Bill's Notebook

I started this tradition in my Junior year of college thanks to an inspiring philosophy professor who applied Ancient Greek philosophy to his profitable management consulting practice.  His guiding concept was arête which has deep meaning but essentially means the pursuit of excellence in whatever you do.  It really resonated with me because I was fast approaching the reality of what I wanted to do after I was graduated in a year from that December.

When I went home for the Christmas break, I had the house to myself for the time after Christmas and just before New Year’s Eve.  I spent most of the time hanging out with friends and having those deep discussions of what we were going to do after we left college.  Of course we had big plans and it was during one session that I jokingly referred to this as the “Five Days of Arete.”  I liked the idea and so when I was graduated next December, I had another round of the Five Days of Arete that had more meaning because I was desperately looking for a job and coping with “real life.”

Over the years I have formalized this process and I thought I would share it with you all.  I hope you find it useful.  Feel free to modify it as you see fit.

The Five Days of Arete:
First Day – Start a journal that you will use for the next five days.  I prefer to mindmap so a large sketchpad and a good set of markers is what I use.  Spend the day contemplating these questions and record your answer before you go to bed:  What are the significant personal events of the last year?  Thinking back to beginning of this year, what were my expectations and how were they met or not met?  What were the biggest surprises of this year?

Second Day – Same drill but with a new set of questions.  1) What are the top ten things I learned this year?  2) How have grown as a whole person this year?

Third Day – One question today: what are the top ten things I want to accomplish by the end of next year?  Order by priority.

Fourth Day – Starting with your list of top ten things create a list of steps for each of the ten items that will help you reach these goals.  Try to be comprehensive but realize that this will change as you progress through the coming year so leave yourself open to serendipity.

Fifth Day – From your list of steps, create a 90-day action plan and starting January 1 or January 2 execute the 90-day action plan.  The goal is to build momentum to propel you in reaching as many of the ten items as you can in the next year.

Have a good holiday season and see you after the New Year’s.

I decided to rebrand the blog because I wanted to broaden the topics I wrote about.  I will still write about neuroscience and government but I also want to add some posts on current politics, economics, and other items that interest me.  In homage to the first blog that I launched, I’ve renamed Neurogovernment as Speaking For All Mankind.

If you were a fan of SCTV then you might recognize the title from Orson Welles’ (impersonated by John Candy) farewell in several skits.

I picked a bad week to be on vacation.  It cold, rainy, and I’ve developed a chest cold.  Catching up on my reading in computational social science.

A group of teachers and students decided to ponder the question of how many teeth a horse has.  They asked what the function of the teeth is.  How the shape and duties affect the teeth.  The idea of teeth in general.  The learned men spent the better part of the afternoon deliberating on this question.

Finally, one of the newly admitted student cried out in boredom, “Why don’t you just open the horse’s mouth and count the teeth?”

There was a stunned silence.  Several of the older teachers looked at each other.  Then they rose and advanced upon the student.  They grabbed him by the front of his robe and, with much kicking and punching, tossed the student out in the road in front of the academy.  They warned him to never come back again.

The teachers then came back and addressed the remaining students.  “That is what you get for being too practical!”

Yeah, I had one of those kind of days.

Speaking as a proud owner of the C64, I love this – http://www.kingsquare.nl/jsc64

I received it last week after a little confusion at the UPS store over when the package actually arrived.  I have to agree with other reviewers who complain about the slow refresh of the reading screen and the controls on the color screen can be confusing.  The WiFi works great and I had no trouble registering it on my home network.  The books look great and it’s quite easy to read on the Metro.

An unexpected bonus is when you pair the Nook with O’Reilly’s Safari Online.  If you have a personal account with Safari, you can access every book published by O’Reilly and download it as a PDF (with even some as an ePub).  I’ve downloaded a large primer on VB 3.5 in the ePub format that rendered well on the Nook.  I’ve also downloaded two different books as PDFs and it rendered well including images.  The other PDF rendered the text correctly but no images.  Considering how big tech books can be, it’s great to be able to carry around a tech library on a micro-SD instead of an overstuffed backpack.

One of the reasons that I ordered a Nook is because Android is its operating system.  Ever since Google released Android, it has gained market share rapidly.  According to Bill Gurley, this is because Google has created the “less than free” business model.

When I was last in the federal government (1997-1999), I was detailed part-time to the President’s Y2K Date Change Task Force.  I helped support GSA’s efforts to educate the public about efforts to prepare computer systems for the “odometer roll-over” as we informally termed it.  This was a real risk but with some advance planning and a few common sense actions, the world came through the year 2000 with just a few humorous hiccups.

Now, NASA has launched a web page to handle the concerns around the 2012 “prophecy.”  2012 is not real like the Y2K problem and even the Mayan elders are disclaiming the hype around the “prophecy.”  Of course this won’t convince the conspiracy theorists but it may help people who can distinguish between a movie and reality.

UPDATE: Slate has an article explaining how the government’s response to Y2K might hamper efforts on global warming and pandemics.

Starting back in 2005, I began blogging on Blogger.com as Eclectic Bill.  Due to some issues with spamming, I took that blog down.  In 2006, I started a second blog at DesignOfKnowledge.com that focused on training and learning.  In February of 2009, I took a hiatus to concentrate on finishing my dissertation.

So, I was reading through some old blog posts and decided to create some pages that summarized some of the recurrent themes in my posts.  The first three that came to mind:

1) My continuing criticism of informal learning.

2) My continuing advocacy of evidence-based learning, teaching, and training.

3) The Theory of Constraints Wicked Problem Challenge.

It will be fun to reignite the debate.

Been a great nine months off from blogging.  I received my PhD in Public Administration and Policy during the summer, visited Alaska, and am working on further research into mental models and organizational change.  For two years, I ran two blogs as Eclectic Bill and at Design of Knowledge.  At Eclectic Bill, I wrote mostly about project management, change management, and strategic management while at Design of Knowledge I concentrated on training and education.

These topics still interest me but I will cover them from a public administration perspective.  Government is undergoing massive changes from the new technologies and the increasing demands of a more complex and global society.  There is some amazing things happening and it is the mission of this blog to chronicle those changes.  Thanks for reading.