noticing Archives : Conferences That Work

Facilitating: try to remember we are all different

Monday, October 16th, 2023 by Adrian Segar

While facilitating, I try to remember that we are all different. Here’s why that goal can make me a better facilitator.

I can be better than I expect at noticing differences

I know that everybody’s fingerprints are unique, though that doesn’t help me facilitate better. But sometimes, to my surprise, I become aware of subtle useful differences between members of a group.

For example, most weekdays I meditate with an online group. Each day, while my eyes are closed, one of several teachers starts the group and rings a bell. By now, I can tell which teacher is leading us simply by hearing how they sound the bell.

Another example. Long before the internet existed, I taught introductory programming to college students. They’d hand in their printouts of short programs and sometimes forget to write their names on the paper. No matter. By the second week of class, I could easily recognize the way each student wrote code and know whose program it was.

Having enough time for helpful noticing is often a problem, though, unless I have the luxury of working with a group for a day or more, or meeting with them multiple times.

Facilitation is necessarily imperfect

What’s difficult, of course, is that participants differ in countless ways, most of which I don’t know.

Consequently, when leading a group, any instructions or guidance I share might be just right for some. For others, what I say may be ineffective or even counterproductive.

However, trying to please everyone is invariably counterproductive. My facilitation will always be imperfect.

Knowing this, what can I do to make my facilitation as good as I can?

Knowing my facilitation strengths and weaknesses

To help work with differences, facilitators need to be aware of their strengths and weaknesses. Here are some of mine:

I am usually good at reading faces, body language, and the emotional content of speech.
However, this focus means that my visual awareness of other activities in the room leaves something to be desired. (For example, don’t expect me to notice, at least for a while, the new floral centerpieces that staff installed during a break!)
I’m easily distracted by superfluous noise.
My academic training makes me prone to providing more detail than sometimes is necessary.
Unlike some facilitators, I don’t have much of a gift for rapidly getting participants’ attention.
As I age, my ability to keep track of multiple issues and conversational threads continues to decrease.

Knowing my facilitation “fingerprint” helps me be aware of situations where I need to be especially careful, and perhaps get help. For example, I’ll sometimes co-opt a charismatic participant or two to help me regain participants’ attention. And I often ask volunteers to use a flipchart or projected Google Doc to capture things we need to remember and/or return to.

Noticing differences that matter

Thankfully, although facilitators generally know little about participants, many differences aren’t relevant to the current circumstances. And we often notice valuable differences. Facilitators obtain information from all kinds of things: facial expressions, body language, emotional responses to events, and what people say and do.

Such observations are key to working with a group and responding in useful and supportive ways to what comes up.

For me, noticing differences that improve my facilitation is motivated by deep curiosity and love of people. Curiosity helps me notice potentially important clues to what’s going on, and what people want and need. Love gives me the energy to do what is often hard in-the-moment work.

Noticing differences that matter guides me in one of the more challenging aspects of facilitation: steering a responsive path between the extremes of providing rigid directions for everyone to follow versus letting people do whatever they want with the group. Noticing differences helps me choose the right words and actions that offer appropriate structure and support while still allowing different approaches and responses.

That’s why, while facilitating, I try to remember that we are all different.

Image attribution: Geoffrey Fairchild, original image under a CC BY 2.0 Deed license

Tags: difference, facilitation, noticing| Posted in facilitation | No Comments »

Support the bottom — a Thanksgiving reminder

Monday, November 29th, 2021 by Adrian Segar

After our prime Thanksgiving dinner, I was sleepily washing a large turkey foil platter when I noticed its embossed central message: “Support the bottom.”

I’m going to blame the tryptophan in the turkey for causing me to muse, from a facilitation perspective, about the significance of this unexpected Prime Directive. I have no other excuse.

Support the bottom

It makes sense. We don’t want our heavy turkey to break through or slide off the tray as we’re bringing it to the feast. The manufacturer suggests we shouldn’t take for granted the strength of the thick aluminum foil holding our main course. We should be mindful that the bottom of our feast needs support.

Well, when working with a group of people, the “bottom” of the group also needs support.

Making assumptions

During group work, it’s tempting to assume that things are going well when we’re hearing from many people. When there’s significant interaction between group members. When folks are coming up with new ideas and interesting approaches to explore.

So it’s easy to overlook some people. Without checking, you might not see them. After all, they’re not bringing attention to themselves. People who say little or nothing. People who are distracted or disengaged.

It’s important to suspend judgment of these folks. There have been many times when I’ve been understandably silent/disengaged/distracted during meetings, and I’m sure everyone else has too. Perhaps:

what’s going on is of no interest;
we’re completely lost and confused;
feeling unwell is wrecking our attention;
we’re seriously short on sleep; or
a personal crisis is all we can think about;

and you can probably think of plenty of additional unexceptional circumstances when someone may be currently incapable of doing useful work in a group. We might say they have hit rock bottom.

But then there are the border cases. Frequently, there are people who might just need a nudge. They are at a momentary personal bottom, and they could use some support. A reminder, a reason, an opportunity to engage or reengage.

So what do we do?

How can we support group members at a (hopefully, momentary) bottom?

Noticing

The first step is noticing them. When working with a small group, the quiet folks are easy to spot. A good facilitator will gently check to see if they have something to say, and bring them into the work if they’re willing. With large groups noticing the quiet folks is hard, because, obviously, they’re not drawing attention. If you, as a facilitator, are concentrating on the people who are contributing and interacting — an important piece of your job — it’s easy to overlook those who aren’t.

How can we avoid missing the quiet folks in large groups? By making time for you to notice them! Luckily, this is typically part of good meeting design — it’s not something that you need to awkwardly or artificially introduce. Good large group work includes short breakouts, where impromptu small groups meet, think, discuss, and share. While these activities are going on, it’s fairly easy for a facilitator to roam the room and pick up on disengaged attendees. (Unfortunately, this is much harder to do online, as I mentioned in last week’s post.)

Engage/reengage

The second step is to provide regular opportunities for the “bottom” folks to engage or reengage. Appropriate small group work, like pair or trio share, is an obvious way to do this. When working in small groups, check to see if participants who haven’t spoken for a while have anything they’d like to add. If you’re running a fishbowl or fishbowl sandwich, ask that people not share more than once until everyone’s had a chance to contribute. And be patient when asking people to share. Staying quiet while people are thinking about whether they want to speak and what they might want to say is a tangible form of respect. So remember to shut up and listen.

Don’t expect to engage everyone

Finally, bear in mind that, no matter how brilliant a facilitator you are, your meeting will not be perfect for everyone. Hey, if it’s the best meeting ever for just one person present, I think that’s great! Because you can’t please everyone — and you shouldn’t even try to.

Instead, do your best to respectfully and appropriately engage as many people as you can. Yes, the “bottom” participants will generally need greater support. But focus your time and attention on maximizing the overall group energy, with as many people as possible actively on board.

You may not hear much of the resulting Thanksgiving. But you’ll know you did the best cooking you could.

Tags: engagement, facilitation, noticing, support, Thanksgiving| Posted in facilitation | No Comments »

How to improve your facilitation: an example

Monday, May 27th, 2019 by Adrian Segar

How can you improve your facilitation practice? Here’s an example that illustrates what I do: a mixture of continual improvement, lifelong learning, and Kaizen.

An example from The Solution Room

I’ve been facilitating The Solution Room, a popular plenary session, for 14 years. It’s a 90 – 120 minute session that engages and connects attendees and provides peer-supported advice and support for a current professional challenge chosen by each participant. Participants routinely evaluate the session as a highly helpful and valuable experience.

Over the years I have made numerous small improvements to The Solution Room. Here’s the process I use, developed intuitively over time, illustrated with a recent tweak.

Practice

If you’re going to improve what you do you need to practice. Each time I run The Solution Room is an opportunity to implement any new ideas gleaned from the previous time I ran it. Even if I don’t have any changes to make, practice typically makes my delivery and the consequent session a little better.

Notice

Noticing stuff that’s happening is a key component of learning from experience.

During The Solution Room, each participant has a turn facilitating the exploration and support of another participant at their table. While preparing everyone for this phase, I verbally share a set of directions on how to do this. Here they are:

Read the challenge that is in front of you out loud.
Start asking questions of the person whose challenge it is to clarify the issue. If necessary, encourage everyone at the table to join in to ask clarifying questions and give advice and support.
Take notes of the ensuing discussion on the paper in front of you.

While running recent Solution Rooms I noticed that table facilitators had no problem implementing #1 and #2, but #3, the note-taking, was sometimes skipped during the intense discussion that followed each challenge presentation.

Respond

Now I’ve noticed something that could be improved, it’s time to respond. “Respond” means thinking about what I might be able to do to make my process better.

Typically, for me, this involves musing over a period of time on what I noticed. (I typically run five or six Solution Rooms a year, so there’s no big time pressure to implement a change.) I’ve found this works best when I don’t immediately fixate on the first idea I get. Coming up with three or more options seems to lead to the best outcomes.

I considered rephrasing my instructions, emphasizing the importance of note-taking in some way beforehand or during the “rounds” of peer consulting. Finally, I had the idea of creating a laminated card with the instructions on each table and asking table members to pass the card around to each consultation facilitator in turn.

Implement

The next step then is to implement my potential improvement. For The Solution Room, I need to create the instruction cards and modify my instructions to participants so they remember to pass the card to the next facilitator.

Test

At the next opportunity, I test my change, by implementing it and noticing what happens.

Repeat!

Continual improvement needs an action loop. We go back to practicing, noticing…

Conclusion: Improve your facilitation practice!

I hope this continual improvement practice I’ve shared helps you improve the quality and effectiveness of your facilitation. Do you have your own approach to improving what you do? Share your ideas in the comments below!

Tags: continual improvement, facilitation, group work, Kaizen, lifelong learning, noticing, practice, solution room, The Solution Room| Posted in facilitation | No Comments »

Struggling to meditate daily

Monday, March 11th, 2019 by Adrian Segar

For three months now, I’ve meditated for twenty minutes every day.

Personally, this is a big deal, as I’ve struggled to maintain a regular meditation practice for decades. I’ve resolved countless times to meditate daily, and fallen off the mindfulness wagon over and over again.

Three years ago, I began attending silent meditation retreats and continue to do so a couple of times a year. These experiences are important and transformational. Each retreat deepened my resolve to start a daily meditation practice. But, despite this increased desire, I was unable to do so.

Until now.

Excuses
Why has it been so hard for me to maintain a daily meditation practice?

One excuse is that my daily schedule is not regular. When I’m home, there is at least the potential to set aside a regular time to meditate. But I travel a lot. I’m just back from a four-week trip that spanned nine time zones, from Italy to the Caribbean, to Las Vegas. I average about two engagements per month that require travel. I might be up at 5 am to catch a flight, arrive late at a destination, and be intensely involved on-site for two or three days. There’s no regular “free” time in my life.

However, my travel for work and pleasure that creates an erratic daily schedule is a choice that I made. It makes it harder but not impossible for me to create a meditation habit.

Another excuse is related to my biorhythms. Over the years I’ve found I do my best creative work in the morning. Meditating early feels like it’s delaying starting my day. At night, my energy level sags and it’s difficult for me to maintain mindful habits. I’m tempted to relax over a drink and a nice dinner.

Finally, my experience of the benefits of regular meditation from retreats quickly fades. I remember that I felt inspired to meditate regularly, but I don’t experience the inspiration. And I lapse…

How have I changed my meditation habit?
I’m sorry. If you’re hoping to learn the secret simple trick that allowed me to finally sustain a daily meditation practice, I’m about to disappoint you.

As I’ve shared previously, the hard work we do that precipitates personal change is largely unconscious.

But here are some clues that might help you.

—At the Vipassana retreats I attend, sitting and walking meditation sessions last for 45 minutes, and there are many such sessions every day. I set myself a far more modest daily goal of a single twenty-minute session. More sessions or a longer time are great but completely optional.

—While meditating with a simple timer, I noticed that my mind started wondering about how much time was left towards the end of the twenty minutes. (Somewhat pathetic, but that’s what I noticed.) So I switched to a free meditation app, InsightTimer, which can be configured to play multiple sounds during meditation. Adding a momentary wood block “click” halfway through tells my thinking mind that there are ten minutes to go, which helps quiet it. This sounds silly, but it’s helpful for me.

—Finally, while vacationing for two weeks in Anguilla last month, I broke through my self-limiting belief that an early morning meditation session would reduce my creative morning time. For the last few years, I’ve started my day there with a (now) forty-minute walk, down to Island Harbor and back. This year I sat on a bench at Falcon Nest and meditated for twenty minutes before returning.

(Here’s the panorama I saw one morning when I opened my eyes. Four island dogs in a neat but respectful oval around me.)

Since then, I’ve been willing and able to meditate for twenty minutes within the first hour I’m up.

What I have noticed since beginning to meditate regularly for the first time in my life
—I have more equanimity in my life. For example, after I rose early for a flight from Boston to Las Vegas last week, it was delayed for four hours due to the weather. I was surprised and pleased at how serene I stayed about this, compared to the persistent annoyance I would have felt in the past. There was plenty of time to meditate at the airport!

—Having said that, I am noticing how easily certain events bend me out of shape. My phone says the Wi-Fi password I’ve entered is incorrect, though I know it isn’t. My new MacBook keyboard switches unexpectedly into ALL CAPS. I fumble several times picking up a heavy piece of wood for the stove.

I’m not doing much better dealing with these surges of irritation, but noticing them is the first and necessary step to change.

—I’m getting better at listening to people. Less likely to jump in with a response before they’ve fully shared. (Yes folks who know me well; there is still plenty of room for improvement. Sigh.)

Celebration!
I am happy that I’ve made this change that has eluded me for so long. Perhaps I will increase my modest meditation time in the future. Regardless, I like the effect on my life daily meditation makes, and this is evidence that I am still able to change my behavior through work and grace.

Photo attribution: Flickr user wiertz

Tags: Anguilla, daily, equanimity, listening, meditate, meditation, noticing, practice, regular, struggle| Posted in Facilitating Change, Lessons from Anguilla | No Comments »

Three prerequisites for lifelong learning

Monday, November 28th, 2016 by Adrian Segar

Three prerequisites for lifelong learning

When the renowned cellist Pablo Casals was asked why, at 81, he continued to practice four or five hours a day he answered: “Because I think I am making progress.” Here are my three prerequisites for lifelong learning.

Like Casals, I want to keep living lifelong learning by:

Trying new things;
Noticing what happens when I do; and
Soliciting and being open to observations and feedback.

As an example, here’s what I recently learned while leading a workshop.

Trying new things and noticing what happens

During the workshop:

I used a projected countdown timer and a 90-second piece of music to get participants back in their seats on time at the end of a short mid-workshop break. Outcome? It worked really well!
While facilitating body voting (aka human spectrograms) I verbally stated each question we were exploring. Outcome? It seemed like a few participants didn’t hear or understand what I’d said until I repeated myself. Verbal communication didn’t work so well.
I wore a red hat when I was explaining/debriefing and took it off when I was facilitating experiences. Outcome? This was the second time I’ve tried this approach, and I’m still not sure whether it’s effective/useful or not.

When you pursue risky learning, some things work while some don’t — and for some, the jury is still out. Whatever happens, you can learn something!

Soliciting and being open to observations and feedback

During the workshop:

Some of the questions I asked during body voting asked individuals to come up with a numeric answer, and then join a group line in numerical order. Someone had the bright idea of showing their answer with fingers raised above their head, so it was easy for others to see where to go in the line. Many participants copied the idea, which sped up forming the human spectrograms. I’d never seen this done before and will adopt this simple and effective improvement.
I love to use a geographic two-dimensional human spectrogram to allow participants to quickly discover others who live/work near them. The wide U.S. map I projected did not correspond to the skinny width of the room. A participant suggested that we rotate where we stood by 90º. I tried her suggestion and found that it was easy for people to move to their correct positions. Duly noted!
At the end of the workshop, I solicited public feedback at a group spective. One participant shared frustration with my verbal statements of the body voting questions and suggested that the questions also be projected simultaneously. An excellent refinement that I will incorporate in the future.

Notice how participants were able to point out deficiencies in processes I used and simultaneously came up with some fine solutions. Peer learning in action!

Final thoughts

I’ve been designing and facilitating participant-driven and participation-rich meetings for 33 years, and many participants have been kind enough to share that I’m good at what I do (check out the sidebar testimonials).

But I don’t want to rest on my laurels. I’m no Casals, but, like him, I keep practicing, learning, and — hopefully — making progress.

Photo attribution: Gus Ruelas

Tags: feedback, Learning, lifelong, lifelong learning, noticing, Pablo Casals, progress, risky learning| Posted in Event design | No Comments »

How to get better at doing anything

Monday, September 12th, 2016 by Adrian Segar

How 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

Tags: get better at doing anything, improvement, Jerry Weinberg, noticing, practice, shortcomings| Posted in Personal effectiveness | No Comments »

Mission Impossible

Monday, September 14th, 2015 by Adrian Segar

Is your mission impossible? If you know your mission — you do have a mission, right? — then your long-term strategy becomes much clearer. You know where you want to go; now, all that remains is how to get there.

Of course, life is rarely that simple.

There’s always that must-do-now stuff that gets in the way. As Seth Godin puts it:

“This interim strategy, the notion that ideals and principles are for later, but right now, all the focus and resources have to be put into the emergency of getting successful—it doesn’t work.
It doesn’t work because it’s always the interim. It never seems like the right time to stop doing what worked and start doing what we said was important.”
—Seth Godin, The interim strategy

How can we stay focused on our mission when there’s always something demanding our attention right now? There are four core steps:

Notice what’s going on. (“A week has gone by, and I’ve spent fifteen minutes, tops, working on my mission.”) Sometimes this is the hardest step. We can’t change when we are unaware or avoid the changes we really need/want to make.
Make a plan. End/delegate/deprioritize the short-term stuff that’s getting in the way. Set goals for your mission-related work.
Carry out your plan. Sometimes this is the hardest step.
Steps 1-3 aren’t a one-time process. Loop ’em. Keep noticing, making new plans, and acting on them. That’s how you’ll grow and, potentially, succeed in your mission.

As Seth concludes his aforementioned post: “The interim is forever, so perhaps it makes sense to make act in the interim as we expect to act in the long haul.”

And remember this.

If you remain continually immersed in interim work, executing your Mission becomes Impossible.

Photo attribution: Flickr user taylor-mcbride

Tags: interim, long term, mission, noticing, Seth Godin| Posted in Facilitating Change | No Comments »

Boredom is just a state of mind

Monday, May 18th, 2015 by Adrian Segar

1969

I am a nineteen-year-old college student, talking with friends in my 500-year-old room above the entrance to Merton College, Oxford. The world up to this point has been a fascinating place, full of interesting things to learn, and new experiences to have. But today, something feels different.

“I’m bored,” I announce.

Cathy, a first-year history student from St. Hilda’s, looks at me.

“I think boredom is just a state of mind,” she says.

And, immediately, I know she’s right.

2015

Eckhart Tolle, in his book Stillness Speaks, calls boredom the mind’s hunger. He points out that, typically, we escape from boredom by “picking up a magazine, making a phone call, switching on the TV, surfing the Web, going shopping,” etc.

I still feel bored from time to time. And sometimes, I’ll do what we mostly do: distract myself by “doing something” that primarily involves the thinking mind. But, thanks to that moment with Cathy back in 1969, I know I have other choices about how I respond.

Noticing

Sometimes, noticing my boredom is a trigger to remind me to embrace it, and become at ease with the state of “not knowing” what I “might” or “should” be doing. Eckhart suggests you:

“…stay bored and restless and observe what it feels like to be bored and restless. As you bring awareness to the feeling, there is suddenly some space and stillness around it, as it were. A little at first, but as the sense of inner space grows, the feeling of boredom will begin to diminish in intensity and significance. So even boredom can teach you who you are and who you are not.”

The body

Or, I can go into my body:

“Feel the energy of your inner body. Immediately mental noise slows down or ceases. Feel it in your hands, your feet, your abdomen, your chest. Feel the life that you are, the life that animates the body.

The body then becomes a doorway, so to speak, into a deeper sense of aliveness underneath the fluctuating emotions and underneath your thinking.”

Choosing activity

Or, if I want to “do something” I can choose an activity that embodies flow:

“Artistic creation, sports, dance, teaching, counseling—mastery in any field of endeavor implies that the thinking mind is either no longer involved at all or at least is taking second place. A power and intelligence greater than you and yet one with you in essence takes over. There is no decision-making process any more; spontaneous right action happens, and ‘you’ are not doing it. Mastery of life is the opposite of control. You become aligned with the greater consciousness. It acts, speaks, does the works.”

It is possible to discover and rediscover that a “bored person” is not who you are.

Boredom is just a state of mind.

Photo attribution: Flickr user spyrospapaspyropoulos

Tags: artistic creation, boredom, choice, Eckhart Tolle, flow, mindfullness, noticing, state of mind| Posted in Facilitating Change | 1 Comment »

Breaking: Government concerned about privacy concerns of “eyes”

Friday, May 17th, 2013 by Adrian Segar

Dateline Washington, DC. May 17, 2013: Congressional representatives today raised concerns about citizens’ ability to see what is going on by using their “eyes”, two organs buried inside most people’s heads.

“Forget Google Glass,” said Rep Joe Barton, “what if the average US Citizen obtains the ability to ‘see’ what is going on in their immediate vicinity? All hell could break loose. The privacy implications of this ‘vision thing’ are staggering and must immediately be addressed by a high-level governmental commission with the authority to put a stop to it.”

Rep Joe Barton then proceeded to tie a bright red bandana around his “eyes” which he said would stay in place “until the emergency is over.”

Photo attribution: Flickr user briananthonyadams

Tags: eyes, noticing, privacy, satire| Posted in Satire | No Comments »

How you can learn from personal stories

Monday, August 2nd, 2010 by Adrian Segar

How can you learn from personal stories?

After I met Glenn Thayer on a warm Colorado evening a couple of months ago, I kept remembering a story that he told me about a celebrity charity event he was emceeing. This puzzled me because the story had no obvious connection to my life or work.

Recently, I began to understand why his yarn kept popping into my head. I’ll post about Glenn’s story another time, but today I’ll write about how to learn from stories like Glenn’s.

Listening to personal stories

Every day, the people in your life tell you personal stories. They might be a family anecdote, a play-by-play reenactment of last night’s game, a tale of frustration at work, or a child’s outpouring about an incident on the school playground: a unique stream of the tragic, the lighthearted, the passionate, and the mundane. Most of these stories pour through your consciousness, hover there for moments, and are gone. A few resonate in some mysterious way and stay with you for years. All of them influence you. And some of them can teach you valuable lessons—if you pay attention to them.

How can you learn from personal stories?

Some personal stories have straightforward learning implications. For example, a relative’s harrowing tale of a ruined vacation due to last-minute illness may encourage us to take out travel insurance, or a friend’s clear description of diagnosing a car problem may illuminate what a timing belt is and does. And here are some more, often poignant examples of learning from stories.

But what about stories that teach us important lessons in subtler ways? Sometimes we hear stories that touch us, but we don’t know why. What can we learn when this happens?

If you are interested in exploring what you can learn from such stories, here are the three steps you must take. They may seem strange suggestions, but I vouch for their effectiveness if you are prepared to do the work.

Notice the important story

Unfortunately, there’s no universal metric that can tell us whether a particular story can teach us something that matters because every story is contextually unique and each of us has unique lessons to learn. So, if you hear so many stories, how do you know which ones are important?

There isn’t a rational way to notice important stories. Instead, you need to cultivate your emotional intelligence, or, if you prefer the term, your intuition.

Important stories affect you at an emotional level. You live in a world that pays lip service to the rational, but, unless you’re a sociopath, you have emotional responses to your life experiences. The trick to noticing that a story is important to you is to detect that you have responded emotionally in a surprising way. An important story evokes an emotional response, and if that response does not make sense to you, there is gold you can mine from it. Glenn’s Colorado story brought up an emotional response that I didn’t understand. Noticing was all I needed to proceed to the next step.

Capture the story

Perhaps it’s my age, but I find that if I don’t capture the essence of the story so I can recall the details, the tale I’ve heard disappears, like smoke, from my memory within a day, never to reappear. So I carry around 3 x 5 cards to jot down stories and ideas I have. (I’ve also started using Simplenote on my iPad for the same purpose.) When I heard Glenn’s story, I wrote “Do you have a handler?” on a card, which was enough for me to remember his story until I got home and added the phrase plus a few notes to a file I keep of potential topics for blog posts. Now the heart of his story was captured in a place where I would see it weekly whenever I was thinking about a blogging topic.

Tease out the meaning

Teasing out the meaning of an important story is a creative exercise. When I came across Glenn’s story in my blog post pile last week, I decided to spend some time musing about it. I’ve found that the two best ways for me to go into a creative place involve either:

Performing mindless physical activity, like stacking wood, going for a walk, washing dishes, or taking a shower.
Listening to loud music that I like.

while daydreaming about the topic in question.

Your methods for stimulating your creative juices are probably different. When you’re ready, find a time and place when you won’t be interrupted and apply them. Here are some tips for making the most of your creative exploration of the story:

Relax, don’t have any preconceptions about what might happen—watch and listen to whatever drifts through your mind.
Don’t censor thoughts and images that come up, just make note of them. I like to have a pen and paper available to record what comes up.
Concentrate on the non-rational; you can unleash your analytical powers once your daydreaming phase is over.
Don’t expect to unlock all the secrets of the important story in one session. You may want to return to it in a few days to see what’s jelled, what seems important, and what now feels superficial.

I’ve learned some important things about myself and my life by examining stories that have power for me. I hope the techniques I’ve described are useful for you too.

How do you make sense of important personal stories you’ve heard? Do you have examples you’d like to share?

Image attribution: Flickr user maxpower

Tags: creative work, creativity, emotions, Learning, meaning, noticing, social learning, stories| Posted in Learning | 2 Comments »