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Something came up

Over the past few years I’ve run a lot of professional learning workshops for teachers. It’s been a joy to be part of the learning journey for educators as they discover new ideas for making a difference to the kids they teach. I couldn’t count the number of workshop sessions I’ve run, or the number of ideas we’ve shared, but it’s quite a lot. And even when I’m training on the same topics over and over again, every workshop is still different because of the collection of people and personalities in the room.

There is, however, one disturbing characteristic that too many of these workshops have in common, and that is the complete predictability of people who register to attend a workshop and then simply don’t turn up. Even when workshops are offered as part of a conference that people have paid good money to attend, you can still predictably count on a no-show rate of around 5% to 10%. There are no doubt some valid reasons that people might pay to attend an event and then not show up – unexpected things happen, your kids get sick, emergencies arise, etc – so I completely understand that expecting everyone to turn up to anything is unrealistic. 

What surprises me is how dramatically this changes when the event is free. I’ve been involved in putting together events for teachers, where we never charge anything to attend.  They are completely free. We put a lot of work into running them, we arrange and pay for catering, we book venues, and often pay for professional trainers to deliver the workshops. And we know that for the people who attend they get a great deal out of coming along and learning with us.

The thing that baffles me a bit is when people register to attend a free event and don’t show up. It honestly astounds me. When an event is offered at no cost I would estimate that the no-show rate rises to about 50%. I some cases it rises much higher, and I’ve even seen it rise to 100%.  You read that right. I’ve seen free events where literally nobody who registered turns up. Baffling. And so damn rude.

Maybe I’m just old fashioned, but I think if you register to attend something, then you should turn up. Not just for PD workshops either, but for life in general… If say you’re going to be somewhere, then you should be there. It’s just a common courtesy to the people who put so much time, energy and money into running an event. I’m sure some people think that a “free” event costs nothing. Not so.  While it may cost nothing to them, there are considerable costs involved in making a “free” event happen, including catering, venue hire, personnel, swag, to say nothing of the time it takes to organise.  

With free events, many people feel it’s ok to register and not show up, because they simply have no skin in the game. I’m betting that people who pay thousands of dollars to attend a Tony Robbins conference all show up. Yet I could confidently predict that most free events will have about half of those who register not show up. I know it’s just human nature, but it’s a pretty disappointing aspect of human nature. I understand it’s going to happen, but please don’t be “that person” who registers for something and then vanishes with no warning.

Please, if you say you’re going to do something, do it. Whether it’s a tech workshop, a family function, a kids party or a meeting with a friend. If you say you’re going to be somewhere, be there. And if something comes up, and you can’t be there, please have the courtesy to let someone know so that the organisers know who to expect, or even so your place can be offered to someone else.

It’s just common courtesy.

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My Facebook Moratorium, One Year Later

My Facebook Moratorium

About a year ago, I decided that Facebook was not contributing much to the quality of my life. In fact, I came to the conclusion that it was actually sucking more out of my life than it was adding, so I decided to simply stop using it. It had become the Anti-Social Network.

I stopped checking Facebook. I pretty much stopped posted. I removed the Facebook app from my phone. I no longer scroll endlessly through all the crap. If I really needed to access Facebook on my phone I did it using Chrome; the mobile browser experience is not as good as the app, so it’s a nice disincentive to use Facebook so often. (It also improved the battery life of my phone, because the Facebook app can be a real battery hog). When I do very occasionally choose to look at Facebook, I consciously try to spend no longer than a few minutes there. And I choose not to “like” everything because I don’t think Facebook needs to gather those signals to feed their algorithm.

I posted the following diatribe to my Facebook page on January 25 last year. I decided to repost it here, almost 12 months later, as a reminder of why I chose to limit my use of this rather invasive and consuming social network.

You may (or may not) have noticed that I barely spend any time on Facebook these days. Today is the first time I’ve logged in for quite a while, and although I have definitely missed hearing what some of you have been up to and keeping up with your goings-on, I have to say I have really not missed “the Facebook experience”.

I’ve always had a bit of a love/hate relationship with Facebook… I know there can be some great stuff happening there, but I was increasingly finding Facebook as a huge time suck that was stealing more and more hours of my life for very little real return. I, probably like you, have spent far too much of my life liking and commenting on other people’s posts, watching inane videos, or observing some of humanity’s ugliest sides in many of the discussion threads.

I was becoming more and more disenchanted with the whole Facebook experience, so I just decided to stop using it. I know I’ve gotten to that point in the past, where I’ve ranted about it, even deleted my account, etc, but I now realise it was far more about how I used Facebook than Facebook itself. (Although I still have many concerns about the way Facebook does things and the many unethical ways it deals with user data).

I still find Facebook useful as a single sign-on tool for other web services, and that is one reason I have kept my account active. The other reason is you… I am connected to many people here on Facebook, and I consider most of you friends. However, I’ve seen less of most of you over the last few years than ever before, and if that’s what it means to have friends these days, then it’s not enough for me. I’ve fallen into the trap of having friends in online spaces like Facebook at the expense of having friends in actual meetspace.

I have to say that since I have deliberately been avoiding Facebook, I’ve been happier, fitter, healthier, and have spent more time doing more things that I like doing. I’ve read more, exercised more, travelled more, and used some of that time to learn a new language. (In fact, the loading page in Duolingo actually says “15 minutes a day can help you learn a new language, what does 15 minutes on social media give you?”) It turns out that I was spending WAY more than 15 minutes a day on social media, and the truth is I was getting very little back from it.

I know some of you love this place and get great value from it, so good luck to you. Facebook is not all bad and for many of you it helps you remain connected with people you care about. I’m glad it works for you.

For me, it became a case of the more connected I became, the more disconnected I felt. I decided that there is a whole real world out there that is far more interesting and more deserving of my time than Facebook. I’m glad we are friends, and I’m glad that I can stay connected to you in some way, but it will be far less on Facebook. If you want to know what’s going on in my life, I’d much rather you call, or have lunch, or meet for a drink, or go for a walk together, or something…

I still like social media, I just don’t want it to be a permanent proxy for my real life.

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Be Unreasonable

Here’s something I’ve noticed about people. Most people love the familiar. They find something that they like and they get used to it. On the surface that would seem like a logical idea, and while it’s certainly ok to like having favourite things – after all, that’s what makes them our favourite things – the problem is that we can get so attached to those things to the point where we never discover alternatives to them. And this means we sometimes become blind to the alternatives, the potential opportunities they offer us, or the idea that we could perhaps like other things even more.

It’s good to be able to identify the ideas, objects and things we are most attached to, and then deliberately make an effort to look around and see what other alternatives exist.  For example, if you normally go to a church, you could try visiting a mosque. If you normally choose McDonalds, try a Hungry Jacks instead. If you normally drive, try walking. If you don’t like to dance, take a dance class. Mix it up a bit.

Trying alternative options doesn’t mean you have to permanently adopt them. Of course you don’t have to convert to Islam if you’re a Christian, or switch to a Mac if you love Windows. It just means you will be more aware of what’s out there, and might even reinforce that your initial choice is indeed the best one for you.  But sometimes trying an alternative to what you’re familiar makes you realise that walking is not so bad, or that you actually enjoy dancing, or that the burgers really are better at the other place.

One of the phrases that I think we all get a little caught up on at times is “that’s the way we’ve always done it”. And it’s probably true that when we start to accept the way we do things as being just the way we do things, that it closes us off from the possibilities of trying something different. Because honestly, if we never look around us, how will we know what’s around us? 

George Bernard Shaw once wrote “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world”. And really, if you can adapt yourself to the way the world works, to just accept it as it is, then it will likely be comfortable and serve you well, so why wouldn’t you just adapt to it and accept it?  It seems a perfectly reasonable thing to do, doesn’t it?. He then goes on to note that “The unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself” And it is those people, those unreasonable, annoying, pain-in-the-butt people, who continually want the change the world instead of just accepting it, who question the status quo, who are never satisfied with how things work, who constantly ask why things are done the way they are, who are always looking at other options; those are the people who ultimately change and improve the world because they are the ones who dare to consider that there may be alternatives to the way we’ve always done things. Shaw concludes “Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

So how does one become unreasonable?

I think the first step is to become much more aware of what your likes and preferences actually are.  What routines do you regularly have? What foods do you eat often? What TV shows do you watch? What operating system do you use? How do you usually get to work? Notice it. Observe it. Then think about mixing it up.  Watch something different. Try getting to work a different way. Try using a different piece of software. Order a meal you wouldn’t normally order. On their own, none of these things might be overly life-changing. Walking to work instead of catching the bus is not, on its own, a huge decision.  However, the effect of questioning your current choices and making a change could be huge. From little things, big things grow.

The second step is to find alternatives. For all the things you currently have in your life, what other things exist that could possibly help you see them differently? Perhaps it’s just because of the kind of work I do with helping people use technology, but the way people become attached to computer operating systems and software are a great example of how entrenched people can become in their choices. Indeed, the whole PC vs Mac thing has been an ongoing cultural meme for years! I meet a lot of people who live in either a Windows world or a Mac world, and who simply cannot function in the other world, or have a negative opinion of it based on the fact that it’s not the one they use themselves. And it’s obviously ok to have a preference for one thing or the other, although if your choice is just based on the default you started with and you have no actual knowledge of what the “other side” is like, then your opinion as to which is best isn’t really worth much since it’s based on, well, nothing. But if you’ve used many different versions of Windows and MacOS, have tried different distros of Linux, have spent serious time using a Chromebook, or even tried other, less known OSes such as BeOS, OS/2, etc, then now I am interested to hear your thoughts on it because I know I’m listening to someone with an open mind and a range of perspectives.

If I could wave a magic wand and change one thing about the world, I think it would be this.  To increase people’s tolerance to the unknown.  To help them be less afraid of those things that are different to what they are used to. To help them be more willing to take a risk or try something new. 

Because if we could all be more ok about the alternatives to our own “normal”, we’d start to see that there really are lots of amazing experiences, ideas, things and people out there.  We’d start to understand that so many of the really big problems in the world – racism, bigotry, terrorism, war, homophobia, hatespeech, bullying – are little more than the result of people not being able to acknowledge, explore and accept that there are other things that exist outside their own little world, alternatives that they would not otherwise be exposed to, that might not be as terrible as they think.

Imagine how much richer our lives would be if we could get past living in a world filled with “that’s just the way we’ve always done it” thinking, and replace it with a whole new set of completely unreasonable ideas that shake us up and help us see the world a bit differently.