Teaching GTD to your teenagers

I was just listening to a 6 min podcast by David Allen on how to teach teenagers GTD. Here's what to say to your teenagers.

  • Just write what you need to do down. Don't keep your commitments in your head.
  • Write down all those things you need to do to finish it.
  • Work out the very next action that needs to get done.
  • Once a week look at all the stuff you need to do and work out what you are going to do next.

We often, as a family, do a weekly review which gets our girls in the habit of this weekly ritual. Given how busy we all are it's vital to the sane working of our household.

Does free thinking mean you can say whatever your like whenever you like?

I'm in a qandry and I need your opion on this one. I went to the Global Atheist Convention on the weekend. My daughter and I went to the Saturday night dinner and the whole program on Sunday. It was a excellent conference. Lots of great speakers. Great food for thought. Peter Singer's talk really resonated with me especially the simple idea that we should stand up for what we think is right. And that's why I'm blogging this experience because something wasn't right. In fact it was very wrong.

Jamie Kilstein is a comedian. I'd never heard about Jamie before the conference except what was written on the Convention website, which listed his achievements. Jamie had a 10 minute slot just after lunch and within a few minutes of starting he launched into what I would call an X-rated invective that included just about everything you would include in the bluest of blue comedy sets you could imagine. It was indecent and obscene.

Now half the audience loved it and gave Jamie a standing ovation. The other half it seemed (of course I'm guessing here hence my need to get your feedback) was like me and felt that that type of set would be fine late at night in the dark recesses of of comedy club (and I have been to plenty) but is innapropriate in the middle of the day at a conference. I was offended.

So I contacted the conference organizers, the Atheist Foundation of Australia, and spoke to the President, David Nicholls. His view was that while he felt Jamie was over the top, he felt Jamie should be able to say whatever he wanted as long as it doesn't incite violence. David told me " free thinkers should be able to hear anything and not be offended." And "they are just words."

After the official proceedings finished I was in the line to get my copy of The Selfish Gene signed by Richard Dawkins and I overheard Jamie Kilstein, as he was selling some of his CDs nearby, say they he didn't intend to be so filthy (his words) but after the first few jokes he felt the audience were up for it. He obviously wasn't reading my body language.

There are a couple of things wrong with this performance. Firstly its tenor and content was extreme and out of character with the rest of the conference except that it had a atheist perspective. There was no warning that the material would be X-rated. I suspect Jamie didn't really know he was going to do the riff that he did but it was poor judgement on his part to do that material. It was ironic that Jamie was whipping half the audience into a frenzy, Hillsong style. People who are ignorant of atheism believe it's just a bunch of left-wing weirdos trying to get away with anything they please and to support Jamie's performance, in this context, only plays into that unhelpful stereotype.

For me free thinking means being able to discuss ideas and to be able to choose which things make sense for you. It doesn't mean a free-for-all where common decency is thrown off the stage. Am I being unreasonable?

Self imposed contraints fosters creativity

On Monday I had the pleasure of spending the morning at Peter Spence's home where he hosted an old fashion soiree of brilliantly creative people. Apart from hearing the story of the Mongolian spring that bubbles when you sing to it and how to deliberately use a faux pas to get your message across, we also learned how to use a simple constraint to foster creativity.

Don Miller runs the Melbourne Centre for Ideas and he lead us in a simple writing exercise: write 10 lines about any topic you wish but you can't use the letter 'a'.

As the secretary of our basketball club (Strathmore Unicorns) I was thinking about the purpose of our domestic competition (the basic comp out in the suburbs) and here is my 10 lines on that topic.

The purpose of our club, in domestic competition,
is to forge conditions where kids love the
sport. It is only when they deeply love it will they
put their skills into motion. They need 10,000 hours under
their bellies to become expert which only comes when
they do it over multiple times. So the role of their
guide is to conjure the field in order to excite while
enthusing their minds. When this love is embedded, only then
will they deepen their skills. This is how we need
to conduct ourselves in the domestic competition.

This simple constraint forced you to break patterns, mainly cliches, in your writing. It was a quick exercise. Great fun too. And left you with the simple message that constraints can be terrific support.

Westpac delivers the antithesis to customer-focused service

On November 11th 2009 I cancelled my Westpac credit card. The customer service person was helpful and efficient but I wasn't convinced that the card was really and truly cancelled because  a few years back I had another allegedly cancelled card and then found extra charges and fees turn up on it after it was destroyed. So I asked whether this card was truly cancelled and I received a promise from the Westpac customer service lady that no other charges would appear.

Last week I happen to be online and noticed I could still see my cancelled credit card among my other accounts. I clicked on it and low and behold there were two charges on the card for $43 each and an interest charge of 87c. I rang the bank but it was the weekend and the dispute team was not working. They said they would ring me Tuesday. On Wednesday I receive a call from a woman from the dispute team who listened to my complaint, then said she was sorry and that she could refund the 87c. That wasn't good enough because they'd promised there would be no charges so I said they needed to pay the $86 themselves. Apparently, this was impossible. She then started pointing our that the credit card contract said I would need to pay any charges.

By this stage I'm pretty annoyed. My blood pressure was rising. I said that to merely apologise without showing you were sorry was not a real apology. And offering to pay 87c was an insult. She maintained the line that it was impossible for the bank to pay the other amounts, because that's what the contract said. At this point I mentioned that I also have a mortgage and a business account with Westpac, and like my credit card I will be looking to move them to ANZ. There was a pause. "I can refund the $86," she said. Hmmm, I thought that was impossible.

This instance occurred in the last couple of days when I was hunting around for examples of Australian companies that really have their customer at the heart of everything they do. Sadly, like this example, I can only find the antithesis to client-focussed service. There is a company in the US I discovered that really lives customer service: Zappos. They sell shoes and a bunch of other things online. Check out this customer service story.

Rodd and Gunn customer service

For a couple of years I've been buying clothes from Rodd and Gunn. I could go there and get most the clothes I wanted. The problem was I ran into a bunch of quality issues. My trousers got holes in the pockets. The shoes split at the seams. And each time I took the items back they would replace the good without a hassle. The thing is, I'm busy. I don't have time to return goods and then face other potential quality problems.

So I stopped shopping there. Then last week I received an email about their latest sale and at the bottom of the message they had their customer service number. I like to see companies improve, that's what my business is all about, so I rang and gave my feedback. The customer service woman listened carefully, apologised for the inconvenience and said they try and make the garments to to highest possible quality and were always looking for ways to improve. She handled the call expertly. Then she asked whether I minded if the managing director give me a call. I said, "sure." The next day Mike Beagley, Rodd and Gunn's MD, called and listened to my feedback and then said if I ever choose to return to the shop and ever have any problems this is my mobile number, ring me and we will fix it.

I have told this story a number of times this week and I feel good that Rodd and Gunn take quality seriously and there is a good chance I will shop there again.

We need a price on carbon

On the weekend I travelled to Jervis Bay on the south coast of NSW to celebrate my father's 70th birthday. We had a BBQ lunch and after everyone enjoyed their BBQed chicken and salad we had 20 people sitting outside chatting. Each little group was having their own conversations about their holidays, kids, fishing and then down at my end of the table we starting talking about the emission trading system and the whole group went quiet and they lent forward to hear what was being said. 

The consensus from this little gathering was that we really didn't understand the emission trading system and how it was supposed to work. So I set myself the task to find out from old colleagues from the Australia National University where I used to work in the 1980s at the Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies, which is now called the Fenner School of Environment and Society.

As luck would have it, on my flight home I bumped into Professor Brendan Mackey from the Fenner school at the airport. He was off to Copenhagen and in the few minutes we had together before our respective lifts arrived I asked him for the quick explanation and this is what we told me.

We need to put a price on carbon pollution before substantial efforts will be made to reduce it. There are two ways to price carbon: have a tax on it or implement a cap and trade system. Sweden introduced a tax on carbon in the 1970s and have reaped the benefits ever since. Europe have had a cap and trade system for the last 10 years. Obama wants a cap and trade system. The emission trading scheme proposed by Labor was too generous to big polluters. That's why it wasn't supported by the Greens. Abbott is being disingenuous calling the ETS a tax because putting a tax on carbon is an altogether different approach. A point that hasn't been lost on Malcolm Turnbull.

I would like to know more about the ETS approach from people who don't have a political agenda. What are other researchers saying about this approach?