In praise of pottering

Pottering is a greatly undervalued activity.

I suppose that the common expectation is that all life is about bashing out widgets, a task requiring neither imagination nor creativity, and so we do no need to potter, or to reflect, we merely get on with bashing out more widgets. We might periodically take time to sharpen our widget bashing tools, or plan our critical path for most effective bashing of widgets.

But we certainly do not have any time for pottering. Pottering is anathema. Pottering is the lazy inefficient waste of time, falling away from our puritan protestant work ethic, our idle hands lead us into the devil's work.

But is this really true. I suppose if you paid someone to work for you, you want to see them bashing out those little widgets as fast as they can. But reducing everything to bashing out widgets presumes that there is no quality dimension, it is purely a case of quantity. The more widgets the better.

But for many things there is not an infinite demand for our widgets. How many emails a day does our boss really want us to send him. Or the quality dimension is paramount. Is more blogging really better blogging.

Which all, in, a round about, way, leads me back to pottering. Because pottering is the antithesis to quantity. Pottering is the complete absence of quantity. In fact pottering can regularly deliver no perceptible outputs what so ever.

So why is pottering any good?

Because if you are ever to be truly great at anything you will probably need to spend a great deal of time pottering. It is the pottering time that differentiates the tradesman from the craftsman, the labourer from the artist. It is that ability to just step back, allow yourself to take a line for a walk, or let the line take you for a walk. To put words after each other just to see if they take you anywhere interesting. Fiddle about with something, take it apart, put it back together again, see if you can make it work a little better.

Just imagine the craftsman pottering away in his workshop, putting together a few off cuts to make a children's toy, sharpening much loved tools, browsing a catalogue, or sketching out impractical ideas.

Just imagine the gardener weeding slowly while just wondering how to arrange some new plants, or rearranging pots while she thinks about colour schemes.

Just imagine the endless hours tinkering with websites, or browsing for ideas for your blog.

I suppose the point is that pottering is defensible, we all need time to potter a bit, particularly around the things we love doing. The real art is in extracting the odd nugget from the pottering, making good use of the nuggets.

Perhaps what we need is a better methodology for productive pottering. Perhaps what we need is a better articulation of the relationship between pottering and bashing out widgets. Ideally they are in harmony, two sides of the same coin. We should not feel guilty that we are not always in the same mode. It is part of our strength.

I hear that they are saving money, and the next series of Ice Road Truckers will be someone driving a white van across London

planning for creativity

The toughest things to plan for the ones that you really don't have much control over, especially when they are difficult.

For instance how could you plan to win a million on the lottery?

I have decided to get a bit more serious about blogging, and freelance writing, and coming up with ideas, and jokes, and whatever other vaguely creative or useful things I write about. But how on earth can I plan the unplannable?

Basically I seem to be tackling this in stages.

1 For the past year or two I have been keeping this blog, and from time to time following up on ideas that I have had, but without much dedication. I now have a fairly substantial blog of writing. I also keep a notebook of creative ideas, with various degrees of dedication, and then transfer the stuff from there onto Voodoopad, which is so loose and freeform, that it suits creative thinking. On the other hand Devonthink is a bit more business-like, and suits stuff that requires a little more discipline. Though truth be told, I use both of them in pretty much the same way.

2 I have now recognised that there are two activities in creativity. There is the creative one, of coming up with genius ideas and typing them out. Then there is the drudgery one, of trying to get someone to publish them, customising them for publications that might have an interest, trawling for likely periodicals, sending stuff off for consideration. They fit together like ying and yang, when I'm inspired, write something, when I'm not, attend to the drudgery. So far there seems to be more drudgery to do, than inspiration required, which suits fine, as I don't feel very inspired most of the time.

3 In particular I am now keeping a log of material submitted, but I am working on the principle that the likelihood of anything getting published is pretty low. So I just constantly brainstorm ideas, possible outlets, pitching anything I think might be of interest. As long as the idea is worked up to a reasonable standard, I just pitch and forget. I don't imagine anything will come of the vast bulk, but over time, some are bound to get published, and I can always use that to inform where it is most productive to put my efforts.

I will probably carry on with this exploratory approach for a while, and if I start getting paid for freelancing, I can always start to specialise a bit more.

I really have no idea what will come of any of this, probably nothing of any note, but I like to write, and I like to bat around ideas, so if some of it manages to find itself in front of a larger audience then I have succeeded in a modest way.

lunch-time seminar

A while back, I posted a blog entry about why work should be more fun, but did not actually say anything terribly useful about how to make work more fun. I have been doing a little work on an idea for a short lunchtime seminar/ workshop that lets staff practice the essential skills for meetings, in a light and entertaining way. If possible, I’ll try running it at my workplace, and see how it goes. Details below, you might need to customise to suit your workplace but the basic idea should work.


advert

this event will appeal to anyone who is not a Government Cabinet Minister, or who is fed up with just taking the minutes at meetings. Participants will take the part of a Cabinet Minister, for a mock Cabinet Meeting. The event is intended to be entertaining while offering practice in the interpersonal skills required to work effectively in meetings. New staff are particularly encouraged to attend. The event will take about two hours.

Set up

small number of participants - 6-8
arrive in room, and sit round the table, there is a name card at each seat, detailing which Minister is sitting there.
The facilitator introduces themself
people are to take the part of the Minister their name card indicates, including the First Minister who will chair the meeting
if the First Minister is really uncomfortable agree to change, but otherwise just proceed

explain that often what we do would be really fun if it were not for worrying about the consequences, this session aims to be fun, and the only consequences are that you might learn something.

facilitator flags up that it is important to recognise the difference between how meetings operate, and what they discuss

The facilitator outlines the principles for the day, which are on a flip chart
how meetings work best;

• chatham house rules
• people really listen
• everyone gets a chance to speak
• people get their points across clearly and succinctly
• everyone feels comfortable (fun?)
• ideas are drawn together effectively
• clear actions are agreed
• the meeting keeps to time

the participants are presented with an agenda (what), the agenda is long and dull,

the chair starts the agenda with welcome and introductions

after a short spell the facilitator interrupts, and explains that he is a government policy advisor and he has just heard an unconfirmed report from the manager at Edinburgh Castle that an alien spaceship has just landed there. Although unconfirmed, we believe the report to be true and the Cabinet has until the end of the meeting to decide the Scottish Government response, as it is believed that Scotland will be the focus of international media interest within the hour.

Allow the FM to continue to chair,

no additional facts are added, but if the conversation starts to flag, then the facilitator can introduce himself as a senior policy adviser with question prompts such as

• what about the health implication
• what about the constitutional implications
• do we assume that they are friendly
• etc

The facilitator closes the meeting fifteen minutes before the end of the session, and allows people to get out of character, by asking them how it all went, encouraging them to start thinking about the how, rather than the what

then refer participants back to the principles for good meetings outlined at the start, ask the group to reflect, both personally and as a group

• what went well
• what went badly
• what to do differently next time

capture this on a flipchart, the principles of good meetings flipchart being on display at the time

feedback sheet handed out for completion before people leave

• tick box - would I do this again
• tick box - would I recommend it to someone else
• will you personally do anything differently in future - actions?
• any comments

thank people for attending, and close

if reconvened, then some members are dropped out and some new are added, this model of temporary membership is retained if the meetings continue as a series.

Update - this seminar has now run, and an update is provided here!

The Reapers by John Connolly

This is just a very good thriller. It is well written, thoughtful, well paced and has a wealth of interesting characters. Throughout it maintains your interest and although you want to know what happens, you are more than content to wait and see how things unfold. I am sure that the author might be capable of writing dull or uninteresting text, but he does not do it in this book.

One slight caveat, by the end of the book, the pace picks up considerably and new characters are sketched in cartoon tones, only to be dispatched a few pages later. The book slips into the style of Carl Hiassen, whereas previously it was more measured.

Quite simply, one of the best thrillers I have read, and possibly one of the best writers in the field today.

Random Quote - "One of those old railroads, now abandonned, curved through a forest of hemlock, maple, birch, and small beech before emerging into a patch of clear ground, a relic of the Big Blowdown of 1950 that had never been repaired."

google ethics

Consider the evidence;

• you cannot find a photo of a Google server farm on Google images
• Google's motto is don't be evil
• the amount of energy required for two Google searches is enough to boil a kettle of water

even the most rudimentary of research, admittedly more than I can be bothered doing, demonstrates that there is not enough energy in the world to do all the searches that Google does, and if there was then miniscule advertising pennies would not pay for it.

The answer is obvious, Google do not use server farms, they use a giant disembodied kidnapped alien brain

Douglas Coupland made plastic

http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/01/28/useless-and-japan-only-but-cute-mini-usb-construction-site/

It is like a Douglas Coupland novel made plastic, cute mini-fig construction worker kit that you can plug in to your computer's usb port so that the traffic cones light up.

I've dropped an email to Lego pointing out that there is a vast untapped computer geek market for Lego toys that you can plug in to your computer's usb socket.

With any luck they will rush into production and mail me one.