Ugh. I haven't finished a book in nearly two weeks. My pace is definitely slacking.
MicroBlog kitt decided around 09:37 on 7 June 2015 to publish this:Insulator light fixture
Blog Written with a loving hand by kitt some time around 12:31 on 1 June 2015The Keen shoe store in Portland (on Glisan near 13th) has a light fixture with electric line insulators as the shades. I am completely in love with this fixture, having been enamoured of electric line insulators since 1994 when my mom and I went walking along a set of railroad tracks, picking up some insulators of said variety. I have two as paperweights at home.
Easier to keep up than catch up
Blog Written with a loving hand by kitt some time around 06:01 on 1 June 2015This was originally posted on The Pastry Box for 1 June 2015.
Years ago, I ran cross-country in High School. I wasn't very good at it.
I would run too fast at the beginning of the race, putz along at a snail's pace in the middle of the run, then sprint at the end of the race. I continued this particular style of cross-country "racing" into college. Every once in a while I'd have an okay run, mostly because I'd see some teammate not that far in front of me and I'd run my heart out to catch up with her.
Long after college, on some particularly long hike with a friend, we stopped for a rest. After the rest turned long, during one of my long-winded stories about my lack of running ability, my friend turned to me and commented, "You know it's easier to keep up than it is to catch up."
Of course, intellectually I knew this. Even in childhood, the tortoise wins over the hare, slow and steady wins the race. And yet, even on that hike when I knew a steady pace was going to keep us with the rest of our companions, I wanted a break, we'd catch up later.
Wow, what a theme that thought had become.
I don't need to invest for retirement now, I'll catch up later when I'm earning more.
I don't need to let my significant other know I love him, I'll let him know later how much I love him.
I don't need to write these 1000 words today, I'll catch up tomorrow with 2000 words in this NaNoWriMo novel.
I don't need to worry about this bug, I'll fix it tomorrow when I'm more refreshed.
I don't need to go for a run today, I'll just go for a longer run tomorrow.
I don't need to skip this dessert, I'll just forgo the extra calories later.
Years later, my retirement account isn't as big as I calculated I needed. My significant other is no longer my significant other. I didn't finish that novel. The number of bugs for this project is so many I want to rewrite the thing and start over. I'm winded playing Ultimate in ways I never was before, and, yes, I'm carrying a few more pounds than I want to be.
I know of very few things in life where catching up is better than keeping up. Maybe illnesses of old age could be one? Okay, yes, YES. I'd like to be free of any dementia, cancers, arthritis, or osteoporosis until right before I die. Then I'll catch up with everyone. That'd be great!
Realistically, however, catching up is really hard. Sprinting at the end is so much harder than jogging in the middle.
It's hard to fund a savings plan that you haven't been contributing to.
It's hard to fix a customer-facing problem that has cascaded into an avalanche.
It's hard to learn a new technology that you haven't seen before, aren't even aware of.
It's hard to lose those few or many pounds that have creeped on.
It's hard to write a book that you haven't been obsessed with writing.
It's hard to repair a relationship that you haven't embraced and maintained.
It's hard to achieve that life goal that you haven't thought about in years.
Small steps move us forward. They may not be the amazing, overnight success stories we hear about, but that's because you don't hear about the thousand small steps that contributed to that overnight success story.
Most of us will not win the lottery: we can still save for retirement. We can still work towards those life goals. We can start that journey of a thousand miles, and take one step every day until we've made it.
Just one small step a day to keep up.
So that we don't have to catch up.
One step.
Keep up.
Practical Empathy
Book Notes kitt decided around 18:00 on 26 May 2015 to publish this:
http://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/practical-empathy/
I bought this book almost immediately after it was published. As someone who has been told time and time again that I lack tact, I dove into this book with abandon and joyous expectation that this book would help me be more aware of the people around me, their motivations, their stories, their expectations, their fears and hopes. My desire was to learn to be empathetic. For the first six chapters of this book, however, I was fairly disappointed in this book. Pretty much the only thing I got out of said first six chapters was the correction that one is not empathetic, but rather one has empathy. Empathy is something that is developed, and, oh, boy, I was thinking this was not the book to teach me how to develop it. This was not the book for me.
To start, the first three (of nine total) chapters are introduction to developing empathy. I was so confused by the lack of anything useful in the first three chapters that I figured I missed something, something so fundamental that it would be obvious on a second pass.
So, I read the first three chapters again.
Nope.
It's three chapters of why I want to buy this book. I already bought the book. I am already reading the book. Tell me how to start this journey, push me down this path to empathy already. I don't need more convincing, just go already. The first three chapters could have been condensed into one introductory chapter.
Okay, so along chapter four, I have more than just the proper definition of empathy. Good. Let's go.
Right into formal listening sessions.
Uh... What?
And then it dawns on me, finally, that this book is not a practical guide for the general layman to develop empathy. This is a very specific guidebook for people who do market research in its earliest states. This book is for people who are trying to understand the motivations of people buying stuff relevant to said reader's company's products, goals, and mission. This book is for people who are trying to get their company to understand people's motivations so that the company can make money off of them (-ish, that's a cynical approach, but perhaps not too far off for American companies).
In other words, this book is not the book I was expecting or wanted it to be.
Having recently read Prodigal's Interviewing Users, a great guidebook on how to do exactly that: interview people who use your product or product idea, I found this book long-winded, scattered, and unfocused. It felt like standing in a time-out on the ultimate field and everyone wants to get a word in on how the team can improve. With so many suggestions and things to try, you can't remember any of them, you just have item after item after suggestion coming your way, it's overwhelming.
Things improved in Chapter 7: Apply Empathy with People at Work. FINALLY practical empathy tips, actionable suggestions that are worthwhile. I almost wish this chapter were the whole book.
Thing is, though, you HAVE to take this book in small chunks. Read a section, maybe a page, and mull it over, play with it, moosh it around in your head, practice it, digesting, and THEN move on to the next idea. Otherwise, it's too much.
As with all my book reviews, take my perspective and reading motivations as factors in this review. This was not the book I was expecting, and not the book I wanted. I am not the target audience for this book. As such, I cannot recommend reading this book for someone who wants to learn how to develop empathy. I can recommend this book for people who have read Interviewing Users, do face-to-face user interviewing research, and want to learn how to shut up and listen to people talking to you. I am not in that latter group.