Pragmatic Life

Moving

Back in January, Dave and Andy decided to take Pragmatic Life in a different direction. Part of the change includes them using praglife.com for different purposes.

As of a week and a half ago praglife.com should have been redirected so that it no longer points to this typepad installation. The items posted here should also not appear in the pragprog feed. Please visit http://praglife.com to follow PragLife news.

If you want to follow my posts,  I've moved all of the existing posts to my http://dimsumthinking.com site. I did not move the comments as I didn't feel I had permission to do so. I will be returning to blogging on various "Life" topics there some time next week. I look forward to seeing you there.

Thank you again for all of your support. It was a great ride.

D

Whose side are you on

My daughter was tested twice this week on her scientific knowledge.

Over the weekend she was part of a team that competed in a Science Olympiad. She also had her final exam for her first semester. 

The difference is striking. She studied hard for her science exam and did well but she's talked non-stop about the competition. As she and her teammates rode the bus home they talked about what they needed to work on for next time. They identified areas of weakness and identified teachers and other resources to help address them.

I'm sure there are many differences between the two situations but one of them is the relationship between the students and the teachers. In the competition, the students and the teachers are on the same side. They are working together to master material that will be tested by some third party.

I struggled with this (and think I mostly succeeded) as a math teacher. The students know that this person teaching them is also the person creating the test and grading the test - how could that teacher possibly be on their side? 

And yet I was. I defined "their side" as meaning that I was committed to them learning and falling in love with the material. If I could do that, then a decent grade was almost always assured.

I once worked in a restaurant where the owner explained to me that one of the secrets to his restaurant's success was low staff turn over. In real terms, it cost him money. So even though he worked to train, evaluate, and manage the employees -- he was on their side.

What about in your work? What does it mean for managers to be on the same side as the people they manage? How would your work and your customers benefit? Whose side are you on?

Don't wait

Yesterday, Kim and I went to the funeral of a 92 year old woman. She'd lived a long and rich life. I only knew her late in life. Her first husband had died nearly thirty years before her and she'd remarried in her seventies and continued to be active, alive, and involved.

It's one of those examples that makes us relax a bit. We look at her and realize that we have plenty of time to accomplish things. We look at her children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren and time stretches out.

But Friday there was a reminder that you don't. Friday, in a church just a few miles from yesterday's funeral there was a funeral for a fifteen year old child. She died suddenly at school earlier in the week.

The pairing of the two was jarring. It was a reminder not to wait. That we don't have endless time to get going.

The 92 year old woman didn't wait. She was active and involved from the start. The stories that were told included her learning English as a second language in kindergarten and becoming the family's translator at school meetings for her siblings.

She was one of those women who was active all of her life. She was a woman who was truly ahead of her time--a working mother when mother's didn't work. A woman businessman out-bidding male competitors when women weren't in business.

Two funerals with two different kinds of sadness. Two funerals together with one message.

Don't wait.

Hope and hard work

In a recent podcast of This American Life, host Ira Glass begins by explaining how little of what they start with ends up on the air. Each week they air three or four stories but they fully produce as many as seven. They consider and partially develop as many as two dozen.

Now and then Glass has to remind us of the rest of the iceberg so we don't look at the three or four that make it to the air as all of the activity that needs funding. Wow, why does he need such a big staff - they only do a few stories a week?

I still think it's the stuff we throw out that makes what we do better. I'm writing an application for kicks these days. Yesterday I took most of the work I'd done the day before and replaced it with a dozen lines of code. The app runs better and the code is cleaner. If I were getting paid by the line I would have been nuts to make the changes I made. Fortunately, I'm not getting paid at all.

This morning Brian Marick tweeted a quote by Vaclav Havel on hope which I shortened like this. "Hope is [...] the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out."

And so This American Life produces great stories that end up not making it to the air because greater stories did. It doesn't turn out so great for those stories that don't make it but it turns out great for the show and us listeners.

If we just do the things we know are going to work out, well, that's not very interesting and is certain to hurt us in the long run.

Sure, we can't build a business on hope alone, but a business without hope isn't worth building.

Fresh Snow

It's the first Monday of a new year in a new decade. I sit sipping a fresh cup of coffee looking out of the window at the snow that's falling here in Cleveland.

The weather feels like a metaphor for the day. The snow has been slow and steady for three days accompanied by a light wind. Just enough to keep the surface white and to erase the footprints of people and animals that passed earlier. There is no well trod path of what's gone before only an empty lawn waiting for new footprints or whatever.

Quick, before meetings mar the day, the year, the decade---lay in the snow beside me and flap your arms and legs to make a snow angel.

Kill, commit, or transform your projects

Johanna Rothman wrote a wonderful book this year about managing your project portfolio that can help you manage projects in your personal life as well. At the beginning of the year it's a good time to take a look at your major ongoing projects and decide whether to kill, commit, kill or tranform a project.

You have limited resources---what are you going to devote them to this year? What successes are important to you in 2010. It's easy to just continue what you're doing but you probably have a bunch of open projects that you're just "kind of" doing.

Johanna writes that "When you commit to a project, it's a real commitment, not a partial commitment." You commit your time, find the people to help, ensure that there's funding and resources. If you don't fully commit, she explains, you'l revisit your projects again and again. 

You need to understand what is required to commit to a project---this should be concrete. Maybe you want to learn a new language or improve some hobby like drawing, photography or playing an instrument. Decide how much time each day that will take--- half hour, an hour---and ask if you realistically can commit that time. If it takes an hour a day of practice and you can only commit to a half hour a day or an hour three days a week then you aren't able to commit fully and you won't be successful.

It's tough but you need to face up to those projects you can't or won't commit to. You have two remaining options.

Perhaps you should kill the project. Johanna advises that "The key to killing a project is to make sure all activity associated with the project stops." This may give you pause. You may look at all of the sunk costs and feel that you can't kill the project. You can.

You may think you're being clever by postponing a project. It's kinder and gentler. You're not. You're just putting it on hold for now. Johanna makes it clear that "Postponing a project is another form of killing the project." You'll be happier later if you do this in an active way rather than just putting the project on hold and never getting back to it. A project on ice is one of David Allen's "open loops" and will be a quiet but continuous source of stress.

The third option is a bit of a hybrid. When you transform a project you are committing to this new version. You've killed off parts of the old project and redirected it but you are now fully committed to the success of this new project. You might change the team, change the goals, or change how you go about your daily work on the project but you still need full commitment.

Take some time this weekend to look at your major ongoing projects and decide to kill, commit, or transform each one. 

More of the same

In thinking about this year's resolutions I've decided that I don't really plan to make new ones so much as I'd like to apply things I already do in one area of my life to other areas.

As an example, I love to cook. Each New Year's Eve I choose a cookbook I've never cooked from and we invite some friends over for a meal I prepare from that cookbook. The husband and I have been friends for twenty-five years and the wife and I have known each other forever (there's a picture of her at my second birthday party). 

I want to have a relaxing evening and at the same time serve really good food. The trick to accomplishing this is easy. I am a very organized cook. I prep what I need before I head to the stove and I have a general idea of the order and the rhythm I'm going to need to prepare the meal. The second trick is even more important: I clean as I go. When I finish with a pan or a knife or a bowl, I wash it. 

Just those two practices - preparation and continual tidying - make cooking easy and enjoyable.

This year's resolution, therefor, is to try to apply those two practices to other activities in my life.

Instead of looking for new practices to embrace, take a minute as 2009 ends to identify things you do pretty well in one area of your life and ponder whether they are applicable in other areas.

Happy New Year.

Preparing for the New Year

In his TED talk from February, 2008 composer Benjamin Zander looks at the opportunity presented by only about 3% of the population here being interested in classical music enough to support it. While others bemoan the closing of institutions and puzzle over how to grow the audience from 3% to 4% he truly believes that everyone can enjoy and value classical music.

He divides people into these categories:

• A small group of people who are passionate about classical music.
• A slightly larger group of people who don't mind classical music. They don't turn it on but if it's playing they are happy with it.
• The largest group of all is comprised of people who never listen to classical music.

He adds a fourth group that claim to be tone deaf and then dismisses the idea that this many people could actually be tone deaf.

He then talks the audience through the "story line" of a Chopin prelude and asks them to picture a specific thing while listening to him play the piece. Everyone gets it. You'll get it.

But I don't bring this up to enhance your life through classical music.

As you prepare for the new year, think of something you are passionate about that you wish other people would better understand or just appreciate. How can you tell its story and move them to a point that they get it? 

I never much felt the passion for history until I read Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation. Since then I pick up biographies and historical accounts for a fun read while I'm traveling. Vowell's book convinced me.

Take twenty minutes to enjoy Benjamin Zander on music and passion and make a New Year's resolution to create that shining look in the people around you when you describe your passion.

Agile Diet Holiday Check-in

Christmas Eve day might not seem like the right time to check in to see how the diet is going.

Between now and the time when our New Year's Celebrations end a week from tomorrow I've got a great deal of overeating planned. I'm not talking about healthy stuff either.

But in the December issue of the PragPub magazine I suggested we start a diet together. So far the rule is simple: eat what you want but write everything down. 

We'll add exercise and moderation and rest soon enough, but for now just write it down. If you haven't started yet, you may want to wait until Saturday morning to join in. When you wake up Saturday commit to writing down everything you eat or drink. Everything.

No guilt. No "oh I shouldn't have". For now we're working on the most important skill needed for success in your diet -- noticing what it is you are doing and creating a record.

Enjoy your end of year celebrations  -- I know I will.

Congratulations authors

Wow November went by quickly. Let's assume that you reached your goal (yesterday's blog post was addressed to those of you who didn't).

Congratulations. That's huge. I'm proud of you and so happy for you. Now, what are you going to do with what you've written?

You could decide to do nothing with it. Your goal was to write and you've written. Sharing it is a whole other ball game. Not only that but most novelists will tell you about several books they have started that they had to put down because it just wasn't working out. This is hard for those who have written a bunch of books---it's even harder if it's your first book.

Look at the chapters you've written. Maybe you can continue to shape them into a book or maybe you should set them down and start fresh on another project now that you know more about yourself and about writing.

If you want to do something with it, the simplest thing might be to use your writing as blog posts. Before you share your writing with anyone realize that people can be really harsh. Even if you post it to your blog and give it away for free, there are people who will make comments that come out of left field or are hurtful.

You might have something between a blog and a book. Maybe you want to shape it into a pdf and distribute it on your own or post it to a site that has a community of people interested in your topic. 

You might have a book on the way but you don't want to work with a publisher. You can self-publish or use a site like Lulu. At the minute you cross the line into charging for your work, some of your readers will look at your work differently. Even if you aren't making any money off of your work, they have paid for it. They have expectations of you---and they aren't all good.

If you've chosen a topic that we might publish, feel free to submit it to us. Submissions for our mainline Pragmatic Bookshelf titles should be sent to proposals@pragprog.com and those for our Pragmatic life series should be sent to lifeproposals@pragprog.com. In any case, please read What we are looking for first.

We tend to respond more quickly than most publishers. Our most common reasons for rejecting a proposal have nothing to do with you. We often think a submitted book would be a great book---just not the sort of book we publish. Many times we don't see a market for the book in our existing audience and we're not sure how to reach the people your book would deserve to reach.

Sometimes it is you or your book. We just aren't sold on an idea and we look at that as a warning sign. If we're not getting the kernel of the book how will we explain it to our readers? I would suggest you do what movies do and create a log line. A short catchy sentence on what the book is and who it's for.

Maybe you want to submit your PragProWriMo book to one of our competitors. Cool. We want to see good books get published. Just because a book isn't right for us to publish doesn't mean it isn't a book we'd love to read. We think there are compelling reasons for writing for us but we know that different authors have different needs and we're not right for everyone.

Whether you end up signing with us or with one of our competitors, you probably have a lot of work left to do on your book. With us a development editor will work with you to help shape your story and get the best out of you. I recently edited a book that the author brought to me in a state that he thought was complete. We worked many months through many drafts to get it to the state where we were all happy with his work. It is still his voice, it is still his book, but it is much improved by the comments of tech reviewers, the copy editor, the indexer, the typesetter, Dave and Andy, and me.

Let me know what you decide to do. I hope this month has been a good experience for you and I hope these daily blog posts have been helpful. In the meantime I wrote 80 pages for my book. I'm pretty happy right now.

Congratulations.