commentary

Readin', Ritin', and Rithmetic, by Rote

Yesterday in Twitter, @jemmons wrote

If answers to your test questions can be looked up by "cheaters" on their phones, maybe they don't need to learn them? BETTER QUESTIONS PLZ?

Continue reading "Readin', Ritin', and Rithmetic, by Rote"

Surprise

surprise - v.

1. to strike or occur to with a sudden feeling of wonder or astonishment, as through unexpectedness
2. to elicit or bring out suddenly and without warning: to surprise the facts from the witness.
3. to lead or bring unawares, as into doing something not intended

I'm thinking about "surprise" today and what it means. Yesterday, at the Job, I announced a decision that I believed was mine to make and that I also understood to be an expected, eventual outcome of discussions and plans we all had in mid-January. In other words, none of this should be surprising. The only unknown was the date of the decision.

Continue reading "Surprise"

Leaving A Mark

As I was reading a discussion (April 2006) in the 43Folders (Productivity) forum, I came across a reference to a disturbing quote attributed to Jean Baudrillard:

The compact disc. It does not wear out, even when one uses it. That is terrible. As if one had never used it, as if one had never existed at all.

Continue reading "Leaving A Mark"

Personality Types

I'm interested in the study of Personality Types.

That's like phrenology, right?

No. I'm talking about Jung Typology, the Meyers Briggs Type Index (MBTI), or the Keirsey Temperament sorter.

How is this different from, say, horoscopes...positing peoples' personalities based on the sign of the zodiac under which they were born?

This is very different. With a horoscope (or phrenology :-), I would take one fact about you and try to extrapolate knowledge of your personality, ideal career, likes and dislikes, or your future, from that one fact.

With MBTI or Keirsey, you describe your own personality, based on many factors. You answer a series of questions, identifying your likes and dislikes, your interests, what sorts of activities energize you and what things leave you cold. You identify your personality type.

Continue reading "Personality Types"

Whisper Campaign

I recently switched to a new manager at The Job. By "new" I mean both new for me and new to the Company That Employs Me.

Our first meeting was not what I expected. My new manager's first words were:
    "So, what's with this email?
        (What email?)
    The email you sent yesterday.
        (Which email?)
   You seem very frustrated?
        (Um...no?)

Things went downhill from there. She asked me to send her anything I was planning to send to a "large audience" first so she could preview it before I sent it. Over the next week, I kept getting battered with repetitions on the theme. The preview requests went from "email to a large audience" to "email to managers" to "long email" to pretty much any email to anyone.

I began to wonder what was really going on. Was she micromanaging? Or did someone put her up to this? And why?

Continue reading "Whisper Campaign"

Who Are You?

Names have power. Your name, handle, nickname, call sign, userid, email address, IM ID, identifies you. There's a reason we call it an ID.

A name you choose for yourself has even more oomph. My mother named me Vicki, but; I choose to call myself Vicki. I don't have a nickname. (When it comes to choosing an online identity, e.g. for a Second Life avatar, I'm stymied.)

My email ID is vlb. I've been using it for so long, and am so comfortable with it, that I chafe at companies that assign me something else. When I can, I request an alias. When I can't... well, I didn't work there for very long.

Continue reading "Who Are You?"

Who Moved My Cheese

Have you read Who Moved My Cheese, the popular motivational tale by Spencer Johnson? Our team director, where I work, suggested it.

It's a simple premise - different people react differently to change. Some immediately move on to look for the next thing. Others become paralyzed and have difficulty coping. Still others are "in the middle", waiting a while but then gathering themselves up to move on.

Continue reading "Who Moved My Cheese"

Choosing Email

We need to stop thinking of email as some strange beast. Email is written communication - nothing more, nothing less. The primary difference between email and any other form of communication comes down to one thing: email doesn't require a human delivery agent. That's it. That's the difference.

Continue reading "Choosing Email"

Are You a Blogger?

I've been meaning to post this essay for a long time and simply haven't found the tuits. Tonight I decided to post it, (finally!), both here and on my website.

Are you a blogger? Before you answer no, consider this:

...There has been plenty of buzz around blogging over the past two years but, as some observers have pointed out, blogging is just writing that's shared with others using software that makes it all very easy.
...

Continue reading "Are You a Blogger?"

Strengths Finder

[ This is part 2 of a 2-part entry on the Clifton StrengthsFinder and the book, Now, Discover Your Strengths. Part 1 is entitled, Discover Your Strengths. ]

Marcus Buckingham (co-author of First, Break All the Rules, and The One Thing You Need to Know) and Donald O. Clifton, Chair of the Gallup International Research & Education Center, have created StrengthsFinder, a "revolutionary program to help readers identify their talents, build them into strengths, and enjoy consistent, near-perfect performance."

The program is described in the book, Now, Discover Your Strengths. But there's more to the book than a simple explanation of the 34 themes in Gallup's "taxonomy of strengths".

Continue reading "Strengths Finder"