Discardia_ More Life, Less Stuff - Dinah Sanders [20]
Do what you love whenever you can. Even if the busyness of life only gives you a few minutes—my sympathies to you new parents out there—make good use of it and don’t put off activities that matter to you. Read a chapter of a book, practice that guitar, cuddle with your sweetheart, plant a few bulbs in the garden, or look through the bulb catalog and think about what you'd like to get—whatever feeds your soul. When you have to do something that you wouldn't otherwise choose to do for pleasure or growth, find the parts of the experience that give you some kind of payoff and supplement it if you can with something you would choose, like music you really enjoy. You are going to be where you are now and you are not always going to be doing things that are fun, so make the best that you can of all your moments.
Symptom #8: The Giant Plan for the Rest of My Life
Solution #8: Agile Self Development
Contrary to what some “gurus” will tell you, there is no single, life-changing secret to working less and living more. The reality is that small changes practiced over time yield big results.
—Gina Trapani, writer and developer
Iterate and improve
One of my key beliefs is that personal growth happens most effectively as a series of small, incremental changes. When there is a huge, daunting goal, our little monkey brains often freak out and nothing gets done. The mountain just seems too high to climb. As a personal coach, I’ve learned that I can effectively help people make these changes by using some of the same techniques used in agile software development. These techniques help teams make a little bit of software at a time and then combine those bits, building it into something more full featured while making adjustments and changes along the way.
What is “agile software development”?
Agile, a lightweight methodology used for writing software, emerged under that name around a decade ago. It is a natural set of tools to adapt to personal growth. It originated as a reaction against older approaches that rely on a very large amount of detailed, inflexible preplanning and supporting documentation of those plans.
Software developer Christian Nelson describes the agile approach as “iterative, adaptive, collaborative, and reality-based.” Agile software development creates usable results more quickly than older methods and then continuously improves those results while keeping them functional. This approach allows the team to adapt readily to changing information and requirements by regularly measuring progress against estimates and reflecting on effectiveness, tuning and adjusting accordingly.
So what is “agile self development”?
Agile self development is a lightweight methodology used for personal development and a reaction against all-or-nothing goals, resolutions, and productivity systems. I began developing it in 2010 and presented it at South By Southwest (SXSW) Interactive technology conference in 2011 with fellow coach Marcy Swenson. It enables geeks to repurpose tools they already know, and we’re hopeful that the community practicing it will evolve from its current beginnings.
What does agile self development do? Same as agile in the software world (that is, creates early and continuous valuable results; adapts readily to changing information and requirements; regularly measures progress against estimates; and reflects on effectiveness, tuning, and adjusting accordingly). Best of all, thanks to the iterative and self-examining nature of this approach, constantly improving your happiness and personal fulfillment reveals ever better ways to do so. It creates an upward spiral of positive change.
Agile self development