Tim O'Hare

Just over a month ago I wrote a post here about my attempts to grow a new houseplant (My Little Plantlet). I am pleased to be able to report back now that my plantlet seems to be going from strength to strength. The small new leave that had just emerged at that time has now grown much bigger, a second new leaf (bringing the total to four) has also sprouted and there is already a tiny shoot which promises to deliver a fifth leaf in the near future:

In the picture above you can see the two original leaves lower down, the largest (third) leaf angled towards the camera position, the fourth leaf already larger than the original two retreating away from the camera and the tiny little shoot reaching upwards at the top of the stem. The plantlet seems now to be fairly resilient and the stem is thickening a little.

I am not sure that I have ever had so much success with plants (I should write another post soon about the way my IKEA succulents are expanding rapidly on my office windowsill) and I can’t help feeling that I have somehow absorb some magic biological powers from now being in the School of Biological and Marine Sciences at work.

I am quite an avid listener to podcasts, usually on my walk to and from work and generally on topics relating to creativity, leadership, productivity etc. A couple of days ago I stumbled on a new podcast (for me at least) called Hurry Slowly. This podcast is curated by Jocelyn K. Glei, an author who I have come across through an excellently written and beautifully crafted series of books published under the 99U brand. Glei has now turned her attention towards podcasting and in each episode she interviews an expert/author about a topic related to the podcast theme of ‘[being] more productive, creative and resilient through the simple act of slowing down’. All of which is right up my street.

So far I have listened to two episodes (the first two episodes) from October 2017.

In the first episode (10th October 2017) she talks with Jason Fried, the co-founder and CEO of Basecamp about the scheduling systems he has developed within his business and the strategies to protect time (both work and personal time) that he employs. I was particularly struck by his system of running his business in 6 week sprints during which just a one or two projects requiring the full 6 weeks together with a few small (e.g. 1/2 day) projects were the sole focus of effort. At the end of each sprint everyone takes a week or two to take stock, today up loose ends, recover and decide on the activity for the next sprint. A key part of this technique is that 6 weeks is long enough to provide a substantial amount of time but short enough not to be daunting and seem endless. In addition, the projects chosen have to be complete pieces of work with clearly defined end points and not simply ‘6 weeks work on longer-term project X’. He described this system in the context of his whole company work structure but I found myself thinking about how/whether something similar could work for an individual and, if so, what the optimum time span might be in my case, whether it was necessary for it always to be the same, how it would work in a job like mine that has specific bursts of activity at different times of year. A second thread of the discussion that interested me was on his thoughts about the importance of properly disconnecting from work when at home. I have thought about this before and I am not someone who is glued to my work email all evening but I do still find myself drawn to check up on things when I am at home. Fried gave plenty of convincing arguments against doing this and it is certainly something that I am going to consider some more.

The second episode I listened to (17th October 2017) was an interview with author Florence Williams about the benefits that getting out into nature can have on cognitive performance and general well-being. Again, this was not a new topic to me but the podcast certainly made me think about my activity and I was left wondering whether I could find a way to get myself somewhere where I can see a view more often from my office environment (for example, how quickly I could get myself to Plymouth waterfront to take in some sea air, see some waves etc). It also made me want to explore the idea of bringing the outside into my office using oils from hinoki trees because when Glen and Williams talked about this it really made me want to smell what they were describing.

Hurry Slowly is now (just) up to its 20th episode so I have 18 to catch up on. It is a great feeling, like when you discover a new author and realise there is a whole new body of work to get through over time. I am definitely going to be working my way through the Hurry Slowly podcasts and related to this discovery I am also intended to add a list of podcasts and other websites that I visit for inspiration, to this site.

Today, the collision between Storm Emma coming up from Portugal and the so-called Beast from the East flowing westwards from Siberia conspired to pretty much bring the southwest of England to a standstill. Actually, the presence of loads of cars on the roads, despite weather warnings and police requests for people to stay at home contributed to the chaos but, obviously, it was the weather that was the key factor.

With roads closed due to snow, black ice, accidents and abandoned vehicles, the icing on the cake was another dose of damage to the railway line at Dawlish, leaving those of us who live to the west of Exeter essentially cut-off for a short while. The railway line at Dawlish is a particularly well known transport infrastructure issue, since it passes along the top of a seawall that was famously torn apart by storm conditions 4 winters ago and rebuilt at some 10s of millions of pounds. Anyone with an ounce of sense would realise that in these days of rising sea levels, increased storminess and more frequent ‘extreme’ conditions, putting a railway line right next to the sea just isn’t a good idea and no amount of repair work is going to solve the problem. Put simply, at some point the line will have to be moved inland…

In addition, today also saw the renewed destruction of the coastal road at Slapton running atop the mixed sand and gravel barrier that forms the beach there. This road was partly destroyed some years ago and rebuilt with a slight inland kink in it at the point of the damage. Judging from the pictures of today’s damage it will take more than a kink to straighten that problem out.

So, bad weather has stuffed the southwest region today. But actually, I would argue that it is Government and politicians who have really stuffed us. Significant money needs to be spent to improve transport infrastructure in the region but, instead, minimum amounts of the country’s money are spent patching things back together whilst oodles of cash are thrown at the HS2 project to build a new fast railway line to the north of the country (and by oodles I mean OODLES) and wasted on other pet political projects (Brexit anyone?). If a fraction of the money spent on some of these other projects was dripped into the southwest, huge and permanent improvements could be made. But this will never happen. It will never happen because the southwest is packed full of old people, farming people, military people and people who aren’t even here but still own loads of the houses. These are all the types of people who tend to vote Conservative and, consequently, almost every seat in the region is allied to that party. The majorities are mostly so great that there is no particular political value in the Conservative Government spending money down here because they will be voted for enough regardless of what they do. There is no particular political value in the Labour Party promising to spend money down here because there is just too much ground to make up and, in any case, they are never going to win many seats in the region. We are left to struggle with an ever-eroding infrastructure because there’s virtually no political mileage for anyone in trying to make a difference. Basically, as the title of this post suggests, we are stuffed in the southwest, and it is hard to see why anything would ever change.

Thanks guys.

A couple of days ago I enjoyed listening to an edition of the Accidental Creative podcast from 5th February in which regular host Todd Henry interviewed Mark Bowden, author of ‘Truth and Lies: What People Are Really Thinking’ (the podcast is here: Mark Bowden Accidental Creative podcast interview).

The main thrust of Bowden’s work is on how to better read body language and other forms of non-verbal communication (others and your own) so as to be more effective when asking questions or generally in communication. I found the whole podcast to be interesting but a couple of sections particularly stood out, one on using a critical thinking approach to prevent jumping to conclusions about situations and a second on utilizing awareness of your own body language to help resolve (or prevent) conflict in teams.

To help prevent jumping to conclusions, Bowden suggested using a critical thinking model that is captured by the acronym SCAN. As might be expected from its name, the model involves a four-step approach as follows:

S = SUSPEND initial judgement – note that this does not mean reject it but, rather, simply put it to one side for a few moments to allow the next steps of the model to be followed

C = consider/review the CONTEXT – is there anything to note about the context in which the communication/situation is occurring, for example might an audience by tired, hungry or cold. The key point here is to note anything aspects of the context that might offer an alternative to, or modification of, your initial judgement.

A = ASK what else? Basically, gather more data to help evaluate what is really going on.

N = NEW judgement – can you come up with one or more new or alternative judgements

Once the SCAN process has been completed then you can consider your initial versus any new judgements and decide how best to proceed. Bowden suggests that this approach can be used in many communication-based scenarios to prevent making default or snap judgements about what an audience is thinking, but he also highlighted that the model could be used to help consider all kinds of individual scenarios and assumptions. He noted that the SCAN process need not take long at all, just a few seconds in some circumstances but could help to prevent rushing to a default conclusion.

In relation to conflict resolution and prevention in teams, Bowden emphasized the value of modifying your own body language and highlighted how this could impact positively on the group dynamics. His advice was to focus on yourself rather than on the other members of the team and utilize open body language. Doing this can powerfully influence the tone of a room, leading the other team members into a more effective and less confrontational mode of communication. He suggested thinking about open body language as the kind of movements you would do if you came in from the cold into a room with a warm log fire burning – stretching your arms out, moving your upper body etc. to take in the fire’s heat.

I thought that both of these pieces of advice had potential to be useful and had the great benefit of being simple to remember and carry out. I might have to look up the book sometime (although the last thing I need really is another book to read!)

I have lived in Plymouth for 25 and a half years now and in all that time it has only snowed properly just a couple of times (by properly I mean that enough snow falls and settles on the ground so that things turn white and it is just about possible to make a snowball or a midget snowman). For this reason, today is quite a momentous day. Perhaps for the first time ever I walked into work amidst flurries of snow and then within a few minutes of getting there the white stuff began to fall more significantly and the ground became covered. These two pictures show the view from my office window just a few minutes apart at around 10am this morning…

It stopped snowing pretty soon after the second picture above was taken but made a few brief returns as the day progressed. I left work a bit early (all teaching was suspended for two days when the forecast is best described as ‘interesting’) and many of the pavements and side-roads were covered in thin layer of compacted snowy, becoming gradually more crusty and set to be pretty lethal as temperatures drop overnight and it freezes solid.

At home, the road outside out house is still snow-covered:

and the back garden has a pleasant wintery look about it:

Apparently there could be more snow tomorrow. In fact, I saw one piece on the local newspaper website that suggested that as much as 20cm could fall. If that happens the weather really will be exceptional and Plymouth will be talking about these few days for many years to come. But it is set to be warmer again on Friday so whatever snow falls or ice forms, it isn’t going to last, here at least.

Meanwhile, I was reading last night that temperatures in the northern Arctic are hugely above the climatological average for this time of year – a monster anomaly that is well beyond anything even the most expert (and pessimistic) climate scientists were expecting. Let there be no doubt, our planet’s atmosphere is changing and we’re starting to see the impacts of this change all over the place…

This morning I found myself thinking about four kinds of stuff: (1) stuff that I do, (2) stuff that I want to do more, (3) stuff that I want to do less and (4) stuff that I make myself do but for no particularly good reason. It seems pretty obvious that I should be actively working to try to do more of (2) and less of (3) and yes, it might be obvious, but that doesn’t make it easy. In fact, such is my utterly perverse approach to things that sometimes it seems as if the more I fixate on (2) the less of it I do and the more I do (1), (3) and (4) instead. Dare I say that I find myself wondering whether I do some things purely so that I don’t have to do things that I say I want to do more in case I find out that I am not very good at them – which is a classic perfectionist procrastination strategy to avoid ever having to be disappointed with your level of achievement… [albeit one that doesn’t work because I AM disappointed with my level of achievement.]

One thing that is certainly the case is that there are some things I force myself to do even though they don’t really have any clear benefit or rationale for being done – category (4) stuff. For example, I have recently developed my slight obsession with keeping ‘streaks’ going, as evidenced by the Streaks page of this blog (morning exercises, science reading, mindfulness meditation, WRITING THIS BLOG, running 25 miles a week). With some of these activities it is fairly easy to see why it is a good thing to do them – exercise and meditation practice both contribute to my overall well-being and, in theory, should make me better able to do all the other things I want to do. However, it can easily be argued that it is not actually essential to do them every day (or every weekday) apart from the goal of firmly establishing them as unshakable habits. I guess habit building IS a legitimate reason to keep doing something – regular science reading and running can be put into this category, they are good things to be in the habit of doing. The problem though, is that there is no real value in heaping pressure on myself to do these things every day or to a certain level. If I only run 22 miles in a week does it really matter? (No) If I miss a day of reading what is the problem? (There isn’t one). The more I think about it the more I can see that having to maintain these streaks is not a source of energy or fun, rather it is a source of completely unnecessary pressure – just another thing to judge myself with.

Of particular interest in this list of streaky stuff is my desire to write an entry on this blog everyday. I do this in the knowledge that almost no-one reads each entry and I tell myself this doesn’t matter because I am writing here just as a means to write something somewhere. But what IS the point of writing in that way? If I want to write then surely it would be better to put more care and thought into writing less frequently so that when I do write I have something more meaningful and carefully structured to say. Or, if I want to just write something everyday why don’t I just write a private journal of some sort? The answer to that question is that I suspect that without any kind of external visibility and accountability I wouldn’t bother to write at all, but doesn’t that tell me something – that writing on this blog is a completely unnecessary diversion away from other activities? So, if I am honest, I guess I have to admit that writing this blog IS about getting noticed by people, even if this only occurs once or twice a day and the people doing the noticing have absolutely no connection with me or my life (in fact in many cases they are probably just trying to drum up traffic on their own blogs). I’m not saying that everyone who visits this blog is like that and I am certainly not judging them, rather I am commenting on my own bizarre confusion. By the way – ‘hello and welcome’ if you are reading this!

All of which is to say that after almost 60 days of writing on this blog once per day I am not at all sure whether I will keep this going. It might be argued that there is a middle ground – just write something every now and again when I have something particular I want to say – but I am not sure that this would work for me and suspect that without a daily habit this blog would die a natural death, as it has done on various occasions in the past. The other possibility is that I come up with a good reason to keep it going, some goal for why I want to put my thoughts out there for others to stumble upon, and not simply write them in a private notebook. I am using good time and energy to write these entries and so if I value myself I ought to have a good reason for using myself up in this way.

So, this entry maybe the last entry on this blog, or it might be the last entry for a while. But it might not be. I suppose we will all find out tomorrow!