Argh.
You ever have those periods of time when you feel like there are things you should be doing, and you're not doing them? Or where you can tell there's something intangible pulling at the back of your head, but you just can't place your finger on it? Or maybe you come home from work and feel like you should actually be doing something, but instead you just sit in front of the TV?
I'm sure you have, because we're all human, and this is just a natural part of the cycle we go through on a daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly basis (the frequency is different for everybody).
The more I learn to practice GTD effectively, the less often I feel this way, as I can allow my brain to embrace the mind like water ideal, and return to old ideas when I see fit. Still, it is impossible to feel and act productively one hundred percent of our time, and so the goal must be to maximize the amount of time we can exist in this state, and learn to accept (and yes, minimize, though this is less important than acceptance) the times when we do need to feel the way I currently do.
As an exercise to break out of this mental state, I write. As of late, two things have been on my mind more anything else: squash and dancing.
I hav been dancing a lot lately, as we are running two jam sessions a week at Vibestreet Dance, and that requires that I come up with something to teach twice a week. I can't even rely on teaching the same thing twice, as the same students may show up, and I end up feeling guilty about not being able to provide something new to them. Maybe this is just something that I need to get over, as part of this whole exercise should be of benefit to myself, not just my students. A teacher that is not gaining something from each lesson that they teach is not missing out on part of the teaching experience, as are their students.
I have taken a couple of workshops lately, and they have been very helpful in showing me new ways of teaching something, as well as many new techniques that I would like to work on and incorporate into my own styles of movement. Recently, I've been given lessons in breaking, locking, popping, and house dancing. That's a lot of stuff! Getting lessons in these new styles of dance is awesome, and is opening up my awareness and broadening my own inspiration to a great extent. However, this only results in frustration if I can't find the time to actually practice what I'm learning. House, locking, and breaking are all very new styles to me, and really require that I take the time to sit down by myself and practice the basics. This is hard to do at home because of the way I have been feeling.
Even though I'm a reasonably experienced popper, I will never be fully satisfied with my level of skill (this is kind of a general theme for my approach to things I'm truly passionate about). I often hesitate to teach something in class that I haven't had the time to sit down with and internalize. Part of the solution here, I suppose, is just accept that nobody's perfect, and that even if I'm still learning something, I can help the class with it. One of the things that I really want to avoid is attempting to show my students something that I'm still learning myself, and in doing so, teach them bad habits, or end up getting them frustrated as I cannot break it down very well.
If you've read through the paragraph above, you've just seen me provide myself with some therapy, as I think I've come up with the solution to my first problem - just do it, and don't worry about whether or not the class is disappointed that I'm not perfect at a move. We all need to learn, and there's nothing wrong with learning along with the rest of the class. Even better if I can provide a tiny bit of direction to help them along the right path.
The other thing that I think I probably need is a couple of sessions in the park with my ipod to just go over the techniques that I've been taught lately and internalize those. In GTD we have the concept of an open loop - something that requires action and is tugging at our mind. Everything that I've learned lately is sitting in that same space. It's occupying space in my head, saying "You should put some time into working on me, otherwise you'll lose this knowledge".
The other thing tugging at my mind has been squash. Although my opportunity to increase the amount of time and effort I'm putting into dancing has been incredible, and something that I've wanted to do for a looooong time, it's taken away from my ability to play squash. Although I've certainly been keeping myself fit (dancing requires a lot of energy, and I'm riding my bike as often as possible), I can feel the rust starting to creep up on my squash game, and this drives me nuts. Part of the reason for that is because I trained so hard this past season, and was really feeling good about where my efforts had led me.
Although all of our hobbies should be things that we do for fun, and don't become a burden on our mind, it's difficult for someone like me to make that leap and just let something be. That's the nature of life though - if you want to do more of one thing, you are going to have to sacrifice something else.
In an effort to have my cake and eat it to, one of the projects I have set aside for myself to take on once I end my tenure at work, is biphasic sleep. The notion of biphasic sleep sounds extremely silly when you initially hear about it: go to sleep more frequently in order to sleep less overall. With one single phase of sleep during a twenty-four hour period, our body generally requires eight hours of sleep. However, by breaking our sleep up, we are able to train our body to fall into REM sleep more quickly (which is the part of sleep that is evidently important), and thus require less sleep overall.
Although some people are absolutely insane and have managed to function quite effectively (arguably more effectively, if some of the blogs out there are to be believed) on as little as six twenty-minute naps a day (that's a mere two hours of sleep in a twenty-four hour period!), the goal I'm setting for myself is quite a bit more modest, and is based on the Hispanic tradition of siesta. The aim is to reduce my core sleep period to about five or six hours, and supplement that with a twenty-minute nap in the evening. In doing so, I will be able to create (as though by magic) an extra two hours of spare time, everyday.
This almost sounds too good to be true, and it very well may be. However, I enjoy an experiment as much as the next guy, so we'll see how things go. I could end up with an extra two hours of spare time every night (which may also be essential, if the workload required for Law is what I'm told it is), or I could fail spectacularly, in which case I will have spent a couple of weeks deprived of sleep, and return to my normal monophasic sleeping schedule. The worse-case scenario doesn't strike me as that bad, so why not try it right?
Anyhow, I think that's a sufficient ramble. Our drop-in sessions at Vibestreet have been growing steadily, and last Monday we had about twelve people in attendance to learn some popping from myself, and some breaking from Steve (good strength training!). If you're interested in learning more about any of this, drop a comment and I can blog and elaborate further.
You ever have those periods of time when you feel like there are things you should be doing, and you're not doing them? Or where you can tell there's something intangible pulling at the back of your head, but you just can't place your finger on it? Or maybe you come home from work and feel like you should actually be doing something, but instead you just sit in front of the TV?
I'm sure you have, because we're all human, and this is just a natural part of the cycle we go through on a daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly basis (the frequency is different for everybody).
The more I learn to practice GTD effectively, the less often I feel this way, as I can allow my brain to embrace the mind like water ideal, and return to old ideas when I see fit. Still, it is impossible to feel and act productively one hundred percent of our time, and so the goal must be to maximize the amount of time we can exist in this state, and learn to accept (and yes, minimize, though this is less important than acceptance) the times when we do need to feel the way I currently do.
As an exercise to break out of this mental state, I write. As of late, two things have been on my mind more anything else: squash and dancing.
I hav been dancing a lot lately, as we are running two jam sessions a week at Vibestreet Dance, and that requires that I come up with something to teach twice a week. I can't even rely on teaching the same thing twice, as the same students may show up, and I end up feeling guilty about not being able to provide something new to them. Maybe this is just something that I need to get over, as part of this whole exercise should be of benefit to myself, not just my students. A teacher that is not gaining something from each lesson that they teach is not missing out on part of the teaching experience, as are their students.
I have taken a couple of workshops lately, and they have been very helpful in showing me new ways of teaching something, as well as many new techniques that I would like to work on and incorporate into my own styles of movement. Recently, I've been given lessons in breaking, locking, popping, and house dancing. That's a lot of stuff! Getting lessons in these new styles of dance is awesome, and is opening up my awareness and broadening my own inspiration to a great extent. However, this only results in frustration if I can't find the time to actually practice what I'm learning. House, locking, and breaking are all very new styles to me, and really require that I take the time to sit down by myself and practice the basics. This is hard to do at home because of the way I have been feeling.
Even though I'm a reasonably experienced popper, I will never be fully satisfied with my level of skill (this is kind of a general theme for my approach to things I'm truly passionate about). I often hesitate to teach something in class that I haven't had the time to sit down with and internalize. Part of the solution here, I suppose, is just accept that nobody's perfect, and that even if I'm still learning something, I can help the class with it. One of the things that I really want to avoid is attempting to show my students something that I'm still learning myself, and in doing so, teach them bad habits, or end up getting them frustrated as I cannot break it down very well.
If you've read through the paragraph above, you've just seen me provide myself with some therapy, as I think I've come up with the solution to my first problem - just do it, and don't worry about whether or not the class is disappointed that I'm not perfect at a move. We all need to learn, and there's nothing wrong with learning along with the rest of the class. Even better if I can provide a tiny bit of direction to help them along the right path.
The other thing that I think I probably need is a couple of sessions in the park with my ipod to just go over the techniques that I've been taught lately and internalize those. In GTD we have the concept of an open loop - something that requires action and is tugging at our mind. Everything that I've learned lately is sitting in that same space. It's occupying space in my head, saying "You should put some time into working on me, otherwise you'll lose this knowledge".
The other thing tugging at my mind has been squash. Although my opportunity to increase the amount of time and effort I'm putting into dancing has been incredible, and something that I've wanted to do for a looooong time, it's taken away from my ability to play squash. Although I've certainly been keeping myself fit (dancing requires a lot of energy, and I'm riding my bike as often as possible), I can feel the rust starting to creep up on my squash game, and this drives me nuts. Part of the reason for that is because I trained so hard this past season, and was really feeling good about where my efforts had led me.
Although all of our hobbies should be things that we do for fun, and don't become a burden on our mind, it's difficult for someone like me to make that leap and just let something be. That's the nature of life though - if you want to do more of one thing, you are going to have to sacrifice something else.
In an effort to have my cake and eat it to, one of the projects I have set aside for myself to take on once I end my tenure at work, is biphasic sleep. The notion of biphasic sleep sounds extremely silly when you initially hear about it: go to sleep more frequently in order to sleep less overall. With one single phase of sleep during a twenty-four hour period, our body generally requires eight hours of sleep. However, by breaking our sleep up, we are able to train our body to fall into REM sleep more quickly (which is the part of sleep that is evidently important), and thus require less sleep overall.
Although some people are absolutely insane and have managed to function quite effectively (arguably more effectively, if some of the blogs out there are to be believed) on as little as six twenty-minute naps a day (that's a mere two hours of sleep in a twenty-four hour period!), the goal I'm setting for myself is quite a bit more modest, and is based on the Hispanic tradition of siesta. The aim is to reduce my core sleep period to about five or six hours, and supplement that with a twenty-minute nap in the evening. In doing so, I will be able to create (as though by magic) an extra two hours of spare time, everyday.
This almost sounds too good to be true, and it very well may be. However, I enjoy an experiment as much as the next guy, so we'll see how things go. I could end up with an extra two hours of spare time every night (which may also be essential, if the workload required for Law is what I'm told it is), or I could fail spectacularly, in which case I will have spent a couple of weeks deprived of sleep, and return to my normal monophasic sleeping schedule. The worse-case scenario doesn't strike me as that bad, so why not try it right?
Anyhow, I think that's a sufficient ramble. Our drop-in sessions at Vibestreet have been growing steadily, and last Monday we had about twelve people in attendance to learn some popping from myself, and some breaking from Steve (good strength training!). If you're interested in learning more about any of this, drop a comment and I can blog and elaborate further.
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