Chris J Wilson

I communicate with my team through a combination of real-time messaging and email. Before I send a message, I try to ask myself “Do I need to interrupt them?”.

I say try because sometimes I forget to reflect on this point (sometimes because I DO need to interrupt them). Most of the time, the answer is “no” or “not now” (I asked my team when they are most productive and I try to guard those hours for them) but sometimes the answer is yes.

Depending on the answer to the question, I can work out if I should

• fire off a quick message
• send an email
• add an item to a task list
• or just wait. I know how annoying it can be to have the over eager colleague who has to share every idea, and I know I can fit that description to a tee. So I try to rein myself in so they can stay fully focused.

Of course, I’ve written this down as I just felt the pull to send a message and then realised, I can and should wait till the end of the day.

That’s at least one success for the day.

Back when I was a teacher, I was a huge believer in time blocking: planning your day and marking certain hours for certain activities. It made total sense for me back then. I knew when I’d be in a class, I could estimate my travel times, and setting boundaries on lesson planning helped overcome Parkinson’s law. But after transitioning to work for a corporation in marketing, I had stopped time blocking. At first I had tried to use time blocking principles, but I found the days were too changeable and I’d often have to suddenly drop what I was doing for something else. It didn’t seem to make sense.

Now I’m managing a team, this trend has got worse and yet I’ve decided to return to time blocking.

Why return to time blocking

Although I have less control over interruptions (with more coming from above and below), that is precisely why I need to block certain time for what Cal Newport calls “deep work”. If I am always in reactive mode, with inboxes open for any interruption, then I never really engage with my work properly. And while there is some amount of instability I’ll never be able to prepare for, I can predict certain parts of my week (for example, when I need to review some content before it’s published and when I’m more likely to be messaged). I also need to create some blocked off times and the only way I can do that is by planning. If I hope a time of concentrated, distraction free work time will magically arise, it never will. I have to make it.

Time to begin

So I’m using the daily plan bar in my Leuchttrum bullet journal again. I’m intrigued to see how this experiment goes but I’m hopeful. I know that there will still be interruptions and my plans will never be 100% realized, but I’m confident it will be better than going in blind.

As Chad Moore and I were discussing SPS, we came up with the term “Graceful accountability”; encouraging each other to do our best, but understanding our circumstances and limits.

I wonder how it applies elsewhere?

Accountability to meet the goals you set and develop yourself with wiggle room and understanding. Providing challenges, but knowing that life has a great way of messing up our plans.

I think it might be a good approach for most things in life.

I’ve noticed two main responses to any problem at work.

1. Blame distribution
2. Solution implementation While most people employ both to varying degrees, we also seem to tend towards one or the other.

Blame distribution is where we sell to find the person to be blamed. It’s not about find the responsible party but that may happen as a lucky consequence.

During blame distribution, you should expect to see email chains resurfaced with sections highlighted or underlined. People will point out how they “did their job” (usually to the letter) or that this issue didn’t fall under their remit.

Blame distribution can affect managers (who do I need to be upset with) and lower-level staff (how can I make sure I’m not blamed).

Usually, the actual problem remains while no one addresses it.

Solution implementation is all about fixing the problem. It doesn’t matter what (or who) caused it unless that information relates to fixing the issue. After the immediate issue is fixed, there may also be a process of finding out the root cause of the problem to avoid any repetition.

Someone solution implementation involves challenging staff to raise their standards, highlighting manager mistakes, and maybe even disciplinary action, but that’s not the first thing; It comes later.

I hope that I’m more of a solution implementer than a blame distributor but I know that I fall prey to the later too.

When someone wants to start a creative project, they usually mispredict what will be their challenges and what they need to focus on.

Several months back I told myself “you think this is your biggest challenge, but it’s actually…” and then my mind filled in the blank (space was actually my challenge.) So I spent time working out how I could have more space and set up equipment faster. Then I started to buy myself some toys. If I’d bought the toys first, I wouldn’t have got far at all.

Sometimes, while I’m on Micro Blog, I get a glimps of a whole world here that I am completely unaware of. Usually it’s from the discovery feed, where I see a post on a topic that I would never normally go searching for, but is interesting regardless. Other times it is from a comment that appears in my feed and I explore the coversation. I’ve heard people discribe different forms of “twitter” (i.e. black twitter, politics twitter, Christian twitter etc) and I wonder how much that applies to Micro Blog? Certainly, the most common trends I’ve noticed are a gravitation towards Apple products and a dislike of mainstream social media (in particular Facebook). But after those two characterists, which aren’t universal, there’s a lot of different here. It’s a great reminder of just how diverse the world is; on Micro blog and everywhere.

One of my big challenges at work now is stopping ideas falling through the gaps.

We’ve had a lot of ideas for ways to improve what we do, but sometimes they get forgotten in the day to day running.

So I’m moving to close those gaps. No more “cool idea let’s do it later.” But “okay, what’s next? What does this actually look like? Who is responsible?”

Part of sharing this is to hold myself accountable if we don’t close the gap.

I’ve been finishing a little review of my new camera and I had a realisation. As I wrote about the mobile app, which is far greater than my previous camera, I realised that there are other cameras which are supposed to have superior apps. I’m sure they do and I might even like and use those extra function. Still, this camera is an improvement and in the ways I needed. While it may not be the best, it’s good enough for me. I don’t want to dampen my enjoyment by comparing it to the best.

The same is probably true of my mechanical keyboard (an Anne Pro 2 with Kalih white box switches). It’s probably not as good as some of these ridiculously expensive keyboards but it’s also probably good enough for me.

You bar for “Good enough" may be different (especially in different fields) but knowing that mark (and not getting caught up in someone else’s definition) is really important.

I’ve had this thought for a while that my job is

1. Make a plan and start working on it in the morning.
2. Spend the whole of the morning finding out that the plan has changed and there are ten new things to do.
3. Adapt plan and work on the new most urgent tasks.
4. Wake up the next morning and repeat.

It annoyed me that people would continually start fires and then leave me (and the rest of the team) to put them out, but I realised today that we get paid to put those fires out fast and get a new plan in place soon.

A terrible blogging writing mistake (I hold my hand up and admit that I do it all the time) is to restate a subheadline as the first sentence of that section.

Here’s an example Subheading: What’s good about (topic) First sentence: There are many good aspects of (topic) which we should consider.

It’s pointless and waffle.

Let’s get into the heart of the topic or at least provide some extra information.

Again, I do it all the time but that’s part of the value of editing.

For a while I’ve wondered about combining my two sites Sketchnote Classroom and Learn Create Share into one site.

Reasons

• I want to focus on one site, not two.
• There is a lot of overlap between the two. They are both about creativity.
• I share sketchnotes on different topics on LCS so almost all the content is sketchnote based really.

The reason I started LCS was to encourage myself to share more sketchnotes (and content) that weren’t about sketchnoting but other topics. The only issue I have is that Sketchnote classroom is very clearly about sketchnoting and solves a very clear problem for people (using sketchnotes to learn…and learning how to sketchnote) whereas LCS is a lot less well defined (It’s a process… that is good?).

Why does it matter?

I’m getting ready to launch some new stuff (updated courses and something very special) and so I’m wondering if I should merge the two sites. I have thought about merging them into LCS but part of me thinks it is more sensible to merge them into Sketchnote classroom (I have a clearly message and better SEO).

What do you think?

I’d love your thoughts. Which name is better (in your opinion)? OR do you think I should stick with both!

Question about non-binary people who use the pronouns they/them. How do verbs conjugate? They is or they are? I’ve wondered about that for a while but never got around to asking.
Secondary question for Americans. Companies are generally referred to as individuals (Apple is making…) would you say “They (the company) haven’t paid yet.” surely not “It hasn’t paid yet.”?

A parabola idea is an idea who has gained a second meaning. While the person who coined the term or expression may have had one thing in mind, other people now have a completely different association with it. Here are a few examples

1. Inbox Zero

In it’s original context it was about not feeling like you have to keep checking your email. Instead you bulk checked and processed your email. But now most people use it to refer to the literal state of having no emails in their inbox, even if they have their email app open all the time to do so (and so not applying inbox zero).

2 Virtue signaling

Originally a term to about actions that help show and build allegiance to a group by exhibiting certain moral behaviors Now a pejorative term used to criticize anyone showing “leftist” ideology or caring for other people.

3. Morning pages

Originally an idea from Julie Cameron of writing, by hand, three pages of stream of consciousness that should be discarded. This was to get the creative juices flowing and remove any inhibitors. Now it means doing some form of journaling or writing in the morning. This could be a highly structured one-line long day plan or an article for a website.

4. Thanks, Obama

Originally to sarcastically criticize then President Obama for consequences (real or perceived of his presidency. Now, a way to mock conservatives who blame president Obama for almost anything. If something bad happen, say “Thanks, Obama.”

5. Fake news

Originally, the creation of false and often completely made up news stories by unknown and foreign news sources without journalistic integrity for multiple purposes. 1) foreign agents trying destabilize a country. 2) For political opponents seeking to smear and discredit opponents. 3) for advertising revenue from views. Now it means negative news stories of Donald Trump whether they are accurate or not.

Can you think of any others?

About three days in to trying to do “proper” bullet journaling. It’s going okay so far. I’m enjoying the analog side of things (but I know it will become a pain at some point. My idea for a solution is to play with different pens).

• I really like the rapid logging system.
• I’m actually using my index pages
• There are moments I want to migrate a task to a specific day (i.e. Monday when X is back at work) but you’re not supposed to prepare days in advanced…so how should you do this?
• I want to look at some month log ideas.
• You could totally do this with a regular Leuchttrum (or Rhodia web notebook) but the reference and three ribbons are nice touches.
• I wonder about making some special bookmarks for specific logs 🤔
• I wonder how this fits into my big picture note taking/task management systems, I wrote some ideas down yesterday but I think it’s still a bit too early to tell.

This topic is something that has been on my mind a lot recently. My wife and I live in a small European flat and our books and analog note taking tools take up the most space after the various paraphernalia our daughter has.

As we’ve been cleaning out recently, I’ve been reevaluating my use of digital and analog tools; one of the frequent debates I return to.

To some people, this will seem like a closed debate

“Books, pens and paper take up more space than a computer, phone or ebook reader. Plus digital notes are backed up in the cloud. Of course analog notes are incompatible with minimalism.
Live with less, man.”

But I think that is a reductive view of minimalism.

What actually is Minimalism?

One of my favorite quotes on minimalism came from Cal Newport when he was discussing his book “Digital Minimalism”. I can’t find the exact original quote but it went something like.

“At the heart of every minimalism movement is a focus on intention.”

In this perspective, more isn’t always bad (but neither is it inherently good). If using “more” matches your goals, then you should use “more”. The real issue is defaulting to more when some or little would be better.

This reflects a similar idea that the minimalist, Joshua Fields Millburn & Ryan Nicodemus, share.

Remove what you don’t get value from, focus on what you do get value from.

Accordingly, the main evaluative question of a minimalist shouldn’t be “How can I show I have less than other people and so ‘win’ the minimalist pissing contest” but rather something akin to “Does this bring me value?” Or perhaps “meaning” instead of value.

Getting practical with paper

While hypotheticals can be useful, they can end up vague due to their need to be all inclusive.

Looking at the practical issue of paper and books again it’s easy to see how more can be bad. Having a lose pile of papers which you never look at again and just get in the way might be annoying for you.

At the same time, more might be good for you. That pile of paper may have a long list of ideas and prompts which you return to when you need inspiration or ideas.

One person’s too much is another person’s enough.

Finding your enough

There are many stages in between and it’s even possible to combine the benefits of analog and digital tools by scanning paper or using styli on a screen.

From that perspective, if you value something, keep it, but don’t keep things that you don’t value but “feel” you should have.

For me, my analog tools and notes fall into my “valuable” list. But for other people, they become clutter and should be removed or digitized (though be careful, books outlast bytes).

Minimalism as an evaluative tool

I really enjoy putting on the “minimalist” hat as a critical perspective on my activities and stuff. As my wife and I have been going through our things and selling items the questions of “Could I get rid of this? How bad would it really be to downsize?” “Do I actually value this?” and “How likely am I to ever use this again.” have been good guides.

In the process, I’ve rediscovered some of my older notebooks and pieces of paper. It’s been a great experience to find an old idea or silly little doodle from a specific moment in time.

But I don’t “live” in minimalism. I don’t constantly look for stuff to remove and focus on owning fewer items.

Although my pens and books take up a significant portion of space in our flat, I don’t view that as Inherently bad. A physical object is a clear reminder of the associated actions or ideas.

• Seeing a book on your bed side table is a reminder to read.
• A pad of paper is a prompt to write.

Most of time, I find these tools match my values. I just wish It was easier to store them.