No matter what level of career you are at, you’ve probably come across the term risk management. To most technical people, it means nothing.  If anything, it is one of those bullshit bingo-type terms that gets used for a made-up discipline that floats around in upper middle management.

In safety and risk engineering, risk management is something we twist. We decide that ‘risk’ is safety related and that ‘risk management’ mostly means the controls we put in place to stop our operations from going wrong – e.g. deluge systems for a fire risk, control systems for a process risk or cleanup measures for an environmental risk.

The thing is, though, that risk management is bigger than that.  Which is exactly why the niche market exists for those upper middle management-types.  Take, for example, your simple act of putting in a deluge system to manage what happens when a fire breaks out.  Inadvertently you are also making the following decisions:

• I choose not to put controls in place to prevent the fire;
• I choose not to use an alternative system, such as inert gas, to suppress my fire;
• I choose to put an unspoken value on the outcome of the fire to accurately cost the deluge system;
• I choose to take responsibility for the outcomes if my chosen deluge system fails.

Recently Engineers Australia has revamped their Chartership requirements and added a requirement for all Chartered engineers to have a component of risk management to their experience. “But that’s a niche discipline,” yelped one fellow reviewing the new requirements, “how is a design engineer to get experience doing something reserved for upper management?”

I think this is one of the issues with the classic engineering brain.  Just because you are designing a pipe or a widget or a jet engine doesn’t mean you are only doing design.  The fellow mentioned above probably manages risk every day without even realising it.  I’d venture to bet that for almost every decision he makes he weighs options, see the option benefits and pitfalls, decides on the most acceptable outcomes and chooses the option that minimises the risks posed to his design.

But What Do You Mean By Internalising Risk?

One of the things we most often struggle with is helping our clients to genuinely understand the risk that they are accepting when they authorise one solution over another.  Giving someone numbers like “your risk is 1.3×10-6 for this situation” doesn’t adequately illustrate the fact that they’ve chosen to accept an increase in their personal and/or corporate liability for the benefit of production.  They’ve taken on the possibility of a bad thing happening in the future in exchange for a productive thing happening now.

Recently the Scout and I bought a house overseas – a house we’d never even seen.  This particular house is on a transmission line clear way hosting high voltage power lines which – if you read the interwebs – can generate magnetic waves capable of producing illness, disease and even death.  There are vague links to childhood leukemia, a couple of recorded studies on spontaneous abortion and many reports of people feeling ill due to the Gaussian waves produced by transmitting electricity down the line.

Sounds like a big deal, right?  So the Scout and I had to decide if we were happy to buy the house (which was everything we’d been looking for minus the transmission lines of death).

Given that Gaussian waves are not my area of expertise (oh, really?), I did what I’d hope most people in such a position would do.  I read.  I read everything I could find on the topic – the inflammatory anti-science stuff, the peer-reviewed journal stuff, the in-betweeny semi-science-y stuff.  I read enough that I felt like I owned the problem, and that I could make an informed decision about how much risk I would take on.

In the end it boiled down to a few allowable numbers summarised as: if a 2 milligauss limit is good enough for the WHO, it’d be good enough for me.

So again, I did what any technically inclined type might venture to do next – I bought a gaussmeter… and made my crazed sisters creep around behind the backyard of our potential purchase to measure the Gaussian field generated at peak power time.

Success!! Only 1 milligauss!!

Sure, it wasn’t 0 milligauss, like many of the suburbs we’ve measured since, but it also wasn’t 8 milligauss which is what the meter read on the drive home at points.

So we decided to buy it. And in doing so we also made the following decisions:

• I choose to trust the science behind the numbers at the WHO;
• I choose to balance my fear of the unknown with the conclusions of the papers I’ve read;
• I choose to take responsibility for any ill effects that my family could suffer from living in such proximity to the power lines.

Which is really the crux of the thing: to fully take responsibility for the risk I was accepting.

Often this is lacking in the decisions that each of us make at work.  Often ownership of the problem seems so difficult that it’s easier to make a decision and ignore the risks.  Often it is much easier to be the middle man who doesn’t actually make the decision, but presents the information for someone else to judge.  Often the bureaucracy of large operating companies makes it easy to never be the person to internalise the risk and make the right decision.  Taking responsibility is scary.

Unfortunately in the case of my clients, though, they are playing with the lives of other people.  They do not have the luxury of ignoring the choices involved in managing their risks.  In the end, someone needs to take the responsibility.

It’s also worth watching the money trail – those who take the required responsibility are often the ones benefitting monetarily from their ability to manage the risks that they must choose to accept or decline daily.

To end, I offer this – a guide for understanding, internalising, and managing risk effectively:

• I acknowledge that I do not have all the information; but
• I acknowledge that a decision has to be made without certainty.
• I choose to manage my liability by learning as much as I can; and
• I choose to make a decision with the information I have at hand.

But finally and most importantly:

• I choose to take responsibility for this decision.

Slide 14 (test tubes) courtesy cambodia4kidsorg; Electromagnetic Wave courtesy waljoris on Flickr.

…or a chef…

…or a psychologist or a postal worker or a web copy writer or a child care relief worker.  I did, however, sign up to be an engineer, which is evidenced by my meticulous collection of every piece of career feedback I’ve ever received, every award I’ve ever been presented and every goal I have ever set (both achieved and in progress) in my Portfolio Binder (note the capitals to emphasize the importance) .  And if this sounds slightly like perfectionism to you (crossed with both a healthy dose of external validation and a love of well-organized stationery), then you, sir, have won a prize.

But this week (read: month) I am all of those roles, because that’s what we do when we live at warp speed and multitask (usually ineffectively say the stats), and try to help others.

As you can see from my last post, it’s been ages since I’ve visited my blog.  Yet, I attend networking functions, and when asked the inevitable, “so, what have you been doing with yourself since we last caught up?” I am at a loss for words.  There are a few things – working towards my chartership, designing a training program for The Scout’s new business, helping my company to launch our new website – but no Big Project, no Big Plan that allows me to move the conversation from small talk to engaging discussion.

I worry that I am becoming like the other 30-somethings I see about the place who somehow went from “on top of the world” to “keeping their head above water” and convincing themselves that this frazzled state of being was somehow equally as satisfying as setting goals and achieving them in a calm and capable manner.  I pile more and more role definitions into my life outside of work, and somewhere along the way I forgot that busy does not necessarily mean successful.

And then I lost my Binder.

In between preparing some web copy after hours and racing rush-hour to feed and dress 3 children for a working-engineer-super-mom (who at the time had one child with a chest infection, one child with a broken arm, one infant who was sleeping only for 2-hour increments and was herself the victim of tonsillitis and a broken kneecap), I put my portfolio binder on the roof of my car.  Then, after unloading the car’s contents and packing the evening’s food, I raced off down the highway.

And when I returned, I was too busy thinking about the training program design to have it click that the papers strewn across the front curb were my career.  How irresponsible I thought as I looked at the mess someone careless had left on the side of the highway.

The very mess that was kindly cleaned up by a neighbour and deposited in a garbage can the next morning – approximately 9 hours before my neural connections got it together enough to realise what had happened… which they did, and then I was heartbroken.  Most of those certificates and feedback blurbs and goals are not things that I hold in any other form.

“That information proves everything I’ve done in my career,”

I said to The Scout, who replied with,

“That’s not true, babe.  You prove everything you’ve done in your career, not those papers.  No one needs to see your archived performance reviews to know that you deliver.”

Which might be true, because I’ve never shown that Portfolio to anyone.

So why do I need the Binder?

They say that writing down your goals gives you a significantly higher chance of achieving them, and that is what my Portfolio is.  But I’ve gone one step further and collated the evidence that even my most active naysayer might need to support my progress.  To the project of my career, that binder is my business case.  I have to admit that until I lost that binder I don’t think I realised that the naysayer I was looking to impress in the future was… me.  Because those pieces of praise, those tiny pieces of validation and those fragments of insight into my ambition are there to remind me.  They are there so that when I’m in The Dip, I can remind myself to keep going.

Which I don’t need to do when I’m calm and focused.  I need that Binder when I’m tired and cranky and ready to give up… on the website or the brainstorming or the exhausted super-mom.

(Enter our tenants, we’ll call them The Kids… …who might be my favourite people alive this week.)

While I was trying to do some more training program work, The Kids went on a walk, and (out of the goodness of their hearts) did a complete search and rescue on my Binder, finding my career for me, crumpled and driven over (and slightly smelly) in a neighbour’s garbage can.  I’ve never been more excited to see drafts of Chartership essays or more relieved to see crumpled performance reviews!

And as I put all that validation in a neat pile (waiting for me to go stationery crazy on the weekend) I realized that most of the information my Portfolio contains is not directly related my technical work.  Sure, there’s some, but not heaps.  It’s mainly information about things I do after work and skills I’ve gained to compliment my technical self.  Which made me wonder…  maybe we aren’t just keeping our heads above water after all – maybe we’re busy building up the diverse skills we need to actually make a difference in the world once we’ve ticked the □ sufficient years of experience box.

Work Life Balance courtesy furykid; Goal Setting courtesy lululemon athletica on Flickr.

Yes, I’ve disappeared, but not for good.  Feel free to take a look around as I stay incognito for a while.  I’m trying to put on a motivational push for getting my Chartership progressed – even as the post ideas build up in my graphpaper moleskine. Unfortunately this requires a lot of writing, and a significant amount of time, both of which are usually reserved for crafting my context here.

Some posts you might like in the meantime:

• When Did Self Control Go Out of Style?
• ChEnected Post: The Credibility Threshold
• And What Does the Liver Do?

So until I return (which I anticipate to be in a few weeks months) – happy reading and (to my fellow bloggers) happy blogging!

Pause courtesy Vanderlin.

This post was written for ChEnected.  That (slightly modified) version can be found here.

Being a professional means that you get letters after your name, and it may make getting that next job a little easier, but can I venture to say that certification doesn’t necessarily make the engineer?

I’d like to share a story for anyone who hasn’t already heard it. At the beginning of February an engineer in North Carolina filed a complaint against a computer scientist for allegedly producing work that only a professional engineer should produce.

From the article:

Cox and his North Raleigh neighbors are lobbying city and state officials to add traffic signals at two intersections as part of a planned widening of Falls of Neuse Road.

After an engineering consultant hired by the city said that the signals were not needed, Cox and the North Raleigh Coalition of Homeowners’ Associations responded with a sophisticated analysis of their own. The eight-page document with maps, diagrams and traffic projections was offered to buttress their contention that signals will be needed […].

Which seems fairly innocuous to me, notable even, but one engineer took such offense to the work put before him that he felt it necessary to report Cox to the North Carolina Board of Examiners for Engineers and Surveyors:

Cox has not been accused of claiming that he is an engineer. But Lacy [the DOT chief traffic engineer] says he filed the complaint because the report “appears to be engineering-level work” by someone who is not licensed as a professional engineer.

“When you start applying the principles for trip generation and route assignment, applying judgments from engineering documents and national standards, and making recommendations,” that’s technical work a licensed engineer would do, Lacy said.

He said there is a potential for violation if DOT and the public were misled by “engineering-quality work”- even if the authors did not claim to be engineers.

You can find the complete article here.

Cox did not claim to be an engineer. His team merely completed an analysis using sound engineering concepts and produced a report of those findings. Isn’t that something that should be praised? Don’t we spend a huge amount of time and effort trying to get the public to understand engineering, to engage with engineering and to respect the work we do?

Even looking past that, shouldn’t the focus be on the content? If a population thinks that something is unsafe – and is willing to go to great effort to prove their belief – then don’t we, as scientists, have a duty to approach the content of their appeal with skeptical appreciation of their methods?

Moderating Exclusivity

I understand (and fully believe) that professional disciplines need to be monitored for the greater public good. Registration of professionals affords a level of security that those taking on public responsibilities are adequately qualified to do so (through a combination of training and experience).

I also believe it is important that the correct training and foundations go in to being a good engineer. Just as I’d only go to a doctor with a degree or a lawyer who’d passsed the bar, there are some elements of engineering education which are essential to calling yourself a professional engineer.  But Cox didn’t claim to be an engineer.

Does communicating a good idea merit a scolding from the Board of Education for trying to be a teacher? Does cooking a gourmet meal call for a finger-wagging from the Professional Chef’s Association for impersonating a chef? Does writing this post mean that I should be reported to the National Association of Science Writers for doing the work of a science reporter while not being registered as one?

My opinion is that badly done engineering by a trusted professional engineer would certainly be a threat to our profession, but I draw the line at criticizing good engineering done by a non-engineer. In this age of ubiquitous information, though, perhaps we should actively ask ourselves if professional status also carries the right to be exclusive about the information which we learned to get there.

I don’t believe it does.

Beware the Imposter courtesy grahamc99; Do Not Enter courtesy DimitryB, both on Flickr.

This post was written for .

If you’d like to start at the beginning, then here are Volumes 1 & 2:

• Volume 1 (on titles, trust and changing the world); and
• Volume 2 (on relentless questioning, imagery and putting yourself out there).

On with the quotes! 

1. “Let me explain further – when I am coaching a client and they say ‘I don’t know’, I sometimes ask them what would the answer be, if they did know?” – Arvind Devalia

I love this quote for the very simple reason that it is – well – perfectly simple.  I believe the hardest part about coaching is to watch your client dance around a solution that will very certainly provide him with the growth or opportunities he craves.  She knows it will increase her happiness, profitability or credibility, and yet fear of change stops her from admitting it.  The interesting thing is, though, that often once the solution is out in the open, then the fear loses potency.  Arvind’s method of getting the solution out on the table, in a non-threatening way, allows the surrounding barriers to dissolve long enough for the solution to surface.

And speaking of barriers (see what I did there?), here is #2…

2. “Do we really believe that the math that most people are doing in school practically today, is more than applying procedures to problems they don’t really understand for reasons they don’t get?” – Conrad Wolfram

These words are actually from a TED talk.  Conrad is talking about how we spend tons of time, money and effort educating our kids on how to calculate, like slow, human versions of computers, while we teach them nothing of the reasoning behind math.  I loved this talk, because I believe he is dead right.  I had the incredible fortune of mathematical modelling instruction from a wonderful professor who felt similarly to Conrad.  He ignited in me an ability to love math for the questions rather than despising math for the calculations.  Math isn’t about mindless execution of derivative calculations or memorization of pi to the 67 thousandth digit.  Math is about building a road properly so the cars don’t fly off or admiring the beauty found in a perfect arrangement of sunflower seeds.

Sure a basic understanding of the calculations is necessary, but there will always be people who thrive on that.  Why not show the non-calculator-types the artsy, beautiful side of science that can change our world instead of alienating them with jargon and extreme frustration?  Which leads me to #3…

3. “I think we do this because to show others that we are so damn smart that mere “civilians” can’t possibly understand our brilliant ideas — or, worse yet, because if we spoke clear English, they would realize how absurdly simple and obvious our ideas actually were.” – Bob Sutton

One of the things that drives me crazy about smart people is that they seem to have a requirement that once they know something, anything, it needs to be unattainable to anyone lacking the same credentials.  This is usually achieved through a combination of confusing numbers, speed of concept delivery and the use of technical jargon that distances them from ‘those who just don’t get it.’  So when I find a smart person who is willing to cut through the education-entitlement crap for the benefit of improving things in general I find it refreshing.  Bob Sutton is one of those people.  I love that he is willing to put academics – his own peers – in their self-righteous place for being entitled about their knowledge.  If you have the time, (or have ever had an inkling to do an organizational development-based MBA) then I certainly suggest you check our his blog.  He makes me want to learn the stuff he knows, but he also makes me want to learn how to deliver those concepts in a way that they can be well received by whoever is receiving them.

Which is, essentially, what this blog is all about, right?

Until next time…

We all know that some of the greatest hurdles to overcome in the office, on site or anywhere in life, really, are culture differences.  In businesses which trade in expat professionals, specifically, it is common to work with people from all over the planet, and communicating sometimes has hidden innuendo that is hard to understand.  In fact understanding those differences is what this blog is all about, and I trust that those who read me regularly understand, that while I want to understand someone else’s context, I always try to throw in a little common sense to make sure that the pendulum doesn’t swing too far one way or the other.

Which these two stories obviously don’t do.

***

Case 1.  Ms. Fan v. UBC Regarding a Hospice in her Backyard (via Crommunist)

or

My culture isn’t your culture, but my culture is better.

“Plans for a hospice on the University of British Columbia campus have been put on hold after some neighbourhood residents said the proposed facility offended their cultural sensitivities around death and dying.  […] “It is all about cultural sensitivity,” said Ms. Fan, a Chinese-born immigrant who lives in a high-rise near the proposed hospice site. ‘We came here as new immigrants with our own belief system. And in our beliefs, it is impossible for us to have dying people in our backyard.'”

So Ms. Fan is worried that the hospice might inconvenience her and her neighbours, and doesn’t want it in her backyard at the expense of – who? – people who can’t help themselves?  Look, Ms. Fan, I am going to try and look past the fact that your beliefs seem founded less in traditionally Asian beliefs (which the Chinese immigration group Success has said don’t necessarily dictate superstition about death and dying anyway) than in fiscal or convenience desires, and I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.  Yet even when I do that, all I can see is someone who is placing the importance of their “beliefs” above the lives of others.

This is dangerous, and no matter how much I try to see things from your point of view, I know that I can only respect your beliefs (which I certainly wish to do) if they are not to the detriment of someone else.

So let’s let the pendulum swing back the other way for:

***

Case 2.  Ms. Williams-Bolar v. her School District (via In My Flippie Floppies)

or

My culture is better, but it isn’t your culture… got it?

“An Ohio mother of two was sentenced to 10 days in jail and placed on three years probation after sending her kids to a school district in which they did not live.  […] The court determined that sending their children to the wrong school was worth $30,500 in tuition.  […] ‘Because of the felony conviction, you will not be allowed to get your teaching degree under Ohio law as it stands today,’ the judge said.”

Let’s leave the black-white discrimination thing out of it for the moment and ask the question: if you met someone who wants a better future for their kids, and who was actively trying to better herself through education, would you go out of your way to stop them from having that?  The Western culture I grew up in, work in, and will raise my kids in values education immensely.  We kn0w that educated people earn more, are happier and live longer, and we are constantly promoting programs which disseminate the value of education (like this one in Canada, this one in Australia or this one in the States).  I know people who actively hold their kids back for the developmental reasons outlined in Gladwell’s Outliers, and yet this woman is not allowed to place the same value on her children’s education as we are?  I don’t care what colour she is, where she is from, or what her reasons are – if she is willing to try and get her kids a better education then how could anyone go out of their way to punish her?  A slap on the wrist for exposing the discrepancies between schools, sure, a charge for disregarding a law, alright, but denying her the right to finish her own education?!?

OK, Judge Cosgrove, I’m trying to see things from your point of view, but I can’t see that taking away the right to a better education for both these kids and their mother is anything but hurtful.

***

I know both these situations are complex, but I’m putting it out there that sometimes my blog’s purpose (understanding the context of someone else’s decision/view) is unattainable in light of my own context.  I’d just like to see a little consideration of the other side and perhaps some critical thinking when applying the rules or pushing one’s own beliefs.

Why not try our cultures are different, let’s chat?

________

*Update:

One of my favourite things about blogging is the discussion it generates, and after discussion with a few people on this topic, I feel I need to clarify my stance regarding case 2.  I believe that ‘cue-jumping’ is inappropriate, and I wholly agree that breaking the rules for one’s own benefit is wrong.  The point I am debating here is the fact that the judge, by charging her with a felony, took away Ms. Williams-Bolar’s right to graduate.

I feel there is a difference between reasonable punishment and breaking someone down because you can.

1. Exchange pleasantries, handshakes & (if appropriate) business cards.
2. Ask where the other person is based or “where that accent is from.”
3. Share a story of working in the discussed location.
4. Discuss the business environment and developments in one of the locations.
5. Eventually get around to asking what one another do.
6. Acknowledge that your organization needs their offering, can fill their need or has similar technical interests.
7. Make agreements to contact the other person to maintain a business contact, acquire their services, or provide them your own.
8. Shake hands, and move away with a slight nod.

The interesting thing for me was noting that, in order to discuss the business you are both there to discuss, you must first (a) indicate how experienced you are, and (b) show that you understand the industry. If you can’t satisfy these steps, then you end up stumped at Step 2, which is inevitably followed by an awkward excuse, a gentle nod and a quick exit.  The take home message here is that some reactions only go one way:

Tell me why I should listen to you, then tell me what you have to say.

We hear all the time about the importance of market knowledge and experience, so I got thinking about a business barrier I now refer to as The Credibility Threshold. Enter the activation energy graph that all chemical engineers know and love:

Input enough energy (Ea) and your reaction can proceed, but don’t put enough in, or try to go directly to the payload (that’d be the equivalent of only adding the delta H energy value) and pfft…  nothing.  Without sufficient energy input no bond can be formed, no product produced, and no (pardon the cheese) chemistry occurs.

But now replace our activation energy with activation credibility, and the interaction recipe above makes a little more sense.  We need to put enough energy into the relationship before it is going to produce the end product we are seeking.  If we try to jump straight to the payload discussion of what we can offer each other, then, again, pfft…  nothing.  Stumped at Step 2.

In short this means that we need to ‘talk the talk’ in order to network effectively.

Engineering information can come through many channels (for entry-level professionals this is often through our professional certification bodies), but for more industry-specific knowledge we may need to be more creative.  Here are some of the methods I use to keep up-to-date:

• Going to local seminars through Engineers Australia and IChemE;
• Taking advantage of conversations with my colleagues and bosses who see different aspects of projects, have more experience, etc.;
• Reading industry RSS feeds on my daily commute (if you have a smartphone, then I recommend NewsRoom);
• Following Twitter users who post interesting industry information (e.g. I follow a number of oil companies, energy news outlets and Chem Eng related posters);
• Reading industry publications (e.g. for O&G the SPE, Oil & Gas Journal or Offshore Mag publications are a good place to start); and
• Staying in contact with previous colleagues (through lunches, phone calls, e-mails and LinkedIn – preferably in that order).

I’m the first one to admit that this takes some effort, but I’ve seen the payoff of breaking through that credibility threshold.  It opens up opportunities to discuss interesting information, make business contacts or build good industry relationships.

Oh, and see how the use of a catalyst means that less energy is required in the activation energy graph?  Maybe a future post will talk about how having a good mentor or champion to be your catalyst can make the credibility threshold just a little easier to break through.

Lego people courtesy bucklava on Flickr; Activation energy plot courtesy Wikimedia.

This post was written for .

A few truths:

1. Sometimes effort is not immediately fruitful;
2. Books in Australia are ridiculously expensive; and
3. I’ve vowed to write (but not necessarily post) once a week starting this month.

These things are all relevant for this post, since I am in the frustrating anticipation stage of waiting to post a much anticipated piece (c.f. #1).  As a result I am taking the easy way out and making a list-post on the exciting pile of books I recently purchased on a trip back to Canada (c.f. #2).   The result is that I can post something – anything (c.f. #3) – to kick off 2011.

A few of these come recommended by my friends (both in real life and on Brazen Careerist), and a few of them are random titles I’ve found while both traveling or hanging out at Chapters.  So here is my current reading list (in order of how excited I am to read them) for this year.

7. Towards the True Kinship of Faiths by The Dalai Lama – I’ve been carrying this around since travelling through an airport in Singapore.  As someone who is interested in the culture differences associated with religion, I think that the Dalai Lama’s opinion on how to combine so many differences could be very engaging.

6. Making Ideas Happen by Scott Belsky – This one comes highly recommended by the BC crowd, and although many of them are more entrepreneurial than I am, I think that anything inspiring the discussions and ideas on there must be good!

5. In Praise of Doubt – How to Have Convictions Without Becoming a Fanatic by Peter Berger and Anton Zijderveld – This one comes recommended from a good friend who is simultaneously one of the most fantastic critical thinkers I know while also being an intensely devout religious person.  I couldn’t help but purchase it.

4. The Elegant Process – The Guide to Enhanced Quality and Reduced Costs by Jason Kilgore – Jason is a fellow Brazen Careerist, and this is his first book.  The engineer in me loves the topic, and it’ll be neat to see what he has to say.

3. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie – I feel like my excitement for this one should be obvious.  It is a classic, it’s been around since 1937 and it is still one of the most fundamental business books out there.  Really – who wouldn’t want to read it?!

2. Science is Culture edited by Adam Bly – An interesting book that I picked up (embarrassingly) because of the rainbow lines on the front.  I read the intro and honestly felt as though the book had chosen me.  It is a series of discussions about the renaissance that is the current-day, science-religion-culture-life-context clash, I am incredibly excited to dive into it.

And finally…

1. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand – My desire to read this book should need no explanation.  All you have to do is read one of the it-changed-my life reviews anywhere on the web know that it is worth every 1168 pages.  Perhaps long, perhaps controversial, but I think I need a healthy dose  of philosophy and paradigm-shifting-thought every now and then.

As is always the case with the life I fill with sand, I am not sure where the time for all these ideas, inevitable discussions and subsequent blog posts will come from, but with any luck some of my book review thoughts will make it onto Crafting Context, and I’ll add those links as I go.

Photo courtesy Vicky’s Pics on Flickr.

I know I briefly explain what Crafting Context means to me on the About page, but for the sake of making my point I’ll give it another go.   Crafting a context is the process of meeting someone and then developing an opinion on where they are coming from.  You judge their actions based on that platform, and the process of doing so gives you a better understanding of how they are likely to make decisions in the future.  The creation of that platform is almost like painting a picture of everything that is a contributing factor for them.  For example – if I wanted to create such a painting for Crafting Context, then I think it’d look something like this:  

But one of the most important parts of understanding people’s contexts is constantly checking that the frame of reference you have set up for them is still applicable.  This is unreasonably important.  If you don’t constantly re-evaluate the frame of reference you use for someone else, then you run the risk of thinking that Bill’s words from 5 years ago still represent his beliefs or that the essay that Jill wrote when she was 20 still reflects her thinking on the subject at age 43.  Labels are created, and people spend their lives trying to get away from the stickiness of the labels others put on them.

The picture above is a Wordle of my About page, and allows for a visual representation of what I think Crafting Context should be about.  Reading that you’d be inclined to think that I write most about understanding contexts.

But if I take my own advice, then I really should be checking to see if that’s really the impression I leave online through my writing.  So I took my RSS feed, wordle-d it, and (lo’ and behold)…

So really what I have been writing about recently is diversity, time and purpose.  Incidentally, I also seem to use the word ‘just‘ an awful lot!

If we’d all simply take a moment to check.  First impressions are incredibly adhesive, but all you have to do is ask yourself – Is George really always late?  You might find he’s been on time for the last 8 meetings you’ve had, but that you are still holding a grudge for the first one you called three weeks ago.

The glue of that label is actually only temporary – as long as you choose to re-evaluate.

A very attentive Scout and I listened as she used the age-old metaphor we’ve heard a million times over: Think about your budget as a bucket.  Fill it with the huge rocks first (i.e. major financial goals), then put in the large rocks (i.e. big goals), then the small ones (i.e. bills, etc), and finally put in the sand (i.e. your everyday expense frivolities).  She obviously missed the lecture at uni where the prof ends it with, “there’s always room for beer,” but the point made it across to us well enough.  The idea was that we needed to have a bit more financial discipline in order to end up as grillionaires someday.

So then flash forward to one of Penelope Trunk’s latest posts where she references Roy Baumeister’s research on self-discipline and how it affects your happiness.  Apparently just a tiny amount of self-discipline in one area of your life will affect your ability to self-discipline (and to regulate your self-esteem) in general.  Carry a book on your head each day, and your diet, sleeping patterns and academics all improve – which is pretty incredible.  I can easily control one small routine daily, and I like the idea that the self-discipline then, sort of, leaks into the other areas of your life.

“I’m Waiting For You Vizzini!  You Told Me To Go Back To The Beginning!”

— Inigo Montoya (in The Princess Bride)

When it comes to the office, I’ve been trying to self-discipline by just beginning.  I often find that once I get into a job, I am gripped by the momentum of solving the problem or the motivation of a completed job that I am full steam ahead.  The problem is often beginning.  So I thought that perhaps the small change I could make would be to pick any part of each project and just begin.  I wouldn’t put that email off till tomorrow.  I wouldn’t read that reference material in the afternoon.  I’d just begin.

And I think it works – the leaking, I mean.

Today I picked up my chanter for the first time in ages.  I used to play (and we’re talking years ago), but as the sand filled up the bucket, I found less time for playing, for going to that pilates class, or for writing that email.  And as my lips gave way on the second last bar of the Brown Haired Maiden, I almost laughed out loud at the childish sense of accomplishment I felt at having had the sense to just begin – instead of putting it off until tomorrow.

*Not her real name.  Zuka means money in African.

Photo courtesy theothermattm on Flickr.