Tag: Writing

10 Year Anniversary

10 Year Anniversary

***Millennialcore-inspired image generated with AI***

While I don’t post regularly (life constraints and such), I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge hitting the ten year milestone for my first post on the site.

I started this blog with the aspiration of documenting my journey into paramedicine, since I knew one path to expertise is writing (digesting for clarity) and teaching (creating connections). At the time, I felt disengaged from work and was looking to bring better alignment between my interests and values. Over time, though, as my relationship with my partner deepened, as we became more financially entangled after getting engaged, as I was supporting her first steps into her professional career, and as we eventually started having children, it didn’t make sense for me to undergo a career reset. Instead, I found ways to better engage my values within my then current work and ensure I could meet our obligations to family and our finances.

Even though it’ll be ten years in January since acknowledging here that I was abandoning the path to paramedicine, I have (still) yet to change the title of this blog. I supposed it’s a bit of the charm – a kind of vestigial leftover from that time in my life. I created this blog during a time on the internet when monetizing blogs were the rage, and yet while I entertained the notion of benefitting financially from writing, I never put any serious effort into monetizing it or trying to keep a consistent brand. The blog reflected my mind in a lot of ways, jumping from education/learning/knowledge, to fitness, to habits, to reading and books, to cribbing Seth Godin’s style of thought leadership by way of micro-blogging. If there was a consistent theme, it was growth through personal development, experiments, and reflection. Until I finally land on something sufficiently creative and/or punny, the name is here to stay.

Many things have changed for me in life, and yet in a kind of George Lucas way, a lot is rhyming for me ten years on. I find myself at another career inflection point. Since getting let go from the college last year, the education sector is continuing to churn as the underbrush of detritus gets burned away after nearly a decade of making hay off the backs of international sunshine. It wasn’t the fault of the international students who came here for opportunity, and I truthfully don’t blame the colleges for exploiting a revenue source that masked chronic underfunding and investment from provincial and federal governments. Then, all at one, the tide went out and we saw that everyone was swimming naked. I was fortunate to find contract work last year, but as my contract comes to a close in a few months time, the sector hasn’t yet found solid footing to stabilize upon. So while the reason for my reflections on departing higher education isn’t the same as it was a decade ago, I am amused to find myself in a similar spot, empathizing with my younger self trying to figure out a path forward.

Whether I staying in post-secondary or not, the time I’ve spent here since deciding in 2017 to stick with it has been a great experience for me, full of growth and interesting puzzles to solve. I hope that in 2036 I’ll look back at this time as a period of intense and satisfying growth that shaped how the next decade will play out. It would be lovely, though, if on the edge of turning 50 I’m not at another inflection point of trying to figure out my next radical career pivot.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

Relearning an Old Lesson About Self-Directed Learning

Relearning an Old Lesson About Self-Directed Learning

Originally published on LinkedIn.

During my period of unemployment, I reflected on my career and identified a few areas I could develop now that I had some spare time on my hands.  One of those development areas is seeking an ASQ certification as a Six Sigma Green Belt (h/t to Andrea for the suggestion!). At first, I delayed starting because I was looking for a low-cost near-free course to guide my study, such as something on Coursera I could audit, learning paths on LinkedIn Learning, or a discounted Udemy class I’d already purchased. But as I started watching the video modules, I quickly realized I wasn’t truly engaging. I was watching lecture content without retaining much.  While yes, watching at 2x speed is largely to blame for it, I couldn’t escape the fact that I was engaging in passive consumption.

While I waited to figure out how to learn the material, I looked up the ASQ requirements and purchased used copies of the Six Sigma green belt handbook and a test prep study guide with practice questions.

Knowing that getting started is better than waiting around for a perfect plan, I started reading the handbook and planned to sort out my study strategy as I went. Almost immediately, I began connecting concepts to my past work and imagining how I could apply them now in my current role.

That’s when I realized: I’d done this before.

Paramedicine (2015–2016)

In 2015, I hit the transition point between early and mid-career phases and started questioning if I was on the right path (I found office work not very fulfilling). I thought it was a good opportunity to seek a career change and embark into paramedicine – I had a passion for first aid, I was a first responder on a few occasions in university (shoutout to University of Waterloo Campus Response Team!), dealt with emergencies while working as a bouncer, and I had written my masters thesis on the ethics of first aid.  It aligned with my values of helping people and provided a fast-paced technical job that would give me fulfilment.

The first step was meeting the admissions requirements, which included needing a high school biology credit. I enrolled in a self-paced college prep biology course.

There was no active instructor; just a course outline, a textbook, weekly tests, and two major summative exams. Here’s how I approached it:

  1. Used the course outline and test schedule as a learning roadmap – Matched unit outcomes in the course outline to textbook chapters covered on tests – Prioritized readings based on the self-paced testing schedule
  2. Created active study tools – Flashcards for definitions and concepts – Hand-drawing diagrams (cells, organs, systems) labeled front-and-back for drill practice
  3. Focused on comprehension-level mastery – Enough to explain, label, and connect systems without unnecessary complexity – The test was multiple choice, true/false, and labelling diagrams, so sticking to the first two levels in Bloom’s taxonomy was sufficient.

This gave me a clear plan and a feedback loop through frequent testing.  I passed the course with an above 90% final grade.

Article content
Samples of my flash cards and hand-drawn diagrams.

The Present

For my Green Belt prep, I have:

  • A roadmap: The Body of Knowledge in the handbook’s appendix, which outlines each section, topics, and the number of exam questions per section.
  • Content: The handbook itself for deep reading and marginalia.
  • Practice: A test prep guide with exam-style questions.

By combining these, I can map my study plan to the exam structure.  I also asked AI to use my weekly time constraints to suggest a manageable plan to break up the work and prepare to take the test by mid-Fall.  Then, I can prioritize topics by weighting and test my knowledge incrementally as I go.

The Lesson

I realized I don’t always need a formal course, especially for a certification with a defined body of knowledge and predictable exam format.  By having a clear syllabus, a learning map, a primary content source to learn from, and a way to test and reinforce learning, I can direct my learning effectively.

Courses have advantages: expert guidance, tailored examples, real-time feedback, and adaptive teaching.  However, courses are not the only route for learning and self-development. By having a well-defined body of knowledge to study from, and using active learning methods like taking notes, journaling on my learning, short feedback cycles, and finding ways to apply the content to my work and experience, I have all that I need to be successful.  All it will cost is some used textbooks, a registration fee, and remembering a lesson I learned a decade ago.

Long Absences

You never intend to step away for very long. A week goes by, then another. Without realizing it, a month has passed.

It can sometimes be hard to keep up a weekly blog. I don’t know how the daily folks do it – Seth Godin says it’s just consistency, but does that mean it’s easier to show up everyday than once per week? Maybe… It’s harder to push off to tomorrow when the deadline is always midnight. I’m not impressed by the folks whose job is to churn out multiple pieces of content per day. Creative burnout aside, there is a difference between being paid for the content and doing it without pay.

Excuses are easy, especially when they are real. Yes, I didn’t set time aside to write, but I also had a major deliverable due at work. I even set up auto-responders on my emails to manage people’s expectations while I was in focus mode. These are reasons, but they do not excuse the absence when you know what you are getting yourself in to.

And when you return to the notion of an update, you feel the need to write something profound to offset the time away, but the ideas feel crusted and not worth sharing. Instead, you hide away, and figure you’ll get back to it next week, meanwhile the feeling of panic and dread increases at the thought of delivering that perfect post.

But next week comes and goes.

There is no magic solution beyond showing yourself compassion, resetting the clock or counter, and shipping the next thing by trying again.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

Post #302

I uploaded my post last week without much thought. When I went back to draft some ideas for a future post, I saw that Beachhead was my 301st post. I missed the opportunity to both celebrate the milestone and reflect on its significance.

Earlier this year, I missed the 5-year anniversary of this blog. I let the milestone pass by, unlike years past. I think part of the lack of enthusiasm for these significant milestones is due to general pandemic-induced apathy (we’re all feeling it). But the optimistic side of me also thinks that these milestones are less important than the work itself. I used to be more metrics-driven with my blog, excitedly noting the passing of the first year or the first 100-posts. However now I’m not concerned with reaching a future target but instead focus more on ensuring I’m keeping up with the weekly schedule and trying to come up with decent thoughts worth publishing.

That’s not to say that all of my posts are worth reading. I wouldn’t say I take a lot of pride in the final product of what goes up weekly; I’m not ashamed either. It’s just that the quality of the final draft isn’t as important as sitting down to do the work. Of taking an idea from brainstorm to coherent narrative. I find more satisfaction in putting in the work than the bragging rights of the final product. I try to think of it as more of a craft-mentality rather than creating a masterpiece corpus of writing.

Each post is an exercise that stretches the muscles, practices the movements, and gives me an opportunity to learn and develop slowly over time. At present, this blog operates at a loss (no income is generated to offset the nominal fees I pay for the site and URL). And I’m completely fine with that. At one time I thought about turning this into a brand and trying to monetize it. I’m not opposed to scraping money out of the endeavor, but it’s not the primary focus of this blog.

When I shifted away from the blog being an exercise in becoming a paramedic, it merely became a place to publicly share my practice of writing to meet a deadline. That’s good enough for me. It doesn’t have to seek to achieve anything grand – not everything has to be epic or monetizable. It’s still fun and I feel good shipping the work. As the mass of posts grow, I can look at the incremental progress and take satisfaction in what it represents – time well spent.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

Writer’s Block and Bad Writing

According to Seth Godin, there is no such thing as writer’s block. He’s been on my mind recently, not just because I listen to his regular podcast, but also because he’s doing the book marketing circuit on the podcast shows I typically listen to. As of writing (November 3rd), his latest book was just delivered to my door.

From what I understand, Seth’s belief is that writer’s block is a function of our desire to not ship bad work. Instead, we hold out until a good idea arrives and we work on it. His advice to overcome “writer’s block” is to constantly write regardless of how bad you think it is. It’s a bit of a spaghetti approach – you throw as much at the wall and see what sticks. He maintains that buried under all the bad writing, there is bound to be some good stuff. The job of writing bad stuff is to eventually unearth the good stuff for you to work on and polish to completion.

Seth is known for having posted on his blog every day for over a decade, tallying over 7000 posts. He says that for every post we read, there are up to 8 that didn’t get published.

I’ve been talking recently about how I’ve missed deadlines on this blog due to poor planning. If what Seth says is true, it would also be the result of a bad ratio of published to unpublished ideas.

2:1

I guess that means I need to get to work pumping those numbers up.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

Friday Round-up – July 31, 2020

Here is my round-up list for the week ending on July 31st:

💭Reflection – Writing Daily, But Posting When Ready | Derek Sivers

I started this blog for two reasons – because I wanted a public way of practicing what I was learning at the time, and to force myself to write consistently. I decided posting once per week was a manageable target, and I’ve been relatively successful for the last few years. Recently, I’ve added the Friday Round-up as a way to force myself to write more and to share interesting content I stumble upon. When I added the Friday posts, I questioned whether it was worth putting in the effort – was I adding value to any part of the process? On some level, I feel it’s worth it, if for nothing else than to force myself to be a bit more reflective on what I consume. However, Derek Sivers’s point about forcing one’s self to post rapidly comes with some trade-offs. I imagine Seth Godin (another prolific blog poster) sometimes feels the same way by posting daily – that most of his posts aren’t what he would consider good. The mentalities are a bit different; Godin posts as part of his process, whereby you have to make a lot of crap to find the good stuff. Sivers would rather keep the crap more private to give him time to polish up the gems. I’m not sure which style is better. Both admit to keeping the daily writing practice, which is probably the more important lesson to draw from their examples, but it’s still worth considering.

*Addendum*

After drafting the above, I kept reading some bookmarked posts from Sivers’s page and found this one written in 2013 after a friend of his died. It’s a heartbreaking reflection on how one spends their time, which included this:

For me, writing is about the most worthy thing I can do with my time. I love how the distributed word is eternal — that every day I get emails from strangers thanking me for things I wrote years ago that helped them today. I love how those things will continue to help people long after I’m gone.

I’m not saying my writing is helping anyone, but the thought that my words will live beyond me touched something within.

📽Video – The Biggest Bluff: Poker as Life | Book Review from ThePoptimist

I’ve known the author of this YouTube channel for a few years, and I follow him on ye ol’ Instagrams (I love his scotch and cigar posts). But I didn’t know until last month that he also reviews books as part of the BookTube community. I wanted to share this link to show him some love, and because it reminds me of one of my roomies in undergrad who introduced me to the world (and language) of poker. While I’m a terrible player, I have fond memories of watching my roomie play online, if for nothing else than the humor of him yelling at the screen.

Oh, and I like Maria Konnikova’s writing, so I think I’ll check out her book. Another good book by a poker player about thinking better – Annie Duke’s Thinking in Bets.

🎧Listen – “Your mask questions answered” | The Dose podcast by CBC

With all the anti-mask beliefs floating around, I wanted to do my part to share good information about the benefits of masks and to help dispel some of the dis/misinformation out there.

Wear your masks and stay awesome,

Ryan

The Post Not Captured

Photo by Diego PH on Unsplash

I have this bad habit of coming up with thoughts for blogs as I’m trying to sleep. I promise myself I’ll remember to jot it down in the morning – that it’s not worth staring at my screen in the darkness when sleep is so close by.

And yet, here I am – kicking myself over the n-th missed idea that never came to fruition.

Perhaps there’s not a lot I can do when inspiration strikes me other than keeping a notebook on hand to capture transient thoughts. However, if the pandemic and working from home has taught me anything about creative activities, it’s that I shouldn’t wait for inspiration to take hold, but rather inspiration should find me already hard at work at the process of making. That is to say, it’s more important that I build regular practice and development into my routines so that I increase the chances of inspiration catching me as I work.

I’m not the first person to suggest this strategy. It’s common advice from many creative folks. What’s new is that I’m seeing the advice in action in my own work: the more I write and practice, the more ideas flow out of me.

If I do this, if I do the work in between the deliverables, I suspect I’ll capture a lot more of those posts from the ether.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

Extra Post – 4 Year Milestone!

I normally post on Monday’s, but today is the 4 year anniversary of my first post on this site (tomorrow if the 4 year anniversary of my substantive first post, but let’s batch them into this post for funsies).

With everything that’s going on, I wanted to pause for a moment to commemorate my “Hello World” moment on this blog. Even though I still don’t have any concrete plans for this site, I’m still going strong by committing myself to consistently putting in the work. If I’ve learned anything in 4 years, it’s less about the business plan and more about putting in the work. In this case, it’s better to focus on quantity, rather than waiting for the quality to start.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

Enough Blog Words to Fill A Book!

fountain pen on black lined paper
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

I’ve hit a couple of milestones recently. For instance, last week I hit a nice big milestone in Duolingo when I hit 600 consistent days of doing lessons.

I wouldn’t say I’m particularly fluent in German, but during my trip in October of last year, I was able to follow some of the conversation going on around me and put into practice the lessons given by the app. I was able to manage thanks to small, consistent daily micro-lessons that expanded my vocabulary a bit at a time.

Something similar happened for this blog as well. From time to time I check-in on the site’s stats and analytics. I don’t have any plans or intentions to seek monetization, so I only check in on things out of a sense of curiosity rather than seeking optimization. I originally set up this blog as an exercise to see if I could keep a consistent weekly writing schedule. At the time, I had the aspirations to go back to school to become a paramedic, and so I also had intended to use this blog to apply the concepts I was learning to help me reinforce my learning. I’ve since abandoned that path, and so the blog largely remains a project to force me to come up with something to post on a weekly schedule.

I was looking at the stats last week and felt a sense of satisfaction for hitting a couple of milestones. First, it appears that I have not missed a weekly post in the last three years (I might be late posting, but I still get something up). Also, I’m happy to see that overall my words per post are trending upwards, though I hope this means I’m providing more meaningful, nuanced posts rather than just being verbose.

Then, I decided to check on how many words I had written for this blog.

YearTotal PostsTotal WordsAvg Words per Post
20163717,660477
20175428,625530
20185226,545511
20195232,210619
202033,0751,025
Sum108,115

As it turns out, I had written the rough equivalent of a book in the four years I’ve been at this. Beyond the urge to create something and a desire to force myself to “write more,” the steady drip of a weekly schedule has now pooled into a large body of words.

I take a lot of inspiration from Seth Godin, and I learned from him the value of consistently showing up and putting in the work. It’s not about creating high quality giant pieces of work from fiat, but instead the slow, plodding, steady work of creating a little bit at a time. When you look back, you see the vast distance you’ve covered by forcing yourself to focus on putting one foot in front of the other. Not everything is going to be good – in fact, most of it will suck. But, over time you get better at the work, and sometimes you can find the good stuff emerging from the mediocre.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan