Toastmasters

I officially joined Toastmasters this week. I have been going out to meetings as a guest for the past several months. I've gone to meetings at three different clubs. The first club I went to was just starting up; the meetings had low attendance and were poorly run.

The second club met at a location that was closer to home for me. I went to about three of their meetings. I liked the people there and I was starting to feel at home with them. The only problem for me was that they meet on Thursday nights and that's when I have my worship team rehearsals. That meant that I would attend only on those weeks when rehearsal was cancelled (or skip rehearsal, which I don't want to do too often).

Then I heard about a club that meets on Wednesday nights and they meet at a location that is even more closer to home for me. I went to a couple of their meetings and found that I liked the people there too.

On my second turnout I won a white ribbon for my Table Topics speech. My speech was about the role of duct tape in the mating practices of the Twenty First century, as told from the perspective of a Twenty Fifth century archaeologist. Hee hee.

Time to start working on my Ice Breaker speech.

Finished Chapter 4!

Four weeks ago I committed myself to a writing schedule consisting of two sessions of two hours each. (See Feeding My Spirit). My plan at the time was to alternate sessions between Mission: Dawn and That Warrior Spirit.

After holding to that schedule for a couple of weeks, I realized I was about four sessions away from finishing Chapter 4 of That Warrior Spirit. At the pace I was holding to, it would take four weeks to finish.

So I decided to accelerate my plan. I decided to put Mission: Dawn on the back burner yet again, and focus just on That Warrior Spirit. I also decided to finish it in one week by putting four writing sessions into my schedule instead of just two.

That was last week and I had some challenges holding to my self-imposed schedule but I did my best to adapt and by the end of the week I was just one scene away from finishing Chapter 4.

Or so I thought. I had forgotten that there was another partially developed scene that I still needed to finish. That meant that I was really two scenes away from finishing the chapter.

I am happy to say that as of today I have completed those scenes, and Chapter 4 is now done. Finally!

I'm planning to publish those four chapters as Book 1 of a series, so I will next be focusing my writing energies towards completing the second draft, and getting ready to publish and market the book.

GTD revisited

I've never really developed a consistent system or consistent set of habits for practicing GTD (Getting Things Done).

I've experimented with various applications which I've tried to set up as my trusted GTD system but eventually I fall way behind and I stop using it, or I stop trusting it. As a result I have numerous lists of things to do that I have begun to set up in various partially trusted systems.

Still, I'm attracted to the idea of a trusted system that will help me manage my work flow, keep me organized, be fun to use, and function in a way that works for me.

My most recent discovery is Thinking Rock. One thing that I like about it that differentiates it from other applications that I've tried is that it separates the step of Collecting Thoughts from determining Next Actions. One reason I do not keep up with my GTD process is that I sometimes do not know what my Next Action should be. Then things start piling up in my list and I start ignoring it and just doing what I need to do instead of keeping a system up to date.

Thinking Rock is an open source application so it's free to download and use. I like open source software.

Dancing with life

Almost one month has gone by since I committed myself to putting in two writing sessions a week into my schedule. For the first few weeks I was alternating my two sessions a week between writing Mission: Dawn (Tuesday evening session) and That Warrior Spirit (Saturday morning session). I've been working on Chapter 4 for both books.

This week I rebalanced my focus. I estimated that I was four sessions away from finishing Chapter 4 of That Warrior Spirit. At my previous pace that would have taken me four weeks to finish it. Rebalancing meant I decided to focus solely on That Warrior Spirit. That would cut down my time to finish Chapter 4 from four weeks to two weeks. I decided to be even more aggressive than that and target to complete Chapter 4 this week. That meant having four sessions all in one week.

I scheduled in all four writing sessions and put them into my Palm Pilot. As is often the case, life intruded and started messing with my self-imposed schedule. Well life did a pretty darn good job of intruding. Nevertheless, I danced with life and still managed to squeeze in my writing when I could. The result is that I am now one scene away from finishing Chapter 4.

There is still one day left in the week so I still have a shot at meeting my target.

Uncle Orest!

I had dinner today with J and her brother's children. I met them at the diner in IKEA.

When they saw me their faces lit up and they yelled, "Uncle Orest!"

That was the highlight of my day.

Negotiating tactics

There is an adage about negotiating that says, whoever is the first to name a figure loses.

So how does that work when both sides of a negotiation are following the same adage? It seems to me that it would result in a standoff, with both sides avoiding naming any figures.

It also seems to me that the person who follows this strategy would be playing the game of win-lose rather than the game of win-win. Where is the abundance in that?

It seems to me that if I am going to show up in my life as a leader then there are going to be times when I choose to be the one to take the first steps to move things forward to attain my goals. It won't serve me well if I choose to equate that with losing.

Maybe it's time for a new adage.