Spheres of Direct Influence, Responsibility, and Concern

What is not shown in this diagram is that the three spheres wish to cover almost the same area. The "springs" shown are extension springs, growth in any of the three spheres allows the other two to grow as well.

Passport photo (pig eyes)

Wow, that is some Nixon caliber five-o-clock shadow. The poor girl at the visa office took the picture 3 times in a row, apologizing each time. I guess even she was appalled at my swarthy-ness.

(I am considering having my eyes surgically moved closer together. Why not turn that knob all the way to eleven, and have my eyeballs actually rub against each other in my skull?)

Toxic Waste

I once bought a wading pool full of toxic waste. I got it home without spilling a drop, just to fall into it in my work clothes. Toxic waste is a hard stain to scrub out.

All the King's Poop...

In days of old, when knights were bold, before the King ate any poop, he had his Royal Taste-Tester taste some of it first, to make sure it wasn't poisoned by sinister assassins.

This particular poop was drawn by my daughter, and she labeled it, so it represented me.

How to Be Respectful of Your Family

Lack of Faith

Ask Not

A very little girl drew this. Damn, the loose style and attitude of this drawing are good.

She draws fast too, like her old man.

CARVER Matrix

wikipedia.org

I like the Navy Seal’s CARVER matrix, for effectively prioritizing objectives under conditions of greatly constrained resources and woefully incomplete intelligence and analysis.

There are six reasons for doing something (ahead of something else – it is a relative score – a prioritizing tool). CARVER stands for these six reasons.

C-A-R-V-E-R stands for CRITICALITY, ACCESSIBILITY, RECUPERABILITY, VULNERABILITY, EFFECT, RECOGNIZABILITY.

• Simple to Understand, no chance of confusion during the action (RECOGNIZABILITY)
• Easy to Complete (VULNERABILITY)
• Can begin now – few or zero prerequisites to actions (ACCESSIBILITY)
• Urgent – Maximum benefit arises from completing quickly, or benefit arises because this is a prerequisite of future successful actions, or makes future successful actions more likely (EFFECT, in a military/adversarial context, this would include debilitation of the enemy today that will allow greater chance of successful strikes in the future)
• Important – key to attaining highest goals or securing highest values (CRITICALITY)
• Quick Payoff – total effort will be repaid in shortest amount of time (RECUPERABILITY, in a military/adversarial context, you may also consider the inverse of this, making the enemy require a lengthy recovery time)

For each task, for each criteria, you assign a number from 1 to 5, with 5 meaning the task rates highest in that criteria, and 1 meaning the task rates lowest in that criteria, and 2 through 4 being measures between.

These six numbers are then added together to give a total (the total will be between 6 and 30). This is the CARVER rating of the task. Higher rated tasks should be completed before lower rated tasks, and the lowest rated tasks should not be done at all.

Zig Ziglar's Goals, work in progress

Still listening to Zig Ziglar _Goals_ audio program. With the list of goals, I know I will rewrite them, as I remember more that I developed earlier. You need to write done the answer to "Why"? Ol' Zig says that. But also, rewrite it as a learning and teaching exercise, to be presented in a form conducive to pedagogy. (Pedagogy is a terrible sounding word. Paging Chris Hanson...) Also, use this technique: imagine having the goal accomplished today, because of work begun 10 years ago. Now the goal is to redo it. The insight to be gained is "What was built and made strong with the use of the Gap between Stimulus and Response"? The person who began the work 10 years ago, and is not merely re-doing, has built up capabilities in the Gap between Stimulus and Response. Use the Satir model to make explicit:

1. Sensory
2. Meaning/Representation
3. Feeling
4. Feeling about Feeling
5. Self-Defense (if perceive threat to self)
6. Rules for Response
7. Response action

In the steps 1 through 7, in the linkage between the steps, the person who began work 10 years ago developed some capabilities, some things were made "Cool" and brought into the realm of the deliberative, some things were made "Hot" and brought into the realm of the automatic. Along with the goal proper, we also have the identification and development of these capabilities in the Gap. OK, now off to my Mom's house to fix her TeeVee, then return to this. I am glad I remembered it now, make the goals feel more "Do-Able", even if it doesn't make the goal any easier.

Bertrand Russell - Conquest of Happiness

Reading Russell's _The Conquest of Happiness_, I am guessing the book has not aged well. He is hammering nails in the coffin of Victorian morality. Time and geography make the book old fashioned. The other thing is that some of the most basic research into human happiness is less than 5 years old. Yeah, I am disappointed (so far, at page 72) that I found nothing to improve Little Moe inside my Head, Sphere of Direct Influence. (Which is a terrible title for the post...)

Be or Do or Have, and Congruence

Because the issue is that if what I am doing is not consistent with what I have stated that I want to Be or Do or Have, then I have a little problem. Where this is going to lead me is to a more thoughtful place, with more intention, and really thinking about my internal mental sphere of direct influence.

Zig Ziglar: Goals

Been more frustrated with myself, about distractions, about wasting time managing my moods, about having scarce motivation to rise above a funk. So will finally do the Zig Ziglar _Goals_ program, which start by writing down everything I want to do, or be, or have.

• Want a programming system in 12 years
• Want to have a constructive mathematics system in 16 years
• Want to run 10 for-profit corporations in southern California in 9 years
• Want to paint the house in 1 year
• Want the garage cleaned out in 8 months

What I really want is something to return to, to have always available when I am wasting time with distractions for managing my moods, or prone to indulge a blue funk. Will come back to this, will work over the next 36 hours, then ready for the next step.