The Thinkulum

Productivity

🤔

From Jon Gertner’s The Idea Factory I learned how Bell Labs invented the whole modern telephone industry. They came up with everything from telephone poles and transistors to cell phones and satellite communication. Like some of the other innovative organizations I’ve read about, it seems Bell Labs’ success is hard to replicate, but you could start with their basic formula: Have a new industry to develop, get a bunch of really smart people, put them all in a big building where they’re forced to interact, point them in a research direction, and let their minds and their feet roam freely. Alas, the heyday of Bell Labs ended with the breakup of Ma Bell, but Gertner notes that after idea factories, the next phase in this degree of innovation may be idea geographies—the newer business model of startups funded by venture capital in closely networked areas like Silicon Valley and Boston’s Route 128. I’d say there’s merit to this idea, though Ed Zitron would have some words about the results.

In my quest to apply computer algorithms to human task management I expanded my investigation of CPU scheduling into real-time systems. The difference between real-time systems and others is that they have stricter deadlines for their tasks, sometimes with millisecond response times, as in flight control systems. So how can their techniques help me hit my deadlines? One factor is that their tasks are assigned priorities based on their type, so maybe I could start by prioritizing tasks by their broad categories, such as their project or origin. For more I’ll be studying the Linux real-time scheduler.

Spirituality

🙂

To reawaken my spiritual side whenever I catch it asleep, I started a practice of music meditation. I’ve learned that music is the key to getting myself in a better frame of mind, so to reset myself mid-day I put my worship playlist on shuffle and spent a few minutes listening. The key for these music meditation sessions is that I can’t be listening in the background while I focus on other things—I have to be paying attention to the music and contemplating it. I quickly found that this practice works very well for me, and I tried to do it every day after lunch when I remembered.

I had an especially fruitful music meditation session for my Friday fast. My reflections were kind of random but mostly revolved around the centrality of our friendship with God. That idea reminded me of Immanuel prayer, so I did some exploring to dig further into what that perspective on prayer means to me, and I ran across a good interview with my Immanuel trainer, Margaret Webb, that captures some of that meaning as she traces the journey that led her to this ministry.

Music

😬

Saturday I participated in a recording session for my worship team leader, Larry. The set consisted of a couple of existing worship songs plus one of Larry’s compositions. I like playing with the team, but I was sort of dreading the session because I’d never done that kind of live recording and I’m not a polished enough performer to want my improvisations preserved for posterity. But I played it safe and curbed the creativity, and it turned out okay. It was at least an interesting experience and even slightly fun.

Productivity

😎

Ben Rich’s memoir Skunk Works gave me an aeronautics angle on adaptive development processes. I wanted to find out how R&D was done at a successful organization outside of software development and before the rise of Agile. Some ingredients of their innovation recipe I picked up on: They had a visionary leader, Kelly Johnson. They assembled a lot of very smart people and let them explore far and wide for solutions. They kept their communication lines short with lots of interaction within and between departments. In spite of the experimental nature of their work, they took their deadlines seriously. They recognized when an idea was a dud and dropped it as soon as they knew. When they had to expand their workforce and settle for lower skill levels, they implemented more safeguards. Aside from all the business and engineering insights, the book was a fascinating tour through an exciting subject, top secret aircraft development during the Cold War.

Spirituality

😎

I worked on a soundtrack for my Daily Jesus Journey. The journey is a schedule I assembled of episodes from Jesus’ life that stretches from 6 am to 10 pm, meant to give me a variety of content for meditation at any time of the day. Music is one of the strongest ways to draw me into an experience, so a playlist will help make the episodes real to me. I’m taking my usual approach of listening to a bunch of recordings to discover the ones that most help me. There are 96 episodes in my schedule, so finding music for all those will take a long time, but I’m not in a rush. I’m enjoying finding lots of good music. Right now I’m on the episodes around Jesus’ birth and childhood. The songs I focused on that week were “Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence” and “Once in Royal David’s City.”

For the first Friday of my Lenten fasting experiment I fasted during dinner. Yes, it was my birthday, and yes, fasting was a great way to spend it. I think the newness of the experiment contributed to the good mood I had all day. At dinnertime I settled down with my glass of water and searched YouTube for an Ash Wednesday recording to watch, since I was too lazy on Wednesday to attend one. I landed on St. Thomas’s Anglican Church in Toronto, a beautiful building and a service way over on the Catholic end, which is just what I was looking for. Normally I zone out during ceremonies waiting for the drudgery to be over, but this time I found the whole thing both entrancing and strangely comforting. However, it did distract me from the fast, so I’m going to try spending my other fasting mealtimes in prayer and meditation.