Category: thoughts

Life Skills Upgrade: Learning a Language

I’m not sure how it came about, but I’ve decided to learn Russian. This process has evolved how I thinking about language learning, and it’s been eye-opening for me. I thought I’d share some of the tools I’m using to learn. Maybe it will give one of you, my dear readers, the courage to explore something new!

First, I should address my reasons for wanting to learn Russian. They are fourfold:

  1. I’m fascinated by Russian culture. Dostoyevsky is one of my favorite authors from among The Classics, and his descriptions of life in Russia and the Russian worldview fascinate me.
  2. It seems that, with rising tensions and talk of a second cold war, the United State’s relationship to the world’s largest country has never been more important.
  3. I wanted the intellectual challenge of learning a completely new language. Yes, I have Spanish, but improving that wouldn’t be the same kind of challenge.
  4. Plus, Russian sounds cool.

Here are some of the resources I’ve used so far, and my experiences with them:

Pimsleur Language Course

If you follow the blog (or know me at all), you know I’m a big fan of Audible.com. They were having a buy one/get one sale on language courses, so I downloaded the first 10 lessons of their Russian language course. Right now, I’m on the sixth course. I recommend this course and method for anyone learning a language. It’s intuitive, exclusively verbal, and seems to approach the material in a learner-friendly way. The lessons are about a half hour long each, and I’ve found that they work best when you have time to listen to the entire lesson in one shot, practicing and speaking while you listen. I have found that I need to listen to each lesson about two times before I feel comfortable moving on to the next one.

Fluent in 3 Months

While on vacation in Petaluma with Lisa, I picked up a book called Fluent in 3 Months: How Anyone at Any Age Can Learn to Speak Any Language from Anywhere in the World. This book is not about Russian in particular, but about learning languages in general. Though it’s not scholarly writing, it has challenged a lot of my thinking (and my excuses) about learning languages. It’s given me the impression that this goal IS attainable. Most of all, it’s validated that I’m not crazy for trying this adventure. The book also has a web site and online community, which I haven’t had the chance to explore yet.

italki.com

The most interesting resource I’ve used so far is iTalki. iTalki is a web site (which has become more of a social network) dedicated to language learning. Each person creates a profile listing the languages they speak (and at which levels), along with the languages they want to learn. From there, you can choose language partners who speak your target language and want to learn your language. So far, I have nine friends on the site. One of them wants to teach me Vietnamese and one would like to speak with me in Arabic. Two have asked to talk to me in Spanish, and the rest are interested in learning English from me, while I learn Russian from them. So far, I’ve had two conversations on Skype with a girl in Russia named Elena. She is a patient teacher, even though talking via Skype can be frustrating sometimes. Elena is also ambitious: during our second conversation, she taught me the entire Cyrillic alphabet. Interestingly, not all of my potential teachers live in Russia. One guy I’m planning to speak with runs his Russian business from Thailand.

Google Translate

This service is much improved from its early days. It features automatic language recognition and fairly well-spoken versions of any word for which you need translation. I’m a little wary of relying on it, but it hasn’t steered me wrong yet.

Text to Speech at Oddcast

This fun little tool allows you to watch (a fake little person) speak any words you have in mind. You can also change the speed at which s/he speaks. This can be useful for slowing complicated words down.

Russian for Everyone

This page is specific to the Russian language, but it’s been a really good resource for helping me as I learn each of the letters in the Cyrillic alphabet. Each letter has an audible pronunciation guide, a sample showing how to write it in handwriting, an example of the letter in context, and other helpful goodies.

Culture and Context

Once I started learning the Russian language and meeting a few Russian people, I became curious about Russian history and culture. Once again, I turned to Audible, where I found a fascinating series of 36 lectures about Russian history. I’m only starting these, but I quickly realized how little I know about Russian history.

I think those are most of the tools I’m using so far. Which ones seem the most useful to you? Do you have any to add? If you could learn any language, what would it be?

Business Plans

I was recently asked about Business Plans.  Below is my response.

Business plans can come in any format. I actually delivered one as a rap one time! The important part is that it succinctly communicates the entrepreneur’s vision, and has some realistic numbers.

Sales projections (with a plan to hit them), economics of a unit, and a monthly break-even analysis are the calculations that are especially important to me when I look at a plan. None of that is rocket science, and some of it can feel more like creative writing at times!

Even though people use business plans to apply for funding, the process of writing a business plan forces every entrepreneur to answer a lot of questions, and the process of answering these questions is probably a lot more valuable than any funding that might be received.

I’ve used Business Plan Pro software before, and it was effective for me. Of course, the quality of plans made with software is highly variable – you only get out of them what you put into them. Here’s a link: paloalto.com/business_plan_software.

The Small Business Administration has some good links to help with writing a business plan: http://www.sba.gov/category/navigation-structure/starting-managing-business/starting-business/how-write-business-plan.

And SCORE, the Service Corps of Retired Executives, has some business plan templates that you can download and use for free: http://www.score.org/resources/business-plan-template-startup-business.

I’m not big on business planning these days. In the Army, they say that no plan survives contact with the enemy. This is often true in business, too. I’d rather have my students ship one unit, and figure out how a customer uses it. That’s when they learn their real value proposition, because we ultimately are making products and services for customers. But the process of planning has some validity, and checking for realistic numbers is the most valuable part of the process.

Things I’ve Noticed 1: Art

I’ve decided to start a new series here on the blog.  I will share things I’ve noticed.  I see little things here and there, and wonder about them.  I thought about starting a different blog to house these thoughts, but how many blogs does one guy really need?!  Here’s he first in the series:

I was in San Francisco a few months ago, and I noticed some things about art.  I was in a beautiful high-end art gallery near Ghirardelli Square.  The salesperson took quite a bit of time with me and walked me through several art pieces.  Reproductions of the art in question were selling for $60,000 and $70,000.  This was an enjoyable experience.

After visiting the gallery, I stopped to watch a street artist one block down from these same galleries.  She was dirty, a bit rude, and looked destitute.  She asked if she could draw a picture of me for a dollar.  I declined, but ended up giving her a dollar after she chided me for taking a picture of her.

It took me a few minutes of reflection to notice that she was engaging in the same creative process as the artists whose work was on sale 300 feet away: making art for sale.

This made me wonder about the value of art.  It it only display that makes a piece of art valuable?  Is it availability?  I realized as I handed her the crisp dollar bill that I was paying with a piece of art: a portrait of George Washington, that’s available to anyone willing to provide a dollar of value in exchange.  I briefly considered the possibility that the George Washington portrait pointed to availability driving value, but I realized that the street artist in front of me was willing to provide me with an original for a very small amount of money.

I realized instead that the value of art comes from context.  The salesperson in the gallery was willing to learn about my taste and sell me on the story of the pieces of art I was considering.  The person on the street was not cognizant of the source of her art’s value.  If she was, she would be able to charge me for the application of her talent.

What will tomorrow’s web be like?

I see four trends converging, and I want to make a prediction about how they’ll collide to provide a type of experience that we’ll have on the web of tomorrow.  Those four trends are:

  1. Immersive
  2. Mobile
  3. Video
  4. Immediacy

Immersive

Many developers are striving to provide a more immersive experience.  Whether it’s better

use of space within web sites and web apps, fullscreen options on everything from video players to desktop applications, it seems everyone is looking to add a fullscreen button to their users’ experience.  Users have become intuitively conditioned to look for indicators of this immersive-style experience.  How to do I know?  W

hen I’m using a computer, tablet or mobile device with my children, they constantly scan for the fullscreen button, and ask (beg) me to use it.  I can hear their little voices chanting, “Fullscreen, fullscreen!” in a half-cute, half-annoying chorus of kid-tech-love.

As a matter of fact, I’m composing this blog post in WordPress’s Fullscreen, distraction-free writing experience.

Mobile

We’ve been hearing for years that someday more people will be accessing the web via mobile phones.  Well, someday has arrived.  According to a Pew Internet and American Life Project study from two years ago, 28% of Americans access the web primarily from their mobile phones.  And 68% of American smartphone users access the web via their smartphones every day.  And this is in the US, where broadband mobile penetration is growing slower than in Africa and Asia.

Video

Cisco estimated in 2011 that the sum of all video content will make up 86% of internet traffic by the year 2016.  When I visit a web site to learn about something, my first instinct now it to look for a 2-minute intro or example video.  Video is increasingly a big deal.

Immediacy

When I talk about immediacy, what I’m really referring to is the low latency of internet-delivered content.  That means that people are figuring out how to deliver content is ways that don’t make you wait around, watching the content load.  Our attention spans are being conditioned to this kind of experience. Designers and developers will continue to push forward our expectations for a low-latency experience.

Where it’s all leading

So when you smash these trends together, what do you get?  The potential for some very interesting stuff.  I think we’re going to see immersive content that blends video with vector-based artwork that we’ll experience on mobile devices (tablets, phablets, Google glass, etc.).  Essentially, we’ll be able to watch little pieces of non-square video in cartoon-like worlds that load quickly on mobile devices in immersive viewing formats.

How will this happen?  That’s the interesting part.  I think it’ll be achieved using HTML5 (or its successor language).  Right now, HTML5 has canvas tags for displaying video content without using a browser plugin.  I predict that these tags will take on more and more attributes, and we’ll start to see blends of little pieces of video, along with vector-style artwork.  Vector is low-latency, and video is rich in experience.

This will happen in much the same way that javascript went from a language for adding simple interactivity to web sites (like a simple submit button) to a full-blown webapp-programming framework (that render products like Gmail).  I don’t think anyone expected the complexity, or the code libraries and other support tools, that we’ve seen emerge from javascript, which started as a more basic programming tool.

In the same way, HTML5 (and its offspring) will bring us some very interesting experiences in the future.  Ever wanted to live in a cartoon?  You may get that chance in the future.

Paul Buxman and the role of disappointment

I spent some time with Paul Buxman today.  He’s a friend of mine, and also a really talented artist.  We check in at least once a year, when he brings in the year’s crop of paintings for me to photograph and archive.

Paul’s paintings tell stories on more than one level.  Visually, each painting tells a story about a slowly fading agrarian way of life in California’s beautiful central valley.  But taken collectively, they tell a story about the artist.

When I see Paul’s entire collection from a year, I see changes.

Paul used more red paint this year.  When I asked him about it, he told me that this year he discovered red, and brought it out from the back of his paint-box.  I also noticed more purity in the colors he chose, and he confirmed that he spent less time mixing colors this year.  I also noticed some different kinds of composition creeping into his work, and more diversity in the nature of his subjects.  His paintings this year feel a touch more realistic, and also a little more wild; a little less controlled.  All these facets of his art make me wonder about Paul’s life, and the events that shaped the artist this year.  So I asked.

Paul told me that this has been the best year of his life.  When I asked why, he started listing off events and feelings that seem to me like anything but the ideal year.  But in looking back, he’s been able to see God’s hand in his life and in his family this year.  The struggles he has been through this year have brought his life into sharper relief.  They’ve brought out the reds.

I’m challenged.  I’m challenged to accept the hard things in life as a gift from God; as his tool for molding me into the shape He wants for me.  I’m challenged to try putting myself into places that seem less safe.  I’m challenged to work harder, as if I’m working on things that benefit someone else instead of me.  I’m challenged to let God show me where to find the red paint.

Abstraction, progress, and my theory of creativity

I’ve observed abstraction both in the movement from assembly language to high-level coding frameworks and in the human upgrade from chiseled stone to steel tools. In all cases, abstracting principles and moving to higher-order thinking enables progressive leaps forward.

Changing the basis for a decision can affect an entire discussion. In some ways, those who figure out the end are more powerful than the best of those who design the means.

But so many times we live exclusively in a world of means. We don’t stop to divine the ends, or even move up the systems-thinking chain. Answers to intractable questions may be available laterally. When people see such answers, they often call them the results of creativity. They don’t realize that creativity is only the result of a habit of mind.

So what makes abstraction into progress?

Completion of the abstraction is one factor. If the abstraction is mostly complete it can be useful. But it can’t allow the freedom and comfort of giving our minds entirely to the higher-order frame of mental reference. Though being able to mentally scale referent frames may be the habit of a strong, creative mind, it’s better for progress that the abstraction be completed and society function at the new, higher level.

Critical mass, support, and surrounding infrastructure are also part of the picture. The pace of change cannot be too fast, or the ecosystem that surrounds the abstraction will choke it off.

What else am I missing?

The future past

Sometimes I think it would be nice to go back: back before things were complicated, before life became what it is today. But there I find a problem: I’m not sure that I’d want to go forward again. And so I press on, trying neither to look backward or forward. For behind me, things are simpler. And before me looms the unknown. Tragedies and complexity are certain to lurk ahead, and I head toward them, blissfully ignorant.

Ecclesiastes 6:12 “For who knows what is good for a man in life, during the few and meaningless days he passes through like a shadow? Who can tell him what will happen under the sun after he is gone?”

Life skills upgrade: focus

I have a confession to make: I have a very hard time focusing on things in general.  You may have noticed this, as it’s been several months since my last blog post.  (Case in point: After writing the previous sentence, I left this post to go check a minor point in my server’s configuration, looked at three config files, then did a Google search on how to modify them.  While my results loaded, I returned to this post.)

I’ve found some help for this problem, and I want to share it with you.  It came in the form of a book, simply titled “focus.”  The subtitle is: “A Simplicity Manifesto in the Age of Distraction.”  Poignant? Yes.

I found the book from the great blog Lifehacker, which I then stopped reading on the advice of the book.  Irony abounds.

Anyway, the book is free.  Sort of.  It’s free for the free version (which is a .PDF-contained eBook), which you can download here: FREE GREAT BOOK HERE NOW SUPERLATIVE EXCLAMATION!  I have to confess, I read the free version first.  But it was so good that I actually went back and purchased the paid version of the book (which is also a .PDF-contained eBook) for 35 bucks.  The free version was worth way more than 35 bucks to me, which means that the full version is worth potentially more still.  Either way you choose to go, it’s a heckuva deal for the quality of the material.

Though the writing is intentionally clean and easy to read, this is not a book that you want to rush through.  I have tried to read it as part of a morningly working focus ritual.  Here’s how it works for me: I sit down at my desk, close all other programs, close the door and issue a stern warning to any who might be tempted to break my concentration, and breathe deeply a few times while I mindfully start reading.  At this point, I’ve gotten a lot of value out of the exercise before I even start reading the book!  When I read, I never read more than one chapter at a time.  I’m not really meditating, just reading mindfully, learning to focus and only do one thing.

This is one of several aids to productivity that have influenced my thinking about work in the past few years.  The other is the Getting Things Done methodology, pioneered and preached by David Allen.  Getting Things Done, or GTD in the parlance of us devotees, deserves its own blog post.  It probably deserves several, but I’ll leave that for another day.  Suffice it to say that this book, Focus, is influenced by and compatible with GTD.

So how has it gone for me?  Really well so far.  I wouldn’t be writing about it otherwise.  (I never would have gotten around to it.)  I’ve read the entire free version of the book once, and I’m now re-reading the full version of the book.  I don’t end up reading it every working morning, but I find that when I do invest a few minutes in the morning to focus, my entire day is VASTLY more productive.  As a matter of fact, if I’ve done any work for/with you in the past six months, you probably owe my participation partly to this book.

The format of Focus is very helpful, as well.  It’s not framed as a large, thought-provoking explanation of anything.  It doesn’t carry that kind of authoritative weight.  Instead, it’s a bunch of bite-sized chunks of useful tips and helpful practices.  There are sections with tips for parents, employees, managers, etc.  Most of the time, I’ve been able to read a chapter and walk away with a very small change to my day.  There’s been at least one occasion where I stopped reading mid-chapter, closed the book, and went on to implement something from that day’s chapter right away.

Anyway, I highly recommend it.  I’ll even buy you a copy of the free version if you’d like.  It’s at least that good.  Here’s the info:

focus : a simplicity manifesto in the age of distraction

author: Leo Babauta
price: free or $34.95
site: http://focusmanifesto.com/

Waiting for David

I read the story of King David’s anointing in the Bible with the kids this evening.  It’s amazing how reading in a new format (i.e. a children’s bible) can give you new ways to think about the stories.

I realized something: it was a long time from David’s anointing until the time that he stepped onto the public stage and starting fulfilling his God-given role as King of Israel.  What did he do during that time? He chased sheep.

David was specifically called by God to do something, and was then placed right back into his everyday life.  How many times do you think he wondered (while tending those dumb, smelly little animals) whether God had really called him?

Of course, with hindsight, we can see that God was training David.  He was giving him the chance to learn leadership; to learn how to shepherd God’s people.  God was training his hands for war: sending bears and lions to teach David to fight, protect and kill.  But it must have all seemed like drudgery at the time.  It probably felt as if God had never called him.

Have you ever been called by God to do something, then dropped back into your everyday life?  Do you ever wonder, “Was God really asking me to do that?” Do you wonder why nothing’s changed?  Could it be because God is preparing you, making you ready for the day you’ll fulfill your destiny? Might he be using small, everyday tasks to build character, to shape your skills?

If you feel that God spoke to you at some point in your life, sit down and think about it.  Write down as much as you remember and pray for direction.  It could be that God’s not finished with that call yet.

How much?

How much can one learn? How many things can a person master? Are there over-arching skills that one can focus on to improve one’s facility with many different skills? I’d really like to be a great photographer, a cutting-edge designer, a good businessperson, a trusted counselor, a good advisor, a knowledgeable historian, an effective teacher, a compelling writer, and a decent human being.  Not necessarily in that order.  Is it reasonable to think that I can become all those things?  Is it possible to be well-rounded in an age that requires such depth in every field?  Or should I give up some of my dreams? Try to develop in stages?

P.S. –  Be sure to watch the Shinn Photo blog tomorrow morning around 8 am.  I created an art piece earlier today that I’m excited to share!