhill [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons

Any questions? Rethinking traditional Q&A

Any questions? Rethinking traditional Q&A. A woman, seated in the midst of an audience, raises her hand.How often have you heard “Any questions?” at the end of a conference session?

Hands rise, and the presenter picks an audience member who asks a question. The presenter answers the question and picks another questioner. The process continues for a few minutes.

Simple enough. We’ve been using this Q&A format for centuries.

But can we improve it?

Yes!

Let’s explore, starting with…

Six criticisms of traditional Q&A

  • Traditional Q&A reinforces the engrained assumption that the presenter is the expert, and audience members are relative novices. This ignores today’s reality that the smartest person in the room is the room.
  • Traditional Q&A is a one-to-many process. These days, conference attendees come to learn and connect. But the only connection going on (if any) during traditional Q&A  is between the presenter and individual audience members.
  • Have you ever thought, “I could answer that question better than [the person on stage]!”? Traditional Q&A provides no opportunity for obtaining answers from audience members.
  • Who gets to ask questions? The presenter decides, allowing any implicit (and explicit) bias full reign.
  • How much time is available for questions? Again, the presenter decides. Too little time scheduled frustrates audience members whose questions remain unanswered. Too much time leads to a premature session close.
  • During traditional Q&A, the questioner is in the audience while the presenter is up on stage. As a result, questioners remain largely anonymous; audience members can’t even see a questioner behind them without turning around.

Ways to improve Q&A

I can think of two fundamental ways to improve Q&A. Here are…

Five ways to refine the traditional Q&A format

  • Include multiple Q&A opportunities throughout the session. This helps audience members get answers to questions while they’re top-of-mind, rather than waiting until the end of the session. It also increases interaction with the presenter, which can help maintain attendee attention and improve learning.
  • Instead of the presenter picking the questioners, have an independent third party (a moderator) choose them.
  • Or you can have the audience submit questions via an app and then vote on the list. This helps uncover popular questions.
  • If you’re using a moderator, have the audience submit questions in writing or via an app. This allows the moderator to curate questions to be asked. When appropriate, the moderator can combine similar questions.
  • Instead of taking questions from the audience, have questioners line up at a front-of-room mike so everyone can see them.

Or, we can…

Further improve Q&A by integrating it into a discussion format

Traditional sessions have two parts, first a lecture, and then Q&A. As mentioned above, presenting multiple short pieces of content interspersed with Q&A increases interaction and consequent learning. But we can do better!

Combined with experiential exercises, here’s the approach I use in my Participate! Labs.

Using a facilitated discussion format like the fishbowl sandwich, I create a session that offers Q&A on an as-needed basis. As I share content, attendees can join me on stage at any time for questions or a discussion that I moderate. (Check the link to see how this works.) The session then becomes more like a live Ask Me Anything (AMA) around my content.

Creating a truly participative Q&A in this way lets the resulting questions and discussions reflect the audience’s just-in-time needs, optimizing the value of the session for participants.

Do you have additional suggestions for improving Q&A? Share them in the comments below!

My treadmill desk — the next generation

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!

Use pair share to improve conference sessions

 

use pair share to improve conference sessionsIn less than three minutes, you can use pair share to improve conference sessions. The technique is simple: after pairing up participants and providing a short period for individual thinking about an appropriate topic, each pair member takes a minute in turn to share their thoughts with their partner. (More details can be found in Chapter 38 of The Power of Participation.)

Pair share (aka think-pair-share) is not the same as conversation, because pair share gives each person an exclusive minute of active sharing and a minute of pure listening. This balance rarely occurs during conversation, because typically:

  • One party speaks more than another, and;
  • Whoever isn’t speaking is often not fully listening to what is being said because they’re thinking about something they want to say themselves.

Improve conference sessions

Pair share improves conference sessions by:

  • Resetting every participant’s brain to a state of active engagement;
  • Providing structured opportunities for participants to share expertise and experience with their partner, and (if built into the subsequent session design) with others in the room; and
  • Modeling and supporting social learning during the session.

For pair share to work effectively:

  • Each assigned topic must be central to the session’s purpose;
  • If the session is presenter-content heavy, hold a pair share roughly every ten minutes to explore and consolidate participant learning; and
  • Design the session to build on relevant expertise and experience uncovered by each pair-share.

I also like to incorporate a closing pair-share where partners each share three takeaways they’ve acquired during the session. I’ve found that when I use this in a session design like the fishbowl sandwich, participants inevitably stay around deep in conversation after the session is officially over. (That always looks and feels good!)

Finally, you can use pair share as a tool for introductions. Invite everyone to pair up with someone they don’t know and have each person take a minute to introduce themselves to their partner.

Improve conference sessions with pair share: it’s quick, simple, versatile, and effective. Use it!

How do you use pair share? Share with everyone in the comments below!

How to get better at doing anything

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

Why meeting evaluations are unreliable and how we can improve them

meeting evaluations are unreliable: an illustration of a skeptical person receiving forms from the hands of many peopleTraditional meeting evaluations are unreliable. We obtain them within a few days of the session experience. All such short-term evaluations of a meeting or conference session possess a fatal flaw. They tell you nothing about the long-term effects of the session.

What is the purpose of a meeting? Excluding special events, which are about transitory celebrations and entertainment (nothing wrong with these, but not what I’m focusing on here), isn’t the core purpose of a meeting to create useful long-term change? Learning to apply productively in the future? Connections that last and reward? Communities that grow and develop new activities and purpose? These are the key valuable outcomes that meetings and conferences can and should produce.

Unfortunately, humans are poor objective evaluators of the enduring benefits of a session they have just experienced.

Why are we poor evaluators in the short term?

Probably the most significant reason for being poor evaluators in the short term is that we are far more likely to be influenced by our immediate emotional experience during a session than by the successful delivery of what eventually turn out to be long-term benefits. We like to think of ourselves as driven by rationality. But as Daniel Kahneman eloquently explains in Thinking, Fast and Slow we largely discount the effects that our emotions have on our beliefs. Information provided by lectures and speeches is mostly forgotten within a week. But the short-term emotional glow fanned by a skillful motivational speaker can last long enough for great marks on smile sheets. Paradoxically, the long-term learning that can result from well-designed experiential meeting sessions may not be consciously recognized for some time.

Other reasons why evaluations of conference sessions can be unreliable include quantifiable reason bias (the distortions that occur when attendees are asked to justify their evaluations) and evaluation environment bias (evaluations are influenced by the circumstances in which they’re made). These biases are minimal if we receive evaluations from the environment in which participants can implement hoped-for learning: i.e. back in the world of work. But instead—worried that no one will provide feedback if we wait too long—we supply evaluation sheets to fill out at the session or push evaluation reminders right away via a conference app.

How can we improve meeting evaluations?

Want meeting evaluations to reflect real-world long-term change? Then we need to use evaluation methods that allow participants to report on their meeting experiences’ long-term effects.

This is hard—much harder than asking for immediate impressions. Once away from the event, memories fade. Our professional lives center around our day-to-day work, and we are less open to refocusing on the past.

While I haven’t formulated a comprehensive approach to evaluating long-term change related to meetings, I think an effective long-term meeting evaluation should include the following activities:

  • Individual participants document perceived learning and change resolutions before the meeting ends.
  • Follow-up with participants after an appropriate time to determine whether their chosen changes have occurred.

In my next post, I’ll share a concrete example of one way to implement a long-term evaluation that incorporates these components.

Photo attribution: Flickr user jurgenappelo