valarywithawhy

[valarywithawhy]

Just reflecting on a weird anniversary. Time, how does it work. How has it been 25 years since mom's accident.

#caretaker #truestories #grief

[valarywithawhy]

Coffee chat and wisdom NOLA style. Love yo self

#nola #random pics

[valarywithawhy]

It's ok to not be ok. Sometimes you have to break a little so you don't break a lot. That is not expert advice, just my experience.

[valarywithawhy]

"Failing is an active verb; it's progress. Failing is the process of growing, learning, improving, and embracing possibilities!" ~ Alex Weber, Fail Proof: Become the Unstoppable You

#quotes

[valarywithawhy]

15 minute meetings for the win. Actually it was only 13 or 14. The point is that we get so stuck in punch-clock-factory-style scheduling of business and training things.

The "seat hours" is so out of date and out of touch but I know most institutions aren't ready for that conversation. When we focus on outcomes and actually getting things done, there will be more time to actually get things done.

As the writer, Claire Keegan, said of prose: "I think something needs to be as long as it needs to be."

[valarywithawhy]

"Failure is success in progress." Albert Einstein

#quotes

[valarywithawhy]

Lots of people making goals here at the start of the year. Sadly, many will abandon their goals in short order, in part because they didn't set themselves up to stay motivated and engaged. Yes, those are different, but we'll talk about that another time.

First, aside from the old, make SMART goals suggestion, one thing people miss is how they will move toward the goal and track their progress. Things in the future are amorphous and abstract and hard for the brain to focus on. But shorter, milestones are more achievable and tracking your progress can lead to greater results. One of my oft-used phrases in discussions about gamification is "Make Progress Visible." It's each to get distracted, or off course, or discouraged. But when you have a path that you can see you have traveled, and clear markers ahead, it is much easier to find your way.

Getting to a goal is a journey. Give your goals a GPS to follow and a memory album to look back on.

Photo by Ronnie Overgoor on Unsplash

#gamification #goals

[valarywithawhy]

Going through some notes today for an upcoming conference session called Failure: It's a Feature, Not a Bug. Years ago I was at another conference as several of us were talking about gamification and included content about normalizing and reframing failure and such. One Dutch attendee I spoke with later laughed at how Americans had an issue with failure. He said something to the effect of "we just expect it."

Another friend in Spain frequently uses the acronym FAIL as First Attempt In Learning. In my notes I had been exploring other ways to use the letters to build positive views of failure, such as Forward Isn't Always Linear. I had, of course, come up with some negative ones too: F#@K, I'm a Loser.

I'll stick with the positive ones. And yes, the shortest distance isn't always a straight line. Especially when learning new things or making changes. Sometimes you have to step back or take a detour or try a different approach. These may not look like progress, but often are.

Photo by Ian Kim on Unsplash

#gamification #learning

[valarywithawhy]

"I was index worthy!" I don't know why this meant so much. I mean, I was shocked that something I said ended up in the book at all, but for enough words to have made it in for me to be mentioned on multiple pages. Gobsmacked!

Failure may tell us that something went wrong and that we need to try something else, but Rob Hatch, a long-time business coach, explores using our past successes to help us with the how to move forward part. We often already have the answer to what will work, because we have done it before and just don't realize it.

If you want to check it out, here's a linky thing to take you there.

#gamification #success #failure #books

[valarywithawhy]

Portrait of an artist as a not so young man, New Orleans

[valarywithawhy]

Homage to Miro, New Orleans

#street art

[valarywithawhy]

Funny how you can't unsee things. On first glance I took the first image because lol, they are being clever with their don't pee on the flowers sign but now all I can see is the fact the edges are not aligned with the concrete block and that there is weird alignment of the words.

A lot of messaging gets lost that way. There is what is intended and what we perceive and all the mental filters we run things through.

The second image is a flower from my mom's yard. I bought the plant recently and I thought, how auspicious for it to bloom on the first day of the new year. When she saw it she was all gloomy because it reminded her of her favorite one she lost some time ago. I try to find common language and emotional setpoints between us but we often seem to be on opposite sides, like the ends of a magnetized bar. Perhaps that is our balance.

New year but old ways of communicating. I'll try again tomorrow.

#random writing

[valarywithawhy]

Check out how you can use gamification as speed bumps. Everyone doesn't move at the same speed and sometimes we need to help some learners to slow down a bit.

#gamification

[valarywithawhy]

The beauty of gamification is that there isn't one definition to rule them all. The full video is available here.

#gamification

[valarywithawhy]

It's Satsuma Time!! I can remember taking weekend drives with my family and buying these by the side of the road. If that sounds weird to you, you are not from the South. Think farmstand without the farm, and ... well, the stand.

Not sure what to do with them besides just peel them open (super easily) and having a great snack and burst of vitamin C. Here are some recipes that I would say are good options.

Cooking is a great way to explore your creativity by trying new things and new combinations. Taste and smell are the oldest senses, so munch up some amazingly sticky memories too.

#memories #practicecreativity

[valarywithawhy]

Now I have a new way for participants to interact during my workshops. Meet the fidget notebook. There will be training activities that utilize the cover too.

#workshop #swag #trainingmatters #fidget tools

[valarywithawhy]

A is for Abecedarian

The rabbit hole I spent too much time in today was exploring variations of abecedarian and how the idea might play into upcoming workshops and content. For those who are also today years old learning the word, it has to do with arranging things alphabetically. I learned of it while exploring a set of cards by Bonnie Smith Whitehouse called Kickstart Creativity: 50 Prompted Cards to Spark Inspiration. It is definitely a more cerebral and higher-vocabulary approach to sparking creativity. Here's a link if you want to learn more about it.

Aside from some religious texts, it is found at times in poetry and one of the examples I found quite charming was Catherine Pierce's Abecedarian for the Dangerous Animals. In it each line of the poem starts with the letter of the alphabet succeeding the previous line. In other examples, it is the first word of a stanza or all lines in a stanza start with one letter before moving onto the next.

I love the mix of language and playful rules in text. I have had a long-standing love affair with haiku for its structured creativity. But I digress. As I do. Because rabbit holes are largely about exploring and finding new connections and this one is yielding a treasure trove of ideas for activities to add to my workshops.

Aside from trying you hand at creating an abecedarian poem, you could also quickly brainstorm topics for 6 months of blog content by simply writing all of the letters of the alphabet down a sheet of paper (or typing them on a screen, or whatever) and then coming up with words that apply to your topic that start with each letter. Do it twice and you are done for the year.

Photo by Sigmund on Unsplash

#gamification #creativity #poetry