Student of Change

Okay – there are more than five.  These are great journalling questions if you journal (or want to start). Or, create a new New Year’s Day ritual and explore them in conversation with a trusted friend.
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The New York Times ran an interesting piece yesterday about pleasure procrastination: our tendency to put off things we actually want to do. Researchers have found that there are a couple of reasons we don’t redeem gift cards or use our frequent flier miles. First, we mistakenly believe that we are too busy to engage in pleasurable activities now and that we will have more time to do so in the future.  Second, we don’t want to settle for a good experience now when we imagine that we can create a perfect experience in the future.
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Watching a show about apartments crammed with junk has made me think about the challenges of sustaining organizational change.

The show is “Hoarders” on A&E, a reality series that documents people whose compulsive acquisition of stuff has made their houses uninhabitable and their lives chaotic.
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I’ve got a month off from assigned reading!   These are the books I’m digging into over my break.
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Seth Godin asked 70 “big thinkers” from business, social innovation, and technology to answer the question, “What Matters Now?”  Their answers – one page essays on topics like fear, generosity, gumption, sleep, and willpower – are available in a free e-book.

You can get the free e-book here.

Remember that childhood game, warmer/colder?  You’d search for a hidden object while your friend who’d hidden the object told you if you were getting “warmer” or “colder” with each step.  ”Warmer” meant you were getting closer, and “colder” meant you were edging farther away.  To succeed at the game, you had to follow the “warmer” prompts until you were right where you were supposed to be.
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This time last December, I was working in an office crammed with stuff.  Conference programs, old speeches, copies of travel receipts, notebooks brimming with ideas from half a decade ago, and drafts of reports long-ago published were filed and piled around me.  I wasn’t a hoarder – I just considered stacking things to be a valid organizing system.
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