Tag: mastery

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The Emotional Bumblebee

I finished Lisa Feldman Barrett’s book, “How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain,” this past week. It’s the latest exploration in my decades-long journey to better understand myself and others. There’s a lot in this book and it’s been a paradigm shift for me personally. I expect the effects from the insights gained from Dr. Barrett’s work in my professional life will be equally seismic.

As part of this exploration and effort to understand what Dr. Barrett and others are discovering, I’ve been experimenting with different ways to organize and assimilate information. For years I’ve used mind mapping and its served me well. I continue to use this approach almost daily. Ah, but the relentless advancement of technology has resulted in new tools. My current favorite (meaning the one that so far matches how my brain seems to work) is a tool called Obsidian. It’s new and is evolving quickly. I’ve been using Obsidian to organize and study cognitive biases in a way similar to Buster Benson’s work. This past weekend I began a similar process with emotions based on Dr. Barrett’s work.

It’s early but it has already yielded many important insights and benefits. I began by collecting as many words I could find (currently, 514) that are used to describe emotional states or patterns. I then entered them into Obsidian, each connected to a single node, “Words that express emotion.” Here’s a partial screen capture of the Obsidian graph:

The graph is too big to fit on a single screen and have the words show. And Obsidian does not yet have an export feature for graphs into a standard image file. So I’m limited by screen real estate. Where I take this next…I’m not sure, actually. Probably a cycle of refinement and deep dive into definitions and descriptions. I can foresee the creation of a real-time tool for assessing emotional states using a circumplex. Lots of experimentation ahead.

There is a dynamic quality to the graphs in Obsidian that is part of the fun and path-to-insights with the information. I’ve created a video to show the effect and set it to Nikolai Riminsky-Korsakov’s orchestral interlude “Flight of Bumblebee.” If/when you read Dr. Barrett’s book, you will understand why I selected the bee theme. It’s a virtual emotional bee hive inside our heads and bodies. Be sure to expand the video to full screen for maximum effect. Enjoy!

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Clouds and Windmills

I recently resigned from the company I had been employed by for over 5 years. The reason? It was time.

During my tenure1 I had the opportunity to re-define my career several times within the organization in a way that added value and kept life productive, challenging, and rewarding. Each re-definition involved a rather extensive mind mapping exercises with hundreds of nodes to described what was working, what wasn’t working, what needed fixing, and where I believed I could add the highest value.

This past spring events prompted another iteration of this process. It began with the question “What wouldn’t happen if I didn’t go to work today?”2 This is the flip of asking “What do I do at work?” The latter is a little self-serving. We all want to believe we are adding value and are earning our pay. The answer is highly filtered through biases, justifications, excuses, and rationalizations. But if in the midsts of a meeting you ask yourself, “What would be different if I were not present or otherwise not participating?”, the answer can be a little unsettling.

This time around, in addition to mind mapping skills, I was equipped with the truly inspiring work of Tanmay Vora and his sketchnote project. Buy me a beer some day and I’ll let you in on a few of my discoveries. Suffice it to say, the overall picture wasn’t good. I was getting the feeling this re-definition cycle was going to include a new employer.

A cascade of follow-on questions flowed from this iteration’s initial question. At the top:

  1. Why am I staying?
  2. Is this work aligned with my purpose?
  3. Have my purpose and life goals changed?

The answers:

  1. The paycheck
  2. No.
  3. A little.

Of course, it wasn’t this simple. The organization changed, as did I, in a myriad of ways. While exploring these questions, I was reminded of a story my Aikido teacher, Gaku Homma, would tell when describing his school. He said it was like a rope. In the beginning, it had just a few threads that joined with him to form a simple string. Not very strong. Not very obvious. But very flexible. Over time, more and more students joined his school and wove their practice into Nippon Kan’s history. Each new thread subtlety changed the character of the emerging rope. More threads, more strength, and more visibility. Eventually, an equilibrium emerges. Some of those threads stop after a few short weeks of classes, other’s (like mine) are 25 years long before they stop, and for a few their thread ends in a much more significant way.

Homma Sensi has achieved something very difficult. The threads that form Nippon Kan’s history are very strong, very obvious, and yet remain very flexible. Even so, there came a time when the right decision for me was to leave, taking with me a powerful set of skills, many good memories, and friendships. The same was true for my previous employer. Their rope is bending in a way that is misaligned with my purpose and goals. Neither good nor bad. Just different. Better to leave with many friendships intact and a strong sense of having added value to the organization during my tenure.

The world is full of opportunities. And sometimes you have to deliberately and intentionally clear all the collected clutter from your mental workspace so those opportunities have a place to land. Be attentive to moments like this before your career is remembered only as someone who yells at clouds and tilts at windmills.

1 By the numbers…

1,788 Stand-ups
1,441 Wiki/Knowledgebase Contributions
311 Sprint/Release Planning Sessions
279 Reviews
189 Retrospectives
101 Projects
31 Internal Meet-ups
22 Agile Cafés
10 Newsletters
5.5 Years
3 Distinct Job Titles
1 Wild Ride

2 My thanks to colleague Lennie Noiles and his presentation on Powerful Questions. While Lennie didn’t ask me this particular question, it was inspired by his presentation.

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The Passing of a Master

It has been several months since news of Emily Busch ‘s unexpected death and I still wrestle with the thought I shall never have the privilege of again practicing Aikido with her at Nippon Kan. The blow to Homa Sensei is undoubtedly far greater. I do not know his pain, but I am familiar with it.

Looking at the growing stack of draft posts, I see about a dozen on the subject of mastery. I feel I have a lot to contribute to this subject, particularly in regard to Agile practices. And yet, I hesitate due to a sense that I still have more to learn before I’m in a position to teach on the subject. In no small measure this hesitation is counseled by having met and studied with a great many truly masterful people across a wide variety of human experience.

Emily was one of those masters.

Not only was she a master of Aikido (6th degree black belt and Sensei at Nippon Kan), she was a master jeweler. She designed and made the wedding rings for both my first and second wife along with several beautiful pendants and a set of ear rings for one of my nieces. I never had a personal jeweler before Emily and shall not have another before my time is finished on this earth.

For all her skill and mastery, she very much understood the importance of service. There was no task that needed attention at the dojo or in preparation for a seminar that was beneath her rank. And I wonder how many patrons to Domo restaurant knew they had their order taken and served by a 6th degree black belt.

Emily had already achieved the rank of black belt by the time I began practicing at Nippon Kan in 1989. My very early memories from practicing with her are of her patience and ability to skillfully instruct a 6’5″ oaf like me in the ways of Aikido – both on and off the mat. I don’t know if Emily even weighed 120 pounds, but that never stopped her from putting my sorry ass on the mat or sending me over her shoulder. Even so, I never matched Emily’s skill, even on my good days.

Those mastery related posts will have to wait a while longer. And in the wider view, my respect for those whom make claim to be masters without having done the work and earned the title have lost a little more of my respect.

Emily Sensei will be missed.