One idea that stuck with me is the importance of rituals as a training activity.  In each case study, the authors, who are acting as consultants (or therapists) for corporate clients, make a point of establishing “positive rituals” to help train their clients out of old, unhealthy habits, and turn them into corporate (and personal) superstars.  According to the diagram below, rituals are the hand-holds for ascending the “High Performance Pyramid”.

I particularly like the idea that rituals create an explicit opportunity for recharging:

Our own work has demonstrated that effective energy management has two key components. The first is the rhythmic movement between energy expenditure (stress) and energy renewal (recovery), which we term “oscillation.” In the living laboratory of sports, we learned that the real enemy of high performance is not stress, which, paradoxical as it may seem, is actually the stimulus for growth. Rather, the problem is the absence of disciplined, intermittent recovery. Chronic stress without recovery depletes energy reserves, leads to burnout and breakdown, and ultimately undermines performance. Rituals that promote oscillation – rhythmic stress and recovery – are the second component of high performance. Repeated regularly, these highly precise, consciously developed routines become automatic over time.

and that they are an important technique for stepping off the daily grind treadmill:

The inclination for busy executives is to live in a perpetual state of triage, doing whatever seems most immediately pressing while losing sight of any bigger picture. Rituals that give people the opportunity to pause and look inside include meditation, journal writing, prayer, and service to others. Each of these activities can also serve as a source of recovery – a way to break the linearity of relentless goal-oriented activity.

This makes a lot of sense to me, and I’ve started to apply it to my own life.  For instance, blogging here helps me clear my head and recharge, but it’s hard for me to find time or space to do it during the regular day-to-day (plus, that’s what Tumblr is for).  But I’ve found that firing up ScribeFire first thing on the mornings when I Amtrak it from Boston to NYC works – so that’s what I’m trying to do now each week.

Another example: Theo and I have been doing swim lessons together every Saturday morning for the past few months, and that time has quickly become my favorite part of the week.  Thinking about it a bit, I realized that, besides the fact that he and I are spending dedicated time together, there’s something particularly comforting and recharging about that time being blocked off from the rest of the week — no email, no phones, etc — and the fact that it is the same time and day somehow adds to that recharging ability.

And then of course there is my hero-blogger Fred Wilson, whose pattern of writing is entirely ritual-oriented (1 blog post per day, ~3 tumbls a day, weekly series, etc.).  I am clearly inspired by the way Fred writes and you can see that reflected in how my own online presence is set up (and probably even in how I write).

At a certain point, rituals can become traditions, which take on a different kind of long-term social value.  For example, my father in law has been having lunch with his friend Bob every Saturday for the last 40 years (maybe longer).  As long as my wife can remember, her dad slipped out for an hour every Saturday.  He also recently told me that his father took him out for breakfast every Sunday when he was a kid.  There is something really powerful about the connections that these ritual/traditions create.  It can be hard to keep them in place, but I suppose that’s what makes them so meaningful if you can.

So, at risk of caving to my own OCD tendencies and immediately hyper ritualizing my entire life, I will say that I see the value in integrating these ideas.  On a personal level, and also on a company / team level.

For instance, at OpenPlans, for the past year or so I have been super focused on external issues — raising money, developing business, making partnerships, etc. — to the point where now that those investments are paying off, I really want to refocus on making sure our internal operations are healthy. To some extent, I think that means working to institute some positive rituals into our work week (without digressing into toxic meetings).

So, there you have it: this week’s personal self-help installment, brought to you by a nice window seat on the Amtrak Acela, somewhere in eastern Connecticut.  See you next week.

I found Bill’s approach to be inspiring, and immediately went
home to incorporate his ideas into some OpenPlans materials that I’d been working on (e.g., a new page on our website describing our transportation business — you can now see Bill’s “beliefs / people / intentions” pattern loosely reflected). I won’t try to reiterate Bill’s big ideas, because that has been done (here is a good overview, and here’s a video of Bill’s Ted X talk).  Both are worth a read / watch.

Since then, one takeaway has really stuck with me: the idea of speaking from the heart.

A fairly large part of my job is talking & writing about what we do; to funders, clients, partners, students, the press, etc.  I believe in our mission, and think that we have done and continue to do good work.  At this point, I can speak pretty easily about it, and do my best to weave our complex mission and activities into a (reasonably) cohesive story.

But I realized that I don’t always speak from the heart as much as I should or could.  It’s hard to describe, but it’s a difference you can feel — when I think of speaking from the heart, I feel the focus moving from my head down to my belly.  To the place where you just know the things you’re talking about, and why they’re important.  You aren’t  nervous or worried about getting it right.  To use Bill’s language, speaking from the heart brings you back to feeling the connection your people, your beliefs, and your intentions (the feeling reminds me of the notion of the Ideal Performance State, as described in The Making of the Corporate Athlete which is also worth a read).

When I think back on the times when I haven’t been happy with how I’ve performed in a speaking gig, I can usually trace it back to being too much in my head and not enough in my heart/belly.  For instance, in September we announced Civic Commons at the Gov 2.0 Summit.  I did a small part of of the announcement, which went fine, but I didn’t consider it an A+ performance (and got endless shit from Clay Johnson about it).  According to my wife, who watched the video (I didn’t), it was a B; not completely embarrassing, but not particularly great either.  Fine.  Afterward, I realized that I had gotten too far into the weeds — was too much in my head and not enough in my heart.  Tired, uninspired.  If I were to do it over, I would have focused on the core ideas about why we believed the project was important and why we were part of it.

Speaking from the heart gives you energy and confidence.  It gets you back to the real reason why you’re involved and why you care.  It’s powerful and easy at the same time.  It’s an idea that I will keep with me.

Drake.

Neon Indian

Groove shark – friends playlist

   Darius.  Radius radius

Brother

“Radius radius” is my favorite part.  I can’t wait to discover what it means, after I do a little googling.

This week, we’re on vacation in Cape Cod with my wife’s family.  They’ve been renting the same tiny cabin by the beach for the past 35 years, and coming here is pretty much the highlight of our summer each year.  Last summer, we brought Theo here when he was just three weeks old.  This morning, he and I took a walk along the harbor in Provincetown at low tide — he thinks of each beached boat as a giant bucket, just waiting to be filled with sand.

The problem is, whenever we’re on vacation, I have a hard time finding the right balance between “unplugging” and staying engaged with the real world.  One the one hand, I want to remain connected with work and friends, on the other, I just want to tune out, relax, and be with the people I’m with.  Inevitably, I end up fighting the struggle each day, carving out some time for the important stuff at work, and forcing myself (with limited success) not to stress about it too much the rest of the time.  It’s tough, and to some extent I feel like I achieve the worst of both worlds: neither able to fully enjoy my break, nor be fully present for important happenings at the office.

This has become more of an issue as technology has evolved.  Here at the cabin there’s never been any phone or TV.  Then there were cell phones.  Next, internet down the road at the town library. Then, iPhone and blackberries.  Now, this year we have a mobile broadband connection for our laptops, so we’re as connected as we can be.  For certain things, it’s great: we watched the World Cup final online last weekend, and yesterday my father-in-law did an interview via Skype, which saved him a day-long trip up to Maine.  But, work email and things to do are now within arms reach at all times.

I suppose the vacation case is just a microcosm of the larger question of how to balance real-world face time with online time.  Fred Wilson, one of my favorite bloggers, covers this topic frequently, and I’m really amazed the extent to which he’s able to stay engaged with the networked world without driving his family crazy.  In our case, the family is only semi-digitally integrated; it’s just not part of our culture to always be connected.  Maybe getting an iPad would push that culture change in a good way.

Lastly, I think it also comes back to information fitness — using online (all?) time to do the most important and productive things, and not just consume endlessly as you might in a less online constrained environment.  And of course, one of these days I’ll be able to plan ahead enough so that everything is under control at the office and I don’t have to worry about anything.  But I’m sure if I did that, I’d find reasons to plug back in…

This morning, I drove from Boston to Cape Cod, alone with my thoughts except for Theo sleeping in the back seat.  Once we were out of the city and smoothly on the highway, I got to thinking about work, and things really started clicking.  I found myself reaching for my iPhone to record voice memos about once every minute.  I may have even cracked an important nut; we’ll see.

I can’t remember where, but I once heard the phrase the optimism of the traveler, and the idea has really stuck with me.  For me, this manifests itself in the fit of ideastorming I usually find myself in whenever I’m on a plane or train (and sometimes when I’m in a car).  Some of my most creative and productive times have been in these situations.  And it’s not just about volume of ideas — there’s a different sort of excitement and hopefulness that happens during these times.

So, what is it about traveling that produces such excitement?

Is it being away from the internet, and therefore being forced to digest some ideas and not just consume at will?  Or maybe it’s less about attention, and more about being in that middle place between destinations, where anything is possible? Whatever it is, it’s really great.  Of course, the hard part is putting those ideas into motion once you’re feet are back on the ground…

// Photo by Tjeerd on Flickr

The takeaway for me is that fitness (of any type) is largely about producing, not just consuming.  You need to write to properly digest what you’ve read, and you need to exercise to properly digest what you’ve eaten.  My favorite characterization of this is David Eaves’ “if writing is a muscle, this is my gym” tagline on his blog.

So in the spirit of fitness, yesterday I went for a run and today I wrote this post

I spend a fair amount of time thinking about LifeHacking.  Getting my inbox filters just right so I can get to “inbox double-zero,” syncing my iPhone and my Google Calendar, setting up ssh keys in all the right places, etc.

But something I’m still not that good at is “LifePruning,” that is, the continual process of getting rid of all the old / no longer relevant shit in my life, the stuff that, if left untended, will crowd out all the good stuff.  It’s kind of hard for me, as I have natural hoarding tendencies, but I’m trying to live by a new code: prune first, ask questions later.

This weekend, with an impending move from NYC -> Boston, I’ve been doing some pruning, and boy does it feel good.  Huge bang for the buck.  I’m going to try and make this more of a regular routine.

Here’s the quick rundown of the LifePruning I’ve done, this week alone:

• Cleaned out my clothes closet and donated all the things I never wear anymore / don’t fit.  Amazingly, getting rid of those uncovered some real gems that I had forgotten about.
• Got a new computer and transferred my data and applications.  Not all of them, mind you; just the ones I really need.  The result is a leaner, meaner, faster machine.  (Note: getting a new computer is not required to do this, but it helps)
• Went through my Google Reader and deleted all the feeds I no longer read, or are just less into these days.  That means less distraction from the awesome ones I want to make sure I actually read every day.

I know that good things will come of this pruning, and I’ll try and keep track as they do.  For example, I’m sure I’ll read a great post I would have otherwise missed thanks to my RSS pruning, and I’ll look sweet at the office in that shirt I found in my closet (not sure of the practical usefulness of that), and so on.

This is just a start.  I’m going to keep an eye out for more LifePruning opportunities, and I’ll post them here as I do.  If you have a good life pruning suggestion, let me know.

Update: SVN has a post today on this topic: The Art of Taking Things Away.

// Pruning grahpic via Agriculture Guide

One of the toughest things I’ve encountered, as I attend meetings, speak on panels, do interviews, and go to conferences, is that you never quite know what the tone of the room will be like until you get there.  In other words, there are always a ton of different approaches you can take to a conversation, in terms of what you talk about and how you say it.  And I never seem to really know what the right one is until after it’s already happened.

I’m thinking about it today because this afternoon I did a short interview with Rick Karr (from PBS’s Blueprint for America, among other things) about open transit data and real-time bus & train information in NYC, for an upcoming episode of the Engadget Show.  Of course, now that the interview’s over, I’m thinking of all the witty things I could have said but didn’t.  But more importantly, thinking back, I wish I had thought harder about the audience and intention of the interview a bit more before going on air.  (Hat tip to Nick for suggesting exactly this a few days ago, but apparently it wasn’t quite enough.)

We talk a lot about open data, and open transit data in particular.  By and large, our audience consists of transit geeks, policy wonks, or bureaucrats (I mean all of those as terms of endearment); in each case, we dive into the policy and technical details of opening transit data.  That’s the mode I’ve been in: white papers, RFIs, formal letters, panel talks, etc.  Today’s interview was really for the consumer electronics crowd, and probably deserved a more gadgety/fun tone and emphasis than what I lead with.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to seeing how it turns out, and meanwhile I’ll continue on my quest to suss out the tone of the room before I get there…

// image courtesy of Best Online Stuff.  No relevance to this post, except that it was on the first page of google image results for “tone of the room“.