Category: Learning

Bacon Sandwich

I am not, nor do I aspire to be, a gourmet chef. And I enjoy cooking. I enjoy the preparation, the cleaning, the choosing, the slicing, the steaming, grilling, and the time it takes to produce something good to eat.

Last Thursday I made spaghetti bolognese at Keira’s request. I prepared it at the same time as she was doing a piece of homework about table tennis as part of a bigger Olympic project. My focus was all over the place, trying to get the food right and trying to respond usefully when Keira needed help. The end result was an interesting and well laid out project from Keira, and an acceptable dinner from Doug, though Keira said she enjoyed both the dinner and the project, and that matters.

Since then I’ve prepared a salad nicoise (well almost), bacon lettuce and tomato sandwiches, and a roast dinner. They’ve all taken longer to make than they might, and that’s fine – remember, taking the time is one of the things I enjoy about cooking. And they’ve all turned out deliciously great, even if I do say so myself.

Take the BLT as an example. The bacon was trimmed and grilled to perfection, the tomatoes were at room temperature and cut just right with a super sharp knife. The lettuce was fresh, the bread seedy (in a good way) and there was a little mayo on it. Keira and I declared these sandwiches among the finest we have ever eaten, until the next ones. Sadly I didn’t get a picture of the BLT, it kinda disappeared too quick – you’ll just have to take our word for it.

Too often we get horribly busy. Work has a nasty habit of expanding to fill the time available. I often meet and work with people who run back to pack, cram packed diaries. And they are always late for something. Face it folks, you can’t manage a series of meetings that run from nine to ten, ten to eleven, and eleven to midday, without a break. When are you supposed to get from one to the other? When are you supposed to take a pee? When are you supposed to think about what just happened and what may happen next? It takes a little discipline to factor in a few minutes to get from here to there, and all that other stuff. And it’s worth it. And whilst I’d take the nicoise, the sandwich or the roast over the bolognese any day, I do realise that sometimes, you just gotta make stuff happen. Not always, sometimes.

I’m off for breakfast, hope you enjoy yours.

 

Instrumental Learning

Yesterday evening Keira and a load more kids from four local schools put on a concert called Stringfest. All the schools in our borough (Sutton) are invited to take part in a year of learning either the violin or cello. There were lots of nerves and excitement beforehand, and you could see plenty of little hands shaking. The concert was great fun, a super mix of music, with the schools and teachers and kids interchanging, encouraging, flourishing and enjoying themselves. As is the role of an enthusiastic audience of parents and grandparents, we cheered the roof off.

One of the teachers who was facilitating the concert spoke about five reasons why it’s great to learn to play an instrument. These things struck a chord with me (ouch!) and I would like to share them with you:

5 Reasons why it’s great to learn to play an instrument

  • It makes you smarter
  • It’s enjoyable
  • It aids concentration and focus
  • Creates self discipline
  • Helps you appreciate the challenge of performance

These things all manifested themselves through the evening, and there were certainly no little hands shaking nervously once the concert began to unfold.

Keira was allowed to take the violin home and she showed me how to play it. Keira is a much better violinist than me, and with her help I managed to extract a few notes, and yes, a few screeches too.

I Have A Dream

Towards the end of last year my Dad asked me what he thought I might try and do with the business in 2012. I told him ‘I want to work in America’. ‘How you gonna make that happen son?’ he asked. ‘I dunno yet’ I replied, ‘I just will’.

I turned on my radar and courtesy of Mike VanderVort I spotted an opportunity to submit a pitch to speak at the Florida State HR Conference. I also recalled a brief Facebook exchange with William Tincup about guitars and America, and I had a quick exchange with Steve Browne about maybe doing something down Ohio way. Then Dad died and things went a bit off track for a while. In due course I made my pitch to Florida, thought a little more about what William had said and kept in touch with Steve.

Florida didn’t happen this time. I’ve no idea why – I asked for feedback and got a rather bland ‘Dear John’ type reply. I’ll maybe have another try next year. Ohio is gonna happen and as you all know I’m really excited about that. And other US plans are forming as I write (watch this space).

So what?

Well I could have burned a pile of money and time coming up with a strategic plan on how to do cool stuff in America, and I’m glad I didn’t. I can’t predict the future so at the time of planning I couldn’t have known Dad was going to die, I couldn’t have known that a timely exchange between Steve and I would have developed further. I couldn’t have known a whole bunch of stuff. But if I had invested in a plan, I’d have felt the need to stick with it and justify the time and money invested. Strategic planning drives convergent, fixed thinking. Jamie Notter and Maddie Grant write beautifully about this in their book Humanize which I recommend if you want to go deeper into the pointlessness of strategic planning (and many other interesting things too).

Me? I just had a goal, an ambition. My response to Dad was honest, I had no idea how I would achieve the goal, I just knew it was achievable and if I wanted it bad enough it would happen.

Set Goals. Have Ambitions. Do Stuff. Be Agile.

Follow your dreams. Life is too short for strategic planning.

With thanks to Sukh Pabial, David Goddin and Jonathan Wilson for a provocative conversation on Twitter that got me to writing this.