Katharina facilitated Friday’s TED O’clock (June 10, 2016) and showed Chris Sauve’s “The Habits of Highly Boring People.” The habits he discussed are:
- Write everything down.
- Reduce to the essentials.
- Stop and question.
Here are the highlights from the discussion afterwards:
- As we are asked to be more innovative in our work, these habits can help us get beyond just the routine maintenance that needs to be done from day to day.
- Do we want to be so automatic to be more productive at work? What are we losing if we do so?
- The Bullet Journal, a washable paper notebook, and the book “Automate the Boring Stuff with Python” were all suggested as possible tools to help with these habits.
- Redefining what “has” to be done is important, as there may be things you do now that really don’t have to be done or perhaps not as often as you think.
- Simplifying life by eliminating stuff can also help. Some suggestions for doing this: if you are wanting to purge possessions but are finding it difficult to do so, take pictures of the items before you get rid of them; order groceries on-line and then just pick them up, eliminating the waste of time shopping; use Blue Apron; and cook on one day during the weekend for the entire week.
- Spontaneity is what gets some people motivated every day, so eliminating or automating things may not work for them.
- These habits become particularly difficult when you have children.
- A person may not only want to do the stuff she/he loves all the time, because there is a possibility that she/he may not love it any more after doing it all the time.
- We need to remember that we are human beings not human doings, so shouldn’t carry these tools too far.
Thank you, Katharina, for suggesting and leading this discussion so well! If anyone else has suggestions for a TED talk we should watch, please let me know. If you’d like to lead the discussion, that’s great! If not, that’s great, too. Just keep the suggestions coming!
ITS:Always fun, never boring
Respectfully submitted,
Linda Petro
