Sucked into the theater

I arrived at Princeton in the early days of coeducation there. After 200+ years as an all-male institution, women were now fellow students rather than weekend visitors. About 28% of my 1,000 odd classmates were women.

I had spent the previous six years at an all boys high school. Which meant minimal experience or skill at interacting with the opposite sex. I had, however, learned one odd thing I was able to take advantage of. Theater productions generally called for a pretty even mix of men and women on stage and that tended to hold true for the rest of the production as well. In high school that meant partnering with sister schools to stage shows.

At Princeton that meant finding my way to McCarter Theater during orientation week to see the Princeton Triangle Club perform some of their greatest hits. The pretty blond handing out flyers at the entrance suggested my hypothesis was correct.

It was.

While I was smitten with a particular redhead in a skit satirizing “The Dating Game”, so was every other heterosexual male in the audience. Turns out she was also a senior but that didn’t stop me from signing up to work backstage on future shows.

Over the next four years that included building sets, hanging lights, stage managing multiple shows, and going on three tours. Eventually I had possession of an unauthorized master key to the theater. I even rode the fire escape slide from the seven-story tower that housed the dressing rooms.

Some weeks I spent more time in McCarter than all of my classes combined. After one late dress rehearsal that ended shortly after midnight, the very first note from the director was to deputize two cast members to escort me back to my dorm room and put me to bed. A bed I hadn’t seen in the past 120 hours.

The theater is a place of myth and tradition. It’s knowledge that you absorb rather than study. It’s also a realm of large, and often fragile, egos. Which made it an extraordinary environment for me to learn how to navigate and operate inside complex, human, organizations. Which evolved into my life’s work.

All because I wanted to get better at talking to girls.

University days, a first home away from home

Photo of Nassau Hall Cannon Green at Princeton UniversityThis spring marks the 50th anniversary of my graduating from college. Which means it has been 54 years since I first set foot on the Princeton campus.

My dad went to the University of Delaware on the GI Bill. He was the first and only member of his family to attend college. My mother started but never finished her college degree at St. Louis University.

I didn’t grow up with any images or role models of what college might mean. I liked school and did well. Books were so much easier to understand than people. Courtesy of a wise nun in my parochial school, I ended up in a Catholic, all-boys college prep school for middle school and high school. College was now the next step on the ladder. Ladder to what wasn’t clear but I knew how to do the school thing. Come my senior year, the headmaster gives me a list of four schools to apply to including Harvard and Princeton. These were still just names to me.

Part of the application process included interviews with recent alumni of each school. The one thing I remember from those interviews is the contrast in attitudes of those two alums whose names and faces I cannot recall. The Harvard grad was all about how Harvard would set me on the path to future success. The Princeton grad touched on similar points but was mostly keen on wishing he could be in my shoes to go back to Princeton and experience it all again.

When I got into both schools with similar financial aid packages, my choice was easy. In September of 1971, I set foot on the Princeton campus for the first time. I don’t recall that college visits were a common thing in my day, although it might have been as much about the logistics of getting nine people to the East Coast and back. The same constraints meant that I arrived on campus on my own.

How I navigated those first weeks is a mystery. I imagine most everyone else was as lost and confused as I was. And as desperately trying to mask their confusion. Not that I remember it that way.

What I was building was a capacity to cope effectively with the new. As a book smart guy from near, if not on, the wrong side of the tracks there was so much I did not understand. Often, I did not understand that I didn’t understand. I muddled through nonetheless.

Testing new writing tools

This is a test post using Dave Winer's newest tool/toy, Wordland. Always interesting to see what Dave is up to. One of the first blogging tools I used was his Radio Userland. As one of the ur-bloggers, Winer has thought about this more deeply than just about anyone. I may not always agree with him, but I always pay attention to his arguments. I'd be stupid not to, and I am not a fan of stupid.

I admit that I am always a bit leery of tools that insist on running in a browser. I am old school in that regard and want to know where my data resides. I'll be keeping an eye on this as it develops. The key question for me is whether it helps me get back into a more regular flow of writing and posting. That's not necessarily a function of the tool suite. 

We shall see how the tool and its value/utility to me unfold

Shaping or shaped by your environment

I am the eldest of seven baby boomers; born in 1953, my baby sister in 1961. My dad was an engineer who rose to middle management working in the space program for McDonnell Aircraft. I think we made decent money but everything gets smaller when divided by seven. I don’t recall that I had a room of my own until college except for a brief period when I was recovering from a broken leg (not a recommended path to privacy).

Looking back, one thing that amuses me was the advice on good study habits to “find a quiet, organized place for your work.” Never going to happen. Instead, I learned to tune out background noise and chaos. Getting my attention when I am concentrating can be a challenge.

Productivity thinking starts with controlling the environment. You design the assembly line to enable the flow you want. If the environment is not subject to your control, however, then you are forced onto a different path. Your task becomes how to be effective within the constraints of your environment. What can you control to make your work flow more smoothly?

Reflective practice makes better

The curtain goes up in 45 minutes.

Actually, it won’t do anything until I give the order. But the order will come on time. I’ve just put my stage manager’s prompt script on a music stand just off stage left in the wings. It identifies everything that will happen offstage to make the magic happen onstage; lighting cues, sound cues, scenery movement. I check in with the tech crew, the music director, the house manager. At thirty minutes before curtain, I call “half hour,” then “5 minutes”, then “places” and we’re off.

For the next two hours, what we’ve practiced and rehearsed for weeks plays out under my direction. Most of the people in the audience have no idea that I exist, much less what I am doing. As it should be. Knowing how the magic is made is rarely as rewarding as simply enjoying it.

There are some of us, however, who develop an interest in how to make magic. Taking things apart to understand how they work has its own rewards. There are any number of cliches I could use to talk about pulling off this kind of performance magic; shared purpose, shared struggle, traditions. rituals. They are cliches because they are anchored in deep truths. I could have chosen to simply continue to accumulate experience and get better over time.

Practice makes perfect.

Although I didn’t have the language or concepts at the time, I chose a slightly different path. Call it reflective pratice. Which I learned some fifteen years later. Rather than striving to perfect some technique, I opted for working on understanding and improving the techniques in parallel with practicing and performing them. A slower and less certain path to travel. But one that turns out to be better suited to a world of innovation and change.

Serving two mistresses

How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life came out while I was in college. One of, if not the first, thing I read in pursuit of better personal productivity.

I was in my second year of college. I had been granted what they called “advanced standing”, which meant I was on track to graduate in three rather than four years. This was courtesy of an exceptional high school education and some natural talent for standardized tests. I was also the production stage manager for a theater group’s spring production. This was an original Broadway scale musical comedy. As stage manager, I was responsible for managing all the rehearsals of the cast of 50 odd fellow students. Finally, as part of my financial aid package, I worked part time as a stage carpenter and electrician at McCarter Theater on campus.

To say that the title spoke to me might possibly have been an understatement.

Surely, I could get it all done if I was just a little bit better organized.

I think I actually believed that for many years.

This was the beginning of a love affair with two mistresses. On one side there was the “magic of the theater.” Bringing together sound, light, and movement to create a moment. On the other side, there was the work to organize and coordinate each of those elements so that they were ready when that moment arrived; systems.

Success depends on keeping both of these mistresses happy and in balance. It’s hard to create magic if you’ve forgotten to book the dance studio for rehearsal. On the other hand, no system can help you when the lead has locked themselves in their dressing room thirty minutes before the curtain is set to rise.

The challenge here is that the systems are easy to see and easy to tweak and easy to play with. They can be measured and reported on. So, you can find lots of advice on how to deal with systems.

Figuring out where to push or nudge to make the magic a bit more likely does not yield to systematic attack. Experience and a willingness to reflect on that experience can work over time. So can frank conversations with fellow travelers. There are fellow travelers out there. Your first step is to go look for them and strike up those conversations.

Beyond productivity; seeking effectiveness

Over the last several years I’ve been noodling on what author Steve Johnson would describe as a “slow hunch.” As someone who has done knowledge work and managed knowledge workers, I’ve been trying to understand what it means to set aside productivity and pursue effectiveness instead. I’m planning on taking the next several weeks to take a deeper look at that hunch.

There’s no lack of commentary about productivity. It’s relatively easy to do but I’ve come to believe that it is anchored in a mistaken focus on the word worker at the expense of the word knowledge.

Here’s a simple example. I use a program called TextExpander on my Mac (if you’re on Windows, ActiveWords would be the equivalent). These programs let you create shortcuts for frequently used words or phrases. Their sales pitch is typically anchored in productivity thinking. Every week I get a little message from the program congratulating me on the time I have saved by using their shortcuts instead of typing out a phrase in full. The premise is that I am a machine for cranking out words and the faster I crank the better.

I don’t care how fast I type; I care about how well I think. Things that slow down my thinking are a problem worth attacking. I can never remember how to spell the word “individual.” Trying to work that out breaks my concentration and flow. I can remember to type “indv” however and let a piece of software worry about my spelling. TextExpander happily informs me of the seconds I have saved by not having to type those extra six characters. It cannot track or understand how it contributes to my state of flow when I’m trying to create. That’s the difference between productivity and effectiveness at a micro level.

It’s time to bring some sustained focus to this slow hunch that productivity and effectiveness are different. Feedback on whether I am making any sense will help.

Making better sense with notes. A review of Jorge Arango’s “Duly Noted”

Everyday seems to bring us news of a new app or service for taking notes. Everyone seems to be offering me courses and workshops promising to make me a world class note taker. All the cool kids are polishing their notes. A niche topic is moving center stage.

Separating signal from noise in these moments can be frustrating. The noise keeps getting louder. In Duly Noted Jorge Arango brings quiet clarity.

The point (of taking better notes) isn’t to stash ideas for later or to have a machine think for you, but to create a space that lets you think more effectively.

There is a deep point here that I first encountered in a story about Nobel laureate Richard Feynman;

[Feynman] began dating his scientific notes as he worked, something he had never done before. Weiner once remarked casually that his new parton [In particle physics, the parton model is a model of hadrons] notes represented “a record of the day-to-day work,” and Feynman reacted sharply. “I actually did the work on the paper,” he said. “Well,” Weiner said, “the work was done in your head, but the record of it is still here.” “No, it’s not a record, not really. It’s working. You have to work on paper, and this is the paper. Okay?” (from _Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman_ by James Gleick.)

Writing—getting ideas out of your head—is a fundamental tool for thought. Notes, how they are structured, and how you manipulate them are core elements in making writing and thinking work. Arango lays out how to make notes work better for you.

Good teacher that he is, Arango starts from a very simple foundation;

  • Make short notes.
  • Connect your notes.
  • Nurture your notes.

An important reminder amid the rush of efforts to exploit the new found popularity of notes and note taking/making. Arango does offer more detailed advice but he keeps simplicity at the core.

The central metaphor Arango chooses to organize around is gardening. You plant seeds with your notes. If you nurture and tend to the seeds they will bear fruit. If you ignore them, the best you can hope for is an overgrown mess of weeds.

It’s unlikely this will be the first thing you read about this new world of notes, but you would do well to make it the next.

Searching for Simple

I had a friend in college who was an accomplished musician. His problem was that he kept comparing himself to Maurice Andre and concluding he was a failure. My friend got over using the wrong comparison to draw the wrong conclusion, but I’ve held onto the story as a reminder to myself to be careful about how to process the feedback you give yourself.

I’ve been fretting about what I’ve produced from my writing practice. Aware of the trap of misleading comparisons, I fall into them nonetheless. It’s easy to tell your friends to not be foolish. It’s so much harder to do so looking in the mirror. Especially when you’re doing the same stupid things they’ve been doing but just differently enough to pretend that you’re special.

While I think of myself as largely an instinctual writer, I’ve also delved deeply into the wisdom and advice about the nature of creative work. Two elements of advice that turn up pretty much everywhere is that your job is to show up and to finish what you start. The promise is that if you manage those two things, the Muses will worry about inspiration and quality (see, for example, Elizabeth Gilbert: Your elusive creative genius)

i’ve concluded that I’ve only been keeping half the bargain. I’ve been showing up. Finishing is where I’ve been falling short.

Wiser folks than I warn of resistance and perfectionism as the enemies of finishing.

And, I want to reject their counsel.

I’ve always been comfortable filling a blank page or screen. And no one who knows me would accuse me of perfectionism of any sort.

But these folks are wise. So I listen some more.

And conclude that resistance and perfectionism take clever forms. The enemies of creation aren’t beholden to obvious tactics. They are more than happy to play dirty. They discern my strengths and weaknesses to tailor their attacks. They throw up speed bumps and trip wires optimized to take advantage of my unique weaknesses and idiosyncrasies.

My habitual response is to look for the smart thing to do to solve my problem. I like to think that “smart” is what I do. But my enemy knows that all too well. What I need to do is seek out the simplest possible things that might work. I was thinking that rhythm and cadence were the things to look at. Now, I wonder whether that’s the “smart” talking.

Now, we look for simple.

 

McGee’s Musings turns 23

Last year when I noted this moment, we were about to leave Portugal and head to Durham, NC. We’re now about to celebrate our first anniversary in North Carolina. A lot has been going on.

I’m still sorting out what I want and expect from this stage of my life. A dear friend recently gifted me Wisdom at Work: The Making of a Modern Elder, which is offering some useful input and perspective. This particular experiment at sharing my thinking will continue. Writing is one of the ways that I work out what I think.

Putting myself on the hook to share the results is a forcing function that raises the quality of my reasoning. Adjusting my quality filters is an ongoing process.