Diversify

"One of the shining qualities that heroes possess is the willingness to be educated by all things. Gregg Levoy, Callings

Last month I started teaching a course in cultural diversity for the first time and was surprised to realize that my students (mostly in their 20s and 30s) had lived their whole life under anti-discrimination laws. Their world view is much different from mine.

Although they can’t really imagine a world where discrimination is legal, they came up with this impressive list of the benefits of working in a multi-cultural group:

• Creativity
• New Ideas
• International Relations
• New Skills
• New Technology
• Becoming Encultured
• Learning New Languages
• New Communication Skills
• Different Values
• Backgrounds
• Work Ethics
• Different Opinions
• Experience
• Potlucks
• Friendships & Socialization
• Being more interesting
• Teamwork
• Developing Social Skills
• Conflict Resolution
• Free Channels of Communication
• Advancement
• Knowledge from Different Cultures
• Equal Opportunity
• Employee Empowerment
• Increased productivity
• Adaptability
• Mentoring
• Self-Growth
• Work/Life Balance

©2007 Dixie Darr. All rights reserved

Possibilities

“Life is an experiment to discover what's possible.”
Margaret J. Wheatley and Myron Kellner-Rogers,A Simpler Way

Scheduling when we do our work can be a challenge for those of us who work at home. At breakfast with a group of writers last week, we talked about the typical advice that we need to write something every day. One woman with young children explained that she has to snatch a few minutes for her writing here and there between her responsibilities to her children.

Another tries (in vain, usually) to schedule an hour or two every day for working on her novel. This is what Barbara Sher, author of Refuse to Choose, calls the school day model. It is well suited to certain types of what she calls scanners: people with restless, curious minds who want to do many things instead of focusing on just one.

In the school day model, you arrange your day like a day in high school, moving from one activity to another every hour or two. She even suggests setting a timer to remind you when it is time to move on to the next thing.

The physician model is another scanner-friendly schedule, and one that I prefer. Sher explains, “a physician might see patients on Monday and Tuesday, go into the hospital on Wednesday and Thursday, attend conferences a few times a month, and take 2 weeks in the winter to go with Doctors without Borders to Nepal to perform hundreds of cataract operations.”

I haven’t been to Nepal lately (well, ever) but I do tend to focus on one thing for a day or two at a time. Today, for example, I will spend the day grading papers and preparing for the class I teach tonight. The next two days I can work on course outlines and workbooks for my seminars. Saturday is the day I spend with my parents and Sunday is for church activities. Since I always have a variety of activities, even on days with one major focal point, my schedule is really a hybrid of these two life design models.

Kristi, a dhoula, describes her aunt, who schedules her housework to do one major task per day. Every Monday she cleans her floors, Tuesday is laundry day, etc. Kristi thinks this is a perfect schedule, but can’t make it work for her because she may spend 36 hours with a patient, then sleep for a whole day. The point is that we all have to find what works for us. It doesn’t help to try to force ourselves into a preconceived schedule, no matter how well it might work for someone else.

Sher’s book describes many other life design models and stories of people who use them. They will open up your thinking about what is possible.

©2007 Dixie Darr. All rights reserved

Work is Not a Four-Letter Word

“Insist on joy in spite of everything.” Tom Robbins

Steve Erwin, the crocodile hunter, was clearly a man who loved his work. I saw a video of him over the weekend which was taken just hours before he died. He was excited and exuberant and filled with joy. That’s the way I want to work, and ideally, the way I want to die.

The best way to enjoy your work is to work at something that you are very good at, because most of us really like showing our stuff. We are also usually interested in becoming better, becoming the BEST at something. The next step is to treat work like play.

In the book, Work Like Your Dog, authors Matt Weinstein and Luke Barber describe the “work” (running) of their dog, Blue. She leaps in excitement in anticipation of going for her daily run. She finds time to chase squirrels, sniff at children and even take a dip in the lake during her run. We can emulate her by fitting rewards into our workday. For me that would be reading, taking a walk, working on a collage, surfing the internet or playing spider solitaire.

Even better is turning our work itself into a game. Today, I have papers to grade, not my favorite part of my teaching job. I could make it more fun by getting some gold stickers to reward my students when they do something right, instead of focusing on their mistakes. Even though my students are adults, I think they would like getting a gold star.

Last week in one of my classes, a student asked if I couldn’t change their final project because “this is a fun class, but that isn’t a fun assignment.” I agreed with her. Now, instead of writing a research paper and doing a boring PowerPoint presentation (and trust me, most of them are boring) on cultural diversity, they are developing games to teach the concepts of diversity to one another. The bonus in this assignment is that their games will be something they can actually use on the job or with their families. I’m looking forward to seeing what they will come up with.

In their final class before graduation, they get to do their happy dances and give standing ovations to one another.

I have always thought learning was the most fun thing in the world and tried to find ways to make the classroom fun. Weinstein and Barber are giving me renewed energy to have more fun and fresh ideas for making that happen.

©2007 Dixie Darr. All rights reserved

Happy Birthday to Me

Creative Rule of Thumb #1

“The best way to get great ideas is to get lots of ideas and throw the bad ones away.” Charles “Chic” Thompson

Laugh more. That’s one of my resolutions this year, so I was thrilled to receive a very funny email birthday card from my friend, Maureen this morning. It let me start the day by laughing out loud for almost a full minute. I still laugh when I think about it. In fact, I liked it so much that I am thinking about signing up for a joke-a-day email.

Laughter is important for stress-reduction and joie de vivre, but it is also a necessary component for creativity, one of my primary areas of exploration for thirty years. I just ran across a list of five levels of creativity from A. Taylor in a classic book, The Nature of Creative Process.

Level 1: Primitive and intuitive expression found in children and in adults who have not been trained in art.

Level 2: Academic and technical level where the artist learns skills and techniques to master the craft.

Level 3: Invention involves experimenting with the craft, breaking rules and challenging the boundaries of academic tradition and becoming increasingly adventurous and experimental.

Level 4: Innovation requires that the artist become more original, using materials and methods that are out of the ordinary.

Level 5: At the genius level are individuals whose ideas and accomplishments defy explanation. This may be the only level that cannot be learned.

Whatever your field, you can probably benefit from increasing your creativity, moving from, say, level 2 to level 3 or level 3 to level 4. Laughter is a good place to start.

©2006 Dixie Darr. All rights reserved