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I don’t know if Savage Steve Holland’s Better Off Dead, starring a teenage John Cusack, qualifies as a cult classic, but it’s one of my favorite ‘80s movies.
In one memorable scene (featuring the late, great Vincent Schiavelli as the geometry teacher), Lane Meyer, played by Cusack, experiences that nightmare scenario of being unwittingly unprepared for class.
Read MoreI’m in the midst of knitting a sweater with lots of bobbles. Eighty-four of them, to be precise.
I’m counting because I’m desperate to be done with the dang bobbles. I guess I forgot how much I hate them. A single bobble requires that you first knit into one stitch three times. Then, you take those three stitches and work each of them again. Then again, and then again, and finally your misery is over and you turn the three stitches back into one, resulting in the finished bobble:
Read MoreProductivity is a trap, you know.
It can be very satisfying to knock out task after routine, mundane task. Answer an email, then archive it so it disappears from your inbox. Load the dishwasher and start the cycle. Proofread the document.
It’s a little scarier to do things that don’t have clear beginnings and endings. Some of these things aren’t tasks at all.
Read MoreThese days, I’m learning how to manage projects.
This is not a well-developed skill for me. I’m good at managing a process — something repeatable that can be refined over time — and I’ve had a lot of experience dealing well with novel situations and improvising on the fly. My weakness is one-time, short-term endeavors with a beginning, middle, and end. Projects. Yeah, those.
Read MoreTeachers my have a reputation for torturing students, but many students do just fine torturing themselves.
Underlying many of our most painful experiences in growth and learning is an unnecessary belief that, once released, opens up all kinds of possibilities.
Often unstated by adults because it might be buried a bit deeper, we can count on kids to express this belief right out loud, which helps them get over it faster.
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