SLOWEST OF THE FASTEST | Keeping Growth in Front of You

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Todd Chandler

With over 11,000 run­ners, the Trol­ley Run in Kansas City is one of my favorites. It’s a 4-mile, point-to-point run that is mostly down­hill mak­ing it one of my faster runs of the year. It’s in the spring and well orga­nized with sev­eral clearly defined waves.

Trolley Waves

I’ve always run in the green wave, but last year, I ran at a 8:29 pace and fin­ished in 33:55, so I planned to step up to the blue wave. Through a cler­i­cal error, every­one on the team I was run­ning with was reg­is­tered as part of the red wave which requires a 7:30 pace or bet­ter. A week prior to the Trol­ley Run, I fin­ished a 5K at a 7:19 pace. The com­bi­na­tion of a lucky reg­is­tra­tion mis­take, recent con­fi­dence from a fast fin­ish, and a tra­di­tion­ally strong per­for­mance on this down­hill course gave me the extra boost to skip the blue and go straight to the red wave.

Good news, I fin­ished under 30 min­utes (29: 38) and qual­i­fied to be part of the red wave again next year. There is cer­tainly plenty of over­lap in the var­i­ous waves — peo­ple in the blue wave fin­ish in red wave times and beat red wave run­ners who fin­ish in blue wave times. As an avid stu­dent of vari­a­tion, I believe many things can be bet­ter under­stood with bell curves and two-by-two grids.

Bell Curve Race Waves

When­ever you fall in the over­lap area, you have a choice — put your­self in the red wave and be con­sid­ered one of the slow­est in your group, or put your­self in the blue wave and be con­sid­ered one of the fastest in your group. I believe I ran faster in the red wave than I would have in the blue wave. I’ll never know for sure, but I felt moti­vated to chase my faster peers, and I sure as heck wasn’t going to let any blues pass me. You have to be real­is­tic when choos­ing your com­par­i­son group, but stretch­ing your­self to be in a more com­pet­i­tive frame­work pro­vides greater devel­op­ment opportunities.

For me, it’s bet­ter to be the slow­est mem­ber in the first wave, than the fastest mem­ber of the sec­ond wave, because the more bell curve you have in front of you, the more growth you have in front of you. Plus the red wave gets to board the shut­tle buses first.

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Telling Stories for Growth and Profit

Posted on February 17, 2013 by Todd Chandler

I'm Speaking at Training 2013 Conference and ExpoI’m thrilled to be pre­sent­ing at Train­ing 2013 Con­fer­ence and Expo.

Humans have been craft­ing and telling sto­ries to share infor­ma­tion and learn­ings since the first cave paint­ings and fables. Some­times we get so bogged down by objec­tives, inter­nal client require­ments, and key met­rics that we for­get to make learn­ing engag­ing and com­pelling. Whether class­room, self-directed, eLearn­ing, mobile, infor­mal or for­mal, learn how to make your next project more com­pelling by:

  • Defin­ing the con­flict to build your plot around.
  • Estab­lish­ing the hero for par­tic­i­pants to con­nect with and cheer for.
  • Cre­at­ing the “lean for­ward” moment where learn­ers feel it in their gut and pay atten­tion a bit more.
  • Build­ing momen­tum that pulls par­tic­i­pants deeper into the content.
  • Edit­ing for pac­ing, scope, and atten­tion span.
Telling Stories for Growth and Profit

Click on this photo to down­load a copy of the presentation.

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Pick Up the Phone

Posted on February 12, 2013 by Todd Chandler

I received an email the other day that irri­tated me. It was only two sen­tences long. The first describ­ing a prob­lem that needed to be addressed, and the sec­ond was a pointed ques­tion, “Are we going to do any­thing about this?”

I have a bad habit of respond­ing to closed-ended ques­tions with a sim­ple “yes” or “no” response. I have a low tol­er­ance for stu­pid ques­tions. In this case my border-line, smart-ass reply would have been “no.” The issue was done, and not one likely to be repeated in the future if not addressed. I didn’t see any value in follow-up. The sender of this email wasn’t really ask­ing if any­thing was going to be done about this. He was request­ing that some­thing be done about that. If I had sent my stan­dard curt response, it would have let to a long chain of emails of him try­ing to per­suade me that some­thing needed to be done, and to me try­ing to per­suade him that it would be best to just move on.

Email is a help­ful com­mu­ni­ca­tion tool. It can share infor­ma­tion quickly and effi­ciently, it can recap dis­cus­sions and deci­sions, and it can be used to brain­storm and col­lab­o­rate. But it a hor­ri­ble tool for debates or dis­cus­sions where two sides see things differently.

So, I picked up the phone and called him. We had a healthy dis­cus­sion and decided on a next steps that made sense to both of us.

“In the end, it came down to two 70-year-old men, talk­ing on the phone.”

The recent fis­cal cliff dis­as­ter was averted when Biden and McConnell ham­mered out the solu­tion to the by pick­ing up the phone and talk­ing to each other.

If your com­mu­ni­ca­tion requires some give and take and a lit­tle more con­ver­sa­tion, skip the email and pick up the phone.

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LISTEN TO THIS | Fogarity

Posted on September 22, 2012 by Todd Chandler

I’m a pod­cast junkie, and LISTEN TO THIS is a recap of my favorite tid­bits, sound­bites and short bursts of bril­liance from this week. After digest­ing sev­eral hours of pod­casts, here are my top 3 must-listen-to moments.

HE CURSED AND HE STOLE

THE MEMORY PALACE | After Party

Lewis Kese­berg was the last man out of woods alive from the infa­mous Don­ner Party. He was accused of mur­der and can­ni­bal­ism. Nate DiMeo says he was not a good man, but that he never resorted to can­ni­bal­ism. Keseberg’s ver­sion of what hap­pened cli­maxes in an emo­tional reunion with Eliza Don­ner, the 3-year-old sur­vivor. Whether Kese­berg actu­ally ate those peo­ple or not, this is a com­pelling exam­ple of every story hav­ing two sides. The entire episode is only 14 min­utes. Lis­ten to it all.

WHY IS THERE SO LITTLE CRIME?

FREAKONOMICS RADIO | Fear Thy Nature

I used to work with a guy who always said, “The sit­u­a­tion defines the per­son.” This Freako­nom­ics episode explores how our behav­ior changes when we’re placed in dif­fer­ent sets of cir­cum­stances. The two main exam­ples are the inter­ac­tive the­ater expe­ri­ence Sleep No More and the Stan­ford Prison Exper­i­ment. I enjoyed the descrip­tions of per­for­mances alter­ing our actions, but my favorite sec­tions are the recaps with Steve Levitt. At 22:44 he expresses doubts with the Stan­ford Prison Expe­ri­ent results, and poses this thought at 32:45, “When I teach my class on the eco­nom­ics of crime to the under­grad­u­ates at the U. of C., one of the points that I stress over and over is that the puz­zle is not why is there so much crime, the puz­zle is just the oppo­site, why is there so lit­tle crime?”

MORAL LOGIC OF ASSHOLISM

LEXICON VALLEY | Who You Call­ing A**hole?

I’m thrilled Lex­i­con Val­ley is back from it’s sum­mer break, and this episode was face­tiously foul-mouthed as they inter­viewed Geof­frey Nun­berg, author of Ascent of the A-word: Assholism, the First Sixty Years. Make sure to catch the expla­na­tion of the dif­fer­ence between pro­fan­ity, obscen­ity, and vul­gar­ity at 5:38.

Siri hears vulgarity as Fogarity

I had to share Siri’s inter­pre­ta­tion of “pro­fan­ity vul­gar­ity obscenity.”

Other Pod­casts Posts You Might Enjoy:

What pod­casts did you enjoy this week and which ones do you recommend?

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LISTEN TO THIS | Get Out in Front

Posted on September 15, 2012 by Todd Chandler

I’m a pod­cast junkie, and LISTEN TO THIS is a recap of my favorite tid­bits, sound­bites and short bursts of bril­liance from this week. After digest­ing 17 hours and 48 min­utes of pod­casts this week (I broke a 1,000 min­utes!), here’s my top 3 must-listen-to moments.

LAST TEXT OF THE DAY

HERE’S THE THING | Fred Armisen

Lis­ten­ing to Fred Armisen describe his rela­tion­ship with Port­landia co-creator Car­rie Brown­stein, reminded me of the impor­tance of hav­ing some­one “to be not great around.” The warm, gen­uine moment starts at 27:15.

FILTER FAILURE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE | The Hob­son & Holtz Report — #668

At 15:34, Shel Holtz walks through a study that explores the myth of infor­ma­tion over­load. I like the way he frames it up with exam­ples of dire warn­ings about too much infor­ma­tion through­out his­tory. It was refresh­ing to hear that par­tic­i­pants did not feel over­whelmed, but instead felt “empow­ered and enthu­si­as­tic.” The trick to han­dling so much infor­ma­tion is to learn to fil­ter for spe­cific inter­ests and adjust the flow to match your indi­vid­ual speed.

GET OUT IN FRONT

RODERICK ON THE LINE | The Con­di­tions of Love

John Rod­er­ick is cap­ti­vat­ing sto­ry­teller. In the last three min­utes, he tells the tale of his first cross-country meet. Start at 102:15 to hear his vivid les­son about the impor­tance of pac­ing yourself.

Pod­cast Test Drives:

Enough — I’m work­ing my way through many of the 70 Deci­bels pod­casts. Myke Hur­ley and Patrick Rhone recently updated the for­mat of the show. I like the dis­cus­sions on my first two sam­ples, so I’m keep­ing it in the line up.

Other Pod­casts Posts You Might Enjoy:

What pod­casts did you enjoy this week and which ones do you recommend?

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LISTEN TO THIS | Geek On

Posted on September 8, 2012 by Todd Chandler

I’m a pod­cast junkie, and LISTEN TO THIS is a recap of my favorite tid­bits, sound­bites and short bursts of bril­liance from this week. After digest­ing 11 hours and 12 min­utes of pod­casts this week, here’s my top 3 must-listen-to moments.

EERIE SAMENESS

SYSTEMIC | On Ever­note, Orga­ni­za­tion and Metal

Guest Brett Kelly and host Brett Terp­stra share more than their first names. Both are on a never-ending quest to find lit­tle hacks here and there to improve their lives. I loved the oh-my-gosh-I-do-that-too real­iza­tion they shared at 10:53 when both described how they use pho­tos in Ever­note to remem­ber where stuff gets buried in junk draw­ers and stor­age boxes. I saw an imme­di­ate appli­ca­tion with things I only get out once a year like Christ­mas dec­o­ra­tions.

ONION SKIN PAGES

THE CULTURE GABFEST | Ben­gal Tiger Giv­ing Birth Edition

I would have never guessed that a dis­cus­sion on the 50th anniver­sary of the Nor­ton Anthol­ogy could be so engross­ing, but I really enjoyed how they dis­sected the edit­ing process and high­lighted the value of lit­er­a­ture in push­ing new ideas. Fast for­ward to 26:45 and gain a fresh per­spec­tive on curated lit.

GET OUR GEEK ON

MIKES ON MICS | The Write Stuff

Yes­ter­day morn­ing I had a park­ing lot moment list­ing to Mikes on Mics. Their dis­cus­sion on writ­ing was so engag­ing I couldn’t stop lis­ten­ing. At 20:30, Schechter explains the ben­e­fits of begin­ning or end­ing your day with writ­ing when he answers “Why do you write so much?” For prac­ti­cal advice on writ­ing pro­duc­tiv­ity, jump to 25:50 and hear Mike and Mike walk through two dif­fer­ent step-by-step approaches on how they each crank out vol­umes of writ­ten work.

Pod­cast Test Drives:

His­tory of Eng­lish Pod­cast — Hooked after the intro­duc­tion episode and look­ing for­ward to this series — get­ting my Ger­manic ori­gins geek on.

Other Pod­casts Posts You Might Enjoy:

What pod­casts did you enjoy this week and which ones do you recommend?

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LISTEN TO THIS | Salty Margaritas

Posted on September 1, 2012 by Todd Chandler

I’m a pod­cast junkie, and LISTEN TO THIS is a recap of my favorite tid­bits, sound­bites and short bursts of bril­liance from this week. After digest­ing 12 hours and 36 min­utes of pod­casts this week, here’s my top 3 must-listen-to moments.

Sweet Roles for Mom

THE TOBOLOWSKY FILES | Gone

Some­times Stephen Tobolowsky is overly dra­matic and a titch didac­tic in his sto­ry­telling, but that never stops me from enjoy­ing it. He has a won­der­ful way of tying ele­ments together, build­ing momen­tum through­out, and explor­ing lessons learned in every­day events. He’s orig­i­nally from Dal­las, and this episode explores how he over­comes the fear of dis­ap­pear­ing mem­o­ries as build­ings come and go and as his par­ents age. The con­text of the entire story is impor­tant to see how it all con­nects, but I espe­cially related to his nar­ra­tive at 38:35 where he describes tak­ing his mom to Star­bucks and the tac­tics he used to get her to eat something.

I Par­tic­u­larly Like the Color

WAIT, WAIT, DON’T TELL ME | Ambas­sador Peter West­ma­cott Plays Not My Job

This week’s inter­view with Ambas­sador Peter West­ma­cott was absolutely delight­ful. I loved the part at 22:281 when host Peter Sagal asks him to illus­trate his skills at diplo­macy by answer­ing a series of ques­tions like, “Does this dress make me look fat?” and “Would you mind read­ing a draft of my first novel?”

We Would Do a Train­ing Before Each Crawl

HOW TO DO EVERYTHING | The Bed­bug Strategy

In answer­ing, “How do you start a con­ver­sa­tion with per­fect strangers?” Ian inter­views Bran­don Sil­ver­man about what he learned from spend­ing eight years crash­ing cor­po­rate hol­i­day par­ties in Philadel­phia. Start at the begin­ning or skip to 1:20 to hear more about these two shared tips:

  • The Bed­bug Strat­egy — find a com­mon enemy to com­plain about. “Man, this line to the bar is so long,” or “These mar­gar­i­tas sure are salty.”
  • The Super­man — start with a totally hyper­bolic com­ment. “This has to be one of the best bands on the entire east coast.” The best part is the state­ment doesn’t need to be true or even sincere.

Pod­cast Test Drives:

Brett Terpstra’s rel­a­tively new pod­cast Sys­tem­atic. I liked when Brett did a work­flow episode on the Mac Power Users, and Michael Schechter gave a sur­pris­ingly good inter­view on this this week’s show. I plan to go back and lis­ten to Brett’s inter­view with Mer­lin Mann last week, and I’ve added this to my sub­scrip­tions. Get­ting lots of techy/productivity inter­view shows on the list. Still search­ing for a good one about learn­ing and train­ing issues.

OTHER PODCAST POSTS YOU MIGHT ENJOY:

What pod­casts did you enjoy?

  1. This time refers the full episode, but the link in the head­ing goes to just he inter­view por­tion of the show. ↩
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The Social Media Parable of the Orange Marble

Posted on August 30, 2012 by Todd Chandler

I facil­i­tated a recent lunch and learn on social media for a small group of about 20 peo­ple. Most of the group felt over­whelmed by all the infor­ma­tion avail­able, so I came up with a sim­ple lit­tle anal­ogy. Then over the week­end, I bor­rowed a few props from my chil­dren. Think of this video as a Yuvi Zalkow knock­off for those that can’t afford the real thing.

Tran­script:

Imag­ine infor­ma­tion as a giant set of mar­bles. Bil­lions and bil­lions of mar­bles. And every sin­gle mar­ble is unique — dif­fer­ent col­ors, dif­fer­ent designs, dif­fer­ent sizes, dif­fer­ent tex­tures. The way we used to access these mar­bles of infor­ma­tion and the way we can access them today has changed — dramatically.

These mar­bles used to live in a remote moun­tain lake. Calm and serene. A col­or­ful majes­tic mas­ter­piece. But there were two major prob­lems with this infor­ma­tion set up: vis­i­bil­ity and access. Not all the infor­ma­tion was vis­i­ble, in fact most of it was hid­den below the sur­face. And while learn­ing was tech­ni­cally open to any­one, it was dif­fi­cult to access. You either had to hike up to the lake with your can­teen and fill it up, or some­one else hiked up there and brought infor­ma­tion back down to you. Learn­ing required a sig­nif­i­cant amount of work. Some­one had to hike up the moun­tain. Plus if what you wanted to learn what was on the other shore or in the mid­dle of the lake, it required even greater effort.

Today, the dam on lake has bro­ken open and infor­ma­tion is on the move. Pic­ture Nigahiga Falls with mar­bles. Mil­lions of gal­lons of infor­ma­tion flow­ing over the falls every sec­ond. While we can now see what was once hid­den below the sur­face, the flow of infor­ma­tion is too fast and pow­er­ful. If you tried drink­ing from that big of a water­fall, you’d likely drowned.

For­tu­nately, there are sev­eral tips and tools that give us the power to con­trol the flow of infor­ma­tion for our spe­cific, indi­vid­ual needs.I can say, give me only orange mar­bles. Look at those and say, not focused enough, give me only plain orange mar­bles that are 9/16 in diam­e­ter. That’s much more manageable.

Social media at its sim­plest from is about con­sum­ing and shar­ing infor­ma­tion. The trick is sim­ply to learn to fil­ter to your spe­cific inter­ests and pace.

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LISTEN TO THIS | Why Nobody Came

Posted on August 25, 2012 by Todd Chandler

I’m a pod­cast junkie, and LISTEN TO THIS is a recap of my favorite tid­bits, sound­bites and short bursts of bril­liance from this week. After digest­ing 900 min­utes of pod­casts, here’s the top 3 must-listen-to moments.

900 minutes of podcasts listening for Todd Chandler

Think­ing Can Be the Enemy

BACK TO WORK | LAMP for Your Productivity

Mer­lin may have added one too many Stok Black Cof­fee Shots to his cof­fee before the show, but then again, maybe it was the right amount. At 55:11 he hits one of his clas­sic moments of clar­ity and pro­vides a stir­ring rant on not over-thinking things, yet deal­ing with the real­ity of a com­pli­cated life. Nice!

Atten­tion > Page Views

CMD+SPACE | Mem­ber­ships and Being Classy with Shawn Blanc

I’m lik­ing where Myke Hur­ley is tak­ing CMD+Space. He’s lined up some fas­ci­nat­ing guests, and I see him grow­ing as inter­viewer. He does his research, gets his guests to share openly, and leads solid, thought­ful dis­cus­sions. On episode three, he talks with Shawn Blanc about being nice on the inter­net and build­ing a strong mem­ber­ship base. At 56:10, Myke asks about the dif­fer­ence between atten­tion and page views. Shawn pro­vides an excel­lent, spe­cific expla­na­tion of the age-oId ques­tion of qual­ity ver­sus quan­tity. If you have a lit­tle extra time, jump back 5 min­utes prior and lis­ten to Shawn’s approach about assum­ing the best in others.

“I believe every­one wants to be the best ver­sion of them­selves that they can be.” ~ Shawn Blanc

I Won­dered Why Nobody Came

ON THE MEDIA | Homi­cide Watch

This inter­view with Laura Amico pro­vides a pow­er­ful per­spec­tive from friends and fam­ily of the homi­cide vic­tims. It also walks through how to get a jump on the cops with dili­gent report­ing prac­tices and strate­gic search tac­tics. The story peaks when host Brooke Glad­stone com­pares Amico to Miami crime reporter Edna Buchanan. The title link above is direct to this seg­ment, or if you’re lis­ten­ing to the full pod­cast, fast for­ward to 25:20.

Pod­cast Test Drives:

I lis­tened to 512 PODCAST | Fir­ing on One Cylin­der based on a tweet rec­om­men­da­tion from Michael Schechter (by the way, his name is quite easy to spell despite what he tells you). This was not the right episode to lis­ten to this pod­cast for the first time. The title tells why, as Stephen was only fir­ing on one cylin­der. I can see how reg­u­lar lis­ten­ers would find the hon­est por­trayal of being in a funk more engag­ing, but not hav­ing back­ground with these guys, it just felt aim­less to me.

OTHER PODCAST POSTS YOU MIGHT ENJOY:

I’m on the look­out for pod­casts about learn­ing. Any rec­om­men­da­tions? Also, I want to see if I can break 1,000 min­utes of lis­ten­ing to pod­casts within one week. Wish me luck.

Posted in Listen to This, Podcasts | Tagged | Leave a comment

LET YOUR WRITING SIT | It’s Still Cooking

Posted on August 24, 2012 by Todd Chandler

Let your steaks sit before cutting into them

You know how teach­ers used to rec­om­mend the approach we should take in writ­ing research papers. Start research­ing early. Cap­ture notes on 3x5 cards. Out­line. Draft. Edit. Rewrite. Edit. Revise. Edit. Final­ize. I always wanted to try that approach. It seemed like a smart approach. But I often opted for a more last-minute process. Wait until about 7 p.m. the night before. Open three books on the sub­ject. Say, “Oh that looks good,” and stay up late rephras­ing the lifted con­tent just enough to avoid claims of plagiarizism.

Qual­ity on a research paper was never my main objec­tive. I wanted to do well, but I wasn’t out to actu­ally per­suade think­ing or influ­ence behav­ior. Other than the grade, I didn’t have a lot of pas­sion around why my papers had to be writ­ten. I was sim­ply shoot­ing to meet the require­ments with min­i­mal effort.

Today, things are dif­fer­ent. I want the stuff I write to have impact. A) I want peo­ple to read what I write, and B) I want it to help peo­ple improve. The prob­lem is my writ­ing habits were formed using the cram­ming method. I knew the teacher rec­om­mended method would pro­duce bet­ter results, but I kept writ­ing at the last minute.

This is true with projects at work, with writ­ing for this blog, and the les­son has really been dri­ven home on my daily quote site, Obser­va­tion Paper. I can, in a crunch, find a quote, com­pose it in a visu­ally com­pelling image, and post it in about 15 min­utes. The quotes are okay when I do that. They meet the require­ments. But when I let a quote cook for a day or two by let­ting it sit and play­ing with a few visual options, that’s when qual­ity hits.

There’s power in the prac­tice of the pipeline. Start some­thing, let it sit, move on to some­thing else, come back to it, pol­ish, refine. And just when you think it’s done (yes Ma I mean “done” and not “fin­ished” — I’m work­ing on a cook­ing metaphor here), put it away for a least a day.

It’s just like tak­ing a rib­eye off the grill. It keeps cook­ing. You have to let it sit because if you cut right into it, you lose the juicy flavor.

Allow the meat to rest before you slice it. Here’s why: As meat cooks, its pro­teins coag­u­late, or uncoil and recon­fig­ure them­selves squeez­ing out the mois­ture that is trapped inside their coiled struc­ture. The heat from the grill dri­ves these freed liq­uids toward the cooler cen­ter of the meat. As the meat returns to a lower tem­per­a­ture after cook­ing, this process par­tially reverses, and the pro­tein mol­e­cules reab­sorb some of the liq­uid. When you let the meat rest, it loses less juice when you cut into it, which in turn makes for much juicier and more ten­der meat. ~ The Cook’s Illus­trated Guide to Grilling and Bar­be­cue, p. 103

What would you like to give more pipeline time to?

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