Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Backdata on 19th century CPA and more musings on busyness










Friday, March 23, 2007

Alternate Lyrics Kung-Fu

There's a good, somewhat aged post over at Creating Passionate Users about "Creativity on Speed." The basic idea being that having to create something under time constraints is a good way to jump-start the creative process, or jump past creative barriers.

I agree. Back in school, when I was studying writing both in class and in lots of off-hours ways, we'd do lottsa exercises that forced time pressures on us. One of my favorites was "Alternate Lyrics Kung-Fu." Here's how it goes.

  1. Everybody writes the name of a well-known, popular song on a slip of pink paper.

  2. Everybody writes a topic on a slip of yellow paper. And by topic, I mean just about anything. You can write any word or short phrase like, "monkeys," "car repair," "psychotropic drugs," "communism," "your mom," etc.

  3. Put the slips in the middle of the table.

  4. Pick one of each.

  5. You now have 2 minutes to rewrite the song you picked (on the pink slip) with lyrics based on the topic written on the yellow slip.

So, let's say you got the Beatle's song, "Norweigan Wood," and the topic, "cheese." OK... Go!
I once had a lunch, or should I say, I once had cheese.
Cheese can be a side, but not a meal. I wasn't full.
Cheese passed on a plate at a party is something that's fair.
But all by itself can be boring, there's not much "there" there.
And when I was done, I craved much more, more than that cheese.
So I baked a pie. Isn't it good. More tasty food.

Now... I admit. I spent about 4 minutes on that. OK. But I haven't played the game in... yeech. Almost 20 years.

In a post soon I'll go back and talk about how time is only one part of "the box" we're always trying to get out of when we talk about "getting out of the box." We can't get out of the box. We can only understand it and use it better. There are other ways to master the box. More on the box later.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

I own the moon (new poem)

Because I say I do.

There are wolves, for sure,
and loons up late. They hoot,
black charcoal shadow cartoon fools
whose gloom assumes
we, too, mourn loss of bright
fiery blaze;
patent days.

There are none, though, walking ways
of cratered, corduroy, rolling, dust-grey
hills and basins. Peaks and vales
like battlefields of grim grenades
and silent, sentient cosmic chum.
but me.

And I say, "Pay!"

You lovers on my white-glow leaning;
you hunters creeping, deer-spoor seeking;
you now owe toll!

No more free ride. Pay up. Way up.

The Man in the Moon be damned.
Homage? For the loons.
I own the moon.

Continuous Partial... Look! A Bunny!

I've heard the term Continuous Partial Attention a few times recently. It was coined by Linda Stone. Some quotes and comments here on O'Reilly.

Partly it rings true. There are days, of course, when the email piles up and the cell phone vibrates and the Blackberry blinks and umpty-nine people walk into my cube looking for ring-around-the-whatever, etc. etc. and I think, "Is this what I am? A thrall to my toys and tools and a help-desk for everybody within range of my loud, annoying voice?"

But then I remember something. We humans are hunters as well as gatherers, and successful hunters are marked by skills that are very well defined by the term "continuous partial attention." If you are very, very focused on one thing -- let's say, spoor -- you won't pick up sounds. If you are only listening to the sounds of one kind of prey, you won't hear the sounds of other, possibly more valuable dinner-time meat.

Gathering, of course, rewards more single-attention-focus behavior. And the ultimate forms of gathering -- modern, mechanized, industrialized, assembly-line systems -- are ones in which we are each expected to be one thing, all the time, thank you. "Round peg, round hole." Sit down, shut up. You need continuous, full, single-task attention when you are only expected to do and be one thing every damned day for your whole working and family life.

What do you do? What do you want to be when you grow up? What do you plan to make of your life? What does your dad/mom do for a living? Where do you work? What does your company do? These are all questions that, more or less, presuppose a single answer.

But we've been told, for quite awhile now, that we'll all have a number of jobs and careers before we buy the big dirt nap. And if that's the case, if we will "gather" a number of types of rosebuds while we may, then aren't we, possibly, coming into a time when our hunter attributes are going to be more appropriate to success?

The landline telephone was supposed to be incredibly disruptive to our social well-being when it first came out. It would interrupt family time. Allow people whom we did not know to fracture the peace and tranquility of our domestic castle. It would encourage a breakdown of the wall between "business" and "home." Oh, dear! My whole life, me attention has been continuously parted by the telephone!
Sarcasm aside... perhaps it's a case of learning to cope. I've seen this in just the 15 years I've been involved in the wireless industry. In 1992, when I got into the business, people had no coping skills. The few people who had portable phones pretty much answered them every time they rang. Partly that was because so few people had them, and so few people had their numbers. By 1999, after the initial popular explosion, millions of people were carrying flip-phones, and most of them hadn't learned how to deal. Everyone was answering calls everywhere, mostly rudely, and they had to start reminding us to, "Please... silence your cell phones," before movies.

Now? In most places, our phones are on "vibrate" all the time. Most of us don't mind if a friend glances at a phone for a sec to see who it is on Caller ID, and then says, "I have to take this." The assumption is that it's the spouse or the boss. And we wait... because we have spouses and bosses, too. And cell phones. But if it's another call... we let it go to VM. And we don't much care. At least I don't. Either about checking mine, or you checking yours.

About four months ago I got a Blackberry-like Pocket PC that lets me surf the Web and check my work email and calendar at all times. Do I sometimes check it during a meeting when I should be listening? Yeah... if I'm waiting for an email that is (imo) more important than what's going on in the meeting. Do I see other people doing that, too? Yup. And if I need to repeat a question... NBD.

Hunting. Not gathering. Active. Not passive. Looking for spoor and listening to the sounds of the jungle. Lots of little sounds and the crackle of twigs and hoots and calls in the distance and smells and... you get the picture.

We aren't round pegs anymore. We are hunting for and pounding different pegs every day. The pace of change is only accelerating. Our ability to sense markers, to be verbs and consumers of verbs rather than trying to exist as nouns will help us to succeed.

Also... If you're looking for a cute bunny that shouldn't be hunted but helped to the stars, please take some time with the absolutely charming Orsinal Games.Â  The one in the upper left is "Winter Bells," and is just delightful. Many of them are, but there's just something about that bunny...

Friday, March 9, 2007

The Twelve Little Pigs

Another post inspired by conversation with my 7-year-old son...

So, Danny was telling me about an assignment at school where the teacher asked them to draw or describe tools that the Three Little Pigs could have used to help build their respective houses of straw, sticks and bricks. Neat assignment, btw, I thought.

He told me about his ideas, and then went on to tell me about something else that day, I forget what, but the story also involved the number "3."

"Why," I asked him, "Do you think the number '3' is in so many stories? Why is it '3 pigs' and '3 wise-men' and '3 blind mice' and all those other '3's?'"

His initial answer proves he's my son...

"Well," he replied. "If it were always 9's, you'd just be asking me the same thing about 9's, wouldn't you?"

Right. It has to be something, don't it? Anyway...

"That's a good point," I agreed. "But why should it just be three pigs? Wouldn't it be a funny story if there were a lot more? Like twelve little pigs? And there their houses were built out of lots of other stuff?"

"Like stuff that's not hay or twigs or bricks. Weaker or stronger stuff?" he asked.

"Exactly. What would the first pig have used, if it was weaker than hay?"

Dan thought for a second and then said, "Grass?"

"Sure," I agreed. "That's weaker than hay. But if we're going to do twelve... I bet you can think of something even weaker than grass to build a house out of."

"Cotton candy!"

"Excellent! That's amazing. That would really be an awful house to hide in from a wolf."

"What would you choose, Dad?" he asked.

I thought and said, "Bubbles."

He nodded. "That's a very weak house."

"Can you," I asked, "think of anything worse or weaker than bubbles to build a house out of?"

He paused for a long moment, brow furrowed in concentration before answering.


I may have peed a little I laughed so hard. Of course. Because, and he confirmed this was his reasoning, chickens would run around a lot while you tried to build out of them.

So I asked him to list the full Pig House Building Material Manifest of Twelve. It went like this:

  • Chickens

  • Bubbles (my only contribution)

  • Cotton Candy

  • Grass

  • Paper

  • Hay

  • Twigs

  • Pants (I have no idea... he just inserted this one on his own)

  • Bricks

  • Concrete

  • Iron

  • Diamonds held together with Super Glue

That would be such a better story.

When he was done, he wanted to know if he could add one more. I said, of course, "Sure."

"I think," he said, "it would really freak the wolf out if you built a house out of wolves."

I agree. I truly, deeply agree.
The moral of this story for writers and creative types is... multiply. If you have three blind mice... how would the song change if it were 300? Farmer's wife... watch out! The song "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover," really only lists 5... can you think of 45 more?
"Then the pigs built a house of pants..."

Totally cracks me up. I have no idea what it means, but I love it.

Saturday, March 3, 2007

Different vs. Better: Worst Blinders Ever




So... Let's have an example.











And don't forget to ask lots of questions.