johnmaconline

I believe that most of our collective issues arise from differences in perspective.

I see it this way. You see it that way. They see it the other way.

My group cares about the right things. Your group cares about the wrong things. The other group is evil.

I also believe that solutions to our collective issues derive from empathy.

The best way I’ve found to engage empathy is to care about, seek out, and genuinely try to understand other perspectives. The proverbial walk a mile in another’s shoes. The more we latch into another’s perspective, the better we understand what they think and feel and, more importantly, why they think and feel.

Perspectives are built through personal history, and personal histories are stories of experiences, sights and sounds, group affiliation, and even geography. The world looks different, sounds different, and tastes different over here.

One of the best methods for broadening perspective is to change geography, if even for a short time.

It’s a big world. Get out there and explore.

Fear is an interesting engine.

For some, it drives them inward — to protect, shrink, and even blame.

For others, it drives them outward — to go on offense, beat one’s chest, and act as if they’ll take matters into their own hands when the moment arrives. 

For the last couple of weeks around here (southeastern Pennsylvania), a convicted murderer was on the loose. He did a fanciful job of escaping prison and then eluding authorities for eleven days. If you listened to The News, Satan himself was running amok. 

Across the whole community, we had all of the reactions to the fear. Some wouldn’t step outside their doors. Security systems sold out (unusual since this is a rural community). So were guns and ammunition (purchases not unusual — sold out unusual). One guy was driving around on his 4-wheeler vigilante-style with a bulletproof vest and his rifle strapped across it. These were the reactions that The News highlighted. The toggle switch headlines, of course. According to The News, all of the southeastern PA had stopped their lives as the manhunt continued.

But if you talked with most people, their reactions to the situation were quite reasonable. They paid attention, ensured the house and cars were locked up at night, and generally were just a bit more diligent. 

But nobody stopped living like The News would have you believe.

Turn off the damn news. 

I will continue, at least for now.

I’m not sure what roads we’ll take, but then again, that’s one of the points of the project. Keep the articles short and manageable, but explore widely.

I’m fiction curious. I’m curious about how I can use ChatGPT better. I’m curious if I can group some of these daily shorts together into longer forms useful for others. I’m curious if I can build an audience. I’m curious if I can dig deeper with more personal stories.

Onward and upward.

Needing daily topics sharpened my observation skills.

That’s definitely a good thing because it required more presence in my surroundings. I was on the lookout. My subconscious prompting my conscious to engage. 

Sometimes topics came to me easily through something I saw, read, or experienced through conversation. Other times, they emerged from the quiet moments. The spaces between actions. 

The world produces plenty of content, but often I was short of attention. I found myself tuning into the nuance, the overlooked, and the subtle patterns amongst the chaos. Although sometimes the chaos itself provided the content. 

The art of deliberate attention. What did I notice today that I might’ve missed yesterday? How can today’s observations lead to tomorrow’s revelations?

One last curious and maybe surprising observation about observing — I found myself taking less pictures focused on the moments of the day and simply using my senses to engage and allowing the sensory perception to burn itself into my memory. The story — as I remember it — being the critical piece, not the concrete image of “how it was.”

Do what you want with that.

More to come…

I wondered if it would get easier as the year wore on.

It got easier, but not in the way I was thinking. The writing itself didn’t get any easier. The commitment, however, did get easier.

I knew that each day I had to write (except for just a handful). At first, that was a daunting task. But as the year wore on, that commitment became something I looked forward to rather than dread. In fact, here I am, still going.

The writing, though. Still the same. Some days it flows. Others, well, it’s a cat fight.

I gave myself the 250 word limit to give myself permission to write and publish small bits. Short would be ok. 

But a curious thing happened along the way. Many times I found myself having to cut articles down to fit within 250 words. I didn’t expect that, but I started to learn the importance and power of editing. I know I’m too wordy (also when I speak). So the 250 word limit helped me focus the content. 

Sometimes I spent longer editing that I did writing. I think that’s a good thing. Many great writers talk about the importance of editing, removing unnecessary words and explanations, and honing the final product.

I have not always kept 250 words, but when I go above, I do so with intention. 

“If you eliminate the unnecessary words, the reader will have time to catch his breath and to think.”

– Ernest Hemmingway

“The first draft is just you telling yourself the story. The second draft is you telling the story to someone else.”

– Stephen King

“The more you leave out, the more powerful it will be.”

– Raymond Carver

My parameter was to publish each day, not write each day.

Not initially, though. Since my purpose is to get better at writing, my initial goal was to write to completion each day. Come hell or high water, I’d need to commit. Just f’n do it — David Goggins style. 

Then, as I designed the project and really thought about the necessary boundaries, I realized even with my best intentions and discipline, I just wouldn’t be able to get it done some days. I can’t always place my own needs above the needs of the groups I’m a part of. I’m a husband, dad, team leader, and team member. Although I’ve become very good at controlling my own time, empathy, leadership, and professionalism demand prioritizing other’s needs over my own sometimes.

Hence, publish every day. I knew I’d have to work ahead to do so. But how far?

For the first few weeks, I worked ahead by one day. I wrote each day and published that article the next morning. That was too close to the hairy edge, stressing me out. I missed my 8:44am deadline one day in November. 

Over the next few weeks, I pushed the pendulum too far the other way. At one point, I was ten days ahead. A curious thing happened — I found myself not as focused, not thinking about topics, and I even “just didn’t write” a few days. Ten days was too much cushion.

I found a happy medium. I worked ahead just enough that if I couldn’t write on a particular day, I wouldn’t miss the deadline, but I’d be uncomfortable enough that for sure I’d write the next day. 

The happy medium is between two and four days ahead. That’s where I’m at right now as I write this — two days ahead. 

I learned that too stressed doesn’t serve me, and neither does too comfortable. It’s such a fine line between clever and stupid. 

I purposely wanted to try writing different types of stories. 

I wasn’t sticking to a rigid timeline, as in, “OK, let’s try narrative personal stories for the next 6 weeks,” but I found that once I started with a genre, I tended to stay there for a bit. Like a mindset.

I didn’t have a schedule of story types, but looking back, I can roughly group them as follows:

• Observational opinions (I’d call it Seth Godin style).
• Self-improvement / Personal Development
• Narrative personal stories
• Success in today’s work culture, team building, leadership, and professionalism

The easiest for me to write was, by far, the observational opinions. I guess I have a lot of opinions that I’d like to share. 

The hardest was the narrative personal stories, especially the ones where I dug in and shared the emotions of the time (maybe still?). I kept saying to myself, “Don’t worry, nobody reads it anyway.” But almost surprisingly, I think these might be the most satisfying. I’m sure a connection exists between the difficulty of the inwardness and the satisfaction of getting it out. 

One exception is the story about working on the iPod with Apple. That flowed out like water down the falls — once started, it could not be stopped. First, I’ve told that story (in person and standing at the front of rooms) several times, so I’d already had its basic structure. But also, I’m still really angry about it. It happened 20 years ago, and I cannot let it go. It feels like yesterday. I can recall the emotions of that moment in a heartbeat. No professional part of me can see anything other than ineptitude, fear, and short-sightedness. Coulda, woulda, shoulda. Of course, none of us know the result of paths not taken, but the ripple effects of that single dastardly decision reach far and wide.

More to come…

Some observations from the “Every Day for a Year” project. 

I needed boundaries. 

Luckily, I recognized going in that I would need to bound the problem, or I would fail right away. Hence, the parameters. I knew this from writing articles for the last few years and developing software for 30 years. 

There’s a big lesson here. Namely, we sometimes think that creativity, problem-solving, and “our best work” require less or no boundaries, when in fact, boundaries, even strict boundaries, are the exact things we need to unlock progress. Our minds can only handle a limited number of variables at once. Therefore, eliminating some variables, even artificially, can help you make progress, eliminate the wrong path, and finish what you started. 

I do this quite a bit as a leader. When my team gets stuck or can’t get started, I bound the problem and eliminate some variables. 

I needed boundaries, so I created some. In hindsight, the two most important were publish every day at 8:44 am and 250 words. 

More to come…