Fernando Gros's Blog, page 13

Make A Map Seasonal Theme

I’ve moved around a bit. I’ve called 16 houses and apartments home since I became an adult. In six countries. That’s a lot of packing, unpacking, and trying to feel at home in new neighbourhoods.

One thing I like to do, a way to locate myself in a new place, is to draw a map.

I don’t mean copy a map, from a book or website. I mean take a piece of blank paper and try to draw a map from memory. Name what you know. Leave blank what you don’t. And see what you end up with.

Why not try it now? Take a moment and sketch your neighbourhood. Fill in only the places you can remember. Leave blank anything you’re unsure about.

It won’t look like a “proper” map. There’ll be all sorts of “mistakes.” That’s sort of the point. Your map will highlight the things that matter to you.

On my map a lot of nearby streets have no names. But all the local cafes are clearly marked. I can locate only one or two bus stops. But every pond and prominent tree in the local park is accurately located.

Of course there are accurate maps. A remarkable amount of craft and science goes into making them. Those aren’t the kind of maps I’m thinking about.

Maps can also be a way of describing how we experience the world. That’s why my map (and probably yours as well) has errors and omissions. Why remember the names of streets we never walk down?

These personal maps capture the slice of reality we hold in our imagination. The world as it activates our senses and captures our attention. That’s why, with Imagination as my yearly theme, I’ve decided to take the seasonal theme of Map-Making.

Personal Maps As Meaning-Making

Last year I took an online workshop in data visualisation with the brilliant Valentina D’Efilippo. IL4 One exercise was to draw a map of the world, freehand and from memory. Then use that map to represent two sets of data of personal interest.

One student used their map to show where the books they’d read during the pandemic were set and and where the authors came from. Another showed the cuisines of the world they’d tried and the ones they wanted to explore.

For mine, I decided to show places I’d lived, how long I’d lived there, and whether I learnt the local language. Yes, that’s three data points. I know, I know, immigrant overachiever syndrome.

There’s a common assumption in expat circles that one way to minimise culture shock and increase your sense of belonging is to learn the local language. I tend to believe this as well.

But my map suggested something different. There were places where I didn’t learn the local language but felt a sense of belonging, like Hong Kong, and others where I knew the language but struggled with terrible culture shock, like the UK.

Drawing the map helped me understand the experience.

Maps And Experience

It’s common in business, design, and programming to talk about mapping customer experience. This is important because the experience someone has using an app or website isn’t always what the creators hope it will be. Just because it seems easy to use to you, as the creator of a product, doesn’t mean it will be easy for its users.

This isn’t a new idea. Retailers have long mapped the way in which customers travel through shops and supermarkets. That’s influenced the way stores are designed and where advertisements and items are placed.

It’s fascinating to map your own experience and work in a similar way.

See how well you can draw a map, a plan view, of your home. Can you remember where all the power points are? Or correctly label what’s in all the cupboards and drawers?

Mapping the way you work is also fascinating. Not just your physical space, but digtial spaces as well. How do you move from one app or site to another?

And of course there’s mind-maps as well.

There are all sort of aspects of our daily lives we could map out.

The Philosophy Of Personal Map Making

Why do this? Because maps don’t just show us our reality. They make us question it. What can we see, what’s missing, what’s left to explore. And how we can explain it all.

Engaging the imagination to question and explore our current reality feels urgent right now.

The post Make A Map Seasonal Theme appeared first on Fernando Gros.

Clubhouse And The Future Of Social Audio

For the past few weeks I’ve been exploring Clubhouse.

In some ways Clubhouse feels similar to other social media platforms. But it’s audio-based. There’s no direct messages, no photos, no text apart from bios and descriptions of events. You listen. You talk. And then you listen some more.

Audio plays a role in other social media platforms; usually alongside video on Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. SoundCloud added some social media features to music sharing.

But Clubhouse makes live, real-time conversation possible among many users. It’s like social media radio. And the experience is surprisingly compelling.

The Social Audio Experience

Clubhouse feels familiar at first. You create a profile, follow people, and people follow you. But there’s no feed or timeline, as on Instagram or Twitter. Instead you see what Clubhouse calls the hallway. This is a list of rooms or spaces where conversations happen, some that are live and a few that are coming up soon. You can also check if the people you follow are online, and what rooms they might be in. And you can start or schedule your own rooms as well.

Some rooms are small, maybe a handful of folk, and some are huge, as in thousands of people. There could be a lot of people talking, maybe a panel taking questions, or it might be a simple interview. Some rooms have a musician or DJ performing to a listening audience.

Once you select a room you see a page with lots of circular avatars for all the people listening to that conversation.

Each user will be in one of three sections. The first is called the stage. That’s the people speaking and moderating the room.

Then there’s a section with listeners who are followed by the people on stage. It’s a bit like a VIP zone. And then a final section for everyone else.

You can mute and unmute yourself. Or raise a virtual hand to ask a question. And of course leave the room. Sometimes the features, like muting and hand-raising, are controlled by the moderators. All of which will be familiar to anyone who has used apps like Zoom or attended live webinars.

What’s interesting isn’t the tech but the way it seems to make people behave.

The Intimacy Of Voice

It’s striking how hospitable and respectful people are on Clubhouse. Hearing people’s voices feels more intimate than reading their words or seeing images. It slows down the exchange. It adds context. And it reminds you there’s a person behind the ideas and stories.

Years ago I wrote about how online forums can become so full of conflict. Any small comment could be taken out of context. The reply could be paragraph after paragraph of relentless vitriol. All totally out of proportion to whatever it was that was said. This is something we’ve increasingly seen take over forms of social media.

Clubhouse users seem well aware of this problem. This is a culture that, for now, prizes authenticity and kindness. It’s remarkable how generous many of the rooms are. It’s helped by a constant conversation that reinforces this culture of allowing people to speak and expecting courtesy. And a sign-up process that makes sure all users are verified.

But, as anyone who’s been yelled at over the phone will remember, the presence of voices is no guarantee of civility.

So far, Clubhouse is small. And spectacularly diverse. This is part of what makes it feel so different and fresh. It’s reminiscent of the early days of Twitter, when that young platform changed from being solely tech-focused to a place popular with creatives and people who worked in media.

Clubhouse now, like Twitter then, is a place to meet people and have interesting conversations.

The Social Audio Space

Right now clubhouse is growing fast. It’s still invitation-only but in just a few weeks it’s expanded to many new territories. How it will cope with an influx of new users, or competition from other apps, remains to be seen.

Spaces, Twitter’s answer to Clubhouse, is already in beta. It promises many of the same features. And because it’s built on Twitter’s platform and social graph it has the potential to be a lot more dynamic and immediate for Twitter users.

And there are already rumours that Facebook might be interested in either buying Clubhouse or rolling out its own version, maybe added to Instagram or WhatsApp.

It seems clear that social audio has arrived. I’m already part of a weekly panel discussing SciFi films on Clubhouse. And I’m experimenting with using the platform to share live music as well.

As long as we’re living with the pandemic, audio is a nice change from the pressure of being on video, while still feeling connected to other people.

I’m not sure if Clubhouse will succeed in making social audio the next big thing. It could be that social audio just becomes a feature we use in an existing platform. The list of apps and platforms that once felt vital but are now forgotten is long. Does anyone remember Meerkat for example, the video-sharing platform that once looked set to take over the internet?

Whatever happens I love hearing people’s voices, hearing the authenticity in their stories, and the kindness when listeners hold a space for those stories and reply with gratitude. Social audio feels like something we need right now.

The post Clubhouse And The Future Of Social Audio appeared first on Fernando Gros.

The Future Of Social Audio

For the past few weeks I’ve been exploring Clubhouse.

In some ways Clubhouse feels similar to other social media platforms. But it’s audio-based. There’s no direct messages, no photos, no text apart from bios and descriptions of events. You listen. You talk. And then you listen some more.

Audio plays a role in other social media platforms; usually alongside video on Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. SoundCloud added some social media features to music sharing.

But Clubhouse makes live, real-time conversation possible among many users. It’s like social media radio. And the experience is surprisingly compelling.

The Social Audio Experience

Clubhouse feels familiar at first. You create a profile, follow people, and people follow you. But there’s no feed or timeline, as on Instagram or Twitter. Instead you see what Clubhouse calls the hallway. This is a list of rooms or spaces where conversations happen, some that are live and a few that are coming up soon. You can also check if the people you follow are online, and what rooms they might be in. And you can start or schedule your own rooms as well.

Some rooms are small, maybe a handful of folk, and some are huge, as in thousands of people. There could be a lot of people talking, maybe a panel taking questions, or it might be a simple interview. Some rooms have a musician or DJ performing to a listening audience.

Once you select a room you see a page with lots of circular avatars for all the people listening to that conversation.

Each user will be in one of three sections. The first is called the stage. That’s the people speaking and moderating the room.

Then there’s a section with listeners who are followed by the people on stage. It’s a bit like a VIP zone. And then a final section for everyone else.

You can mute and unmute yourself. Or raise a virtual hand to ask a question. And of course leave the room. Sometimes the features, like muting and hand-raising, are controlled by the moderators. All of which will be familiar to anyone who has used apps like Zoom or attended live webinars.

What’s interesting isn’t the tech but the way it seems to make people behave.

The Intimacy Of Voice

It’s striking how hospitable and respectful people are on Clubhouse. Hearing people’s voices feels more intimate than reading their words or seeing images. It slows down the exchange. It adds context. And it reminds you there’s a person behind the ideas and stories.

Years ago I wrote about how online forums can become so full of conflict. Any small comment could be taken out of context. The reply could be paragraph after paragraph of relentless vitriol. All totally out of proportion to whatever it was that was said. This is something we’ve increasingly seen take over forms of social media.

Clubhouse users seem well aware of this problem. This is a culture that, for now, prizes authenticity and kindness. It’s remarkable how generous many of the rooms are. It’s helped by a constant conversation that reinforces this culture of allowing people to speak and expecting courtesy. And a sign-up process that makes sure all users are verified.

But, as anyone who’s been yelled at over the phone will remember, the presence of voices is no guarantee of civility.

So far, Clubhouse is small. And spectacularly diverse. This is part of what makes it feel so different and fresh. It’s reminiscent of the early days of Twitter, when that young platform changed from being solely tech-focused to a place popular with creatives and people who worked in media.

Clubhouse now, like Twitter then, is a place to meet people and have interesting conversations.

The Social Audio Space

Right now clubhouse is growing fast. It’s still invitation-only but in just a few weeks it’s expanded to many new territories. How it will cope with an influx of new users, or competition from other apps, remains to be seen.

Spaces, Twitter’s answer to Clubhouse, is already in beta. It promises many of the same features. And because it’s built on Twitter’s platform and social graph it has the potential to be a lot more dynamic and immediate for Twitter users.

And there are already rumours that Facebook might be interested in either buying Clubhouse or rolling out its own version, maybe added to Instagram or WhatsApp.

It seems clear that social audio has arrived. I’m already part of a weekly panel discussing SciFi films on Clubhouse. And I’m experimenting with using the platform to share live music as well.

As long as we’re living with the pandemic, audio is a nice change from the pressure of being on video, while still feeling connected to other people.

I’m not sure if Clubhouse will succeed in making social audio the next big thing. It could be that social audio just becomes a feature we use in an existing platform. The list of apps and platforms that once felt vital but are now forgotten is long. Does anyone remember Meerkat for example, the video-sharing platform that once looked set to take over the internet?

Whatever happens I love hearing people’s voices, hearing the authenticity in their stories, and the kindness when listeners hold a space for those stories and reply with gratitude. Social audio feels like something we need right now.

The post The Future Of Social Audio appeared first on Fernando Gros.

It’s Not Easy

I’m trying. Every day. But the words haven’t been flowing.

It isn’t writer’s block. I’m not short of ideas. I’m not scared of the words. I just, kind of, don’t care.

Last year was productive. I wrote 50 blogposts. That’s a lot for me. Enough to fill a book.

Then January messed with me. The grey English weather. The constant sound of ambulances. The ever-rising daily death tolls. And the looming anniversaries: a year since my last visit to a gallery, or cinema, or cafe. And a year since I went into isolation here in London.

I hear a lot of people talking as if we are getting close to the end of the pandemic. If anything, we’re getting close to the middle.

Here in the UK, people have been dying at the rate of a thousand a day for weeks now. The Super Bowl could become another super spreader event as people gathered in homes to watch the game in the US. And, while some countries are proceeding swiftly with vaccination programmes, many other countries haven’t started yet or don’t have adequate plans to vaccinate their people.

If we listen to the experts, the picture is pretty clear. We’ve still got a way to go. We haven’t started the end of this. We’re in Act 3 of a five-act play.

Lots of people have noticed odd effects of living though this pandemic. Weird dreams or trouble sleeping are some of them. For me, there was a very strange side effect: nostalgia.

The idea entered my head to buy a new guitar. When I moved to London, most of my studio gear went into storage. Including almost all my guitars. I kept my most versatile guitar with me. But it wasn’t right for the musical ideas I was having, and it’s been so long since I bought a guitar anyway. So I started looking online.

There’s a renaissance in the kind of guitars I grew up playing. Bright colour schemes, heavy customizations, even fake aging to make them look like they’ve been played onstage for 30 years. I fell into this pit of nostalgia, tempted by the familiarity of these instruments, and I almost bought one. It just felt comforting.

This looking backwards, though, isn’t me. It runs counter to my natural energy. The thing is back when I was young, playing those kinds of guitars, modifying and customizing them, I wasn’t looking backwards. I was looking forwards. Being future-oriented gave me creative energy back then and ever since.

But throughout this pandemic, it’s felt hard to see the future. Every day my devices remind me of cool things I did on this day in years past. But I’m struggling to create new memories. Nothing makes a photo I take this week feel different to one from last week or last month, or six months ago.

People talk about returning to normal soon. It just makes me angry. The old normal wasn’t that great. It was full of racism and division, misogyny and prejudice, economic injustice and a looming ecological disaster. Going back to that normal feels like a waste of everything we’ve gone through, the suffering and doubt, the questioning and rethinking.

To write this, I’ve retreated to the shed at the end of our small yard. It’s the place that became my wife’s work-from-home office. Now, on a Saturday night, I’m holed up here, listening to the rain on the tin roof as I write these words. I want to focus on the sound of each drop. Like grains of rice poured out on a kitchen counter. But there’s a noise in my head. Like static. And then another sound, a passing ambulance.

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We’re All Content Creators Now

Fire up the ring light. Check the microphone and video settings. Make sure it all looks good on screen. Maybe tidy up the room a little, so it looks good on screen. Going live in 3, 2, 1.

Of course, I’m describing the new reality for millions of people who now regularly work from home. If it sounded like the setup for a YouTuber or live streamer, then that makes sense. Because we’re all content creators now.

Back when I left high school, there were certain skills that we take for granted these days. Formatting some interesting text and graphics and printing it out was called desktop publishing. If you wanted to project words onto a big screen so everyone in the room could see them, you used an overhead projector. But anything fancier – with colours, for example – required expensive, professionally produced slides. Even creating spreadsheets was the sort of thing that required training.

Every decade we’ve seen the ability to use technologies go from being a bonus skill to an assumed item on your CV. Typing, data entry, and presenting information on the web were specialist skills once. Now they are daily life for anyone with an Instagram account.

Now a new skill is assumed: content creation.

How We All Became Content Creators

Video conferencing has been around for a long time, whether it’s the Zoom call at work or Facetime and Skype for personal use. But the whole area exploded in 2020. Live video went from a thing we sometimes did to a way of life. We took to cameras and screens in a way we never had before.

The year 2020 was when office workers and educators discovered ring lights and good quality microphones. Just as there was a rush on office chairs and monitors as people built home offices, there was a surge in demand for lighting panels and high-definition streaming cameras.

The perfect home office suddenly became a lot more like the den of a live streamer or YouTuber. Because we are all content creators now.

Content Creation As A Core Work Skill

The cost of creating video has suddenly gone down, and the expectations around video have changed. Video no longer requires a team or professionals to produce. Livestreams are being saved and reused. People are recording at their desks and in their homes. And in many jobs, agility around performing on video is a requisite.

This has a bunch of implications for the way we work.

Workers are being forced to adjust their comfort levels. C-suite executives who used to appear only in polished studio settings now post from home offices. Workers who might’ve been used to a degree of anonymity now have to be on screen. And videos that were once produced as long-lasting artifacts are now disposable. It’s a bit like the way the office memo went from the work of many (typist, typesetter, printer) to the work of one via email.

But are we ready for this proliferation of video? Our inboxes never really adjusted to the explosion of email traffic. What’s going to happen when the number of videos we need to watch goes up?

In the arts, the role of video also accelerated in 2020. For many musicians, live-stream concerts became the way to survive. The camera’s place in the music and rehearsal space is permanent now.

The Challenge Of Universal Content Creation

All this presents a parallel set of challenges. To thrive in a video-forward world, we need to develop new skills, or enhance the ones we have. And those of us who teach or work with younger people need to encourage the mastery of video skills. Yes, a lot of learning is happening online right now. But with video, there’s a big difference between coping and thriving.

In the words of my favorite Veggie Tales episode, “The Future Is Now”. It’s time we figure out how to master video, because seeing ourselves on screen is not a trend that will be reversed anytime soon.

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Habit Tracking In 2021

One of the most popular articles I’ve written is a 2018 post on Marshall Goldsmith’s approach to habit tracking. I explained his system of daily questions and the app I used to implement it. But I don’t use either anymore. In fact, during the tumultuous and unprecedented year of 2020, my approach to habit tracking went through a tumultuous and unprecedented series of revisions. So, it feels like time to explain the changes, why I’ve made them, and some things you might want to consider as you try to track your changes.

My Habit Tracking In 2021

For 2021, I’m committed to tracking 5 habits: sleep, eating, movement, using character strengths, and WOOP. I’ll explain these further in a moment. But for now, it’s worth noting that this is fewer than I’ve normally tracked in the past. Last year, I tracked 8. When I wrote about the Goldsmith system, it was 7. Sometimes, it was more than 10.

Making a long list of habits feels virtuous. But it’s anxiety inducing. And not all habits are equal. I can go two days without playing guitar or reading a book and still be OK. The same isn’t true for two days without good sleep.

So, I’m tracking a small number of important habits – using paper. It’s something I spend a few seconds doing at the end of each day. I use the five little boxes at the top of each page in my Hobonichi Techo. And the graph paper at the back to track the habits on the 25 × 52 graph double spread in the notes section. It’s a very simple setup.

Moving Away From Marshall Goldsmith

Acclaimed business coach Marshall Goldsmith has an interesting approach to habit tracking. Instead of tracking whether you did the habit, he suggests you track your effort. Maybe you didn’t exercise, but you made the time and got your workout gear ready. That’s different to not even trying.

Doing the habit is one thing but building the process and system to sustain the habit is another. Relying on willpower alone isn’t enough.

To implement this, Goldsmith suggests you track your habits by asking positive questions. Not “Did I exercise?” but “Did I try to exercise?” And that you give yourself a score out of ten for your effort. Finally, there are apps to help keep track of the score over time.

There were three things that didn’t work for me though. First, tracking with an app pulled me onto my iOS devices right at the time of day when I needed to start disconnecting. Second, the weightlessness of digital made it too easy to add too many habits.
Third, rating habits became a frustrating and anxiety-inducing process.

I like Goldsmith’s idea that you should focus on your effort more than on your success or failure. You can control your effort; you can’t control your circumstances. And your habits will be better sustained if you embed them in processes and not rely on willpower.

Goldsmith’s approach is born from his work as a management coach. It makes sense for people who have a lot of stakeholders and need to demonstrate their effort to be at their best.

But, if your main focus is personal accountability, then it makes sense to use a simpler approach. It’s too easy to get sucked into pointless questions like: “What does a 7 out of 10 effort look like?” Opt for questions where you can answer yes or no. I tried or I didn’t.

Identifying Master Habits

Some habits are more important than others. We can think of them as master habits. They make other habits more possible.

For example, I like to write every day. And play guitar. But both of those depend on sleeping well. If I don’t sleep well, then I’m not focussed enough in the mornings to write effectively. Or able to manage the day well enough to arrive in the evening chilled out enough to enjoy playing guitar.

There are three habits – sleep, exercise, and eating well – that are like this for me. When those are consistent, all sorts of other areas of life feel better. That’s why I track them. Even a couple of bad days seem to put the rest of life into a spin.

Then there are habits that seem to have an overarching impact on our mindset. I already wrote about using character strengths. The days I use them, especially during work, are powerful.

It’s like having a turbo boost on my creativity.

And then there’s WOOP, which stands for wish, outcome, obstacle, and plan. It’s an approach to goal setting that asks you not just to imagine a desired outcome, but also the obstacles you are likely to face and how you’ll overcome them. It’s been called “science’s #1 tool for habit change and goal achievement.” I love that it hardwires my theme for 2021, imagination, into the daily task of managing projects. And, WOOP makes a whole bunch of other habits, like having a growth mindset or gratitude, easier to maintain as well.

The Prospect Of Automation

When I think of the habits I’ve done well at establishing and sustaining in recent years, three stand out: daily mediation, regular sleep, and walking 10,000 steps a day. What all these have in common is that they’re tracked with very little effort from me. In fact, they are tracked automatically, even if I forget my daily habit check-in.

The Calm app records my daily meditations, as does the Apple Watch Breathe app, with time and frequency details collected in Apple Health. In the same way, my sleep is recorded by my Sleep Tracker and my various devices collect my daily steps.

If you’re interested in tracking your habits, here are a few ideas to consider. First, keep the list of habits you want to track short. You don’t want to create a long list that breeds anxiety, resentment, and resistance. Second, focus on the most important habits, the ones that beget other goods in your life. It might be tempting to track a lot of wellness habits, for example, but, perhaps, one or two that become daily and regular will have more impact.

Third, consider whether you need to track the habit forever or whether it’s OK to focus on it for just a season. It might be enough to embed a habit by tracking it for a few months. And you may find that the habit doesn’t need to be a daily thing.

Finally, where possible, automate your habit tracking. If you can offload the habit tracking to a device, then do so. We’re kind of terrible at scoring our efforts. So, it makes sense to offload the tracking when we can.

Being intentional about your habits is an essential part of living well. Our habits make us who we are. Cultivating the habits we want to have is an integral part of aligning our lives with our values. Tracking a well-curated list of habits is one of the best tools we have for maintaining our well-being.

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Imagination – Yearly Theme For 2021

I’m usually skiing in Japan this time of year. Deciding on my yearly theme is something I routinely do on the Shinkansen from Tokyo to Nagano or, like last year, on the mountains themselves.

But I’m not writing these words from the mountains. My cabin in the Japanese Alps is cold and dark. And I’m still in London, living in isolation, like I have since March 8, when the world’s borders closed and my universe got smaller.

Thinking about 2020, words and phrases come to mind I never want to hear again. “Unprecedented” is one. “Common sense” another.

For a yearly theme for 2021 I need a word that sums up what was missing in 2020 (see the article on how to choose a yearly theme for more on this). If one word could sum up 2020, it might be “compliance”. Compliance was the difference between countries that dealt well with the pandemic well and ones that didn’t. Establishing rules and policies means nothing if people don’t comply.

However, I’d already spent 10 months complying. Not just to UK standards, which are as fickle as Britain’s famously changeable weather, but to the best global standards. Compliance is already automatic.

It’s also tempting to focus too quickly on the end of the pandemic. But we’re not there yet. While next Christmas might be a lot better than this Christmas, summer 2021 will be more like summer 2020, than summer 2019.

We should remember something we learnt in 2020, if you don’t know how long the journey will be, then assume it will go on forever.

The Failure Of Imagination

I need a word that can do double duty. Something for a year that will begin in lockdown and with rates of death and new infections as high as at any time during the pandemic. A year that will add many weeks to the 42 I’ve already spent in isolation. Where the prospect of widespread vaccinations offers hope as long as people comply with the programme. And a year replete with economic insecurity, as countries struggle to cope with the consequences of the pandemic, and people try to find work, or rebuild their business.

I need a word for the best of times and the worst of times.

As the first wave of the pandemic receded and articles were written trying to explain what had happened, one word appeared in quotes from experts that seemed to sum up what went wrong.

Imagination.

Or more specifically, the failure of imagination. So many people, especially people in positions of power, failed to imagine how bad the pandemic might be, how quickly it could spread, how it might be transmitted, how crippling and deadly it could be, or how drastic the measures needed might be. We saw the failure of imagination every time someone said it was “just the flu” or prognosticated a date when it would soon be over, like by the summer, then Christmas or perhaps, next spring.

If only we’d had more imagination, we could’ve handled 2020 better. So, surely, we’ll need plenty of imagination in 2021 as well.

The Work Of Imagination

The words we choose as yearly themes should do work for us. Simple helped me simplify my life and Conviction helped me believe in myself more. Momentum kept me going when a year that was supposed to be full of adventure and travel turned into a year when the greatest challenge was not to get stuck. So, what is the work of Imagination?

Imagination is obviously connected to creativity. But it’s not a connection I’ve written about or explored in depth. I’ve mostly been interested in exploring the practices and processes of creativity. I want to explore the role of imagination in creativity, the way we engage our imagination when encountering art, how imagination encourages playfulness, and the way we use imagination to generate new ideas.

“The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.”

Albert Einstein

Imagination also defines the character of our cognitive architecture. Imagination is at work when we use our beliefs, experience, and knowledge to make sense of the world. This is especially the case for decision-making, moral reasoning and scientific discovery. Imagination is at work whenever we need to move from the abstract to the particular and practical.

Even our sense of humour depends on our imagination.

Imagination makes hope possible. In 2020, my natural optimism took a beating. It was hard to hold onto faith in humanity. Imagination is central to faith – faith in change, faith in progress, faith in a better world. When we set a goal, or start a project, we imagine a successful result, and that imagined outcome gives us the hope to keep going.

Imagination isn’t some fluffy nicety. Without imagination, science isn’t possible. Imagination is central to any attempt at public policy or personal self-improvement. Imagination drives change and fuels hope.

We Need Imagination Now More Than Ever

The year 2020 ended with a burst of excitement about vaccines that could end this pandemic. Today, I put my details into a website that predicts when you might get a vaccine, based on your age and other factors. It suggested I’d have to wait until early 2022.

It’s hard to imagine another year of limitations and restrictions will be like. But we have no alternative. We have to be brave enough to imagine a new normal because the old normal left us dangerously vulnerable to everything that went wrong in 2020.

For this we need imagination to be a torch to light the way in 2021.

“Normal was great for some people. It was terrible for a ton of other people. And we can do better…

…it is a moment in time that demands the full force of our imagination. We fail the challenge if all we do is go is back to like some earlier safe point.”

– Ed Yong

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How To Choose A Yearly Theme

The end of the year invites introspection. In amongst the gifts and celebrations, it’s natural to look back, and, as we start another year, we hope life will be better.

We set goals and make New Year’s resolutions. But so often, they don’t work. Abandoned, sometimes before the end of January, these resolutions prove to be useless as guideposts for the rest of the year. All they do is add to feelings of guilt and inadequacy.

There is another way: choosing a yearly theme.

The Yearly Theme Philosophy

Resolutions encourage you to look at life as a series of tests you pass or fail. That’s a tough path to walk, especially if you’re into the slow task of personal growth. The inevitable risk of failure could well encourage you to just give up.

A yearly theme is different. It isn’t a test. You don’t pass or fail. A yearly theme can adapt to changing circumstances because it can be explored in different ways.

Take the classic New Year’s resolution: going to the gym more often. It’s a nice idea. But what if a few weeks go by and you haven’t gone for a workout? Or your local gym shuts down? Are you tempted to give up? What happens to those hopes you tied to your gym-going resolution? Is anything going to get you closer to feeling or looking better, for example?

What if, instead of setting a resolution like going to the gym, you choose a theme like health? Health can express itself in a lot of different ways. Exercise in a gym is just one path to health. Eating well and getting enough sleep are a couple of alternatives. You might discover gyms don’t work for you, but some other exercise does. Maybe illness or injury changes your ability to exercise, and health takes on a whole different meaning. Maybe the path to health starts with a visit to the doctor instead of the gym.

Yearly Themes Are Growth-Oriented

Yearly themes are adaptable, creative, and holistic. As your circumstances and needs change, your yearly theme can be implemented in ways you might not have imagined at the start of the year.

New Year’s resolutions encourage you to look to the past and focus on what you don’t like about yourself. Failure causes you to doubt yourself and your potential to grow. Year after year of broken resolutions becomes a story that suggests you might not have the ability to grow.

Yearly themes help you embody a growth mindset. They’re future-oriented and invite you to develop multi-faceted strategies for becoming better. This helps keep your focus on the way your positive attributes are developing. Living with yearly themes encourages you to trust in your creativity and your ability to adapt to what life throws at you.

How To Choose A Yearly Theme

Trying to pick a clever word out of thin air is really hard. The way I do it is a little less arduous.

Take a piece of paper and draw three columns. In the first column, make a list of the things you felt were missing from this year, in your personal life, in your work, in the world around you. You’re looking for the gaps, the inadequacies, the limitations. Then, in the next column, make a list of things you want more of in the coming year. You’ll naturally start with things that were missing, but move your focus onto things that are already part of your life, but you want to experience more. Now draw some lines from one column to another. You’re trying to make connections and common themes. Explore the paths that can take you from one item to another.

As you do this, make a list in the third column of words that describe these connections, paths, and themes.

Think about the processes you might need to commit to in the coming year to make these things happen. Look for the nouns and verbs you’d use to explain those commitments. Focus on the ones that evoke strong feelings in you.

This is your list of potential yearly themes.

Now narrow down your list of potentials to a few words and live with them for a little while. It might be that your yearly theme isn’t even on the list yet but considering the short list finally gets you there. You’re looking for a word that works in three different ways:

Enigmatic – your yearly theme should be like a good question, the kind of thing that would make someone say, “Interesting. Tell me more.”

Extensive – your yearly theme should cover as many of those areas of life you wanted to address as possible and those paths you wanted to travel. It should address both your work life and your personal life.

Fructable – your yearly theme should be able to bear fruit. It should encourage your growth mindset and generate ideas and inspiration.

Putting This Into Practice

Focus, Luxury, and Style were all on the shortlist for my 2018 yearly theme. I chose Simple instead. Those other ideas all spoke to some aspect of life, but Simple encapsulated them all. Focus wasn’t enigmatic. Style wasn’t extensive enough. And Luxury wasn’t fructable. It was hard to see how it would generate interesting ideas.

For 2020, I was almost decided on Novation as my yearly theme. But again, it didn’t feel quite right. Then, at the start of a ski run, my instructor said, “Momentum is your friend.” And Momentum turned out to be a much better yearly theme.

A Few Yearly Theme Questions

Can you have more than one yearly theme? Yes. I don’t, but some people do. Some people have different themes for work and personal life. Some choose a sub-theme for a particular hobby or project.

Can you change your yearly theme? Yes. If it doesn’t work, probably you should change it. I was originally inspired to try yearly themes by the Cortex Podcast and one of the hosts changed his theme for 2020 because of the pandemic.

Can you use seasonal or monthly themes instead? Yes, you could. I use seasonal themes in conjunction with my yearly theme.  But they aren’t totally different. Changing your theme so often would fragment the power of sticking with a yearly theme.

Putting Your Yearly Theme To Work For You

Once you’ve chosen a yearly theme, remind yourself of it regularly. An easy way is to set a daily reminder in your calendar app. Just create a new all-day event and set it to repeat every day at a time you’re likely to see it (mine is set for 11am). If you use a paper calendar, you can write it at the top of each month or week. You could also incorporate it into your bullet journal if you use one,  or as a prompt in your journaling habit.

You don’t need to be thinking about your yearly theme all day every day. But it’s good to be reminded of it when you face a problem or need to make a decision. And it’s remarkable how using a yearly theme starts to give your choices a sense of flow and purpose.

If you’d like to dive into this some more, here are the themes I’ve chosen in recent years, along with explanations for why I chose each one.

2018 – Simple

2019 – Conviction

2020 – Momentum

The post How To Choose A Yearly Theme appeared first on Fernando Gros.

2020 Personal Review

In 2019, I flew 101,318 kilometres on 19 flights through 15 different airports. That’s more than 2.5 times around the world. In the first two and half months of 2020, I’d managed to cover 32,251 kilometres on 7 flights.

Then it all ground to a halt.

I flew back into London on March 7 and spent the weekend cancelling every upcoming commitment and meeting. Then I withdrew from courses and cancelled home renovations. I also fought with my wife because she was still going in to her office. There were cases there, but her company was waiting for advice from the government. And I talked to my daughter about her plans for when her college, inevitability, shut down.

It was clear this was going to be bad.

When I moved to Hong Kong in 2003, everyone I met had a story about SARS. They’d lived with the shock and uncertainty of a deadly, mysterious disease. Many had a plan for what to do when something similar happened again. Once news started to spread about this new coronavirus, I watched my friends in Hong Kong, and across East Asia, start to put their SARS plans into action, like flying to a remote location or hunkering down in situ.

By March 9, with my calendar now cleared, I went into isolation. Once all the groceries and other shopping were being delivered, I went out only to exercise and for essential medical needs. More than two weeks later, after the Australian government had issued a call for citizens to come home and started to close the borders, the government here in the UK started the first of what would be several poorly enforced and fragmentally observed lockdowns.

And that’s how I’ve lived for the rest of the year.

2020 The Year Of Momentum

My yearly theme for 2020 was momentum. Every year I set a theme. I had high hopes for the year of momentum. Then, less than a quarter of the way through, everything just stopped. What does momentum mean when we’re going nowhere?

It turns out, quite a lot.

This is the difference between choosing a theme and setting goals. By mid-March, most of my goals for 2020 were in the trash. I had planned to spend 2020 writing my next book by drawing on my experiences of travelling to all sorts of places around the world, like beaches, caves, deserts, mountaintops and rainforests. That wasn’t going to happen now.

Instead, I had to help my child adjust to a very disappointing version of the college experience she’d been looking forward to for years. And I had to help build a home studio for a spouse unaccustomed to working from home and who was now on Zoom video calls for nearly 10 hours a day.

But, the theme, the idea of momentum, was still there to help. We had to keep moving, keep going, keep trying. Momentum became about holding onto daily habits. I kept my mind moving by writing and learning. I kept my body moving by exercising and walking.

And I kept my soul moving because there was a future out there to look froward to.

The Two-Step Experience

Pretty soon, going online felt odd. People would write about how bored they were from spending all day every day on the sofa watching Netflix in their pyjamas and wondering what day it was.

But I didn’t have enough hours in the day. When I did find my way to the sofa, it was late in the evening and I was feeling kind of shattered from the day.

Then there were the well-meaning suggestions for everyone to focus all their extra time on hobbies. But I’ve never had a year where I had less time to devote to diversions than 2020. Some days it was all I could do to scratch out a few hundred words in between processing deliveries and cooking meals.

And this was before the disinformation really started to spread. Twitter was riddled with bots and freshly minted troll accounts spewing lies. “Masks don’t work” (they do). “The disease isn’t that deadly” (it is, and patients who don’t die suffer for a long time). “Lockdowns in countries that are handling the disease well (like New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Australia) will ruin their economies” (spookier alert: they didn’t).

It was pretty clear people were experiencing this pandemic in very different ways. If anything, as the year progressed, the gap widened.

When the pandemic first hit, I expected the biggest long-term changes would be around the way we work and learn, or maybe how health and travel services are offered. But it seems the biggest changes might be the way we do friendships. We’ve had a rare window into the morals of people around us. And many didn’t like what they saw in their conspiracy-peddling, COVID-denying, lockdown-breaking, mask-non-wearing friends and co-workers.

Everyone is looking froward to socialising again soon. But who gets invited where might be subject to significant revision.

A Few Words About Privilege

Before going on, I should address the small herd of elephants that are with me in the room as I write this. We took a big hit financially this year but not enough to effect the way we ate or where we lived. A lot of people have had a rougher ride.

I had the good fortune to be living through this close to a large park, which gave me the room to walk in safety. A lot of people were confined in small spaces for weeks without being able to get outside.

My plans were ruined, but I had a long history of creating my own routine and could adjust quickly. Many people were suddenly thrown into working from home or thrown out of being able to work at all.

My experience of living in Asia had prepared me for the radical disruptions that would shape the year. Quite a few people were taken by surprise by this thing that they thought was just a type of flu. They were unfamiliar with wearing masks or unable to fathom out how lockdowns and border restrictions could become a thing.

A Few Words About Location

Living in a global city like London seems glamorous. But there were many times this year when I looked with some envy at friends in places with more open space or where the pandemic was spreading less wildly.

Perhaps hardest of all was, I couldn’t act on my own disaster plan. I have a place in the Japanese Alps but couldn’t get back there once the borders had closed. I could’ve gone back to Australia, but not with my wife, whose company made it clear early on that she had to stay in the UK.

This year has left me wondering about where to live. I’ve always enjoyed big global cities. But take away the gigs and galleries, the cinemas and stadiums, and what’s left?

A Few Words About Mental Health

Given my past experiences, it was surprising to me that anxiety wasn’t a problem in 2020. There were potentially triggering moments – visiting the airport to pick up my daughter, moving things to and from the storage locker or going to the doctor for a check-up – all made worse by people’s reticence to wear masks or maintain social distancing. And, there was the constant sound of ambulances, all day and night, the soundtrack of the first weeks of the pandemic.

But those moments didn’t induce anxiety so much as a sudden and chronic bouts of tiredness, which passed after a good night’s sleep.

What was more persistent and eventually corrosive was a kind of angst. At first, things were OK. Everyone I loved was safe and healthy. It was going to take a while for countries that hadn’t seen SARS or MERS first-hand to get their head around public health warnings and social restrictions.

But, surely, they’d get it, act and then reduce the spread, so we could live safely until a vaccine became available.

As the summer wore on, it was clear, especially here in the UK, that things were going to go wrong. There were still a few restrictions but little compliance. I’d always wondered about those history book graphs of the Spanish flu in 1918 with its giant second wave and wondered why? How? Now, I was watching it happen.

Late afternoon walk in the park. As crowded as I’ve ever seen it. Full of sports teams, workout groups, large social gatherings.

Not a mask in sight.

Feeling like an alien, like someone beamed in from a parallel universe, or another moment in time.

— Fernando Gros (@fernandogros) September 1, 2020

Within a week of writing that tweet, the number of new daily cases in the UK had doubled. In a month, it’d gone up fivefold.

Maybe that’s why October was the worst month for me. I felt, exhausted, trapped and perpetually weary. It became clear my second year in London wasn’t going to be as wonderful as my second years in other places. I was making mistakes everywhere. My cooking was off. My writing was worse. And sometimes I couldn’t even understand what my loved ones were saying to me.

One of the most disappointing things about 2020 is the way mental health has been weaponised by Covid-deniers and anti-lockdown propagandists. That lockdowns are a mental health disaster is a catch phrase we’ve often heard, with little clarification over what it means or evidence to back it up.

Something corrosive has happened this year for many people, and I’m not sure it’s as simple as the cliche suggests. It might not be an acute problem that we will leave behind once lockdowns and this pandemic are behind us. It could be a deeper malaise, connected to things we’ve realised about the people around us and the societies we live in, which we’ll have to face for years to come.

A Very Few Words About Work

Normally, these yearly reviews are mostly about work. But you’re looking at my biggest work project of 2020. This is the 49th of what will be 50 articles for the year. It’s been my most productive blogging for a long time. Thankfully, both my readership and subscribers trebled this year.

Beyond that, the year was mostly about learning and maintenance. I did some great courses, like The Science of Well-Being, Building a Second Brain, and Notion Mastery. I rebuilt my research workflow and updated my photo catalogue system. And I workshopped a memoir manuscript.

Being Sanguine About 2021

My years normally finish with a flurry of activity. I’ve usually got a lot to finish or to prepare so I can pick up again in the new year. And I start every year with an ambitious list of projects.

But not now.

It’s like I’ve hiked the last miles of 2020 slowly with very little in my backpack. I’ve deleted everything on my “to watch” and “to read” lists. If I didn’t consume something in 2020, then when will I?

In my next article, I’ll reveal my theme for 2021 and the simple sketch I have for what I’ll be doing throughout the year. If you’ve chosen a theme for 2021 or have something you are looking to do in the year, then I’d love to hear from you. The more we can encourage each other at this time, the better.

Summing Up The Year Of Momentum

The other big difference between yearly themes and goals is that themes don’t toggle between success and failure. You either achieve goals or you don’t. But the value of a theme is in the way it helps you as you navigate through the year.

And momentum proved to be an extremely helpful theme.

There were so many moments in 2020 when it would’ve been easy to get stuck. Although I didn’t mention momentum in my articles, it’s clear that the desire to keep moving, not to let circumstances hold us back too much and to take care of ourselves was there in a lot of my best articles. Here’s a small sample,

Working From Home

Knolling Is The Perfect Activity For This Moment

How Friction Can Help

Manage Your Energy Not Your Time

Personality Isn’t Permanent

How To Create A Personal Kanban

Before Planning Begin

Advice For Living Well During This Pandemic

Time To Reclaim The Internet – And Our Minds

On Not Losing Hope

Thank you for taking the time to read this article and the others on this site. Hopefully they have brought you inspiration and fresh perspectives. We’ve finally made it to the end of 2020, and I hope we can continue together, into whatever 2021 has in store for us.

The post 2020 Personal Review appeared first on Fernando Gros.

Simulated Annealing And Using Randomness To Fuel Creativity

Creative ideas sometimes seem to come from nowhere. We describe this as being inspired. But inspiration is a fickle source of motivation. Chuck Close famously said, “Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work.”

The problem isn’t believing in inspiration. The problem is waiting for it. Waiting for inspiration before you try to create anything is a recipe for procrastination. If you work only when inspired then you’ll get very little done, take forever to finish anything, or give up thanks to the frustratingly slow process.

So we push past how we feel and just get on with the task of making and creating. Often, as Charles Baudelaire suggested, inspiration flows from doing the work.

But sometimes we get stuck. Maybe we feel like we’ve run out of ideas. Perhaps the problem we’ve taken on seems too difficult. Or maybe the only paths we can see ahead require more skill than we currently have. What do we do next?

The answer may come from a technique used in maths and programming – simulated annealing.

What Is Simulated Annealing?

Annealing is the process of heating and then cooling a metal to change its properties and make it more workable. It can make metal easier to shape or bend, or stabilise it after it has been worked or welded.

Simulated annealing takes this idea of heating and cooling and applies it to complex mathematical problems. It’s particularly useful for the kind of problems where you have a large number of possible answers and must find one that is optimally efficient.

Let’s say you have 20 parcels to deliver all across town today. You want to devise an efficient route. But you can’t spend all day working it out, and you don’t necessarily need the absolute best route. After all, traffic conditions might change during the day. You just want to be sure you’ve rejected all the worst routes and chosen one of the better ones.

Now imagine a bigger version of that problem. Maybe you have 20 trucks in a big city, and hundreds of parcels. Or 20 cities, each with 20 trucks. Or 20 cities in each of 20 countries. That’s the kind of problem simulated annealing can help to solve.

There’s three interesting features to these kinds of problems. They are complex. They must be solved promptly. And finding the perfect answer doesn’t matter – you need only to find a good enough answer and to avoid the bad ones.

Why This Matters For Creative Work

Consider the kind of problems we face with creative work. There’s a lot of options. It’s hard to choose between them. But some are clearly worse than others and should be avoided. The obstacles we face are sometimes unknown. The clock is ticking and we need to make something.

And we could procrastinate forever, trying to find the perfect answer.

Imagine you’re writing a book, or making a film, or recording an album. At the beginning you don’t know exactly the shape of your final product. There’s no single correct version you can imagine before you start. Its final form will be the result of the many decisions you will make along the way.

Choosing a path still matters. Some choices could be catastrophic. Others might invite delays or frustrations. Some could ensure you never finish.

In order to begin, you don’t need the best answer. You need an answer that’s good enough to get you going. This is important to remember whenever you feel stuck or overwhelmed.

Try A Little Randomness

So, how does simulated annealing work? Remember the heating and cooling process in metalwork? In simulated annealing the heat refers to throwing a lot of guesses at the problem without concern for their accuracy. The cooling starts when some of the guesses start to reveal a pattern.

The heating is fast and violent. The cooling is slower, taking longer to calmly identify the best guesses, especially as you start to see the better solutions.

As Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths put it in Algorithms to Live By,

“…Simulated Annealing: you should front-load randomness, rapidly cooling out of a totally random state, using ever less and less randomness as time goes on, lingering longest as you approach freezing.”

Start Anywhere – Focus Later

The cliche says “You have to start somewhere.” The lesson from simulated annealing is that when you’re stuck, you can start anywhere. The important thing is to start (we explored something similar in the article Before Planning Begin) Start, and the best alternatives will reveal themselves.

So, the next time you are stuck, try anything. Literally anything. Try lots of anything. Move quickly between different types of anything.

Then, as you start to get ideas that feel like they work, slow down. Be less random and focus more. Pick an idea that feels good enough and commit to it. Trust that your decision has led you out of the place where you were, and will lead you forward.

And keep going.

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