Month: April 2006

I was listening to an item on today’s programme where one of the speakers said that the incidence of depression in women is far higher than in men. I remember reading somewhere that in fact the story is more complex than this throw-away statistic might lead you to believe. In communities where alcohol isn’t drunk (US baptists I beleive) the incidence of depression and related illnesses is about the same for both genders. It would appear that the social context allows the expression of the same tendencies by different means. In our wider society drinking and drink-related ills are where the men generally end up. I wonder if this would be a useful start for an item on your programme?

Music

Finally bought One by One, which is my favorite Foo’s recording. In particular I like Tired of you, which is a song that I’ve always felt is very Buddhist in sentiment. This is me talking, I’ve no idea what Dave Grohl thinks. It doesn’t matter what happens or how tired I become I will not quit on you; you being every sentient being. See, I’m putting my own sentiments on it. That’s one of the nice things about music – you can make it what you want. The stuff about diamonds in your fire is very Buddhist, at least very Tibettan Buddhist so …

All my life, I live in that space too and the last track Come Back is, to me a reprise of the sentiments about not abandoning people, keeping them in your heart where it matters. Their music is about uniting people and overcoming barriers most of the time. I’d forgotten how much I liked it. I also like they’ve had trees planted to cover the carbon cost of making the album.

Books

Just been reading the very excellent Leadership and Self-Deception, I can’t recommend the book too highly. It’s central thesis is that we all live (at least some of the time) in “the box”, a place where we do selfish and self-centred things and then start justifying our behaviour by painting others behaviour badly, which puts them into a box also (assuming they choose to join in). Then you end up with a self-reinforcing structure where people just feed each other’s bias and nothing gets done, also, sadly, nobody gets what they want and it hurts. It takes some bravery to admit that you are doing this kind of thing though. You get better results when you turn away from yourself, honest, and it feels so much better. It’s just difficult.

In my own experiences I’ve characterised this as people saying now look what you’ve made me do all the time, which is what happened to me a lot in a relationship that failed badly and was very painful. Other people don’t make you do anything, you choose your response every time. It’s just that sometimes people find your hooks or buttons and catch you with them or press them and start the script running, some people press their own buttons and the best thing to do is keep well back. I remember years ago going on a course where people were taught to say I am not a fish, which meant you didn’t have to take the bait or rise to the trap that’s been set for you. This book explains this idea, using the box metaphor, very well and succintly as a simple story. Don’t be put off by the word leadership in the title. You have to lead yourself before you do anything anyway. I’m thinking of buying several copies through the mentorship system I’m part of (which is where the book came from) and giving copies to people I know who need it. I need it as much as anyone and need to make sure that people understand the gift is not criticism, but a genuine attempt at dialogue.

The next book is Success Acceleration, which is slightly problematic for me because I am not a Christian and there is a lot of God in the book. However this doesn’t devalue the book at all and the strong beliefs in it only show the author’s sincerity, which I can’t fault.

I haven’t finished it yet but it has given me some surprises. In order to set goals you need to know what part of your life they affect. He also reminded me of something from my coaching qualifications (that of course should apply everywhere but I had forgotten it, sigh …) which is how you learn new skills:

• Unconsciously Incompetent. As in you don’t know what you don’t know. Not really even a beginner.
• Consciously Incompetent. You know you need to work on something and are doing so. You are beginning to acquire the skill.
• Consciously Competent. You have acquired the skill and know how to use it but still have to think about it.
• Unconsciously Competent. You can just do whatever the skill is without conscious thought, for example if you were riding a bike you just thing I want to be over there and there you are.

He suggests that a a lot of us are unconsciously incompetent at goal setting. We think we know how but funnily enough our “goals” don’t come true. This has rung a number of very loud bells for me. I am going to go back and look at how I set goals.

He hasn’t mentioned (and may not) that there is a difference between tactical and strategic, tactical being what do I do now to reach my goals and strategic being the long term thing you are trying to achieve. So, for example, you might have a task which is go out and meet more people but the goal is build a big people-based business. So a daily tactical goal could be something like talk to 10 new people every day, but if you don’t know why you’ll probably stop doing it.

[[ Note 16-Apr-06 In fact the last section of the book is called tactics! So more fool me. ]]

Another important factor is persistence, just getting things done that you said you were going to do. Putting dates on your goals and tasks and ticking them off. This means getting the habit of listing and checking them all the time, which is what differentiates people who are good at getting things done.

I also like effective people:

• Accept responsibility
• Get results
• are energetic
• are competent
• are willing to adjust their belief window

If you want to know what a belief window is I suggest you read the book!

An old classic that is just back in print is Your Greatest Power, which is of course the power to choose. Try saying to yourself I choose to be happy, I choose not to fight with people, I choose to be wealthy several times a day. You’ll see. Another point that the book makes is you should avoid things like I can’t afford x like the plague because you are choosing not to be able to afford it, ever. Instead say I will afford it and I will have it. This doens’t mean hitting the credit card, it means opening your mind to the opportunities that come along. My only slight criticism of the book is that the author obviously wrote it in the days before italic fonts and word processors so THERE IS A LOT OF SHOUTING IN CAPITALS, but hey, it’s a product of it’s time and still a classic. I read this book and re-read Keys to Positive Thinking at the same time; the compliment one another very well. I have summarised the summary from this book and stuck it on the toilet wall where I will read it often!

Onward.

For me the best tool is a mapping tool of some kind. I used to use Mind Manager, which is a good tool that does the job very well. I also liked the export to HTML and M$ Word. The corporate edition does things like allow you to have brainstorming meetings and so on. I like it but don’t need it. If  you work for a big corp and have to do a lot of collaborative design stuff I recommend it though.

If you want to put a lot of information on a node it goes into a note field at the bottom, which is OK

I then played with the brain for a while but the export tools are not good enough. You can get a tool from the website that will allow you to export the brains you generate to XML – this is where the fun starts because it doesn’t take the notes with it, these are held in separate RTF documents. In essence, if you are using it to plan a written document, it isn’t good enough. It’s good for organising thoughts and so on but just not that good to put up with the very poor export facilities.

I have finally started to use free mind, which is essentially an open-source clone of Mind Manager with better facilities. It also has this really useful multi-line node thing that means you can put a lot of text into a node, then press F6 to shrink the font. I’ve been using it a lot to plan my work at work as well. Free mind is a bit pure in that it won’t export to proprietry things like M$ Word but so what? I use Open Office for personal stuff anyway. Free mind has almost all of the same key strokes as Mind Manager, except that alt-enter puts you in multine node mode. It also supports notes on nodes but you have to dig for it on the menus. I like the mode where you can look at the nodes as a simple hieriachy and select many at a time, as well as the way it does links between nodes.

Another good thing about free mind is that it’s open source and, erm, free. You do need to have a Java Runtime installed though, but so what? You need one anyway for your web browser.

In an ideal world I’d like something like the brain with decent export facilities, the radiant thinking thing of mind maps is good but I like the way you can hoist another node into the centre of the visual field with the brain, just the export facilities are crap (who but a techie could even deal with XML, or even want to, for goodness’ sake!) and freemind does the job well enough for me. Mind maps work well for project planning and work management as well, they allow you to jump about and look at priorities, which is something I’ve been forced to do a lot of recently. Mind maps let you see the big picture and the brain doesn’t – it’s all horses for courses really. Actually, in an ideal world I’d like to be able to have a mind map with hook points where I can hoist a node up to be the centre of another map (and keep everything in sync) – the best of both worlds. Hmmm… Free mind is open source …. hmmm … maybe I could do some experimenting with it?

Maybe when I get some time…

[[ Note added 16-Apr-06 ]]

Not overwhelmed by Free Mind when I try and print a mind map. It looks fine on the screen but on my ink jet printer not so good, the text seems to be doubled up and higgledy piggledy. This may be something to do with the Java library’s printing facilities and not something that the free mind developers can control. I will ask them about it on the site.

Last blog entry I said I was really under the weather and struggling.

I went to see my doctor and told her that my IBS was playing up, I hadn’t slept properly in weeks and my sinus condition was playing up. My eyes also look like they belong to someone else as in they’re so sunk in you can’t see them properly.

She takes one look at me, looks at my medical history, and signs me off for two weeks

“Let them go hang”

That’s what she said.

I feel bad though – we’re in the middle of a big release. However the work I did that was on the main track has largely been done and the guy who seems to think I can be his hands driving Oracle Designer can just remember how to use it himself; it’ll be good for him to make the odd decision I think.

However, I can’t even work from home because I’d be uninsured. Once the doctor has said you aren’t fit for work then you can’t go in.

I am very tired. I have slept an awful lot, I didn’t realise how wrecked I was. Also having trouble driving, being very careful and taking my time – can’t do that instant evaluation thing I usually can.

Oddly I fired up my work laptop so I could re-initialise my Palm Tungsten (let the battery go flat) and even looking at the thing made my head hurt.

I think the main problem is a complete lack of autonomy – priorities being changed all the time and no part in the decision making process. That combined with being managed by someone who isn’t very good at people (see earlier couple of blogs). Anyway, I’m resting and trying to get my strength back. Also doing some exercise because my doctor advised this to get rid of the fatigue poisons that have been building up for so long. Did a session on my cross-trainer this morning and couldn’t get to 20 minutes. Legs are aching all the time too. Suspect I just need to rest up …

Sigh.

Well, this is difficult for me. I did a lot of voluntary work for my local canone club. Not for gain, just because I enjoyed it and wanted to give something back to the many coaches who had helped me become proficient at the sport.

We also had a lot of good young people at the club and they needed to stretch on white water and outside of the boring narrow confines of the pool and the lake.

I stopped going to the pool because I didn’t agree with the way the sessions were being run by the Capsize Stazi who were forcing scared kids to capsize their kayaks and do a capsize drill. My daughter was one of the victims, but not the only one. When I coach I never force anybody to do anything, all I say is if you want qualification x you must meet the criteria. If you don’t want it today, that’s fine, no worries. My daughter won’t even get in a kayak now. Not that I’m angry about this or anything, honest. Not much.

OK, I ran one event a month for the best part of 2 years. Rosie ran one also, she prefers flatter water and social paddling. Hey, this is good, if she wanted to do white water we’d always be fighting over child care.

About 9 months ago I realised that I had “coachitis”, as in my own skills were not progressing, going backwards if anything, and I seemed to be spending all of my time helping others and getting frustrated. I decided to take some time off but, because I am so fed up, I haven’t been kayaking for myself, I haven’t done any at all. This is upsetting because I used to get so much pleasure out of it. I’ve tried to go out a number of times and it always feels like my limbs are made of lead and I go climbing or walking instead. Note that I got no support from the club at all – no-one even bothered to talk to me.

In the midst of all this the club’s ineffectual chariman (nice guy, always says he’s going to do things and never does) decides (or gets talked into, I think) that we should go for “top club” status. This means we can apply for grants and things (we already have more kit than we can use because of earlier success). I don’t care about such things, think they’re nonsense to be honest. In fact I think its state-sponsored bureaucratic crap that allows politicians to say they’re helping the community because they put 50 pence in a tin. I’d rather be self-sufficient and pursue my sport for its own sake. I also have talked to other paddlers in other parts of the country who have no kit at all and need grants and so on a hell of a lot more than we do.

After a lot of humming and ha’ing and help from the club secretary who actually does the work of filling the forms in, proving we do enough to justify this status, and it is granted. I think I made a substantial contribution to this, as did Rosie, and have been thanked at most once. Thing is, there’s been almost no extra-curricular activities since I withdrew. I’m not sure that the status is deserved any more.

The other active coach is a very self-centred guy who is responsible for the Capsize Stazi incidents. He is apparently doing the 3 things he always does (when he doesn’t cancel with a week’s notice). He only ever does things if they are of personal benefit to him and is always finding ways of not spending his money. It’s a very unedifying spectacle and gives me the creeps. There was an incident when I was paddling with him when I thought I was going to die, but that’s another story. I decided not to paddle with him because I don’t trust his judgement, this was before the incident with my daughter and I wish I had spoken up then, but if wishes were fishes … I suppose I should learn from it and speak up next time and every time.

The chair has decided to have a big jamboree on a weekend Rosie and I can’t make it. All of the local politiciains will be there and the press, glad handing him and others. This will not do his career, or the that of other coach, any harm at all. They are or will be teachers or youth worker co-ordinators. To be fair, I don’t think this was deliberate, just typical of the cloth-eared way he does everything. We were given two ears and one mouth and should use them in that proportion, which he does when it suits his plans, which I suppose means he doesn’t listen really.

Then there is the vexed question of the website. My dear friend Roger set it up for us for free on one of his servers, it has content management and all sorts of useful stuff like diary management and bulletin boards if we can find time to learn to use it. The chair thinks it doesn’t work and keeps getting people who are not IT professionals, which Rosie and I are, to do things for 50p. If the club were buying equipment then we would ask the people who know for their opinions, but because your mate can do a web site for £50 and you haven’t bothered to ask (or even read the minutes of the meetings when you were told) you don’t realise you alreay have a site that will meet all of your needs for nothing. Cloth ears and wasting club funds. But just stupid and ignorant. To be honest you get this all the time with the web, everyone thinks they can do it for a packet of crisps and wonder why it looks crap when they do. It’s also a control-freak thing – getting his mate to do it puts him in charge.

Rosie resigned from the committee a couple of days ago from sheer frustration at nothing ever getting done. She used to play buzzword bingo:

“keep on agenda” – no-one’s bothered to do anything (again)
“the chair will do that” – it won’t happen
“coaching report” – my PC broke (I couldn’t be arsed)

Plus the words “the pool” and “the lake” and “top club” will be mentioned. This will also take all night. The comittee members promised newsletter articles every month and there never are any. Rosie was suppose to put them up on the web site but you can’t put stuff up that’s not there, can you? This may be why the web site is thought to be bad, I dunno.

Please understand, I’m not angry. I did the voluntary work because I wanted to and would have done it anyway. I just feel that it’s been manipulated into something that I wasn’t ever consulted about and may not agree with. I just don’t know what it is and no-one’s ever thought to tell me.

I haven’t renewed my membership this year and I will definitely get back into a kayak. I have joined a different club who (wait for it) JUST GO PADDLING FOR FUN!!!!!! Whoeee !!!!! All I need to do is overcome my unwillingness to get in a kayak because of all the bad connotations it’s been generating in my mind.