Tips to Thwart Procrastination

So, see the theme this week? Yeah…all started back there on Monday with that TED Talk by Tim Urban.

Then instead of working on the rewrites of that YA fantasy that’s in its 50,000th reincarnation, I found Coffee Reading Writing on Youtube. 

Hope you enjoy it, Writerly Friends!

And after you watch, let me know what you’re working on!

THEN…GET BACK TO WORK!

PS. If this is a big challenge in your life right now and you would like someone to help you identify and eliminate those blocks to your creativity, contact me for a free  consultation to see if coaching is right for you!

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A TED talk about Procrastination You Probably Shouldn’t Be Watching Right Now

What kind of procrastinator are you?

My answer is that I’m the kind of procrastinator who puts things off till the last minute…and then, if no one else is waiting…decides it wasn’t important to do anyway.

This is a fatal type of procrastination for aspiring writers! So when I googled ‘procrastination’, I found this TED talk by Tim Urban that I think everyone will enjoy!

Share your thoughts after you watch!

Don’t procrastinate about sharing your thoughts! We’re all waiting!

 

 

Printable Classroom Poster

Welcome to a new school year, Teachers!

When I worked in a public school system as a teacher, or a counselor, I began the school year with a vision for the year. I started doing this my second year of teaching when a very supportive principal shared his habit of setting yearly goals. He would spend his summer reflecting on the gaps in his teaching and then set goals for the following school year to address those. That’s how I began also, but quickly moved into a more affirmative visioning.

I think most of us spend our summers reflecting, taking workshops to grow our skillsets, developing new units of study, so it wasn’t difficult to add a reflective piece. This process may sound familiar to many of you:

1. It’s easy to reflect on our gaps, but I liked to reflect on those days, units, lessons that went really well because that’s what I want more of in my classroom. What was the overall mood in the room? What caused the students to be so engaged? In other words, what went right?
2. I bring back those days in my memory during meditations, prayers, daydreams…and I’d really let that soak into my brain cells.
3. I’d set the new year intention of experiencing every day like those memories.

Easy-peezy, right?

I think we all realize…not quite right. Because what normally came up during my reflection stage were things like this: I brought the attitude that day…I was excited, interested, accepting, and calm when I walked into the building, knowing somehow that this was going to be a great day.

Measure your success in improvement…one more class today than yesterday that was engaging, exciting, and fun.

Don’t aim for perfection…because perfect doesn’t exist, so seeking it takes the fun out of bubbles, let alone school!

Remember to love your students, because until you have their hearts, you can’t possibly engage their minds.

 

Canceled Blog Post

Today’s witty and inspiring Blog Post will be canceled due to an acute attack of  Listicle Binge Disorder. Be on the look-out for that! It is, in fact, contagious.

My attack began with The 5 Myers-Briggs Personality Types that will Put You First. I learned that I am not one of those, so that may take me out of the dating pool on Match.com. I’ll have to tell my husband. He’ll probably be disappointed.

But the attack didn’t end there. NO! I went on to The 7 Habits That Will Help Me Lose Weight…which I read while eating strawberry mochi ice cream. I suppose I’ll start those habits on Monday.

Don’t feel badly for me, but my attack didn’t stop there. The 7 Questions You Should Ask Yourself Before Getting a Master’s Degree…  would’ve probably been more helpful before I actually received a Master’s degree, but I was delirious with LBD and wasn’t thinking straight.

The 3 Ways Blogging Can Pay was the LBD just playing itself out…this acute attack was almost over…and with a listicle that doesn’t apply to my blog at all … Unless you want to share this with 3 friends who happen to share with 3 friends who also edit magazines.

Not that I’m asking you to do that… But if you really want to…I mean, since you didn’t send a card.

Anyway. What was my point?

Oh yeah… There will be no blog post today due to an acute case of Listicle Binge Disorder.

Do you believe in GHOST?

I know what you were thinking. You were thinking this post was going to be about life-after-death-spirits. Maybe it is in a way. But not in THAT way.

Last week, my post was about TEDx Hilliard. I didn’t talk about one of the speakers: Matthew Carter. I purposely left him off the list of 5 +1 Amazing Things I learned.

The tone of that blog post wasn’t right for how Matthew made me feel. You see, he was sort of a ghost to me before he took the stage.

Oh, I’ve never met him, but I saw him milling around the Bradley High School commons before the event began. We were all filling eco-unfriendly black plastic plates with diet-unfriendly appetizers! Delicious appetizers.

My eyes scanned him but my brain didn’t register him. He’s a normal-looking black guy. My eyes never stopped.

Now the woman standing beside him? She made my gaze falter. You know that women wear make-up, dress, and accessorize for other women, don’t you? This young black woman succeeded!

I didn’t put her with him until he took the stage and pointed her out. What? She’s with him?

So, see? He should have been the inspiration behind the main character in Jason Reynolds’ novel Ghost! And he was…is.

He introduces himself as a superhero. By this time it didn’t surprise me. Clark Kent was a normal looking guy; so was Batman until George Clooney stepped in as the lead; so was Iron Man, the Hulk, the Arrow…I don’t need to go on.

And then Matthew Carter began talking about the trauma that turned him into this superhero. I won’t share the details. I’ll just tell you that it was shocking and I don’t know why.

I know at this stage of my life that black people in this country have never had it easy. NEVER. And STILL.

I know that single mothers have never had it easy. NEVER. And STILL.

I thought it had changed. I was under a delusional illusion that we had overcome our puritanical, racist background, thrown our arms wide open, trashed the judgmental bullshit with our Marlboro’s and DDT. But, you see, that was never true. Just because I can eat in a restaurant now without swallowing second-hand smoke does not mean there aren’t a dozen smokers in the back parking lot filling their bodies with carcinogens.

But I naively thought it did.

Naive isn’t the right word…stupid…that’s the right word.

Matthew Carter introduced himself as a superhero and made me believe that his was going to be a light-hearted story of self-actualization. It was…and it wasn’t. He, somehow…miraculously can make you smile but his story brought me to tears. There were times I’m sure my heart stopped, then skipped, then raced.

There was trauma all right…and drama…and maybe some dharma too. I think he’d agree with that last…because I think he’s found his purpose visiting schools and students and teachers and starring on TEDx stages.

He made a few good points, but the ones that transformed me on August 9, 2019 are these:

• it’s important to share our discomfort with young people so that they understand it’s okay for them to share theirs with us.
• it’s important to be ostentatious listeners because when we aren’t, we silence somebody’s truth.
• it’s important to see the superhero in everyone, especially the person who hasn’t yet seen it in their own mirror.

5 + 1 Amazing Things I learned at TEDx Hilliard

I learned 5 AMAZING Concepts at the Hilliard TEDx event on August 9, 2019:

1. Social Media is like going on 50 First Dates. Not the movie, but actual first dates. Remember those? You kept your conversations to positive, superficial topics even though just that afternoon a colleague stole your biggest client which sent you down a deep, deep well of self-doubt! You wore Spanx under a dress that you bought at Saks 5th, because heaven-forbid anyone would discover you’re a REAL person.  Stefanie Jackson tells us in her refreshingly honest style how the never-ending first dates of social media are killing our FLOW! DO NOT MISS IT! Watch this TEDx talk AS SOON AS it’s posted online! (In 5 weeks.)
2. Around-the-House Football is a thing! Maybe that wasn’t the big idea Brent Wise wanted me to come away with, but once you put your ideas out there, you no longer control them! What is around-the-house football? Instead of playing backyard football between the trees, young Brent and his friends incorporated the front AND backyard for their games which included over-the-roof passes and circular yardage. Get it? You don’t have to stick by any arbitrary rules of the game if they don’t fit your purpose. It’s just slightly possible I got stuck on the ‘around-the-house-football’ thing and missed the major point…you be the judge when you watch Brent Wise’s TEDx Hilliard talk online. It should be posted tomorrow next week in 5 weeks! 
3. Data solves a lot of not-problems. Bill Balderaz listed a number of them: getting the make-up you ordered on-line quicker than driving to the store; finding website suggestions on your smartphone; seeing Facebook ads that fit the exact thing you were looking for next! These are fixes for not-problems, but Bill says the same data and algorithms can be used to predict and prevent urban blight, hunger all over the world, and the addiction crisis. How? you ask. Bill will tell you when you watch his TEDx talk …Statistics are showing that people want to see that now, but that 95% will wait the entire five weeks until it’s posted. 
4. I should take an Improv Class! Again, that’s not the message that Mihaela Jekic was trying to send, but once your message is out there…  Mihaela’s message had more to do with using our humiliating experiences to transform ourselves into fearless critters who will try anything at least once. What does that have to do with Improv? Well, you’ll have to find out when Hilliard TEDx hits the web. And when will that be, you ask. IN ABOUT 5 WEEKS!
5. Talent’s just another word for ‘work’. That’s what I learned from the youngest speaker on the TEDx stage, Elise Byard. That girl can sing! But beyond that…she can play piano while she’s singing! And beyond that…she can do both while remaining on tune, in rhythm, and error-free! And she says it’s because she doesn’t quit when it’s hard. Pshaw! She got ALL the talent, that’s all! You be the Idol Judge when you watch Elise on the TEDx Hilliard stage…when? IN FIVE MORE WEEKS! 

AND, (you should be hearing a drumroll) the PLUS ONE AMAZING THING I LEARNED AT TEDx HILLIARD:

Our math teachers lied to us!

Raj Shah’s talk on using video game principles to help children love math made me fall in love with math! If you want to know the secret lies that our math teachers told us…that’s right, you have to wait the requisite...5 weeks! 

Great-Reads and Listens For The Weekend

Because why waste your time reading or listening to anything less than great?

Here’s one I’m reading now with a group of friends at the Columbus Center for Spiritual Living where I worship. I think you’d enjoy reading this book if you want to re-map your brain to lean toward happiness instead of negativity.

I’m not calling you negative…I’m just saying that we’re all predisposed for it. All of us! Even Pollyanna!

It’s a good read with a lot of solid commonsense ideas with scientific background…which many of us like to have so we can misquote it to our friends when we recommend that they read this book.

Remember, I am an Amazon Associate which means if you click and buy here…you’re helping a not-starving writer fund her addiction to blogging!

As far as the listening portion of this post goes…let’s stick with our theme of happiness, okay? And who’s the happiness guru-ess? That’s right, Gretchen Rubin!

I do not listen to Gretchen religiously, but I do think her podcast is light, filled with talk that spurs my own thinking about how I define happiness for myself, and entertaining.

Here’s a link to Gretchen’s podcast, but if you use a different platform for your podcasts, just put the name in that app to pull it up.

more

 

I won’t even claim to know anything about platforms and apps and all things technical that allow you to listen…very much like my inability to tell you how Netflix works…only that I push a button on my remote and I’m HAPPIER!!! Wanna know what I’m binge-watching this weekend?

The Story of God with Morgan Freeman