Let’s Stop Learning Alone

The Coffee Klatch. Sketching People in Real Life at Third Place Commons in Lake Forest Park.

We live in a golden age of learning. Pick any subject you would like to learn, and someone has posted a free video on Youtube. You can join a massive online (or MOOC) class at Coursera or EdX and learn from the best professors at the top Universities. You can pay a subscription and have quality courses from experts at Lynda.com or LinkedIn Learning with courses that are available 24 hours a day to teach you how to analyze a spreadsheet or give a business presentation. You can join Master Class to learn film-making directly from David Lynch or Storytelling from Neil Gaiman. The possibilities are endless, and I’m proud to say that I’ve done my part by working on democratizing learning.

We have a feast before us. And I would never want to go back. I think about my process of starting a business. In just the space of a couple of weeks, I’ve watched small business marketing courses on LinkedIn Learning, a video on tracking your business expenses on Youtube, and attended two webinars on products. These quick online learning lessons were exactly what I needed to understand a technology or business problem at the moment.

However…while online learning is great for a lot of things–I’m going to say that learning in person is even better. It is time for us to stop bowling alone, or learning alone, and get back out there in small community groups and learn from an instructor, learn from one another and engage with our neighbors.

If you aren’t familiar with the term bowling alone, it comes from the title of the essay, and later a book by Robert D. Putman that spoke about the loss of Civic Engagement in the United States. Published in 2000, and seriously, if Putnam saw that things were bad in 2000, remember this was the time before smartphones, Facebook, Twitter, Netflix binging, etc. The year 2000? 2019 is calling and asks you to hold their beer.

I think it is time to meld the best of both worlds again. Keep the options from online, but add a little real-life interaction into the mix–especially if you want to learn a craft or become an expert on a topic. For myself, that came in the form of Cloud 9 Art School in Bothell, a small art school run by my long-time friend Charlene Freeman. The school sits in an older building at the edge of Bothell and is light and airy with two floors of classroom space.

What I’ve found there is that third place. Third place is a term to describe a social space that is separate from home (the first place), and work (the second place). I started by taking a course on the Artist’s Way with Charlene. I spent twelve weeks with a small group of wonderful women talking about our creative lives and spurring one another on. I could have just read the book, but being in a group together, going through the chapters, and holding one another accountable was key for the experience. On our last night together, the class met at the Beardslee Pub in Bothell to celebrate with one another and to pledge to meet back up in a few months to see where we were on our Artist’s journey.

I didn’t stop there. I decided to take a Nature Sketchbook class from Charlene. You can learn more about why I thought that class was the push I needed here. But here I want to stress again that when I entered the classroom, there were women there who had taken courses at the school before and the class felt more community. While I learned about watercolor and sketching techniques, I also learned more about the women around me. Some were working artists, and some were naturalists, and some were newbies with no connection like me. My favorite part of each session was where people would share their sketches from the previous week. Did I mention there were working artists? It would be easy to be intimidated, but instead, it was inspiring.

My sketch from Bothell Landing of a fence post.

I recently finished a Sketchbook Journaling class, and while the people are different, again there were many repeat Cloud 9 students. With each class, this place feels more like home. We even went to Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park (get it third place?) to sketch people in real life. Our last class was spent roaming around Bothell Landing, and I spent a nice hour sketching with others at a picnic table. While learning, I’ve had good conversations with other students and feel more like I’m part of a community.

This isn’t to say that I’ve completely abandoned online learning or plan to. For my artwork, I like cruising Youtube channels with watercolor artists. Sometimes I run them in the background while I’m working and I’ve learned some things from them. I watched filmmaker David Lynch’s Master Class to learn more about how he creates. But I tell you, having the person next to you tell you that they like a palette you used or the bird you drew is much more rewarding than 1000 likes on a twitter or Instagram post. Having feedback directly from the instructor about your work is far more instructive than reading comments below a Youtube video and never getting direct feedback.

Steven Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People also published The 8th Habit. The 8th habit is to find your voice & inspire others to find theirs. With that, I’m taking what I learned in the Artist’s Way workshop from Char and my fellow students, and I’ll be sharing that with others by facilitating the next session of the Artist’s Way workshop this fall at Cloud 9. I hope you will join me and others from our community there.

Morning Rituals and Routines

Do you have a morning routine or rituals to get you started for the day? I’ve always been a morning person, and I’ve learned that in starting a business I need to guard that morning time with all I’m worth. I recently started to guard that schedule by avoiding any appointments or meetings before noon. There is no way to work around that completely–right now I have a Wednesday morning class at Cloud 9 Art School on sketching which gives me joy, so at the moment, that is the one exception.

I usually wake up between 5:30 and 6:00. I really hate alarm clocks, and so I’ve managed to train my body clock to wake up on its own. I feel like waking up to an alarm is the worst possible thing for your body–to be jarred awake from whichever sleep cycle you are in.

That first hour is for me. I get up, take the dog out, and then fix my first cup of coffee in the morning. I then take a long bath with a book or the latest New Yorker or Vanity Fair. Me-time. Me, glorious fricking, me-time. People always ask how I find time to read as many books as I do, and this is it. I don’t meditate, this is my meditation.

I love the smell of book ink in the morning.
Umberto Eco

After getting dressed I head back downstairs, feed the cats and dog, and then open up my journal and start a new page for the day. On one side I write up my schedule for the day. I learned this trick from Cal Newport’s Deep Work. By hand, I write down the times of the day and then I first pen in appointments and meetings (allowing travel time), and then I block off time for deep cognitive work–for me right now, that is focusing on getting my new business off the ground. I’ve always been a little absent-minded about my calendar, so the act of writing out appointments from my Outlook schedule into this notebook is a way for me to acknowledge each scheduled item. Since I’ve been doing this routine, it is rare to miss or be late. I try to leave open space in the schedule for changes and to work on my “action list.” I also list out my morning routine.

Around this time is when I have to wake up any kids in the household for school prep and then drive them to the bus stop. A good day is when everyone makes it to the bus on time, and if I have to drive them in, they owe me an hour of my lost productivity.

After the bus stop I pop in at the Starbucks down the hill for a latte or flat white. Some days I bring my journal with me (no laptop), drink my coffee, and write my Artist’s Way morning pages. That is three whole pages of writing. For me, I’m usually acknowledging the work and schedule for the day ahead and sometimes musing and recording what has happened in my life since I last wrote in the journal. I leave the laptop at home because if I have a screen near my morning pages and journal, I can easily be sucked into the black hole of lost time. And I don’t like email to be the first thing I deal with in the morning–another black hole of lost time.

When I return home it is time to hit the list. I strive to work non-stop until noon. I work on my business, and alternate it with my morning routine around the house. For the business I usually have one or two priorities for the day. For example, today I’ll be working on a mini-marketing plan for an upcoming class I’m teaching and then want to get started on planning a course around Digital Minimalism.

The business work is always changing, but my morning routine is fairly stable. It involves:
*morning pages
*clearing my desk
*a load of laundry
*cleaning the kitchen
*anything else

Afternoons are for appointments, errands, meetings, sketching, writing, and whatever suits my fancy. Sometimes that involves a nap after lunch. So refreshing and I may sneak in another chapter or two in the book I’m reading.

My morning routine is never quite finalized. What I need to work on next is completing a couple of items before bedtime, so I have more time in the morning to hit the ground running. The two I need to work on are making sure the kitchen is clean before bedtime and clearing my desk. I hate a messy desk, but I always seem to make my desk messy.

What is your morning routine? Have you posted your morning routine on a blog? What tips do you have for getting your day started right? What about tips from night owls?

Make sure you check out my upcoming class on the Artist’s Way. It starts Fall 2019 at Cloud 9 Art School, but registration is open now.

Stress or Don’t Let the Baboons Get to You

Have you ever had that situation at work where someone new in the organization, oh, say a new higher-up, comes into the organization and goes out of their way to disrupt things in the name of change and causes a lot of extra stress? They think they are being disruptive for the good of the organization. Sometimes that change has been good, but in most of the situations this new person does a lot of damage to the morale and the function of the organization. I’ve actually lived through this a few times now in my career and at different types of organizations. It always goes the same. New person makes big splash! Knocks some heads! Things are going to change around here ya see! And then boom. Next thing you know they are either out the door or at least out of the corner office. In their wake are the stressed out and shell-shocked team they leave behind.

Well, apparently this is how baboons normally live–knocking heads and going out of their way to stress each other out. This weekend I watched the National Geographic/Stanford University documentary called Stress: Portrait of a Killer. The major focus of the documentary was the work of Dr. Robert Sapolsky who has spent decades studying the physiology of stress. According to Sapolsky, baboons live in a very highly structured social hierarchy. They spend a few hours foraging a day, and then the rest of their time looking for ways to harass one another. And according to the research, the higher up you are in the hierarchy, the less stressed and healthier you are, and the lower you are the more stressed and less healthy you are. This research was also backed up in the documentary by some human research done in Great Britain among bureaucrats in the famous Whitehall study. The higher up…the less stressed the lower…the more stressed. This stress can cause cardiovascular problems, ages you faster and may also cause you to carry fat in “bad” places on your body.

But something interesting happened with the baboon troop that Sapolsky followed. The troop was foraging at a garbage dump and the higher up males who had the most access to the “choice” garbage accidently ingested tainted meat and died, leaving behind the females and the lower level males. The troop did not collapse. In the absence of the higher-up males–who happened to be the biggest bunch of jerky primates you can imagine (and if you don’t believe me check out Sapolsky’s book Memoir of a Primate), the females and the more “nice guy” baboons somehow made a change. They shifted the troop away from harassing one another. Now new males did move in–adolescents wandered in from different troops, would try to impose the old ways and eventually within six months would realize their jerkiness wasn’t tolerated and simply became “better” males.

I’m lucky to have also seen this happen in some of the organizations I’ve worked in. It is amazing what a calm, level-headed leader who expects a lot from their team and yet doesn’t pick on people can accomplish. And how much more worthwhile your work can feel under their guidance.

So how do you counteract the bad baboons? How can you counteract the stress in your life?

According to the documentary, bad stress can be counteracted by a couple of actions–connecting with others and by feeling you have more control over your situation. According to Nobel Prize winner Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn, mothers of disabled children live extremely stressed lives which then lead to shortened telomeres (which is a whole other interesting subject) and therefore significantly shortened lives by premature aging. But this stress can be alleviated by what? Connection with others in similar situations. Simply meeting and talking with other mothers of disabled children alleviated stress.

So when faced with the baboons at work–connect and talk and help others. And find a way to gain back control. That study of bureaucrats also showed that when people feel they have a sense of control over their situation or that things are fair or there is justice at work–this can also counteract the bad stress and make a healthier workplace for all.