Hitting the restart button at the start of the school year

There are so many things weighing us all down these days. Our brains are overloaded with negativity. For me, I need to refocus as I head into the new school year... and focus on the kids. That's what this is all about, and that's what gets me back on track and back into a positive mindset. And one of the cool things about the summer vacation is that it's like we get to hit the restart button every year for us and our students.

But that doesn't mean it will always be the best start it could be. In a recent issue of the Marshall Memo, Kim Marshall writes:

"In this article in AMLE Magazine, teacher/consultant/author Rick Wormeli bemoans the fact that students’ eager and receptive frame of mind at the beginning of each school year is often deflated by the endless succession of going-over-the-rules, filling out forms, and stale getting-to-know-you activities. “Students grow increasingly disillusioned,” says Wormeli. “We’ve missed a golden opportunity for them to dive into the subject material with neurons firing on all thrusters. It’s probably the most significant time of the year to hardwire students’ minds to embrace our subjects, and we don’t want to miss it.”

He recommends mixing mandatory stuff with lively activities, so students learn something new about your subject every day."

I love his idea of making sure we grab their interest at the start of school, but I would add a couple of other goals to my list of the three things I want my students to take away from the first few days of school:

1. Piqued interest - As Wormeli recommends, I want to hit the ground running the first day with high-interest, challenging and content-rich activities. Earlier this summer, as I was planning this year's Science Project Block I asked myself, "What are the most interesting topics in biology that can be tackled with a simple hands-on approach?" I want to make sure the first day they are diving right into that.
2. Success - When I ask myself what these kids need most, the answer is confidence. The students I work with are all in dire need of a feeling of competence and success. This is true for all of us. When we feel successful at something, we will not only be interested in it, we will tend to become more successful at it. And the opposite is also true, which is why school failure is a downward spiral.
3. An expectation of hard work - At the same time, I want them to be in the zone of proximal development--not overwhelmed, but challenged. Expectations are key, so I also want them to expect to work hard every day.

So what does this mean for the first day/first few days? It means I need to provide learning activities that are:

1. Inherently interesting.
2. Easy enough to ensure success.
3. Challenging enough to require help.

In the case of Project Block, this year we'll be trying to raise trees from seed and cuttings in order to help fight climate change. The first day, after introducing the idea of climate change and the "Trillion Tree Solution," we'll go right out into the woods to look for tree seeds that we can bring back inside for the next steps. We humans have a natural interest in living things, and while I am sure they will all be able to find seeds, I also think it will be challenging.

If I can infuse success into these kids, then I've succeeded. Success here could restart their whole lives, and that's what this job is about. It's not about all this other stuff that's going on in the world or in education these days. It's about these kids and their futures. It's about what we can do to help them.

Bringing order to your chaotic life with Trello

Ever feel like your life is a hurricane of responsibilities? Of course you do. So do I. That's why I write so much about managing stress and priorities. That's why I've been using the Bullet Journal method for a few years now. But I've recently retired that stack of black journals on my shelf and discovered an even cooler tool for time and task management.

Last fall, Elizabeth Brott Beese, a Ph.D. student from Purdue who spent some time studying our program, saw my notebooks and knew what they were. I thought that was really cool, because I'd never met anyone who knew the system. I told her how much I loved it. Then she told me why she didn't use it. She'd discovered something better. It was called Trello.

It looked really cool. I tried it. I said goodbye to my black journals.

Why is Trello So Darn Cool?

What I like about Bullet Journal is the physical feeling of writing stuff down and drawing little boxes and arrows and checking things off my list with a G2 pen. It's an ingenious system designed by Ryder Carroll that enables you to move tasks from week to week and manage tasks by category or calendar.

But it has weaknesses. Though you create your own index, it's still hard to find stuff when you try to go back in previous journals for important info, and everything becomes disjointed. Pages of unrelated stuff separate related tasks and topics from each other.

Trello is better. It helps you visualize your tasks by category, and it's super easy to move stuff around, reschedule, and find stuff you need, when you need it.

My Trello System

There are lots of ways to use Trello, which is of one of the cool things about it. I made this video about Trello for my students that explains the basics--the four essential pieces of the Trello system: boards, lists, cards, checklists and calendars. Start there for the basics, but here's how I use it for my stuff:

I like to make the boards very broad. For example, I have one board for my whole, entire job at the Depot Campus. On my Depot Master board, I divided all of my responsibilities into categories. This was a cool exercise, because it forced me to really think about what were the most important aspects of my job. It helped me bring order to a job that involves a sometimes bewildering array of very different responsibilities.

In each of those categories, I create cards for particular projects and tasks, and then within each card, I create checklists. I set due dates for each card based on the next checklist item that is due in each card. When I complete a checklist item, I change the due date.

Once in a while, I'll go through each list just to remind myself of what I need to do, what's coming up, and do a priority check. It's a great way to reorient myself when I'm overwhelmed or refocus when I feel like I'm running around like a chicken with it's head cut off.

When I have new ideas, I jot them down as cards and tag them with follow up dates.

I periodically go through the whole board and archive old stuff, finished stuff, and stuff I no longer care about.

Trello is also really cool for delegating. I can easily move cards to my program assistant's board, for example.

I have a dual-screen set up on my computer, and I always keep Trello open on the right hand screen. This gives me a continuous birds-eye view of my job.

It's not perfect, but neither am I. You see all those little red rectangles on the screen shot above? Those are missed deadlines, or just cards I haven't updated.

But it still helps... a lot.

It's like a map of my working life.

Glittering out again

"Something I discovered was a new love for myself."

-A Depot senior in her valedictorian speech 

Yesterday was our little graduation ceremony at the Depot. We call it "Senior Celebration." Every senior gets to give a short valedictorian speech, and hearing their accounts of their high school experiences was powerful.

They are a diverse bunch, but every one of them overcame tremendous challenges to get there yesterday. Challenges in their pasts led to challenges in their habits, dispositions, and support structures, which led to difficulties in school, which  snowballed until they were too big to handle. "When I first came to the Depot," said one senior, "I was pretty much ready to give up."

But to focus on these disadvantages would not do these young warriors justice. All of us have deficiencies and weaknesses, scars and wounds, hurts and hangups, failures and mistakes. We can all decide to focus on those, stew and fret over them, or accept them and focus on improving. We can lie down in defeat, or courageously move forward.

We can all view ourselves as a static, fixed, permanent set of weaknesses and  collection of failures and mistakes, or we can see ourselves as always growing and changing, dissolving and reforming, every moment as a new beginning.

We can all focus on judging ourselves for our weaknesses and failures, which actually hinders progress, or we can accept ourselves, which opens the door to progress.

We can tell ourselves a story about weakness and injury and victimization, or we can be the heroes of our story.


What defines these students is not their pasts. It's not their failings. It's their victories over these obstacles. They've gained a new openness to admitting they are wrong and asking for help, the courage to face their deepest fears and anxieties head-on,  and the resilience to bounce back from disappointments and failures. They've grown in self-awareness, self-acceptance, self-compassion, and self-efficacy. They've set high goals and gained academic skills they never expected to master.

It's not the failures that define them, but the constant growth and renewal, and this is an ongoing process. As I wrote my little speech for them this week, it really hit me: though we aim to get them ready for college and career or whatever's next, we can't really prepare them. I don't think we're ever really ready for what life has in store for us. At least, I'm not. Life has a way of serving up challenges I never imagined, and I'm certainly not always "ready" for them. That's why I need to always be learning. That's why I'm always a beginner.

That's what I told them, and that's why I shared my favorite poem with them at the end--Struggle, by Sidney Lanier:

My soul is like the oar that momently
Dies in a desperate stress beneath the wave,
Then glitters out again and sweeps the sea:
Each second I'm new-born from some new grave. 

When I finished, I said, "This is a new beginning for you all. May there be many more to come. I know there will be more struggles, but I know that every time you'll glitter out a again... and sweep the sea."

I caught one senior's eye as I said that last part. I swear her eyes glittered.

She will sweep the sea.

I hope they all will, again and again.

I hope we all will.

We need a new narrative

Tristan showing off the urn he made at his internship.

What is the Depot? According to one of our students, it's "a place where you go and come back with blue hair and piercings."

That's an interesting description, and it has a grain of truth to it. At least 25% of our students have had colored hair at some point this year. But it is also false. Many of them already had it when they came, and 75% of them never color their hair or pierce their lips.

The problem is that stories like these change the way people see us, and more importantly, the way we see ourselves.

Not that colored hair is a bad thing, and though facial piercings may not help you get a job, that description of the Depot doesn't really bother me. The more common description of the Depot is much more damaging. It goes something like this: "The Depot is a place where you go when you fail."

This is the story we hear over and over again from our own students. It's the story they tell themselves about the Depot and about themselves. It's a story that shapes their beliefs and even their behaviour. And it's not true. And we need a new one.

Just like all cultures, nations, organizations, families and people, the Depot has a story that we tell about ourselves--a story that defines who we are. As Yuval Harari writes it in Sapiens, these stories are part of what makes human societies possible. According to Harari, the ability to make up such stories is what made homo sapiens so much more successful than the other homo species, like the Neanderthals. The stories that make up our religions and national histories bind us together in groups much larger than genes ever could. These stories are powerful, because they provide us with identities, guidance and justification for our actions.

For example, if you believe that humans are descended from peaceful, egalitarian, bonobo-like creatures that had sex freely with any and all members of their group, as suggested by Chris Ryan in Sex at Dawn, this will affect the way you view yourself as a human. It will provide an identity (humans are inherently peaceful, sharing and loving), and it will provide an explanation of why humans have a tendency to cheat on their spouses and why the divorce rate is so high. It will also suggest an answer to the problem.

But it will also fail to fit the data. Lynn Saxon, in her rebuttal of Sex at Dawn, called Sex at Dusk, shreds Ryan's analysis and makes a strong case that humans are naturally monogamous with a natural tendency to cheat on the side when they can. This is what is called the "standard narrative" of human sexual evolution, and it paints a very different picture of who we are and how we should live. Which story you believe will affect the way you view yourself and your world, and could affect your behavior.

The standard narrative of the Depot, that it's a place for students who "don't fit" the traditional model--a place for kids who fail, also has powerful implications. It suggests that there's something wrong with them, which suggests that they behave accordingly.

But what if it's not true? What if the Depot is just a different path to success, one where students can learn from mentors in real-world settings? What if it's a place where all students could thrive? Then we're not the Island of Misfit Toys, and they're not misfits. They're here, not because they are failures, but because we offer something that can help every student succeed, and they made an active choice to help themselves by taking advantage of it.

Just like societies and schools, we all have little stories about ourselves that we tell ourselves. As fantasy author Patrick Rothfuss put it, “It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.”

If your story is that you're a failure, victim, or misfit, that's going to shape you, and not in a good way. You may have baggage and challenges you've inherited from your history, but that doesn't have to be your story. Instead, your story can focus on the overcoming and the strengths and positives.

My own negative stories about inadequacy and fear and failure and rejection have hindered me at times throughout my life, and I know I'm not alone. I see my students struggle every day with the stories they tell themselves. Like the stories I tell myself, the standard narrative of the Depot gets propagated because it has elements of truth. Many of our students have failed at the main campus. Many feel they don't fit in. But the story is false. That's not who we are, and it's not what we're about. We need to change our narrative.

The truth is, we are all humans with tremendous potential and resilience, and that's much more encouraging than the fiction. The truth is, we can be what we want to be. We can write our own story.

Moments like these are too rare

During my son's second year at college, he started working with a professor  who really took him under his wing. My son, Luke, worked for his business, even did yard work, and his family became like a second family for Luke.

After Luke's graduation this past week, this man had us all over for dinner at his beautiful house on Long Island. This highly distinguished man, who has helped my son so much over the past few years, was going on about how much he appreciates Luke and how proud he is of him.

I turned to look out the huge window overlooking Long Island sound, fighting back tears. I know it's not over--Luke has a lifetime of challenges before him, but at that moment, there was no worry about what was next, about how he would overcome his next hurdle or make it in the world. At that moment I was overwhelmed with pride and gratitude for what he had achieved, for who he is, the support he'd received, and just the simple fact that he'd made it safely and successfully this far.

Right then, that moment was enough.

Moments like these are too rare. The fact that it was as if a huge weight had been rolled off of me speaks to my tendency to see dangers around every corner and flaws everywhere I look. The fact that the approval being heaped on my son overwhelmed me speaks of my own "trance of unworthiness" and life of never being good enough.

But it all points to a different way. That moment on the Sound was profound, but moments like it should be much more common. There's no doubt that some landmarks of life have particular emotional significance, but every moment should be full of gratitude for those around me, who we are, and that we've made it this far. Every moment is an opportunity to awaken from the trance and shower our loved ones, those around us, and even ourselves with acceptance, encouragement, and approval.

Why the success of everyone is up to all of us

The message of Malcolm Gladwell's provocative book, Outliers is either kind of discouraging or really exciting, depending on how you look at it.

According to Gladwell, it takes four things to be successful:

1) Practice. You need 10,000 hours of what has come to be called "deliberate practice" to become a world class expert. That's 8 hours a day, 7 days a week for 3.4 years.

2) In order to get that, you need plenty of lucky breaks, like Bill Joy, who basically just fell into lucky opportunities to get in tons of computer hours--at a time when they were hard to get, and at a time that positioned him precisely on the ground floor of an industry about to explode.

3) And you need the right upbringing--one that teaches you it's OK to ask for and, if necessary, fight for opportunities. You can't be like Chris Langan, the genius who's defeatist attitude he learned as an at-risk youth cost him a college education--twice.

4) This unhelpful attitude of powerlessness toward authority may also be passed on by your culture, so you need the right cultural heritage. And it helps to be from a culture that also instils a strong work ethic, like that of southern China, where the simplicity of the language and the lessons of rice farming combine to make people into mathematical powerhouses.

This can feel a bit discouraging if you're not someone who meets these criteria, like me, but here's why we shouldn't despair.

1) Subsequent studies have suggested that "deliberate practice" actually accounts for only one third of whatever it is that determines whether or not someone will become an expert. (Tim Ferriss also takes issue with the 10,000 hour rule. He's done it again and again--in months instead of years. It's all about how you learn, rather than how long.)

2) It's hard to argue with Gladwell about the importance of upbringing and culture. But it just means those of us without the best backgrounds will have to work harder, and that's no surprise to any of us. The good news is, change is possible, as the success of the KIPP schools demonstrates.

3) Gladwell's ideas echo Carol Dweck's concept of the growth mindset--the belief that talent and intelligence are not fixed, but flexible and responsive to effort and attitude. Gladwell says in a footnote that IQ is 50% genetic. If that's true, that gives us a lot of room for improvement by effort and strategy.

4)  There's been some controversy over the idea that success is determined by grit or perseverance. Critics seem to think this means blaming disadvantaged people for failure of attitude. But Gladwell's book shows us the balance--even "character" can be inherited, and changed.

5) More than anything, the central message of Galdwell's book, to me, was that, because success depends on these factors, there are things we can do--as parents, teachers, friends, as a society, to help everyone be successful. It's within reach.

If we can dump this outdated mindset that we live in some sort of global meritocracy where people automatically get what they "deserve" and realize that we are all subject to all of these external and internal factors--that some have great advantages, and others, great disadvantages, and that we can do something about that, "The world could be so much richer than the world we have settled for."

Quality vs. success

In her book, The Rise, Sarah Lewis contrasts the "momentary nature of success and the unending process required for mastery."

That process, she says, is what's important--not the goal of success, which forever retreats into the distance.

It got me thinking about whether I'm more focused on "success" than mastery, perfection than the process, and recognition than relationships.

It made me wonder if slow is better than fast, cultivation, than harvest, learning, than winning, growth, than achievement, creativity, than conquest.

And I forced myself to sit in the yard under a tree for an hour on Sunday and watch my bees.

And today as I hiked to Wolf Den again, I wondered if it's really more about the quality of each step than about how fast I make the round trip.

What's your Twitter pitch?

Can you condense your resume into 140 characters?

In Dan Pink's latest book, To Sell Is Human, he talks about the successors to the elevator pitch in the information age.

In these days of disappearing attention spans and information deluge, not only will your elevator pitch get lost, it may not even get read unless it is short and really hits home.

Pink suggests writing a one word pitch.

Or a "Twitter pitch"--140 characters.

This seems like a great idea. Something you could leave with interviewers when they ask if you have anything else to say, or as they escort you to the door. It's also a great exercise in clarifying your own thoughts, goals, and persona.

As someone who is currently in the market for an administrative job, I couldn't wait to to try it out. So here are mine.

One word:

Engagement

140 characters:

You won't find anyone with my combination of vision for innovation and collaborative change, technological expertise, and relational skills.

What's yours?

Positivity ratios for buoyancy on a sea of rejection

I checked today, and my positivity ratio was 0.50. According to Daniel Pink and Barbara Fredrickson, the ratio of positive feelings to negative feelings has to get to at least 3.0 (3 positive feelings for every negative feeling) in order to get real emotional well-being.

I'm going to try tracking it over the next week and see if I can get it up there. Thankfully, Pink suggests a practical strategy for boosting your ratio: Strategically seek out experiences, encounters, conversations, people, etc. that will boost it.

It's a few chapters into his book, To Sell Is Human, in the section on buoyancy, the attribute we all need to be good movers of people. He says we are all confronted every day with an "ocean of rejection," and Pink suggests three general strategies for staying buoyant:

1) Before we attempt to move people (before class, before I apply for that job): replace negative self-talk AND positive self-talk with questions: Will I be able to move these people? And how?

2) During the process, while we're trying to persuade, stay buoyant by staying positive. That's where the ratio comes in.

3) Afterwards, if you're rejected, ask yourself three questions: Is it permanent? Is it pervasive? Is it personal? The answer is probably "No" to all three. "The more you explain bad events as temporary, specific, and external, the more likely you are to persist even in the face of adversity." Dispute and "de-catastrophize" your knee-jerk negative explanations.

He even suggests writing yourself rejection letters (this site will do it for you) to stay buoyant, and tells the story of one entrepreneur who kept all of his, and framed them when he became successful. Or try keeping track of every time someone doesn't "buy what you're selling" for a day or week. Pink says you'll be surprised by the sheer volume of small failures you actually survive.

Reminds me of what I was thinking last week when I wrote "Failures aren't failures, they're fuel." In fact, I guess as soon as I wrote it I wondered what I was thinking. But there's truth to it. It's all in the attitude. You just have to stay buoyant--see those failures as external.

For me, I think I'm starting to get to that place... some days. Not that I want failures, but maybe I don't fear them as much. They're like the water I'm swimming through, pushing off of, gaining strength from.

But I can see that this kind of Sisyphean perspective is not going to be enough. That's why what I liked best about this section in Pink was this practical plan: make it a priority every day to seek out positive interactions.

Behind the curriculum, but...

If you read my last post, you either:

1) Think the mastery-based system is an abject failure (if your priority is coverage of the curriculum), or

2) Still hold out hope, if not.

But I thought I should balance that last post with some additional info. that suggests another reason to "hold out hope."

1) I forgot to mention that, while I'm several weeks behind where I was last time I taught the course (2 years ago), I am only a week or two behind my colleagues teaching the same course (with traditional methods) this year.

2) More importantly, I thought I'd compare student performance across the years, and threw in a previous year for good measure. First, there's the grade distribution:

 

Note the blue line is this year: mastery-based, project-based, and differentiated, with a no zero policy.

In 2013, I had begun the project-based, differentiated approach, but without the mastery and no zero components.

In 2012, I ran it as a traditional course.

Telling?

Maybe it's obvious--give kids second (and third) chances, more interesting work, and more time, and they succeed at a higher rate. But keep in mind: the mastery, "no zero" model also includes the requirement that they must do all of the assignments and meet a minimum standard on each one. There are no opt-outs (zeros) allowed.

In the first semester this year, my students completed a total of 8 projects, each taking several days, 14 video quizzes and shorter assignments, 8 labs, plus tests, quizzes, and other assorted tasks.

So is the bar lower or higher?

And what's the point of the "bar" anyway? Isn't the point to see them learn how to learn, master the material, and value hard work and quality and perseverance?

Is school just some sort of filter--a gateway or obstacle designed to keep certain kids from passing through to a productive and happy life, or is it a springboard to make sure they all do?

Seeing engagement... and success

A student teacher observed my mastery-based class today.

(Most students were working on their Gattaca responses or cancer prevention posters, while a couple were wrapping up previous assignments.)

What most impressed him, he said, was how engaged the students were.

That's funny, because that has been my biggest concern. In the absence of external motivators like hard deadlines and constant threats of point deductions, I worry about how to motivate and engage my students.

But this student teacher's viewpoint is encouraging. It validates the fundamental philosophical foundation of this whole approach: provide autonomy, opportunity for mastery, and purpose, and that will produce engagement.

And it made me realize something: Sometimes all I see is my failures. I envision the "perfect" classroom, and I focus on the shortcomings, problems, issues, and challenges. I hone in on what's wrong, and miss all that's right.

Not good. My students need to know how well they're doing. (And so do I.)

I did the same thing with their Gattaca responses. My first response was to notice what they missed--what they didn't do, instead of noticing the way they all authentically engaged with the content in their own way.

My perfectionism rears it's ugly head more often than I would like. And it is kind of ugly. Though it does have a few redeeming qualities, I'd rather focus on (and enjoy) the good stuff.

And for goodness sake, Bill, this is working. They are working. They're enjoying the class. They're learning. And that's what's important.

It may be a bit messy along the way. Some targets may be missed. A few vocab words may fall by the wayside. A few details forgotten. A few minutes spent playing fantasy football when they should be working. Who cares. More will be spent learning to enjoy learning.

You are more than a grade

It's a tough balance--the balance between drive and contentment, between motivating students to push themselves, and realizing the value of contentment.

I find myself flipping back and forth between my own drivenness and this glimmer of an idea inside that the real way to happiness is just being mindful of everything.

I feel a bit like Siddhartha, I guess, and maybe I'm on that road, but right now I feel like the answer is somewhere between a headlong drive for achievement and Buddhist detatchment--a balance of the two, if that's possible.

And that balance, I hope, is making it's way into my classroom.

Achievement is a great goal, but it's not the only worthy one, and probably not the most important. There's a lot more to life than that sort of success.

There's a lot more to being human than that.

And if any of my students are reading: There's a lot more to you than your grades. You are not a grade. The value of your life is not measured by your grades.

But do your best.

And I'm here to help.

The dream of reaching every student

"You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope some day you'll join us..."

-John Lennon

Maybe it's just a pipe dream.

Maybe some students are just unreachable.

Maybe there are some we just can't help.

Maybe our responsibility is the kids who want to learn.

Maybe the unmotivated, resistant ones don't count.

Maybe their failure is not our fault.

But I don't think so.

I think if they fail, we fail.

I think everyone of them counts.

I think their motivation is our responsibility.

I think everyone can be reached. Everyone can be helped.

Progress may be slow, and none of this will be easy, but it'll be worth it.

Single-mindedness, faith, and failure

"This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be."

-Jim Stockdale, quoted by Jim Collins in Good to Great

That kind of perseverance and faith is tough sometimes, when every step seems like you're trudging through knee-deep mud. But I know that's where dogged determination comes in--that indifference to myself, and that single-minded focus on a goal that I'm shooting for. That's the level 5 leadership I'm after.

After all, I'm not after "success" in terms of approval, or ego boosts, or credit (at least I don't want to be). I'm after something much bigger. Harry Truman said, "It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit." And we could expand on that: It's amazing what you can accomplish if you're not focusing on yourself. & It's amazing what you get when you're not focused on yourself.

Of course there will be resistance. Of course there will be setbacks... and failures. But as Michael Jordan said in his awesome commercial:

"I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

 So let's keep going.

The work hole

"That's fine. You just go in your little work hole."

That was my wife's response.

She had told me about her plan to take Sundays off from classes and just relax. I don't know how to relax, I told her. I have to work.

Her characterization of my habits was (unfortunately) accurate. I'm either at school, night class, or entrenched at my home workstation. A year and a half of a rigorous administrative preparation program on top of full-time teaching, and I've dug in... and developed bad habits. Leisure? What's that?

But Humans need leisure as much as they need useful work. I know that. It just hasn't made it into my life lately. The question is, what to do about it.

Not sure I can answer that definitively in a quick (Sunday) blog post, but here's an idea: If I can't eliminate the big items that crowd my to-do list, maybe I can change my approach to them--not be such a perfectionist about them.

I'm committed to my students at school. I'm committed to becoming a school leader. But I don't need to be committed to perfection on either front.

And the reality is, success in both of these arenas is really about relationships, not how many items I've checked off in my Bullet Journal (as much as I love that thing). Reality is, none of it will be any good without my emotional and social health, and without healthy relationships at home and work. And in fact, if I start there, the rest will probably fall into place.

So, time to crawl out of my little work hole and see the world again.

Let's see if I can succeed at that.

What's in your bowl?

Bacon, chicken, & avocado salad (http://goo.gl/zBaLRZ)

If you're a recovering stress junkie, like me,  you're constantly playing crazy mental video games,  shooting down tasks before they reach you and it's game over. But how can you ever enjoy the present now, if you're always worried about the next now?

Imagine the present moment like a bowl of food. Future bowls are stretching off far into the distance. We can fill our "now" bowl with sweet things, fun, pleasure, socialization, rest, or we can fill it with hard things--studying, work, planning, and exercise. I tend to focus on worrying about future bowls, filling the now with work, so much so that I can't enjoy life. I don't want to focus too much on the present, because then I may not get as many future bowls.

But neither should I just fill it with stuff that is only "good for me"-- stuff that is only for the future. Why? Three reasons: 1) That future may never come. 2) How many missed "nows" until they outweigh the future "nows" I'm saving up for. 3) How will I ever learn to enjoy the "nows" of the future if I can't enjoy the "nows" of now.

No. What I want to do is fill my "now" bowl with a mixture of things I can enjoy now and things that are preparing me for the future. Maybe some kale, but also some bacon. Maybe some coconut milk, but also some honey. Maybe some carrots, but also some dark chocolate. Maybe one day I'll come up with an equation for what percentage of each moment should be spent enjoying and what percentage working on the next bowl. For now, I'll keep it simple: Next time I'm tempted to sacrifice now for tomorrow, stop and savor at least a bite of the present--every present moment, even in the midst of preparations for future bowls. Make sure every moment has a balance of hard and soft, rough and smooth, pushing myself and having compassion on myself, responsibility and relationships, protecting people and enjoying people, exhaustion and ecstasy, improvement and immersion, struggle and sweetness, justification and joy, roughage, risk, richness, rapture, relaxation and release.

Now, what's in my bowl? What's in yours? What's in ours?