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Report From Take Your Daughter To Work Day

by on April 28, 2006 in Career, Creative, Work

One of the joys of introducing or reaquainting your child to your job and workplace is that you get to see it through their eyes. Often, they ask very simple questions that bust through our semi-conscious thinking and challenge those ideas that we just take for granted. And then, they add some much needed fun to what might normally be staid chores. Here are some of the things that Leah and I experienced together yesterday.

Some questions…

When is your lunch period over? I didn’t quite understand Leah’s initial questions about lunch and lunchtime until I probed a bit further. And then, the connection was made: kids in school have a very structured day. The lunch period is always at the same time and lasts for the same period of time…usually about 30 minutes. If you’re still eating or have a good chat with your friends and the teacher says “Lunch is over now,” then it’s time to go. It seemed pleasantly surprising for Leah when I answered, “Whenever we want it to be.” I did explain that I needed to be back in the office for a mid-afternoon meeting, but we had the freedom to decide how we spent our lunchtime period.

Do you have a substitute boss today? This question was really interesting and quite alarming. Our CEO is in Florida this week for a leadership training. When I told Leah that my boss was not in the office, she looked puzzled and wondered who would tell me what I needed to do. I replied that in our office, we all know our responsibilities and plan our work together. And no one needs to be here to supervise us to make sure we do our work and don’t create trouble. For Leah, I think she found it curious that I didn’t have someone telling me what to do, when to do it, and how to do it all the time.

Which raises for me several deeply troubling problems with our schools and mainstream pedagogical philosophy. I guess I always had problems with school when I was at that age and revisiting them as an adult and parent has reinforced my thinking that we can do better for our kids…but I wonder whether certain parts of our culture share this thinking. If we help our kids be more critical thinkers, what would happen to some of the current foundations of business and governance? Critical thinkers mean less compliant shoppers who want to know where their food comes from. Critical thinkers mean less “obedient” workers who do exactly what their organization demands. Critical thinkers mean less willing participants in a political system that encourages ever narrowing viewpoints. What if we helped our children see through the flimsy messages offered by pop media and experience a richer life?

Some cool things…

Watching mail go down the indoor mail chute. I’ve been told that many older office buildings have filled their old-timey mail chutes in due to them being fire hazards. Our building still has one and we’re on the 11th floor. Leah thought it would be cool to go halfway down and watch the mail fall through the glass enclosed chute. So we went down to the 6th floor and watched as our financial manager dropped some envelopes (containing all important bill payments). Man, those suckers moved fast as gravity took hold.

Leah also learned how to use a copier and a postage machine. And not just use, but learn how it all works. Our copier is very powerful and also very prone to misfeeds. So, we took it apart to get to the midfed paper.

She also got a peek at my daily commute which isn’t anything to cheer about. It’s long and she noted that if she had to do that every day, she would be unhappy. Which all begs for another blog post coming very soon.

If anyone else took a child to work with them yesterday, what was your experience? What did the child learn…and what did you learn?

The Greater Sin Is Not Dreaming Big Enough

by on April 22, 2006 in Career, Creative, Life

I’ve been meditating on a particular prayer that prefaces a sermon written by Davidson Loehr, a Unitarian Universalist minister in Austin, Texas. Through this prayer, I’m facing off with that great demon known to us as Playing-It-Safe. Davidson writes:

If we must fail, let us fail at high endeavors. Let us not fail to be mediocre when we could instead fail to be absolutely brilliant. Let us not fall short of being moderately compassionate. Let us rather fall short of being fully compassionate.Of all our failures in life, perhaps the saddest are those in which we failed even to try and serve the highest and noblest ideals.

It is a sin to fail at low aims. Not because we failed, but because we aimed too low.

But it is not a sin to fail at very high aims, like aiming for truth, justice, compassion and character. Because even our failure puts us into the company of the saints, the company of those who also believe that rising to our full humanity and rising to our full divinity may be the same rising.

Striving after low and mean ends is a boring sin, not worthy of us. Let us have greater ambition for our failures. Let us vow never to fail at anything that wasn’t noble and proud, never to settle for lower aspirations for ourselves, our lives, our country or our world.

We will all fail at some things. But let it not be a failure of vision, a failure of aspiration. If we must fail, let us fail at high endeavors, and then let our failures bless us – for they will.

Amen.

You can read the full sermon here.

The passionate idea of working toward great and noble ambitions in our lives offers both comfort and strength. When put into this context, we are free to set our mind and body toward the light we want to create. Even failure cannot touch us or our soul.

I think this prayer ties into Curt Rosengren’s recent post on an interdependence of dreams and actions. When we gather the courage to dream big things and then take action to follow our heart’s calling, we move beyond the small ideas of success and failure. These are often inaccurately measured based on someone else’s notion of the world. Instead, we journey on a path which is uniquely our own…where the endpoint is uncertain, but clearly a paradoxical place of excitement and solace.

Extended Play (04/23/06): My friend Garth at exploreplay has a great quote from Jon Krakauer’s book Into The Wild which really accentuates the power of following your sense of adventure. It starts: “So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism…” Visit exploreplay for the rest of the quote…you’ll be glad you did.

I Don’t Like RSS And Newsreaders

by on April 21, 2006 in Creative, Media

See, here’s the thing…most of us take great pride in creating an interesting, provocative, web experience through our blogs. But, if you only get your blog content from a newsreader, you miss the whole experience. It’s kinda like listening to your favorite band on AM radio…the sound is there, but it’s less than an optimal experience when you could listen to them live.

Case in point…I read Patti Digh’s 37 Days blog and it’s just fabulous. But I usually read it from my Rojo newsreader. So, today I go and read her latest post and it hits me that her content is just one aspect of the total 37 Days experience. The content might be the most important, but there’s other neat things to find there as well. The whole site personifies her whimsical and deeply soulful view of the world. I liked her mystery carrot award so much I gave myself one.

Guess all of this builds into a somwhat frustrating and confounding observation I have with blogging and blogreading. I’m thankful to have folks like you who read the stuff that tumbles out of my brain. And I’m inviting you to take a deeper look at my blog and the rest of Bailey WorkPlay if all you’ve ever experienced is through your Bloglines or other RSS reader.

And don’t start and end with just me…make an effort to actually visit the blogsites of people who you find fascinating. And let them know what you like. As blogging is a personal pursuit for all of us who take it playfully serious, it’s always nice to know that you’re loved not only for the content of your mind, but for your body as well.

Something For The Geek In All Of Us

by on March 29, 2006 in Creative

Wil Wheaton has an ant farm and it’s super cool. You’re probably asking how ‘ant farm’ and ‘super cool’ interact in the same sentence. Well, take a look at his post for today, i call the big one bitey (which is itself a funny riff on a Simpsons one-liner).

Need further proof? Seriously…check out his Flickr photos. Time to introduce the many splendors of our workaholic and very social insect cousins to my two girls.

Creativity Is An Act Of Courage

by on March 22, 2006 in Creative

Dave Gray at Communication Nation is conducting an experiment in facilitating an asynchonous conversation with Maish R. Nichani who writes the elearningpost blog. I’ve seen just a couple of attempts at creating an open, evolving dialogue like this on other blogs so it will be interesting to see what happens.

What’s particularly interesting are some of the initial comments from Maish about our learned lack of comfort with being uncomfortable. As someone with children just entering the U.S. educational system, his thoughts run parallel to my own – we either need to worrk to change the system (which is an uphill battle and frought with much despair) or change the way we help our kids (which is something specific that all parents have the power to do). Here’s Maish’s thoughts:

It’s one thing to be out of touch, it’s totally another to do something about it. In this day and age, success, I think, comes to those who are comfortable being uncomfortable or those who deliberately practice being uncomfortable. But many of us shy way from being out of touch. A few days ago I had a chat with a friend who runs creativity courses here and he signaled out the education system as the reason for this passive shyness. Right from the start we are told to draw on the lines and color inside the boxes and this conformity mindset has molded us into being passive receivers. But thanks to the Internet, there is hope.

So, let’s encourage our kids to draw outside the lines, wear clothes that don’t match, make messes, make mistakes, think really big things. Build their confidence to be active generators rather than mere passive receivers. And continue to listen and encourage them when an old, industrial-era teacher comes along to squash these better qualities. Because it will happen at some point either as a kid or as an adult. Creativity is an act of open disobedience against the norms. Creativity is an act of courage