Hilary's Weblog

Lessons from cats and dogs

We don't mark stuff nearly enough.  Cats and dogs have the right idea.  They are continually marking and re-marking their territory - their place in the world.  We have a lot to learn.  Some of us may be obsessive about marking our physical patch - the stone cladding, the gnomes in the garden, the razor wire on the fence - that's not the kind of marking I'm talking about.  In the rest of our lives, our attention is always moving onto the next thing - on the path opening up ahead of us - and we forget to mark the place where we are right now, to celebrate our arrival.

So here I am, marking the spot. 

A series of interpretation boards have been put up along the riverside in Bedford to tell passers-by about the planned Bedford and Milton Keynes Waterway, which will connect the River Great Ouse in Bedford with the Grand Union Canal in Milton Keynes.  It has taken a lot of work by an energetic band of volunteers to get to this point, bidding for and winning funding, designing and commissioning the boards, negotiating and agreeing their locations.  Now they are installed in pride of place along the river.  Before our attention gets swallowed up in the thousands of other pieces that need to be in place to make this amazing scheme a reality, clearly, the boards called for a Board Walk.  Over 50 people took part, including the Mayor and the local MP, and it was a great success.  My job, as you can see, was simply to point to the start.

Are we put off because it seems like too much trouble?  Marking ceremonies don't have to be expensive or lavish.  The act, the fact of congregating is far more important than the bells and whistles.  By all means look forward, but don't forget to mark the steps along the way. 

Take the time to say:  "together, we are here".

Last year's model - a small step for sustainability

I just stumbled across a great blog. Last Year's Model - saving the planet through sheer laziness. It's here: lastyearsmodel.org

In the words of the blog: Get great gadgets. And keep them.

Oh, and then tell everyone - on the blog, on Facebook, on your own blog or on Twitter (#lastyears).

It's a peculiarity of the world we live in now that things like this simply drop into our paths. In my case, I was finding out a bit about what people think about the new beta version of Typepad, veered from there into lists of blog designs that people liked, and this was one of them. I went to look at it for the design and stayed for the content. Mind you, this isn't a Typepad blog by accident - it was created by Anil Dash, Vice President at Six Apart. 

I hate goals!

Let's be clear about this. I really mean it. I hate goals. I have tried - seriously tried hard - to develop my own personal set of goals, but after 6 months' work they still had DRAFT written across them in large letters, and I wasn't happy.

Goals just don't work for me. For a long time I thought it was just me, but I have come to the conclusion that for a lot of people goals don't work a lot of the time. Instead of being a spur to action they become burdensome and limiting. So here's my theory:

1. It's hard work, and it's all down to me.

   Please don't tell me ever again about eating elephants one bite at a time. I don't want to eat the damned elephant however you slice it. Working towards my goals is all my responsibility to do, and all my fault when progress isn't made. I just didn't try hard enough. I clearly didn't want it enough. I feel depressed. I need to lie down.

2. I'm missing my life.

   So I pull my resources together and focus, really focus on the elephant in front of me. But if my focus is so strongly on some future imagined state, it's way too easy to lose awareness of the here and now, and forget to live my life today. 

3. Heaven forbid I achieve my goal.

   It won't magically change anything. My imagined future, the glorious technicolour 3D image I'd unknowingly built around the specifics of the goal itself almost certainly won't be there. And then what? I've worked hard to reach the pinnacle and I find it's really a cliff edge, and I'm on my way down. This article about one of the UK Olympic gold medallists says it all.

To be fair, for some people goals work a treat. The kind of pressure that sends me round the twist gets them up with a bounce in their step every morning. So now I am addressing the rest of this post to the people like me - the normal ones.

Standing still isn't an option (although for a short while to smell the roses it's idyllic). We do need some kind of forward momentum in our lives. Let's call it intention. The great thing about clear intentions is that they are things I can be doing now and into the future. They don't have the terrible, leaden end points that goals do. They open out my awareness of possibilities and opportunities, and they are loose enough to morph around the best of them. 

Innovation Alessi-style

I'm inundated by email newsletters from all and sundry. Mostly they lie around in my in-box until I snap and stow them away, or snap completely and unsubscribe. The big problem is that there are real gems tucked away within the mass of material. This morning I found one of these gems.

I had heard stories before about Alberto Alessi and his obsession with producing beautiful objects without compromise. McKinsey interviewed him, and have put together a great insight into his thinking and his design principles. Have a look at it here. (Click on "Launch Interactive" to view it.)

I was particularly struck by the formula he uses to assess a new product. He assesses the prototype - as he says, not the first rough prototype but from at least the third so that it is already in a reasonably polished state. His formula evaluates each product on a 5 point scale against four parameters. The central two have to do with the relationship between the individual and the product, and the social impact of the product. To this he adds an evaluation of function and of price. The parameters are shown in this piece. It shows fascinatingly how clear he is on what is Alessi.

In good time...

On Monday the lean-to construction on the back of my house was demolished. You can't really grace it with the name conservatory, although that is presumably what it was originally supposed to be. It had become a glory-hole, swallowing large quantities of mostly rubbish. It had been due to come down for nearly 20 years, and as is often the way, what finally tipped the balance was a snap decision. Now, not only has the lean-to gone, but, hooray, so have 90% of its contents. I was standing in the sitting room as the roof came down. It was as if someone had drawn back a heavy curtain. Light flooded in. The room positively changed shape. The cat became confused - so many sunny spots to choose from.

Isn't it amazing what we put up with? For years I have tolerated this monstrosity, and the way it cut light from the house. I've overlooked my own rubbish every day, and yet somehow managed not to see it. The dark side of the room attracted even more stuff, establishing itself as a general dumping ground. And every time I arrived at my house, I was met by my own junk, advancing down the garden towards me.

And yet what did it take to make me take action? The builder said "I hate to send a skip away half empty." I pointed at the lean-to and said "Will that fit?"

And the moral of this story is what? I had all the permissions I needed to be able to take action - I was ready for change. I had the builders here already so my appetite for change was whetted. Or simply the wind was in the right direction

Time out

I need more friends who are late. Normally I'm the late one, so I miss out on the sudden space that opens up when someone else's schedule breaks across mine. Here I am, away from the routine, space to think, cranial wheels spinning, slightly cursing because I only have my last-ditch mini-notebook with me, so I'm having to write in spider style - not natural. But then, on the umbrella and sunglasses principle, if I'd come prepared, David would have been on time.

There is definitely something about found time. I guess because the time has no other purpose, it is particularly fertile.

Now don't try to tell me that the best way to find more time is not to be congenitally late. I just am. Given the opportunity to be early, I'll find another couple of things to fill the available time, and then be surprised when they take twice as long. It is part of my identity. I can't change it - it might change me.

I must find more late friends...

Why put away childish things?

It is always and endlessly fascinating earwigging on other people's conversations.  I'm passing an hour in a wine bar in central London, waiting for the half price ticket booth to get more tickets, and for my car to be washed by the obligatory Russians in the car park.

Two gentlemen are sitting in the corner of the bar in front of me, leapfrogging each other's increasingly tall stories.  Apologies, gentlemen, if you read this.  I promise I didn't hear anything specific or attributable.  Their stories all revolve around cars, alcohol, dissolute friends and good times.  Ford Capris, Vauxhall Vivas, even an E type Jag all come to sticky ends, helped by copious amounts of booze.  It's fascinating to listen to the pattern of their voices, the energy levels ramping up as story tops story.  When I close my eyes I can see a couple of six year olds, swapping stories of increasingly legendary derring-do, mostly muddy but always adventurous.

Someone said that growing old is inevitable but growing up is optional.  I wonder.  If you poke most of us with the right stories at the right time, do we ever grow up?

Absolutely the most amazing thing you'll hear today

The wonderful people at TED have just posted the highlight of TED2009. Jose Antonio Abreu is the founder of the youth orchestra system in Venezuela (El Sistema) that has transformed the lives of thousands of young people. His TED Prize Wish is to bring El Sistema to the world. Click here to hear more about it. To support that wish, we were treated to a live concert from the Teresa Carreño Youth Orchestra, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel (himself a graduate of El Sistema, and now music director of the LA Philharmonic Orchestra). 

It was incredible. Thanks to the wonders of the TED talks, I can share it with you now. For maximum mind-blowingness, plug your PC into a good set of speakers and make yourself comfortable.

Elizabeth Gilbert's TED talk just got put online

I blogged enthusiastically about Elizabeth Gilbert's talk a few days ago.  It has just been put up on the TED site, and here it is:

Amazing things people have said

Just so I don't lose track of them, here is a random selection of some of the amazing things people have said so far at this year's TED conference.

Jill Tarter, TED Prize winner and searcher for extra-terrestrial intelligence said: 

The ascent of man has to go - it's a sense of privilege the natural universe doesn't share

Yann Arthus-Bertrand, photographer of the world from the air, and cataloguer of our impact on the earth, said:

It's too late to be pessimistic

Bonnie Bassler, molecular biologist and ace communicator of bacterial communication processes said:

We have 10 times more bacterial cells in us and on us than human cells - we are 10% human and 90% bacterial

Golan Levin, audio-visual artist and software engineer, and creator of the amazing double-taker, said:

The (computer) mouse is probably the narrowest straw you can try and suck human expression through

Elizabeth Gilbert, the writer, about whom I have already blogged, said:

We have somehow accepted the assumption that creativity and suffering are necessarily linked