Dmitry has taught me the value of good design meeting documentation and how to really use it to move forward.
We are working with some fast-thinking researchers, who are great at talking through their design decisions. When they re-visit the decisions, they keep making use of the good notes from the previous meeting, in order to remember and pick up the thread of thinking and move forward.
I have never seen notes put to such positive use before. This is a Big Lesson for me.
I have always been a fan of complaining, when it’s part of a move to action. I whined so much about my cold house, which was taking five hours to go up four degrees, that I heard my voice in complaint and said “Wait, that’s really not right!”
I called Putnam Fuel and they had someone over to FIX the problem, within the hour!
Martin Luther King, Jr. through the eyes of my Facebook friends on this day and then a story about my grandmother.
Patti posted: ”Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.” -MLK
Judy posted: “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”– Martin Luther King, Jr.
Tim posted: “If a man doesn’t have a job or an income, he has neither life nor liberty nor the possibility for the pursuit of happiness. He merely exists.”
I have to start this one with a story from a long time ago. But maybe you were there? Leave a comment if you were.
Some time around 1970, my family went to Greenville, Maine for a ski vacation. Each of us kids got to bring a friend and we did the downhill ski thing, as did my dad. My mom, however, signed up for a cross-country ski lesson, which was a radical and brave thing for her, since she was not athletic or active in any way that I can remember.
At her first lesson, she told the instructor “I hear that you are going to teach us how to get up when we fall”. A friend had told her this, and it had given her great comfort and security in this adventure. “Sure,” he said, “When you fall, I’ll teach you how to get up.” “But I want to learn now”, my mother insisted. “We’ll get to that when you fall”, he repeated. Shlomp! Down she went! “OK” she said. “Teach me now”. And he did.
Fast forward to this day in 2011:
I went cross-country skiing with my sister, Lava, on my new fast skis. Fast. Really fast! I went down a Black Diamond hill that was not fast at all the last time we did it in starting-to-melt slow snow. But on this day, it was 12 degrees and the snow was fast and my skis are fast. All fast. I hit something – it may be the half-foot divot we looked back at (or maybe I made that one) or maybe it was something else, but I landed directly on my face. It hurt! I put my poles uphill and got myself up and kept skiing on this cold sunny day.
A while later, I did it again! I landed on my face again! It didn’t hurt as much, and I got up more easily.
The next times I fell (my new skis are fast, I tell you!) were farther apart, and each fall was easier and each time I popped up more quickly.
Like my mom, I learned how to fall, and I learned how to get up. Now I just need to learn how to ski a little better!
Bonus lesson: I learned how apt the term “face plant” is!
Here is the bottom part of the first hill. Yes, it looks like a bunny slope, and it would be on downhill skis, but on fast cold snow, it was a challenge on cross-country skis!
I should know this by now. I’ve learned it before. More than once. In the last year, alone.
This lesson: To get across the middle of Boston is not necessarily faster by taxi than by walking and the T.
It takes me 45 minutes to get from Fenway to South Station, including walking through Chinatown. If I need to do it without the walk, then it’s two trains and I need to allow a little longer. It takes me at least that long from Longwood, as well.
So, one might think that a taxi for this distance, would be shorter, right? I mean, it is about 3 miles, after all.
Nope. In rush hour, you can fly through some parts, or not, but the area around South Station is bound to be gridlock. And it’s the kind of gridlock that leaves you watching the traffic lights and your watch and your odds of making the bus all change before your eyes, without moving at all.
Which brings me to TWO extra bonus lessons for the day:
1. When you are sitting in a taxi within site of your destination and you are not moving, GET OUT and start walking already!
2. Never make plans that matter what time you arrive, for after a Boston commute day. This was one of the first lessons in this blog, but I guess I forgot it and need to learn it yet again. And maybe again.
If I had a dollar for every time I’ve learned not to go into meetings (or any interactions with other people) hungry, then I could probably hire a personal chef who would follow me around and serve me food in time to avoid me being very cranky and obnoxious. And unhappy.
But I don’t have those dollars or that chef, so I need to learn, either once and for all, or (more likely) over and over again until it sticks, to EAT well before I get to starving, no matter how busy I am.
Why is this so hard to learn?
is when your gut says, ‘no way’ and your mouth says, ‘sure, how can I help you’?
From Michelle
Although I always tell people that if I had a whistle-less teakettle (like my mother-in-law’s) I would probably burn my house down. And my family bought me a wonderful electric espresso maker after my fear that I would do the same with my stove-top model for that. Yet, if I forget to close the whistle/cover on my teakettle, I’m in the same scary boat and the water boils out and it’s not a pretty thing. Or a safe one.
Lesson learned again today: always always ALWAYS close the whistle on the kettle!
P.S. I know that one of my beloved blog-followers is going to hate this. But I’m sure she would rather I posted and learned! Right?
From Susan O*:
“I have learned lately that the best thing you can do for yourself is to live in the present. All the best laid plans can change in an instant. I am wondering how much time I have actually spent in the same room with myself.”
*this was on the About page but it deserves a day of its own!
I have learned, again and again, that it is really rude to not RSVP.
And I promise to try very hard to never forget again.
Jane's Lessons Learned 