Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 344

Best worst best interview ever

This is the best worst interview ever.

Good Morning Sacramento news anchors interview actress Cara Delevingne about her upcoming film Paper Towns.

In the process, they refer to her as "Carla" instead of Cara, imply that she couldn't be bothered to read the book that the movie is based upon, laugh at her more sincere answers, and then make fun of her, both to her face and (like a bunch of jackass cowards) after the interview is over when she can no longer hear them.

Delevingne admittedly seems a little irritated from the get-go, but these asinine news anchors get exactly what they deserve. Their questions are stupid, their comments are stupid, and their decision to belittle her after she's off the air is disgusting and pathetic.  

I loved every minute of this video. 

Don't don't judge me.

This whole business about not judging people is nonsense. "I try not to judge" or "How dare you judge me!" are two of the most ridiculous statements that people say.   

We all judge.

If we didn't judge, we would embrace everyone exactly as the are and have an utterly random collection of friends, regardless of their personal values, interests, record of incarceration, personal hygiene, propensity to kick kittens, or ability to carry on a conversation without spitting.

We choose our friends carefully, and we do so by judging.

We do this all the time.

You're in a grocery store, rolling your cart to the cashiers. There are two cashiers ready to scan your groceries and accept payment. One of them is bright eyed and smiling. She looks ready to help. The other looks like a depressed troglodyte who wants to jump off a bridge but can't find a bridge high enough to do the job.

Who do you choose?

We spend our lives judging people, and it's okay. We are not obligated to be kind or friendly or even polite to every person in the world. 

Some people are rotten. Depressing. Disgusting. Chauvinistic. Smelly. Racist. Negative. Passive aggressive. Stupid. We are not required to spend time with people who we don't like, and we avoid doing so by judging what we can see and hear and drawing conclusions based upon our observations. 

So rather than advising people not to judge or admonishing them if they do, how about asking people to simply judge fairly.

Don't discount someone based upon a first impression. Don't assume that all obese people are lazy or all conservatives are uncaring or all old people are boring. Don't assume that the length of a woman's skirt or the number of tattoos on a man's arm says everything (or anything) about them. 

Judge fairly, with an open mind and an open heart. And if in doing so you discover that the person is a Red Sox loving, close-talking, inarticulate, racist heathen, by all means shun that person. Extricate yourself from their sphere of influence. Avoid them at all costs.

Just be fair. Make your judgments with as much information as you can gather. And don't publicize any negative opinions unless absolutely necessary. 

And stop telling people to stop judging. It's ridiculous.

A terrible break in routine

My wife took this photo yesterday morning. I love it so much. 

I'm in Brazil, which means that when Clara woke up, she couldn't go downstairs and see her Daddy, who is either writing, sweeping, or getting breakfast ready for her every morning. Not wanting to wake anyone up but with no one to talk to, she plopped herself down in the hallway to wait.  

I love this. It also breaks my heart. I'm one day into my week long trip and I can't wait to get home and see her. 

Whale watch was both perfect and perfectly disgusting.

My wife and I took the kids on a whale watch last week. It was the first whale watch ever for me and the kids.

We set sail out of Boston harbor and spent 90 minutes at sea before reaching the area off the tip of Cape Cod where we would find the whales.

In that time, the ocean managed to alleviate about half of the passengers of their previous meal, including my son. He took one bite of a melting chocolate bar and immediately vomited all over himself. 

Thankfully he's three years-old and can get away with being in a diaper and nothing else. Other people on board were not so lucky.   

Charlie also had good reason to be sick. Seas were three to five feet, and the chop was even worse. The bartender told me that she had been working on the boat for ten years and had never felt sick until that day.

So it was bad. My wife felt sick for most of the trip, and about half of the passengers were ill to one degree or another. There was a great deal of groaning throughout the ship, and the cleanup crews were working double time.  

But rough seas equates to excellent whale watching. In addition to watching the whales flap their fins and tails for more than an hour, we saw several humpbacks breach many times from about 100 yards away. They leapt from the water, doing barrel rolls as they crashed back down beneath the waves. 

We were told by several crew members that it was the best whale watching all season.

I actually had tears in my eyes as I watched the whales. Charlie was in my arms, pointing and laughing, watching these incredible animals on display in their natural environment. It was amazing.

As we neared the end of our hour with the whales, I took Charlie and moved to the bow, where a whale was leaping into the air. A minute later, Charlie discovered another meal somewhere in his gut and threw up all over me, and then, just to make the moment complete, threw up into my mouth as well.

A crew member watched it happen and was so disgusted that she had to turn away. 

Here's the thing:

I didn't care all that much. I handed Charlie off to my nearly sick wife for a minor cleanup (since most of the mess was on me) and retired to the restroom, where I removed all of my clothing, washed it in the sink, and put it back on. The clothes were wet and they stunk, but unlike Charlie, I would've looked strange if I had been only wearing my underwear.

But it was fine. I was with my son, and we saw whales, and a little vomit (or a hell of a lot of vomit) wasn't going to stop me.

One of the ladies sitting near the restrooms asked me how I could still be smiling after the horror show that she witnessed. 

I think a few things combined to allow me to retain my smile:

Perspective: Vomit is disgusting, but it's only vomit.My love for Charlie: I will never forget the look on his face when he saw that first whale.Patience: I can put up with a lot.Recognition: I had just witnessed something incredible. 

I didn't tell the lady all that. I just told her that I was tough as nails. And maybe I was.

But I think it was simply my refusal to let a minor, albeit disgusting, bump in the road spoil my day.

Can someone please explain these bumper stickers to me?

Our babysitter is making me look like a bad parent

Worst TEDx luck ever

I have spoken at four TEDx conferences over the past three years.

None have turned out exactly as I had hope. 

In 2013, I delivered a talk at TEDx Litchfield called "Speak Less. Expect More." The talk actually went extremely well. A representative from TED told me that he loved it and thought it had a chance on getting on the TED channel. Then we discovered that the sound on the recording of the talk was compromised. You can understand what I'm saying, but it ain't easy.

That same year, I spoke at a TEDx Western Connecticut State University on the topic of personal productivity. Once again, the talk went very well. I was excited to see the results.

The organizers - all college students - never posted any of the videos to the TEDx site. They posted photos to a Flickr album, though. 

Not really the same at all.

In 2014 I delivered a talk entitled "Say Yes" at TEDx Somerville. This talk also went well, and the organizers were tremendous in their preparation and execution. Even the recording of the talk is solid. But the timer on stage was incorrectly set for 9 minutes (my originally allotted amount of time) instead of the revised 15 minutes that I had been assigned, and since a TED Talk can never exceed 18 minutes, I suddenly had no way of judging how long I was speaking or if I was even supposed to be speaking for 15 minutes.

I should've waited. Asked for the timer to be set properly. Taken a moment to ensure that everything was ready before I opened my mouth. I didn't. 

You may watch this talk and see nothing amiss, but when I watch the recording, I see myself rushing through sections, dropping entire sections out of the talk, and generally disengaged with the material. I was so consumed with the mental gymnastics required to change the content of the talk mid-speech that it wasn't the performance that it could've been.  

It wasn't a bad talk by any stretch of the imagination. I've received a great deal of positive feedback as a result of the talk and the subsequent video.

But it wasn't exactly what I wanted.

This year I spoke at TEDxBU on the topic of education. Once again, the talk went extremely well. I heard from many people in the days following the talk, telling me how much it meant to them. But when the video of the talk was released a couple weeks ago, I learned that the first minute of the talk was lost due to technical malfunctions and one of the cameras was not running at all. The video looks terrible, and the loss of the first minute makes the rest of the talk a mess. I couldn't bring myself to even watch the whole thing.

I'm currently being considered for two TEDx Talks in 2016. 

All I want is an opportunity to speak and end up with a quality recording of the talk that I had originally planned on delivering.

I never thought a goal like this would be so damn hard to achieve.

Productivity tip: 14 Reasons Why People Cannot or Will Not Delegate Responsibilities

One of the secrets to my productivity success is delegation. I am a delegation junkie. Whenever possible, I assign tasks and responsibilities originally assigned to me onto others.

In no place does this happen more than the classroom. 

If you ask my former students, they will tell you that as a teacher, my goal is to do nothing. I dream of the day when I can sit at my desk, feet propped up, reading a book, while the classroom bursts with activity and learning around me.    

In the classroom, I delegate responsibilities to my students at a rate that astounds people. There is almost nothing that I will not allow my students to do, including teaching my lessons whenever possible. My students take full and complete ownership of the classroom, whether they like it or not, and as a result, they possess great ownership of their learning. 

I also know many people who cannot or will not delegate responsibilities onto others. They are either ineffective or unwilling to delegate work. The reasons that people cannot or will not delegate are varied, but I believe that they come down to these 14 reasons:

They possess an unwavering belief in "one right way."They cannot accept any less than 100% of their expectations being met. They lack faith in the capacity of others. They fail to understand the importance of autonomy when delegating responsibilities. They fail to recognize the value of an initial investment of time in future productivity. They do not plan ahead.They do not maintain a to-do list (mentally or physically). They cannot think open-endedly. They are ineffective teachers. They value work over results. They view a reduction in their work load as a threat to their ego or self worth. They fear failure.They are overly attached to habit or routine. They do not follow up on the delegated in productive and inspiring ways.

The three most confident words in the English language

I am never more impressed with someone than when I hear them say this simple, three word sentence:

"I don't know."

It should be an easy thing to say. Three one syllable words that we all know by the time we are three years old. 

And based upon the vast amount of information available in this world, the enormous number of skills that human beings have mastered, the vast amount of mysteries still in need of explanation, and our own personal and biological limitations, it's a sentence that should be said often.

There is a lot that we don't know, both individually and collectively. 

We don't know a lot of the time. 

And yet "I don't know" is like poison to so many people. Again and again, I listen to people leap into verbal gymnastics in an attempt to avoid the sentence, "I don't know."

They guess. They hypothesis. They conjecture. They make stuff up. They feign expertise. They change the subject. They ask rhetorical questions. They delay. They postpone.

It makes no sense. 

"I don't know" is confidence.

"I don't know" says: "I know a lot. I kick ass in many facets of my life, but in this particular area, I haven't a clue, and that is okay."

Single use restrooms in all public venues must be made unisex because not doing so is stupid.

I would like to enact the following policy immediately:

All public locations with single use restrooms will hereby remove their male and female signs immediately, thus making both restrooms unisex.

There is absolutely no reason for single use restrooms to differentiate between male and female occupants. Not only will this make restroom availability more equitable amongst men and women, but for transgender people, this will make life a hell of a lot easier in many places. 

This does not solve all of the problems related to the struggles that transgendered individuals face with larger, multi-use public restrooms, but it's a start. And frankly, it's something that should have been done long ago.   

In fact, in some places, patrons have taken and stand and instituted this policy on their own. It is not uncommon for the female patrons at The Bitter End - a bar in New York where I frequently tell stories for The Moth - to simply begin using the single use men's room when the women's line is exceedingly long and the line to the men's room is nonexistent. 

So do me a favor:

Go forth and help me enact this policy. Forward this blog post to restaurant owners, museums, Turkish baths, municipalities, and any other public venue that has single use restrooms. Tell the owners and managers of these locations about this new policy when you frequent their establishments. 

This is one of those no-brainer, simple-to-accomplish acts that will improve the world in a small but significant way. Let's make it happen.