Kourosh Dini's Blog, page 7

Up and Up and Up…

A toddler at play…

… building with blocks, up and up and up and…

Crash!

A giggle and a smile and a reach all wordlessly say, “I’ll do it again”…

Meanwhile, a vital confidence embeds in nerve, muscle, and being:

“I can build my world.”

One day, maybe we find ourselves cultivating our surroundings, physically, mentally, and interpersonally. Maybe we even do so such that our worlds support us in turn, feeding a continued play as well as the things we find meaningful for ourselves and our loved ones...

There’s No Difference Between Task and Appointments?!

Some see no difference between tasks and appointments:

“A task and an appointment… both need your time and your presence.”
– Work Clean, Dan Charnas, p56

To this end, many recommend scheduling some of your tasks. Some even go so far as to encourage scheduling all of your tasks.

For some, this can work very well. With a calendar, they pin a start and end time to the work at hand and engage. Others use the Pomodoro Technique, an often useful productivity technique to engaging work in 25 minute blo...

ADHD – Victims and Survivors

The 4th of July.

A lovely day for an argument.

Invited to a neighbor’s house for our requisite sausage and burger fiesta, resting in my post-prandial glow, along came a discussion of ADHD…

Is ADHD real?

It seems like everyone has it now. What symptom isn’t ADHD?

Isn’t it over-diagnosed?

And as wary as I am of my propensity to run roughshod over such conversations, I did so anyway.

My unsuspecting audience, perhaps now captive, heard me out as I dove into:

the clear evidence that such symptoms e...

A Visit and a Game

What’s the point of doing nothing?

An admittedly bold move, I’ve suggested that there’s an alternative unit to work called a Visit. I contrast it with the more typical measures of work such as those related to:

A piece of work itself (e.g. it’s goals, its completion,…) orClock time (e.g. 30 minutes, 3 days from now,…).

A Visit, in short, is about showing up to something with the full option to doing none of it. But how is it not a waste to do nothing?

To illustrate, I’ll describe a visit wher...

On the Word “Harmony”

The term “harmony” finds its way into many places.But I worry if its power has dissolved, diluted among commerce and culture.But a pause brings its beauty and power from whatever had once obscured it, never truly lost, patiently awaiting an observer, should we ever be ready.Hearing notes that sound good together…… what makes them sound good together?    Hills and valleys,          Waves sloshing and peaking through time,              Movements blending,                      hold...

“Maybe I Just Need Another List…”

“We’re out of milk.”

 

“Ding! There’s another message I gotta respond to…”

 

“There’s that darn bill again…”

Whether by interest or intrusion, **things** come to mind.

“But, I’m doing this thing now!”

Maybe if we ignore it, whatever it is will come back in just the right way so that we’d be able to do something about it, … later.

Or, in our better moments, we might wonder:

“How can I deliberately get this to come back to me?

And so we can create a signal of one sort or another such as:

Objects ...

“I’ll figure it out myself…”

Maybe they know what they’re talking about.

The teacher, the students, the presenter, the attendees, the guy running the zoom breakout rooms… they all seem to know what’s going on, nodding along in agreement.

But,

“I just don’t get it.”

Meanwhile, you might quietly stew in some sense of shame bubbling into daydreams, as you nod along with the rest of the room, not even realizing that you’re doing so.

Maybe you hope it will all come together later. But, it’s all to easy to check out. Distraction ...

When “Just Do Something” Paralyzes …

“Have I really just watched 5 episodes?”

or

“Clean this, pick up that, do the dishes, and oh yeah – the living room, …”

Restless waves can carry lost and frenetic feelings. Whether bingeing away or cleaning in a flurry, a subtle undertow may flow beneath without awareness.

With a pause, we might discover some underlying overwhelm, a worry that whatever decision we make will be a meaningless drop in the ocean.

Maybe a massive report awaits.

Maybe a crucial deadline creeps along.

Maybe your world ...

The Excellent Textbook

As a student, I’d look at the year’s textbook and easily feel awed by the amount of material. It would be all too easy to turn away, often not even realizing that I’d done so, happily enjoying a game, barely thinking of the work ahead.

But some textbooks were excellent. They’d draw me in.

Wherever I was, I felt I was getting somewhere. Or if I got lost, it seemed to have a way of saying,

“Hey, take a look back here. You may have missed something,”“Maybe this example could help?”

or maybe...

A Nameless Place

Dear Reader,

A fellow wandering mind shared a podcast episode in the Waves of Focus forums. The episode is:

– John Dickerson’s Notebooks: The Sneaky Pitfalls of the To-Do List

Dickerson defines productivity in several ways. But one of these resonated deeply with me – that of productivity as synonymous with craftsmanship. This is the subject of today’s newsletter.

– Kourosh

A Nameless Place

When practicing at the piano, I stumble. Quite often, really.

I press a few keys, feel through the sound, ...