Accident or Design

It occurs to me that our days tend to unfold in one of two ways: by accident or by design.

This struck me after looking back on a recent summer weekday and realizing I had done nothing but float around the house like a half-filled helium balloon: doing a chore here, playing with the kids there, checking email every 20 minutes, thinking about work with no particular purpose in mind, reading a little.

Wow. In the grand scheme of things, I thought, I have done nothing to add value to my life today, and it was by accident. I wasn't intentional. I just existed.

Don't get me wrong, this kind of living has its place. Occasionally, and on purpose. Making a choice to "decompress" or "disconnect" can be a good mental break. But when there exists no purpose to what we do, we have no purpose.

I like to make lists. Lists keep me honest and directed. My usual routine is to make a list in the morning for my day. However, in an effort to quell the recent malaise that has beset me, the teacher in summertime, I recently began writing out to-do lists for the next day as I sit enjoying Netflix in the evening. This little shift has set up my tomorrows much more successfully. I wake up with intention (today it was to start at 5:30 AM with a 30 mile bike ride), and move on to other goals (like writing this post). No floating unless I designed part of my day that way.

Ultimately, we have control over ourselves. That's it. Small steps like setting a few little goals and intentionally designing tomorrow to move ourselves closer to those goals will lead to bigger and bigger things. Avoid accidents with better design.

Smart Phone Apps that Keep You Learning Behind the Wheel

If you are often mindlessly behind the wheel of your car logging windshield time, perhaps with the radio on or maybe in silence, you could be missing an opportunity to engage your mind with positive or enlightening messages. Last year I read something Larry Winget wrote in one of his books about using driving time as another chance to learn.

Since then, I have used several different apps with my Android smartphone to listen and learn while in the car. I commute to my teaching job 40 minutes each day, and the average nonfiction audiobook is six hours in length. If I play an audio book on my way to and from school for each of the 190 days I make the trip, over the course of the school year, I will go through roughly 21 books!

These are the best and most used free apps I use to beam content to my Bluetooth connected radio:

Overdrive Media Console. This app will connect to your public library's audiobook collection and play them with a very nice interface. You are limited to your library's offerings just like you would be for regular books to check out, but if your library has a decent stock of titles, you'll be set. There are over 22,000 libraries that use the system, so chances are good you're a member of one. The other nice thing is that the audiobooks are automatically returned if you don't renew them... No late fees!

Umano. This app is unique in that it offers a curated list of interesting articles from major publications on many different subjects narrated by professional voice actors. I have found many thought provoking and interesting items using Umano. The people employed to read do a quite respectable job. At one time, I had a search in place for inspirational items. The app didn't disappoint, offering a wide array of news and general interest items that fit the category.

uListen is my current "go to" app in the car. It is just great. There are thousands of videos on the youtube with motivating, inspiring, informational, and fascinating topics. Many of these videos are perfectly understandable with no video playing at all (like taped motivational seminars) or are already audio only. uListen will search all of YouTube and will play only the audio from any given video. On the road, cell towers can be spread out. No video means less bandwidth and a smooth playback experience despite poor reception!

Stitcher bills itself as a kind of internet radio. What it actually is is a streaming podcast app with a wide array of content in 18 different subject areas, from current events to religion and spirituality. I like Stitcher because of its streaming platform. Podcasted shows aren't downloaded and don't take space on my phone. Episodes are also dynamically refreshed to the most current without my help. The app also allows the creation of a list of "favorites" to return to time after time.

Do you have favorites in this genre of app? Please share below. I'd love to hear from you!

 

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Email the Snail Way

I've noticed lately that people want things from me immediately. Usually because of email, immediate responses seem to be the norm rather than the exception. Quite often I oblige and work diligently and quickly to shoot out response after response. Whether or not those responses are the best and measured answers to questions doesn't always occur to me....

... and bad or hasty decisions are usually more trouble than they're worth.

I've been slowly working my way through the great book by Doris Kearns Goodwin called "A Team of Rivals." In this wonderfully researched and presented history, Kearns Goodwin details the life of Abraham Lincoln and those people whom he both competed against (the Rivals) and later asked to join his cabinet (the Team).

The book is written using letters and first hand accounts from people surrounding Lincoln and his election to the presidency. What strikes me most as I read is the pace at which the communication happens.

One of the nice things about living in the era before email and immediate communication was that people took time to think about what they were going to say and think about how they were going to say it. The patience that would then follow -- as letters galloped across the countryside and back again -- would drive us nuts today.

And it's rare to have that patience anymore.

I've read suggestions from others about managing our intake of data. One of those suggestions is to limit our email use to once or perhaps twice per day, setting aside certain times to answer the notes filling our inbox.

I can imagine changing a habit such as checking email would be quite difficult. However I can certainly see the potential upside to this. My life at work could slow down and become more effective. On the other hand, I realize that the people on the other end of the email chain may not be as patient as I might be. This could undoubtedly cause problems.

So what's the answer? I think the best solution is somewhere in the middle of an instantaneous response and waiting for the Pony Express to arrive. When going through emails, why not answer those mundane emails that don't require much thought first, and then cycle back to the more heavier involved-thought questions? And even then, perhaps you will need to give a response a good bit more time (or pick up the phone.)

An email response to a heavier request perhaps later that afternoon or the following day is OK. Life was pretty successful for thousands of years before computers and email. It will probably be okay if that response happens in six hours or 6 seconds.

And perhaps taking the time to think through a response in those six hours will save you that much in headache later.

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