Pontification on Thoughts

Poi, Fire = Fun

2007-10-07T18:46:00.000-07:00

Why Change? (yourself)

2007-08-15T20:03:00.001-07:00

My mom asked me today why I have changed so much from when I was a child. She teaches and coaches about personalities, and how to use that understanding to become more effective personally and professionally.

Call it your high school coach, only for life, not football.

I used to be shy, reserved, unmotivated. I was comfortable having the few friends I had, and was a specific personality, called high "S". But I knew about the other personalities from her teaching our family.

So why change?
I saw the benefits of the other personalities, and I wanted those benefits. But plenty of people say they want something, but do nothing. The change came from two factors. My mom, and the things our family learned from her studying personalities, and reading Stephen Coveys "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People".

If you like self help books, great. If you don't, you are either doing all the things in your life you want, do not like reading, or are not in a painful enough situation to change what you are currently doing.

Anyways, good book.

So mom and personalities. By learning about personalities, I saw that if I had big dreams for my life, I was going to have to get out of my comfort zone, and learn some new skills. To be CEO of Christopher Inc. I would have to try things that were not comfortable.

First Step
Learn what other successful people have done. What do they do on a daily basis? Why are they successful? So I read books about them.

Second Step
Try it. Fail miserably! If they were good networkers (Keith Ferrazi, Dale Carnege), they talked to people. They learned the art of small talk, and meeting strangers. So I did that, and sucked at it for a while. Now, I am not as sucky! The point of this is, just do it. Put yourself it uncomfortable circumstances, and learn the skills you want to have, to be the person you want to be.

Third Step
Learn some more, then try it, fail, then not be as bad as before.
This is where the reading books part comes in.

I used to know everything. I did not need self help books. I could hear their sales pitch before they said it. But I was not living what they suggested. It took getting over myself, and realizing that everyone has something they can teach me. I intuitively understand some things, but I can always learn and grow.

Now, I am addicted to learning new things, getting out of my comfort zone, and growing. It is a cycle for me now. Learn something new, try it, fail, try again, get better, then go learn something else new. Good times, good times.

Another interesting book

2007-07-01T23:36:00.000-07:00

I recently had a great conversation with a local inventor. Full disclosure, I was being interviewed for a position in her company. Nevertheless, a good conversation.

Out of that good conversation, came a good book recommendation. I interviewed on Friday, went from the office to the bookstore to pick it up, and now Sunday night am two thirds of the way through. Enough with the suspense, what is the name of the book! Not so fast(I do realize you could easily scroll down to the part where I tell you the name, but it would be more fun if you don't just yet, honest).

A book of mystery and intrigue.... nope.
What some would call "fun" reading.... nope.

It is about Starfish (that was a hint, google that if you dare, but still not enough to go on yet!)

But seriously, it was about organizations, and how really good ones have thrived without a figurehead at the helm. It is helping me to understand how Linux has come about, and what I want to do when I grow up. The subtext of the title states (nother hint coming) "The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations".

Now I disagree with the that subtext to some extent. The authors go on to clarify the roles that people play in these organizations, and there are leaders, they just do not look like the typical leader one would think of (one being a mythical person that thinks exactly what the majority thinks, or something silly like that) when one thinks of a leader.

Instead of leader, the authors look at one position in these groups that they studied, that they call the catalyst person. The catalyst helps the organization to adapt and change, is comfortable with ambiguity, make loose connections between people and ideas, and other interesting things. The one interesting thing, is that the hierarchical organization this person is in, does not always like the way the catalyst is stirring things up. I remember hearing of a Gorilla Award at the wheelchair manufacturing company Quickie. They gave the gorilla award to someone who was always advocating for positive change, and who was a pain to work with, or always rocked the boat, but absolutely necessary for the organization.

I have wanted to be a Gorilla for a while, but have not been able to articulate what it looked like, or why a company should have me. Who wants things to get stirred up, changed, the boat rocked (besides me).

Well, now that I have almost read all of...... gasp...

"The Starfish and the Spider" *releases breath that I have been holding the whole time*
I have a better understanding of what I believe are my natural talents. Making things messy, asking tough questions, pushing organizations, tools, resources to their furthest limit, and loving every second of it. I have written about it in the past, and I think I may have to devote a whole blog to chronicling people in recent and ancient past (before cellphones and beyond) that had these catalytic traits.

The Book, the book, get back to the book *voice in my head telling me what to do*
Ok... Fine... It is good. If you wondered why the Apache Indians, or the Apache servers did so well, back in the day, check it out. Even if you have never thought about those separate but similar stories, the book parallels many old organizations with current incarnations of "Leaderless Organizations" (think AA or Abolitionists for old, and Wikipedia or Napster for new).

Marketing Websites using Blogs

2007-07-01T00:54:00.001-07:00

Blog Carnivals are an interesting idea I stumbled upon recently. The following quote talks about what they are, but I really see them as a way to interact with the online community that is interested in that specific topic they have organized around, and a way to increase awareness of blogs and websites people may have on a particular subject.

clipped from blog.coldtobi.de

A blog carnival is a type of blog
event. It is similar to a magazine, in that it is dedicated to a
particular topic, and is published on a regular schedule, often weekly
or monthly. Each edition of a blog carnival is in the form of a blog
article that contains permalinks links to other blog articles on the particular topic.
There are many variations, but typically, someone who wants to
organize a carnival posts details of the theme or topic to their blog,
and asks readers to submit relevant articles for inclusion in an
upcoming edition. The host then collects links to these submissions,
edits and annotates them (often in very creative ways), and publishes
the resulting round-up to his or her blog.

Many carnivals have a home page or principal organizer, who lines up
guest bloggers to host each edition. This means that the carnival
travels, appearing on a different blog each time.

(From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Non Profit Idea

2007-06-17T17:09:00.000-07:00

I love not having to recreate the wheel. I have been searching for what kind of business to start, that would have an impact on the community, but would also allow me to do the things I have a passion for doing (being around like minded people, playing on computers).

The answer to my dilema? Free Geek

Bitty Browser (iframes required)

In case you were curious, I am using Bitty Browser link to embed the web page of Free Geek into my blog.

So they take computers, use volunteers to take the donated computers apart, get the working parts out, recycle the bad parts, and all get to hang out and get better at computers.

There are individual value propositions that I could get into, but most anyone can see that it is a cool idea, with lots of benefits. Now the only problems will be getting the space to use, and setting up the non-profit organization. My goal is to partner with a club on campus called SIFE (Students In Free Enterprise) to market, organize, and ensure a large impact on the community (while making it a sustainable concept).

College Business Web Consultants

2007-06-07T14:02:00.000-07:00

You are a web guru, and want to build a profile, but you need projects, what do you do?

You are a graphics designer, need things to try out new graphics programs, and build your portfolio, what do you design?

You are an Entrepreneurship student, need graphics designers and website designers, but do not have the money to pay people, but need guys that know their stuff to give you advice, and create cool sites for you, what do you do?

Well, bring these groups together of course!!

I think it would be great to setup a "business" bringing these separate groups together for added benefit to all. The web and graphics guys get to see the business side of starting a company, whilst creating cool stuff for their portfolio, and the entrepreneurship students get a free website design, with the caveat of paying for the services rendered if they choose to launch their venture.

There is a greater benefit than just website development. The entrepreneurship students may need technical advice for their projects, or "experts" to go with them to meetings with advisers or potential investors to explain how some technology would work, or the time/cost commitment needed for x project.

Non-Profit Meets For-Profit, Cool!

2007-06-06T18:15:00.000-07:00

I want to change the world, but I want to make money also (provide for my family, have influence to do cool stuff). How do you create a socially responsible company, that really provides benefit, yet also becomes profitable?

Answer:

Bitty Browser (iframes required)

If you are familiar with what has been happening in the Linux world (I skim the surface of this with my rss reader), then you have heard of Ubuntu. There are plenty of sites that talk about Ubuntu, but I am looking at it from the way they have chosen to structure their company.

So from my understanding of it, there is a commercial side, Canonical, and a non-profit side, Ubuntu and others(Kbuntu, Edbuntu, Xbuntu).

Another cool company that has a similar business model, but kind of opposite, is SpikeSource. So it is good to see that there are companies out there that can use open source as a foundation of their business model (either building on it, or building it).

Social Networking

2007-03-14T12:41:00.001-07:00

Fortune cookie promotes social networking
Originally uploaded by BigBlue.

Social Networking

How Can we fit popular sites like Myspace and Facebook into the teaching curricula, and culture of school? I think the idea here is of a digital self. Online there are many aspects that define who your are perceived. On myspace you are the drunk college kid, flicker you are the artistic photographer, and Monster.com you are the perfect employee who lives to work. There is a kind of balance in "real life" how much information you give people access to, and how much you tell someone at one time. I think this same concept applies to a persons online digital self.
In business, a common form of communication is the business card. It has some information, but not everything. You could research more with that info, but it would take time. The same can be applied to the digital identity of a person or business. A business can have a my space page, and use that as a medium to communicate about their goals, vision, and the such. Or it could be brief with lots of flash but little content, begging the viewer to find another aspect of that businesses digital existence. Just like in real life, these are decisions students and teachers should be aware of, but will have to apply differently to each circumstance.

As these new technologies and means of communication, there will come a standard of what information is commonly provided, and in what way, just like the company, title, cell and email address, printed on that specific sized business card (who in the world thought of that size business card anyway?)

Building an "Online" company

2007-03-09T19:08:00.000-08:00

How do you build an "online" company? One where most of the workers call Starbucks, the office?

How do you have meetings?
What do you do if a laptop gets stolen?
Do you need face time?

I may or may not answer all of these questions. But they are interesting. Lets approach these backwards. From a brick and mortar company.

What would starbucks look like as an online company(more integrated into new tools, not digital cups of coffee). Their star partners(employees for those of you not up on the lingo) would blog about what it was like to work there. They would write comments about their favorite customers. It could be a door into deepining that 1 min a day conversation with those interesting artistic (or whatever) folks.

Maybe they would have a wiki for secret shopping excursions, and have people who know alot about coffee go in and do their snapshots (secret shoping) for the company, in exchange for a free cup of joe (you economists can ponder the principal agent problems of this, but it could work).

The key here is that it is user generated content, and categorization (more on the categorization in my tags post, and future folksonomies posts) of that content. It has the potential of a huge network of information, and a kind of grass roots marketing, while building the lifetime value of a customer by deepening the connections with those customers. It would also make recent new additions to the neighborhood (metephorical social "neighborhood", or whatever..... you know what I mean).

Internally there could be wikis for all kinds of stuff. Best practices of the coffee masters for how to make the best french press, repairmen sharing the latest problems and bootstrap solutions to fixing the latest brewer. By having the people "in the trenches" create and update the info, you always have current info. Sure there are problems, pr issues and whatnot, but that is where the corporate wiki could champion the good contributors, and discourage the bad ones (not sure what this all looks like yet, but who does?)

So none of those questions got answered, but I think going from what currently could work is a good start. How do you know what is on the other side of that mountain, unless you start writing erp, crm, charts and graphs of the best possible route..... I mean try and put two feet forward to climb that mountain?

Interesting Wiki Info

2007-03-02T21:16:00.000-08:00

I have thought about the time to adoption of wikis quite a bit recently (all those sleepless nights now have meaning). How long does a good idea take to be implemented by a large group of people? Or at least a sub group of people in say, one company?

There are many questions that pop into my head. How is the technology or tool modeled?(both by the upper management, and by direct reports of each level in the company) Is it (the tool, wiki, hammer, toy) really as user friendly as everybody says it is(ma by user friendly needs to ask the question, who is the intended user?). So these are good questions, but I found a website that is trying to answer some of these.

I frequent the blog Wikinomics, and they featured a site(If you have not guessed yet, it is the screen shot above).

The site is called Wikipatterns and it is exactly the kind of website I am finding useful these days. I am hoping it answers some of the questions about implementing a wiki, but even if it is not helpfull for me, at least it can serve as a sort of knowledge repository for me to refer people to(I love not having to reinvent the wheele, or wiki, or sliced something or other).

Text Book spawns Ideas

2007-03-02T17:08:00.000-08:00

I was reading in my management book ("Strategic Management, A Dynamic Perspective" Case 2) about a marketing director named David Ogilvy. I want to share a little about who he was, why he interested me, and several ideas that came to me from learning about him.

What interested me about David Ogilvy are how different he was from my understanding of his contemporaries. The book states that he was "Quirky".

He took pride in his agencies "Streak of orthodoxy". He once advised a young account executive, "develop your eccentricities early, and no one will think you are going senile later in life".
.... He also exhorted his staff to achieve brilliance through "obsessive curiosity, guts under pressure, inspiring enthusiasm, and resilience in adversity."

As I read these sections, I wanted to call him up and say "I will work for you at any price, just let me show you what I can do." I felt like he was describing my insatiable curiosity, and was admonishing things that I am striving to achieve and aspire to learn when given the opportunity(I don't feel like I have the resilience in adversity, or the guts, but definitely the eccentricities and obsessive curiosity).

I mentioned he was different from his contemporaries. I don't think this is the route that interests me, but here is where I would go if it did. What are the similarities between David and other CEO's? What is the personality makeup of a good marketing CEO?

Back to what is interesting (a.k.a. interests me).

Because of his creativity(and recognizing that as a strength and exploiting it, and disciplining it, and searching it out in others), he was able to change with the dynamic marketplace. He was also a catalyst of positive change in his organization. He cast a unifying vision for the future of his company through his strength of creativity, and eccentricities(e.x. the quotes above and New York times add below).

(possible character traits I am extrapolating from limited information and attributing to him, ok so that also describes some of what I wrote in the previous paragraph, but I just thought of it so I am putting it here)
I believe as a leader, it is important to be consistent(more explain later). Although eccentric, he was consistent in that. I guess the idea I had about this point is, know your strengths, exploit them, and communicate them to others(and why you believe they are strengths). Know your weaknesses, avoid situations that would require their use, but have others who know that is your weakness, and who are strong in those areas you are weak.
(this article is not meant as a proof of these ideas. It will take more research to prove them, but I think the inklings for making my case are present in the outward manifestations of this man's philosophies)

Knowledge Worker

2007-02-18T22:45:00.000-08:00

I have been hit recently by how recently things have changed. It is a modern concept to have so many freedoms, and abilities. I am sure I am not the first to see this trend, but I would like to comment on it, if you will allow me (given my new sense of freedom!!!).

Stephen Covey, in his book entitled "The Eighth Habit, from Greatness to Significance", talks about the "knowledge worker". From my understanding of his idea, there will be opportunity in this decade to recognize and reward the individual contribution workers give while at work. This recognition and rewarding thing is not that special, it is why they will be recognized and rewarded.

I have many interests. How on earth could one company take into account all of my skills and abilities, and pay me the sum of what I am worth? (in December this will start to be a valid question when I graduate from College). This equation of worth must add up a workers creative abilities, side hobbies that lend to understanding in diverse fields, basically, workers that continually learn and grow, and apply that knowledge and passion back into work.

What does this look like? I have no clue. I have ideas, dreams, plans for what I would want it to be, but lets face it, I can not see the future (not yet anyways! I may or may not let you know when and if I ever can).

So that disclaimer aside, what might it look like, from my/our current standpoint? An example may be open source software. If you have ever used software written by people not paid to do it, it feels different. More dynamic, more alive, granted more buggy since sometimes adding a new feature is more exciting than fixing those pesky phylum (bugs).

Another example? Lets go hypothetical. Lets say you hire Leonardo DaVinchi. At first you say to me "Awesome!!! I get this highly creative guy on my team, made all those cool things, painted, drew, other stuff....." I have to interrupt you after several minuets because you keep blabering.

He writes backwards and has his own code, no good at sharing notes. He had the most unfinished works of any master (came from a book, will cite this sometime, believe me till then). Juggled in his spare time, and always scribbling in his journals. He would have been awful to have in the office. Like MacGuyver always pulling out his pocket knife to fix the broken fax machine, Leonardo would have ditched his assignments and done flight experiments with his attempt at a wooden helicopter.

Ok, so he might not have been that bad, but he would not have fit in. He had too many talents. How can companies fit this type of character into their companies, and keep them interested?
Lets use some corporate lingo-
1. Break the walls of interdepartmental knowledge barriers
2. Allow creative problem solvers to solve creative problems wherever they arise
3. Find a way to encourage learning and creativity, even if it is not directly related (ie juggling, art, ambidexterity...... you can get a little creative here, it is ok by me).
4. Pay people according to the value added activities they provide the company (figure out how to measure(better yet, let them tell the company how to measure) their value added activities, and pay people proportionate to how much of it they get done).
5. Build in time to allow people to increase their capacity to learn/work/increase creativity/give back/whatever.

Some companies get some of these concepts, but there is a ways to go. People like Google, Apple, Ideo, and others are starting to understand work sucks if you feel like a cog in a wheel in a machine. Work can be fun if you can contribute, add personal touches, do what interests you. Lets hope more get the point by the time I graduate! (otherwise consider this public notice that I will be starting a business that does as many of these things as possible, and we will take over the world!)

(For those of you who care to continue reading this gargantuan post, I do not think Leonardo would have done that badly, just not used to his full potential. Imagine Einstein at McDonalds, he would have been awful, staring off into space imagining gravity and light and singularities. Or more likely, the inefficiencies he saw around him, how he should write to corporate to speed this up, change this, do that. Corporate would have hated him! Unless they brought him up to a level where he could have seen the problems from a broader perspective, then he would have been a Genius!)

Resistance to Change

2007-02-10T10:39:00.000-08:00

I am always surprised by someones resistance to change. I have chosen to continually grow and learn in my life, but I realize that not everyone has done this.

I only become aware of any difference when I talk about a great new "technology" or idea, like tags. If you are on the web at all, you are probably familar with using tags and how great they are. People that have not used them do not feel the same way.

"Why would anyone do something extra like typing in relivant keywords just so other people can search something better?" Well, I started to draw out supply and demand charts from my early econ days, then I thought about the effects of a public good or positive externalities, but all of these danced around the point.

Do unto others as you would do unto them. I now sound like I am preaching about technology. I think the point boils down to this, if you make something and you want people to see it, where will you put it? Lets say it is pottery. Would you put it in a closet? Or would you put it in a window? Even if that window was a litter farther away?

Tags are wonderful. I wish I could use them for real life objects, and organize my life by knowing what things I will need for school on a given day, and tagging them "school" and they magically fly into my backpack. That would be awesome!!!

But alas, that does not happen (yet!). Until then my digital life will remain dynamically organized by category and priority, while my room lies in dismal ruins (or organized by level of proximity from door to bed to floor, aka equally and evenly distributed between all three points in space).

Recent Aspiration

2007-01-29T20:31:00.000-08:00

So you say you want to start a business?

So I says to the guy, "yea, I do!"
Then he says to me, What makes you think you will make some money eh?

So then I say "You see, when a market opportunity exists that has the potential to change the way business does business, is in its early stages of implementation, and there is one company that is doing it well and making good money, I say sign me up."

So what is it you ask?

I want to be a consultant, helping businesses integrate new collaborative technology into their companies. These simple tools, like email in the 90's, can revolutionize the way business operate, and they are giving the software away! That's right, there is good free stuff out there, but small and large companies don't know what to do with it yet.

Here is where I come in. I have heard it said, all the world looks a nail when you are holding a hammer. I do not believe world hunger can be solved by a wiki(well actually if you got enough people involved all finding the domain of their agreement on the issues at hand....), it might, but not yet. I think the greatest application will be to change the way groups work together, the way information is exchanged, like what email did to the paper inter office memo (only email made the annoyance, pain, and arduously non-relevant flow of information much faster, not necessarily decreased the redundancies, inefficiencies, or other silly things that happen in offices).

Do I think wikis are the savior of the information age? They will not perform any miracles. Nor will they give forth any metaphorical wine(or would it be digital wine?). But there will be a revolution. And I want to help in the unfettering of the digichains that currently bind our information to the jail cell walls of old world, old software constructs (tell me you have never saved a document, and unknowingly placed it in the unsearchable miry depths and quagmires in the heart of your computer, with no hope of rescue? The grave sin of not maintaining an anal retentive filing system, shame on you).

Beautifull Photo

2007-01-07T21:37:00.001-08:00

Originally uploaded by Little Jon1.

This just looks amazing to me. It is so great what can be done with so little, all you need is a $5,000 camera, a $7,000 computer, a few hundred dollars of software, and a few hundred hours of playing around with the exposure settings to get amazing pictures like this.

If I could, this would be the top of the list, from my 30 hobbies.

Flowers HDR

2007-01-07T21:24:00.001-08:00

Flowers HDR
Originally uploaded by curlykrakow.

So I was trying to remember what technique it is called when the photographer is gathering more wavelength light than the human eye can see, and I stumbled upon the name, and this picture at the same time. This kind of thing always happens to me. I think of one thing, and it leads to another amazing discovery(to me anyway!)

Changed Formatting

2007-01-07T20:40:00.000-08:00

Ok,

So I have changed the formattting to be a little simpler. I am not the Techie genious that I sometimes think I am. I have also learned I am a starter, not a finisher. Anyways, this will hopefully turn less introspective, more observational and provide people with usefull information. That is the goal anyways.

Wish me luck.

2006-09-03T22:07:00.000-07:00

I have have been delinquent in making this blog exciting in the least, or even very readable by breaking up text with pics and stuff. Now that I know how to add these things the natives call "pictures", this blog may get more readership(I think posting regularly may add a little to this phenomenon of people "reading", this thing that I "write", but lets not read too much into common misconception of a broad reader base like timely delivery or appealing to an audience)

This picture is of me, back three years ago, with some fake and real facial hair.

Orginizing a Titlewave of Ideas

2006-08-18T20:06:00.000-07:00

"> More work on my website, and getting great ideas. I have been sitting in the university starbucks writing mind maps and trying to figure out how to orginize my website. The idea that has come to my mind is to write an intro at the beginning of each page describing the main topics that I will be covering in that page. The trick is that within each page I will have tons of links to the other sections of other pages in the site.
It would look like this. As you read the section say on ideas(I am taking liberties assuming you think I am interesting enough to go to my website, and also actually read it instead of just looking at all the cool pictures), I might bring up where the idea came from, like becomming ambidexterous from leonardo davinchi, or how to improve creativity through juggling(link to juggling and theories of creativity).
I think I will end up writing enough material for a book by the time I am done, so it will deffinately have an organic feel to it. To keep navigating it easier, I think I will do a mind map of the whole website with links built in to show one way the flow of the website could go.

Writing Website

2006-08-18T18:19:00.000-07:00

Well I have been working on writing a website for about the past two weeks. It is quite a lot more work than I anticipated, but is never the less coming along. I have also scoured my old pictures for memorable poses of myself. I like to take pictures, but almost never take any of myself, for obvious reasons(arm length pics get boring real fast).

My biggest struggle in the content of the website has been how to organize the ideas in a coherent manner. All of my ideas link together, so it is hard to relegate them to one section. I have learned some info on mind maps from my friend Jerome, and these are helping me a great deal. I have also found that writing several introductions for the same topic allows me to get a feel for what the main idea is, and I will end up using the intro's in different sections as segways from topics pages to main pages( this doesn't make sense in words, but will become clear later).

Off to write more content....

How "Groundhogs Day" changed my life

2005-10-06T10:50:00.000-07:00

Is there something you want to be able to do, but can't do it yet? Or are there things that you wish you could do a little faster, reading, typing, critical analysis, anything? Then there are those useless talents that everybody wants to have, but never tries, like juggling, throwing cards into a hat? All of these things appeal to me, and I was jealous of ... For having the time to acquire these talents in the movie Groundhogs Day.

well this movie got me thinking, how much time do we have that we don't use? How often do you find yourself waiting at the stop light, or at the doctors office, anywhere where you can't really do something productive, but have time? I say, use that time. Doing what? Improving your ability to learn. Increasing the connection between the left and right sides of your brain. Maybe learn a language, or five. The limits are boundless, but I don't think I have sold you on the benefits of the idea.

Why do these useless talents matter? I recently started to learn how to do several things left handed. One of these is writing left handed, and mirror, which is more natural for the strokes, but not for the brain. And what did I notice about my normal writing? My penmanship has improved drastically. It almost looks like another persons writing. The drawbacks area that it only lasts for several hours at the moment, as I am not proficient at writing left handed yet, so I am developing theories as to why this happens, but anyways. It also, in my opinion, helps tap into the creative part of my brain. The best people at problem solving, have the ability to switch between highly logical and highly creative sides of their brain. Some of this ability is innate, or at least fostered at an early age, but I believe the ability to improve this connection, however weak it may be at the moment, never goes away.

Well, I must be off to class, but I will add more later in the day.

Ok, I am back. So another talent I recently acquired, is speed reading. Now this one is a little tougher than some of them out there, but I think it will probably end up being most benefical. I am very suprised at the reaction I have gotten from this though. Several people have said things like "why would anyone want to read faster? I like reading for fun, not for work, and that seams like work to me." Or "I have heard you lose the enjoyment by doing reading fast." It is a tool. It would be like writing all of this down instead of typing it out. Are there fun aspects to writing as opposed to typing? Sure, I still write, but I also type, there is a place for both. How much you do of each depends on you. I journal in writing and typing. Sure I would like to only use one, but I use each for different purposes.

The other aspect is the time it takes to learn how to do this. Yea, it does take time and practice, but I will gain this back once I am faster at it. And I don't feel compelled to do it all the time, or to always be improving. There is a time for doing what you have always done, and a time to improve. I am also learning to only read what I want, and not feel compelled to read a whole book if I have gained the insight I was looking for, or if I really don't like the authors perspective, or if they are negative, or whatever. It is very liberating for me to not feel this pressure.

I find it interesting to see how stuck in their ways people, and myself, can sometimes be. It is like someone trying to convince me that they enjoy the hunt and peck method of typing, and that they could not imagine the drudgery of having to use qwery, and how they would lose the aesthetic value of typing and searching for the right keys, or maybe the connection they had with the computer when hunting and pecking. Just doesn't make sense to me. But change is a slow process, and I am programming myself to become accustomed to change. So I don't mind peoples apprehension to it, I just want to understand what their misgivings are, so I can help them to overcome it to the degree they are willing to.

One way I am going to try to help people overcome their reluctance to positive change, is a comedy routine at a standup club. I am writing the material for this in between classes and whenever (in my free time, ha ha ha, get it? Ok, so I am very busy, but I still have tons of little moments here and there to expend mental energy in multiple avenues of creativity). We shall see how this goes, if it is well received at all. It will be an experiment at how to get the audience on my side, then speak the truth in love, and still have them accept me enough to believe what I am saying. I'll write about this later. Go out there and try some new stuff, and let me know, ok?

Am I crazy?

2005-10-03T17:32:00.000-07:00

No, I am not. But sometimes I wonder how much of my personal experience is similar to other peoples experiences. So I am in this acrylic painting class, and experiencing the joys of color theory, artistic layout, so many new avenues of thoughts, it is inspiring. I then go to work, and suddenly I see art everywhere, I look at the shot glasses and the sweet espresso pouring into them, with the Guinness like separation of creme from the body of the shot, and I see a painting at work. Everywhere I look, I see possibilities and colors converging.

I go to Target, and I am overwhelmed with the colors and inputs. I walk by clothes, feeling the texture of each, I walk by shelves and see the converging lines of perceived vanishing points, with the contrast of colors filling my field of vision. I completely forget what I was there to do, and wallow in sensory input. Sometimes, without purpose, or even a recollection of what was causing this euphoria of sensation.

Ok, so honestly, this does not happen often. And it is an extreme case of the right amount of caffeine, and lack or overabundance of sleep, combined with the right frame of mind, like I was just drawing something, or wanted to draw something, or was daydreaming about drawing something(you get the idea).

I am working on what frame of mind caused this to happen, and how I can foster it in the right circumstances, and push it back in most other cases, but it is interesting in any case. I was driving with my parents about an hour ago, and I thought of a great analogy to what this was, and the adhd experience for me in general.

So you know the movie "A Beautiful Mind" Russell Crow is describing how he was able to overcome skitsophrania, he would not feed the different identities. If he saw a person that he had realized was not really in existence, he did not acknowledge it. He would not put himself in situations that would bring about the delusions.
Now for my experience. I work near a framing company, they frame paintings and the such. Every time I walk by, I notice a new painting or print, and am inspired by the colors, brush work, overall design of the piece, but I keep walking at my normal fast pace. I would love nothing more than to sit down on the sidewalk outside and contemplate the foremost painting for hours. Then each piece would require the due respect I would want to give it now that I have new appreciation for art. But I can't, so I don't even entertain this idea in the slightest. Do I think about the frozen image in my head often throughout the day, you bet. Do I contemplate the design of the foremost painting while I drive, more than you can ever know. But I have learned to focus my mind on what is at hand, and allow it to roam in the fenced in areas of what I am doing. It still goes through the same process at work, but concerning work, how I can improve at work, what I would do if I were a district manager at work, on and on and on it goes.

The trick with focusing my mind, is to look at what I am supposed to be doing from a new perspective. How would a stock holder view my actions of what I am doing? What if they were making a movie of me throwing these cups behind my back as I steam milk. People say I look like tom cruse as I spin wiped creme, and toss the tea shakers.

Who am I? What is identity?

2005-09-24T17:56:00.000-07:00

So what if I go through a midlife crisis every month or so. It is good to find out some of these answers, or at least ask them. What makes you, ? It is not what you do, not what you look like, who you hang out with, or even what you did in the past. (I think I wrote about this a while ago, but I am going to be taking it deeper, besides, this is how adhd works, you get the same ideas over and over again, you just take them further each time.) It is what you decide to do right now. What you did in the past will affect how easy it is to make the right decision, but that does not mean you will make the right one. And if you were a "bad" person, you still have the ability to make the right decision, it just might go against your accumulated experience up to that point.

(to let you in on some though processes, I am thinking and deciding how deep to go with this topic. What the hey, lets show you some thought process organization.

Topics I am thinking of covering

The core of consciousness, do we really decide our actions, and to what degree

Free will

divergence between self perception and others perceptions

Can we change who we are, and to what degree?

The influence of other people's perceptions of us and its affects on our identity

So I am sitting in starbucks(ina and Thornydale) using these questions to focus my thought on the topic at hand, and struggling in myself to see which ones relate more to the topic I want to discuss, and which would lead away from it, however relevant they may be. I will go with the last line of questioning, and maybe bring some of the others in as they relate. But in my mind, they are all inter related, in ways that I have not thought through yet. Lets get back to topic, if one does actually exist.

If I am aware that a specific person, call them Bob for fun, believes that I am uncoordinated, and I am aware his perception and belief of this, then I begin to act this way (mind trailing off to Quantum Leap episode that deals with this issue, no, come back mind, ok back for now). Well I am highly coordinated(count'em, juggle 5 balls, ride unicycle, like to swing dance, do magic tricks, manipulations, flourishes with cards, bla bla bla) I trip and am aware of what I did, and glance over to see if Bob noticed. Now I become aware of each instance of a misstep, or all of the normal things that people do, but when accentuated through the perceptual filter of heightened awareness, becomes uncoordinated behavior. I may begin to see myself as this klutzy person, and I start noticing every instance of this new formed identity, I start self fulfilling prophecies and perceptions. I have seen this scenario happen over and over again, someone forms opinion based of perception, I become aware of their perception and act according to it.

Here is a worse one. It is not really what believe, simply what you think they believe, that starts to affect you. This is where trouble happens. But how can you really know what others think about you? Here again multiple ideas come to mind.

I believe that you can never fully understand what someone thinks of you. Communication is imperfect at best, and humans do not have full disclosure with each other using this impaired communication. So, take deep breath and listen intently, we can never fully understand how other people perceive us, or what their opinion of us is. No matter what they say, there are underlying feelings that they will not want to express, or can't (because of impaired communication). Lets put an example on this one. You ask, "do these pants make me look fat?". Whomever you asked, can never go completely into their feelings on this subject, because of social constructs of the way communication should happen, (read don't be too honest, but try to hint at true opinion). What if this pant analyzer wanted to be completely honest, they would have to write a dissertation on their understanding of what fat was, how you fit into some of the categories that they list, and do not fit into others. Then their opinion would get completely lost in the shear volume of information that was trying to be conveyed.

Again, I could go off in thousands of directions with topics in the last few paragraphs, but I will bring it back to a point, a leaf on the twig of the branch on the topic of Identity. What are the implications of never knowing what someone's opinions of us truly are? You can only ever get a broad picture of if they like you, and a small amount of info about the specific topic. (I realize I am on thin ice of understanding, both my understanding, and the limits of simplifying down such a complex topic, with lots of other issues involved, but lets proceed). What are the implications? You decide how much to believe of what someone says. "Yes, those pants make you look fat!". Well, decide for yourself how much of this you want to believe. What is their concept of fat? What positive aspects about the pants are they neglecting to mention, simply to sway your judgment. They can never fully express their feelings and thoughts concerning the subject of your pants, and if they could express it, your understanding of what their whole point in the conversation would be confused at best (what are they, a professor of pants, PhD pants, why do they care so much about the positives and negatives of wearing low rise verses classic look).

And I believe I am approaching this line of understanding, where my point gets lost the deeper I try to explain it. That idea, that the more you try to explain something, the more confusing the point gets, intrigues me, and I think I wrote about it before. Must refine, must focus, must condense to a intelligible level so I can share it with others. Ok so back to the first sentence of this paragraph, I am done. I hope you learned a little, disagreed a little, and try to carry some of these ideas further than I have. Let me know if you do, and I will try to write about the ones I touched on, but didn't want to allow to confuse the topic.

House of Cards

2005-09-23T15:53:00.000-07:00

My ability to conform to a normal life, or just keep up with everything that I have going, is all a facade. Normal tasks take effort, mental processing to accomplish, and at some point I will forget do that thinking process, and everything will collapse like a house of cards. This is a genuine fear I have, just one that does not run my life.

I am a financial genius, and completely inept at the same time. I have grandiose plans of how to balance my two checking and two savings accounts(ok so 3 checking if you include the credit union that I have a savings account at). I have read several books on how to limit your spending, how to do a budget, and follow it, pay bills on time, the whole works. I am able to "keep it up" for a period of time, and then it falls apart. I forget to pay a credit cards, my checking account gets overdrafted several times, fees . Thankfully I am now able to fix these, and have minimal damage, thanks to learning how to fail, but I still fail a lot,.... a ton.

This same philosophy carries into my school work also. I am gunk hoe for about the first third of the semester, then my ability to stay up on the work wanes. I can't figure out why, but my drive just dies. I think it has something to do with an inability to see my work contributing to the end results that I am going after.

Now I am an extremely positive person, and happy. I enjoy work, and am pretty darn good at it. But this fear applies there too. What if several aspects that I am in charge of suddenly collapse, or I forget about them. Individual instances happen all the time. I don't allow my mind to wander at work, but this is sometimes how I remember to do things I didn't do the minuet I saw them. I notice an inordinate amount of things I could be doing at any moment, and am torn between which one has a higher priority, and which will have lasting benefit. I try to do the urgent, and the important tasks that are not urgent, as much as possible.

It is like, if anyone actually saw how many times I forget to do something, and then remember later and do it in the nick of time, they wouldn't trust me with anything. I am waiting to see if someone notices this, or if I have a high error rate on any given day, and someone sees how I really am.

After reading the above section, you might wonder how I sleep, or live with myself. No fear, there are positives. Many I might add.

For every time I am worried about what I am doing, and if it is the right thing to do, I discover a better way to do something, or a new insight about an old problem. I am always analyzing what I do and if it is efficient, so I find ways of being highly efficient. All of these ideas concerning my circumstance provide me with a very vivid memory, and ability to see where a system was breaking down, and usually how to fix it.

It is my belief that my strengths overshadow my weaknesses that helps me to see the light of day, and enjoy it. I am also able to put myself in perspective. For different people, there are different roles that they would fit into well, and ones that do not fit them at all. Can you imagine Einstein working as an accountant, daydreaming of relativity and science when he was supposed to be doing "work". Many great people in history were that way because they found where their talents and abilities applied, not how to improve their weaknesses so they weren't as bad. Sometimes their weaknesses were blaring, they just rarely had to encounter circumstances that would demand their use of the weakness.

So as you may have guessed, that is what I am trying to do, find where I fit, and what my strengths are. How can I use them to my advantage, and what "job" or work would best suit those strengths. We shall see, we shall see.

What ignites the mind?

2005-09-16T18:18:00.000-07:00

Have you ever had something capture your imagination to the point of obsession? All you wanted to do was to understand that subject more, and talk to others that understand it or are a part of it.(For me, I continue to compile this list, and it goes 30 or 40 concepts or subjects deep, with the branching out of topics in each one of these being numerous).

How about the opposite? Have you ever really needed to do something, yet could not get any motivation to get it done, no matter how important it was? There are some things even within an interesting topic that I simply can't seam to accomplish.(managerial accounting, I would sit in class, understand the concepts, and so could not see the connection between understanding the subject and needing to do the homework. No amount of mental reasoning could force me to acknowledge this obvious point, that I really did need to do it.)

What am I talking about? There is a force, strong in people with adhd, that can cause ones imagination to be simply captured by a subject. At this moment in time for me, this is painting, and having an artists eye. Every where I look, I see things in a new way, with new eyes. Everything is about composition, lighting and shadows, negative space, bla bla ba.... you get the point. I feel as though I am on the verge of a major artistic breakthrough, and at any point an art critic will see my first painting(of which I have yet to complete) and will be enthralled with my grasp of color, and my innate sense of composition. Any of the subjects that have captured me like this(for it was not a willful action on my part, in most cases I was content to stay on the previous amazing idea), have been thoroughly engrossing, to the point of almost pushing out any and all of my former interests.

Concerning the inability to focus on a concept of no interest, this is also not a willful endeavor. I felt with these things, that no amount of cajoling could bring about the completion of the given task. I wondered if I was alone in these feelings, but countless times I have discussed this wall, or block, and have found each person that seams to exhibit adhd has had this problem.

more on these ideas to come. I will have to delve into some other issues to reconcile the problem I see with the mental attraction and mental blocks. I find the connection between seemingly opposite ideas interesting(why, I am not sure). But the fact that a new insight in one are can have extreme impact on others has always been intriguing to me. So as I develop a few of my others ideas, I think they will explain this idea further.

Weakness is strength

2005-09-13T14:53:00.000-07:00

Know thyself. This is a good place to start. I used to think that I could accomplish absolutely anything and that it was natural to me to do this. I know this is optomistic, but it stems from reading some great books on learning, establishing daily habits, and not setting limits on yourself.

Yes I can do anything if I want to put alot of work into it, but not everything comes naturally to me, or would be easy. So what am I saying? I believe people with adhd are primmed to overcome new obstacles, be in environments where they are presented with new information, lots of stimlous, and tons of growth. We are good at learning. I may be good at learning accounting(which I am actually not at all) but to be an accountant would bore me to death. But I love learning the new concept and applying it to new things like the stock market, or predicting the next enron.

So know thyself. Know what you can and can't do. Use what you are able to do, your strengths, and apply those to the areas that need work. Work through strenghts to dimish weaknesses, or at least make them irrelivant. And as I am discovering, a strength is something that comes naturally. You might do it if you were never paid to, and probably do and don't(you do it, don't get paid for it).

I am not an highly internally motivated person. Once I have commited to doing something, then I am motivated by my commitment. But this is ok, really. I know that if someone were not there to tell me I needed to go to the doctor, clean my room, or change my oil, I would not really want to do it, and not only want, I would be incapable of doing many of these things without an external reminder. I am learning to impose these external reminders upon myslef, but that does not mean the condition does not exist. The degree I am willing to accept this about myself, the better I can get these simple tasks done in my life, and will be able to do the large and far reaching projects that I have the passion and dreams for.

New Insight

2005-09-13T05:41:00.000-07:00

I have been doing some research as of late. Ok, so I have been doing a lot of research. I had a conversation with a person from work who has a close relative with bi polar disorder. This condition has intrigued me. I see many differences between adhd and bi polar, but there are a few similarities that show the inner workings of the brain that I am intrigued by.

I also just finished 2 books on speed reading, several on memory, more on adhd, new prognosis and treatment, lots of good stuff. So I have material to do quite a bit of writing for now.

I am not able to expand on this yet, but some of the ideas are very exciting to me, and we shall see where they take us.

Educating the Creative

2005-07-30T20:17:00.000-07:00

At this moment, I have maybe 15, maybe 7 or 8 ideas that are going through my head, each of which is focused in on an idea. Those Ideas are coming from an article I read about a year old in a US. News about adult adhd. Of those ideas I will now chose one and focus it in. However, as I have learned about myself, in order to be able to write about the one idea, I will also write somewhere else about the other ideas, and how frustrating my conclusions are about that. But in a future post, you will get to read these as well.

So what am I choosing to write about? The positive, constructive things that someone could apply today to help them tomorrow. And I am illustrating my first principle as we speak. Learn how to focus on one aspect of the many. For any subject, there are an inordinate amount of perspectives one could take, but which are appropriate? This takes discipline to learn, but it is pivotal to the learning experience to do just that, learn which ideas are relevant. And it is almost never one. But what I chose to do is limit it to one, then allow my mind to branch out from there on the aspects of that particular idea, like right now, what would help a parent with a child with adhd right now.
-Guiding questions
Again I just illustrated it by asking myself a question that I can answer in may ways, as I ponder this question I almost always come up with several other questions before I am able to answer the first. This is where I failed in school, the teacher would ask a question, and I would start thinking of her warped perspective on the subject, her bias, what were other relevant questions. These were all valid thoughts, I just have do learn to focus them. So I will just write several questions down on the paper, and go back and answer them later, or not. Sometimes just thinking through that logical process I come to a new revelation about the topic and I realize my original perspective was warped or not on topic. My initial questions were not failures, they helped to guide me to the more relevant topic. It is all about failing towards success. But how can you allow a child to do this? Still working on that idea.
-A channel for off topic ideas.
I get some of my best revelations while I am trying to do something else. So what I do now is to keep a journal with me basically every where I go, and write down random ideas, words I like, things I want to do when I am 60, whatever. This has helped to focus my ideas, and to utilize the creativity that is pent up in my brain. As I drive I have a tape recorder in my car that I can talk to and capture my ideas. Now I have yet to go through and document those, but nevertheless they are there for me when I have a dry moment of inspiration to draw from.
-Physical release of energy
I have a hard time sitting in one place for very long. Despite this I spend up to 6 hours in coffee shops every day studying, reading books, hanging out. I bring juggling balls with me, my unicycle, toys I call them. If I am very creative, I will need to take an energy break more often, but sometimes I will just go out side and walk around for a little to release some energy. Also by being in the coffee shop environment I get constant visual input and small breaks from what I am doing. These small breaks help me to refocus on what I was doing.

Well I am reaching my max for sitting here, and I have even taken several breaks, will write a several more editions to this though, and It is kind of an ongoing thing learning what works, what doesn't, and all that stuff.

What is genius

2005-07-24T17:22:00.000-07:00

This is not expert opinion, just me thinking out loud.

It is impossible to see everything that is happening around you at once. It is also impossible to interpret all of the signals that we receive in sensory input, like what we are seeing, hearing, smelling... Examples of abilities associated with interpreting signals are that some people are able to read others responses like a book, others can play chess really well, still more can apply their huge database of knowledge to the appropriate situation at any given time.
For an extreme example of this, think of the movie Rain man. Dustin Hoffman's character was not able to interpret the social situations that they encountered, yet he was a "genius" at numbers. But not at every aspect of numbers, at memorizing numbers, and at doing arithmetic with them. Point covered, on to the idea.
What is this "genius" ability? I think there are many different abilities, and some of them combined together form a strategy for comprehending the world. Lets make some assertions, then see which prove out.

-one person can not have every ability.

-If your ability is to focus in on one ability, you lose out on the opportunity to have it's opposite.
(If you don't agree with me yet, see where we go, hold on for a little and try me)

-These abilities combine to form a strategy unique to that individual, but through different strategies can come to similar results, with differing successes in speed, and accuracy.

and the last assertion (no drum roll please)
-Being a really realy good genius ( not evil or anything) comes from having the ability to instantly and continually decide if the ability you are using or focusing on is the one needed for the situation.

I will edit this to actually talk about it when I am not so tired.

Learn how to succeed through Failure

2005-07-17T14:49:00.000-07:00

To preface this, it is not my own idea. I have read many books, and I got it from one, but now that I have applied the philosophy to my life, I have incorporated it in new ways.

The learning process is really about error correction. However it is not about reduction of errors, or trying not to make very many, learning something well can be about making as many error's as possible in the beginning. I will now use an example. There was a game called dance dance revolution. People walking by it in an arcade were drawn to the flashing lights and dance pad on the ground, wondering in amazement how it worked. Then an expert would walk up and make it all look so easy that no one else would want to try it.

The first time I did it, I knew I would look funny doing it, and that I probably would not be able to do anything about it. So I tried tons of different songs, watched others do it, and would hopelessly abandon all sense of coolness in my attempts to get my feet where the screen told me they should be. (as I am writing this, I am noticing the lack of point, or maybe meandering through it, will try to fix). So for the next several times, I tried to discover what I was having a problem with, and what I was already good at doing. Sometimes what I was good at doing would lead me into one of the things that I was awful at. But in the beginning there can be so many things that you are not doing well that you don't know where to improve or how.

The Point. Pick one thing, and get better at it. No one can improve in every area at the same time. Become aware of what is failing and what is working, and be willing to be bad at many things until you figure out what it will take. I think I noticed this most dramatically with the unicycle. I would say there were around 15 leaps of understanding that I had to go through to be able to ride it more than a few inches. Until I could do each of these, and be at least somewhat aware of them, I was not going to be able to ride it.

So my philosophy in riding the unicycle was, fail at as many things as possible, in order to discover what I was going to have to learn how to do. After those initial sessions, I could look for small areas where I was improving, even if they were subtle. I could have learned half of the things to get better at the unicycle the first day, and I still would not be able to ride it. So for a large learning curve like that, it takes just failing for a while, and for the unicycle quite a while.

Then one day, you don't feel like you have improved in the least since you got the darn thing(going from one inch to ten inches does not really count). All of a sudden, you do it for a good distance, everything just falls into place.

(So far, all of this was just cursory info that came to my head as I was thinking about what I was really wanting to say. And as an aside, I am speaking on the main idea at my Toastmasters group this Tuesday, in 2 days)((Alternate title: How to kill two birds with one stone, write about what you are thinking about for a blog, then speak on that topic in your public speaking group. Ha ha ha, I will include that advice in my book on how to take over the world)

Now what I was going to be talking about. The 1 % success rate. This is also not my idea, read it in a book a while ago. If you improve in something by 1 %, anything at all, after a year with compounding interest you will be 1000% better or more. So here is my take on this. I am energized by having new ideas and thoughts in my head. I was interested in cryptography recently for about 3 days, then something else caught my interest. I don't mind jumping around as long as I know that I will come back to this later at some point and learn more about it, or get better at it. In fact, sometimes just having these ideas not completed is exciting because I can take the concepts I did learn about in that brief time further. Then when I go back to the cryptography, I have context to put the information in, as well I have thought about it at random times for a while.

Another way to apply this philosophy would be to think about having a core set of competencies that you want to be able to do. I like to improve myself through reading, improving my motor skills through learning new manual skills like juggling or unicycling, learning how to improve my memory, many others. So lets say there are 10 of these things that can be relaxing and may or may not help me in the future. I go in cycles of doing some of these things and completely neglecting others. Lets break it down

I probably have a top three that I am always doing one of these. If it is juggling, I have all of that stuff in my car, and may always carry three balls around with me wherever I go. I may do this for an average of 20min a day, in between this class, during my break at work. I have the other 7 things that I do occasionally, like origami, where I keep some paper handy in my room or in my backpack, when I get the urge I will do it for a few days, then not do it again for 2 weeks.

At the moment I can only do 3 models of origami. You could call me a failure at origami. I learn one new model a month, if that. And soon It may drop off the radar screen as other things push it out of the way. But one day I will pick it back up, and It might be on the top of the list, in which case I will work on it in a creative frenzy learning two or three figures a day for several weeks.

I guess you could call this the 5min a day principal. Anything you want to learn, if you were to put in a little bit of time towards it every day, at the end of a year, you could be awesome at it. The other point I see in this, is that you could do several of these things, and let a natural flow develop as to which one is more interesting at the moment. This is a very exciting way to go about the day.

Everyone stands in lines, has to sit at stop lights, or wait for a meeting to happen. What could you learn while this was happening?

This question alone is exciting to me, almost blowing my mind. It conjures ideas like what are the limits of human potential? What would be possible if a person continued to get better at an increasing number of things through out their whole life?

Perfection is only attainable within Perfection

2005-07-10T12:02:00.000-07:00

So I haven't posted in a while, because I was worried about formulating my ideas more clearly, aswell as making sure I made sense. Well it is a good idea to make sense, but I think seeing the process unfold can be a beneficial thing aswell. There is something to be said of keeping the aesthetic beauty of something intact by leaving some of it's original form in place. I am speaking of my writing style in this instance.

I am in a summer school art class at the moment, and it is so liberating and exciting. This class has added a filter of perception to my brain, that as I go about my normal things, I am seeing the world through a whole new set of eyes. I still have all of my old biases, but this is now an added one that plays with all of the others. (see right now I realize that my subject is a little fuzzy, aswell as my meaning, will try to clear this up). It is like when you read a book, you could look at it from the historical perspective, a feministic perspective, why did the author write it, so many ways. So I call these the filters through which we see the world. ( see I am bringing it back, slowly I know). Each of these gives context to the book, and allow us to experience it on a deeper level.

Well this filter of perception that is true for books, is also true for our interaction with others. All of this is covered in philosophy, so I won't delve into it too deeply, but it has major relevance. As I meet new people, many of these filters come to my head, and I question which ones apply to the current situation, and which are irrelevant. This ability to decide on appropriateness of these ideas is a factor of intelligence, but so is the ability to have many filters. (aha, another subject to discuss in a later blog, the idea of multiple intelligences, and what I believe are some of the factors). So what happens when, upon meeting a new person, wondering what their background is, where did that accent come from, how much of what you say do they understand based off of your analysis of their education level? These are all good ideas, but with too many of them, they become overwhelming, especially when people accidentally give off false clues, maybe use a high register word that is not normally a part of their vocabulary ( and here I could go off on all the false clues I have seen, or just misconceptions I had based upon a first impression.)

I have said how these multiple filters can be a negative in light of meeting a new person and trying to fit them into your understanding. But the process of allowing your mind to wander through so many ideas, and come to random conclusions can also be a good thing. For one, once it is refined, can allow for very deep insights without a lot of information, case in point, Sherlock Holmes. All of his assumptions always seemed to turn out right, but as I work at Starbucks and see inordinate amounts of people walk through the door, there is much information that can be gained from appearances. What I have learned from experience is how much weight to give to these. Everyone has inconsistencies in their lives. My room might be a mess while my car is spotless. Granted, this extreme is rare, but people are always in the process of changing and growing, and they do not grow at the same rate in every area ( this has been a recent acknowledgement for me, and a great relief to the personal internal inconsistencies I saw in myself. I can now realize that these are a part of the human condition).

Let me summarize what we have up to now, so we can go further. So we have perceptions through which we see the world, these allow us to put context to our experiences and interactions with others, and allow us to instantly gather a great deal of information about the other person, but we have to further the relationship to see how much of this initial information truly describes the person. There are many good and bad things about this way we see other people, but that is what happens. So on to my point. With adhd, these filters come pouring into my brain, without the ability to decide which are more relevant than others. Or if I chose to try to decide which are more important, I become overwhelmed with competing ideas and the degree of relevance each has in comparison to the other. You could call this getting caught up in the process without regard to the results. I have learned how to continually think about, why was I trying to do this, what was the point of this thinking process. By continually analyzing this, I am able to have a wide variety of ideas and still narrow them down into a cohesive idea or result.

An interesting by product of these multiple filters of perception and random associations, is the ability of memory. Because any experience, like meeting someone with an accent, has this huge database of ideas and thought experience surrounding the event. So I do not only have the one experience of meeting this person with an accent, I have what I was thinking about, the free associations and Ideas that were swirling around in my brain, aswell as the strange Sherlock like conclusions that my brain came to. Now these ideas my not be relevant to the interaction, but they serve to preserve it in my brain. If someone mentions accents and asks if I ever met someone with a strange one, I can recall a large portion of my meeting because of the volumes of information I associated with that meeting. I might remember what they were wearing, what we talked about, or more likely the ideas that came to my head as a result of meeting them. So learning how to control this process, or at least use it to your advantage could be a very helpful thing.

The premise behind Learning

2005-06-20T11:39:00.000-07:00

Does everyone have ADHD? Is the number of cases of people with ADHD going up? These questions came from an interesting conversation I had with a Starbucks partner yesterday In the Ina and LaCholla Starbucks.

As we talked I was able to articulate some of the ideas that I have been pondering for quite a while. To begin to answer these questions I will first use an analogy to describe the process that I believe happens in normal people, and then what it would be like from the eyes of someone with ADHD. You will notice the similarities and the differences between them, then I will use those to explain further if everyone does in fact have ADHD.

So a lawyer reads a new law for the first time. As he reads it he is using the left, logical side of his brain to interpret the meaning behind the law. The left side of his brain will begin to analyze the words and what they individually mean, then put them together in a corporate context to begin to understand what their use collectively means as a whole. Now a good lawyer will begin to use his right hemisphere, or creative side and allow his mind to wander through different cenario and applications that he might use this new law. He might wonder why this law was enacted as a clue to how to use it, what loopholes this new law creates, any number of paradigm's concerning the laws application, interpretation, or it's ambiguity. If he were introduced to this new law in a meeting, it would be quite distracting for him to have to do this and not pay attention to how the meeting was proceeding. My point with this is that the good lawyer know the balance of how much he can allow himself to think about this subject according to the appropriateness of the situation.

I will explain cycle rates, and then we will look at this same cenario with the creative knob turned up.

Cycle rate? What is that? This is a way of thinking about the balance between being logical, being creative, or simply being aware of stimulus. For a "normal" person, they look at a problem, and slowly look at it from different angles. They may read the law, and think of another law that it reminds them of. This would be the personal filter of past experience. Then once they have gone down that path for a while, and may or may not have given them any new revelation to the new law, they look at the law analyticity, is the law clearly stated or is it hazy or ambiguous. There are tons of these different perspectives that they could look at the law from, some more relevant, some less relevant. You could say they cycled through different filters that they had, to see which would apply or where appropriate.

Now lets turn the cycle rate up. As this person starts to think of the past experience of the law, before they have finished, they start looking at the wording of the new law, then they realize the old law was worded a little funky, well gee there was this one law that was really funky in wording, but that came about because of the amount of people working on the law. Maybe this new law had too many people giving input to it, Man my sock is really bothering me, maybe those people who wrote the law had socks that bothered them too, or their room was dimly lit like mine. Who, where did that come from? When the cycle rate for going through personal filters, the current stimulus is sometimes more pressing in the mind that what one was thinking about, but this could flip also. If they are driving and the physical stimulus of driving is what is important, and driving by an old building with interesting architecture passes, the driver could start thinking about architects, what kind of schooling they must go through, all that crazy math. Speaking of math, I wonder what my instantaneous velocity is at this moment, am I speeding up at an increasing rate, or am I accelerating at a constant rate? Ok, sorry to do that to you, I know it can get confusing to be thrown down random paths like that.

But what did we learn from this? "Normal" people have the same brain process as ADHD people. In fact, this ability to connect past events to our lives to help us interpret present information is vital. So is the ability to see different perspectives when approaching a problem. These are considers good skills to have. The problem arises when these skills are taken slightly farther than necessary. This cycling through logical, then creative, then sensory impute, is handy and troublesome. I would like to talk about this at some length later on, but feel it would draw me away from my topic.

As I have learned, must continue on the topic. So what were we talking about? Aha yes, everyone has this ability to cycle through different inputs, both physical and mental, and in the mental, from both sides of the brain. I will give some examples of where this is very good, and let you think about these taken to the extreme.

A good salesman has the ability to look at the customers objections from their perspective and overcome them in a way adequate to that customer. What if you looked at situations from other peoples perspective too often? Especially without ever knowing if you were able to actually see it from their perspective?

Lawyers look at the ambiguity of language to find multiple meanings in the laws, aswell as the testimony of witnesses, or even contractual agreements. What if you herd the multiple interpretations of what everyone said? And not necessarily all the time, but that was one of the things your brain cycled through?

A good chess player is able to look at tons and tons of lines of strategy to see which ones work better, but take this skill out of context and apply it to social situations, or simply a question someone asks you. This skill being a positive one in the chess setting, suddenly becomes a weakness when applied to situations where quick decisions and assessing of the situation is a must.

I will sum up what conclusions I make from all of this. ADHD is simply the natural creative ability that we all posses, simply taken to a higher thinking cycle rate. It is not even thinking faster, is is just more jumping around. And even this skill is beneficial applied to some concepts. Another way I can put the cycle rate, is that the subconscious thoughts are continually interrupting what I am consciously doing. A different perspective on this, is that the natural feedback loop in my mind is like low volume elevator music, you only hear it when it stops or something really interesting comes up. But for me the volume is turned up a little more, so I hear the thought process of my subconscious continually working, and this can be distracting. One last analogy for this. As I was talking to the Starbucks partner, she herd the incorrect grammar that she had said, and immediately corrected it. This is the internal subconscious listing to what she said and alerting her to the incorrect grammar. So we all have this subconscious voice filtering information, it is just a little louder in ADHD, but in some cases it can be much louder.

I think there was good information here. Again as usual, any comments are appreciated. If you have any other ways of thinking about these, let me know, or if there was something not quite as clear, I would love to know how to express these ideas better. The only thing not very beneficial is criticism without a way to fix it.

What is ADD/ADHD

2005-06-16T11:07:00.000-07:00

As a disclamer, this is what my experience along with many conversations with other people that have ADHD. This is by no means comprehensive, nor are the ideas taken from somewhere else, they are an amalgamation of experiences up to this point.

What is ADHD/ADD

This is a tough question because I believe that ADHD is simply a normal trait that everyone posesses (creativity) taken to an extreme in some individuals. The degree to what extreeme this is taken is what creates the grey area, how much of this abundance must a person have to be classified as having ADHD. For my purposes I will state the extreemes of a given atribute, and let thee reader decide.

For me ADHD, is a blessing and a slight nusance. A blessing, in that I have a continual flood of ideas, inspiration and perspectives from which to draw on at any time. It can be a nusance in that I am always jumping from one idea to another, or have a hard time being consistent with most things on a daily basis.

Let's use some analogies. Imagine with me for a moment, a novelist writing a book on a typwriter. Sitting in a dimly lit room at 3:00 in the afternooon. The bed is unmade, with the room tidy but unorginized. Maby a hotell room or a sparse apartment. She is sitting at a small table trying to think of the complexities of her story. At any given time she must attain a balance between getting ideas, and writing them down. The process of typing down the ideas stunts her ability to think of more, while the more deeply she thinks about the story, the less she writes about it.

Where is her ispiration comming from? Is the inspiration a part of her will that she can force to happen? Or does it come in fits and starts and random times and from random places? She glances over at the disheveled bed and realizes her main charicter is not as one dimensional as she realized. Deep in his ethos is a part that longs for the freedom of spontenaity amongst his strictly regimented lifestyle. This thought came from her surooundings. It was the stimulos of her eyes applied to the thoughts going on in her head.

This is an example of a "normal" person using her creativity. Now imagine she has ADHD. She is sitting at the table, looking around the room for inspiration. lets do internal dialogue here "wow my room is a mess, look at the bed, all messy, I wonder why material my sheets are made of, I have herd egyptian cotton is nice, do they use sheets in egypt, why did the sphynxes nose fall off, my character should have a protruding nose, yess that is good. Then she starts to type, " Wow this old keyboard is weird, listening to the beat of the keys I am pounding I can make a rhythm, or even morese code. That's cool." And with each new idea a whole new stream is born. With one idea comes the whole mental shift of thinking about that idea to it's extreem, but that never comes, because as she takes that idea very far, more intriguing ideas come to mind.

I think this story illistrates the way the creative process when taken to an extreeme throws off the balace of being able to produce what one is thinkinng about. Creativity is only good if it produces something, but with ADHD the wonderment of the process hampers the ability to produce a work.

Let's do another anologie.

A man is at a party where he only knows the person that brought him. His firend wanders off and he is left to fend for himself. He begins a conversation with an attractive girl, which carries on for 10 min. Then they are interupted and somehow get separated and do not see each other again.

Now put yourself in this man's shoes. What is going through his head as he talks to the girl? "Man, I wonder if she likes me, is she intrested, does she have a boyfirend?" These are questions anyone would think about, somewhat surface level. Lets turn up the creativity knob. What was her up bringing, did you notice the southern accent, is she a natural blond, wow look at her nails, well manicured, her outfit matches well and seams to fit with her personality, aswell as matching the time of day, the season, and the general ambiance of the party. Did she just look away because she was bored, or looking for a more exciting conversation, or hoping one of her friends noticed the attractive guy she was talking too?

This train of thought is still pretty focused even though it shows the natural tendency to analyze the situation, and second guess what is really happening.

Another train exebited by overactive creativity, is the awarness of signals put off by others, and by yourself. But without focus or discipline, these run rampant without having the ability to measure the validity of each signal in turn.

So we will trun the creativity knob up full blast and see what happens.

Lets do the internal dialogue of the man again. "Man I wore the wrong shoes, they are a little uncomfortable, hey that hot chick is comming closer, intresting accent" he says to her"Excuse me, I noticed a slight accent, are you from the south?" bla bla bla.... he sees the fingernails well manicured and wonders how recently they were done, maby she is high maintinence and only likes to go to nice restraunts, dosen't enjoy the simpler things of life, wow these shoes are uncomfortable better shift my weight, oo no, I think she noticed that, she might think I am anxious to leave, but i just want to get to know her better, I wonder what kind of car she drives, I like bigger cars I fit into them better."

Not sure if this example illustrates it well but I will have to refine the core idea more. By the way, as my internal dialogue is going, if any readers of this have comments about how relivant each of these examples are, just post a comment. Or even better, if you have a good analogie to share, please do so, I appreciate the imput. None of these ideas are set in concrete, and I think each individual exibits these traits through their personality and individuality. I am looking for commonalities, and the deeper meaning of why we have this dialogue or self doubt, and how we can channel it into being productive, or deep thinking.

More to come later.

Talking Passionately about Something

2005-06-10T10:23:00.000-07:00

Talking Passionately about Something
Originally uploaded by Coffee Master.

Childhood Memories

2005-06-09T22:24:00.000-07:00

What was it like for me in school?
I remember one time in math class, there were 5 or 6 of us kids sitting around another student who would hold up flash cards of multiplication, and we had to blurt out the answer before anyone else. I don't think I got one of the cards first, or second, or third. I think that was the first time I recall thinking about my thinking process, and why it was different from the other students.
Why did it take me a while to process these new math concepts? This is now a theme that has driven my thinking since that point. When I looked at the numbers, I questioned their overall relation to each other, not only the predefined question we were supposed to be answering. I was having a hard time limiting my mind to the constraints the class was putting on me. It took me quite a while of thinking about why 5 and 6 where so similar, one number off, yet different. One was even, one was odd, 6 is a perfect number, having the same numbers, 1 2 and 3 that when added equal it, and when multiplied equal it as well. I had to let my mind wander through some of these concepts before it would settle down on the concept I needed to learn.
One thing that always frustrated me in math, was that I always wanted to know what the other buttons on the calculator did, but no one could explain it to me conceptually. In fact, their inability to do so, led me to believe that most people did not really understand what was going on with these higher functions. It has only been recently that I have been intrigued once again to some of the oddities of numbers that I was presented with back in the day.
School was quite frustrating back then. I did not yet have the ability to explain things in a cohesive manner. I would start talking and my subconscious would interrupt me with wonderful ideas, and I would start talking about those, or simply stare off in wonderment of these ideas that I could not yet explain or focus down into an intelligible level. Thankfully my mom home schooled me for the first three years, so she was able to encourage my creativity while still honing my inability to focus on one idea.

For the record, I am learning html so as to publish a website that will cover many ideas that are foundational to what I want to say. As I write this post, I am realizing I have not defined what ADHD is like for me, how I have overcome the obstacles while maintaining the positive attributes. Tons of things I would like people to know about. This is the frustrating thing about ADHD, I see many things at once, and can't decide which should come first. Just for fun, here is what I mean
-ADHD as a child
-Why I am glad I took ritilan for a short time, but also hate it.
-What ADHD is like in different situations
(must go off on this one)
-Driving
-Thrift Stores
-Reading Books
-The classroom
-Sitting in Starbucks
-Why brief respites of focused attention help to refocus attention
(This is the point at which I realize my stream of consciousness could go on forever, but where I also see it segwaying into several more subtopics, or back to my original point. I guess I will take it back to the original point, but that is not quite as much fun, I guess I will have more fun later, I will take you on a real ADHD trip... ha, ha, ha.)
So what am I doing about all of these ideas. I am slowly but surely working on writing a book about learning and ADHD, I keep journals that are highly unstructured but through natural selection of random ideas are becoming more structured, and this list could go on for quite a while as well. I hope this blog will forum for people to ask questions, give feedback on these ideas, as well as helping me refine my ideas to further help other people like me. We shall see where these ideas take us. My next post will have to deal with some of what I experience with ADHD, hopefully broad enough to encompass the aforementioned specific examples.

Mark and his philosophy of life

2005-06-09T17:17:00.000-07:00

duckbill
Originally uploaded by Coffee Master.

Mark recently moved back to California, but he was here long enough to share some wonderful conversations.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step

2005-06-08T20:03:00.000-07:00

I am very happy to start writing this. I have begun to write a book about my experiences on having ADHD or as I prefer to call it, dual brained. My intent is to use this blog to be a place where others can read about my experiences and learn about themselves or others they know who are dual brained. I am researching learning, the process of it from my experience as well as published and scholarly works. I also hope to learn from the feedback I get concerning the articles I write, and a sifting of ideas from the broad range of experiences of many people, to ensure that my experiences are not isolated.

I think this blog will also serve as a way for people I know to keep abreast of what I am up to, what new things I am learning, and new inspiration that can help me in my search for a deeper understanding as to the underlying principals behind nature and life (I know, I know, my english teacher would tell me this sentence is a tad to long, but it exemplifies the thought process of my brain, and will give a peek into the flow of ideas in my mind).

I am thankfull for this ability to express myself, and for the hope of helping others like me. May I be clear in expression, yet not lose my voice. May I be general enough for undestanding, yet specific enough for relivance. These statements will become clear later, delving into the deep waters of my thought process.