Test Letter
Howdy
Wow, is it really December? The whole year has just flown by, hasn't it? How has your year been? Mine has been filled with change. Work is a lot different than it was last year, more to do with less. I am fitter now that I was last year thanks to Crossfit. I now have two great kids running around at home, instead of one running and one crawling.
I usually get very reflective this time of year, probably induced by the holiday atmosphere and I start to think about what I wan next year to be like. I don't set goals or ideas in concrete, and they rarely extend beyond a year, but I start to "imagineer" what the next few months will look like. This year I am going to write them down and I'll probably share them with you so you can help keep me accountable.
Do you have any goals for next year? Do you start to think of them now or closer to January 1? I am not a fan of the New Years Resolution. I think that we should continually be evaluating and tweaking our lives and habits to make us more productive, happy people. I think Kaizen is probably one the most significant concepts that I have come across (the other being Wabi-sabi) and I try to apply it regularly. I am always tweaking my office at work or my garage configuration at home to make work more effortless. I find that the less difficult the effort I have to put forth in little things, the more I can pour into the the harder things.
What about you?
Social change
Since the last letter, I have made good on my promise to change the way that I use social media. I have pretty much dropped off Twitter, Google+ and Facebook, not because I don't want to interact, but I am trying to break my addiction. I find myself constantly checking my phone, or on my computer and I know that I am missing out on the important things.
But it has been hard to give up the addiction. I have definitely suffered from FOMO. Caterina Fake wrote about FOMO and Social Media earlier this year.
If you didn’t know that party was going on, you’d be home contentedly reading your latest New Yorker. But since you do, you hungrily watch each new tweet.
Exactly.
I have, how ever, rejoined Path. Why Path? Because it has built in limitations. You can only have 150 friends and the number was picked very intentionally to fit with Dunbar's number.
Dunbar's number is suggested to be a theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. These are relationships in which an individual knows who each person is, and how each person relates to every other person. Proponents assert that numbers larger than this generally require more restrictive rules, laws, and enforced norms to maintain a stable, cohesive group. No precise value has been proposed for Dunbar's number. It has been proposed to lie between 100 and 230, with a commonly used value of 150.
I remember attending a conference session on using social media to prepare for and react to a crisis. The information was being shared with people who were (are) very skeptical of social media and the presenter didn't do a great job of winning people over. "I have over 5,000 friends on Facebook and I connect with each one of them" was a line used more than once. I scratched my head and wondered what "connect" really meant to the presenter. That is why I like Path, there are built in limits (Plus it is only on my phone, so when I put my phone away, I am better able to focus on the things that are not on my phone).
I am still trying to find a happy medium, but Path's built in limits I am getting there. I am not suggesting that you go install Path and have an island you have to row out to, to interact with me. If you look at it and like it cool, if it is not your cup of tea, fine, I just want to let you know where I "am".
Links
Often while Hazel is watching a movie, I look up the trivia and goofs in IMDB to see if I can spot the mistakes or find a new interesting gem about a movie that she will be talking about for weeks. During the Thanksgiving break, she saw Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (A Benoit household favorite) and the trivia is fascinating. The most oddly worded was this:
This movie was shot in Munich, Germany, but the producers had to go outside of Germany to recruit enough little people to play the Oompa Loompas (one of the many tragic legacies of the Nazi era). Many of the people cast as Oompa Loompas (German or otherwise) did not speak English fluently, if at all. This is why some appear to not know the words to songs during the musical numbers
This week the internet was a buzz with the Little Printer. Esther said we should get one, so I might write more as the ability to pre-order comes around.
For the kids: The Trouble With Bright Kids
- And the moms: Mothers and Sleep Medication
Reading
- I read an GQ article about three different celebrities exploring Japanese culture, which reminds me of the NY Times article that I read last year: Exploring Tokyo Through Its Ramen Shops
Mmm… Ramen.
I have a huge fascination with Scientology. I don't know why, but I am intrigued by the culture surrounding the religion, as well as the their focus on celebrities. Janet Reitman's piece is a great primer on the whole organization. Every bit of interesting news about Scientology or Scientologists that comes my way, I am sure to read. Send me some links if you have them.
When I lived in England, my family visited 221b Baker Street. I had no idea that there was this level of interest in Sherlock Holmes
This Steve Jobs PBS short is a 20 minute insight into the fledgling NEXT and Steve.
Two great videos about ending marriage discrimination
I hope we can agree that these are some great videos.
Action
With holidays upon us, I know that in years previous Esther and I have needed a break from our break. I have been a GTD practitioner for years, but had never brought the whole family into the process for such a major holiday. As I have heard and repeat with some regularity, "we do poorly on the things that we don't or can't practice, like Christmas". This week, Esther and I sat down and planned our Best Christmas and the number of things that came up that would have bit us later where forehead slapping. It took us about an hour and I know that I feel much more relaxed about the holidays. It is not too late for you to as well.
If you try using the Natural Planning Model, let me know how it goes.