Medical researchers have more than figured out the health benefits of a good night’s sleep. While the idea brings the ire of parents with young children, it is a necessary habit to build.

However, in a world hyper-obsessed with going full-tilt all day, aided by the endless caffeinated options, sleep seems like the end result of exhaustion. You get there by passing out.

It’s time to slow down a bit.

Let’s hit the pause button during the day and appreciate life, rather than letting it fly by.

Let’s enjoy our evenings, rather than have them be the mindless unwinding from an over burdened day.

Let’s take a break in our day to relax.

And let’s do it with a nap.

It’s the extra sleep we need.

This year, there was a an initial disappointment there would be no trick or treating for my kids. Well… a bigger disappointment for the parent tax that goes along with it, but still off putting for them.

Knowing this was going to be a reality, we prepared them ahead of time.

They knew the situation.
They knew what to expect.
It wasn’t going to be the same as last year.

The usual excitement on the streets was all but dimmed as only some homes continued to decorate their homes in preparation for the night.

However, knowing this is the reality we face, other plans were made.

We spent the day together: making pizza dough, baking said pizza with their choice of toppings, hanging out, visiting grandparents in our bubble, watching a Halloween movie, and then breaking a piñata with enough candy to fill their bags.

Neighbours stopped by to drop off small baggies with treats and in turn, hand drawn thank you notes were returned for the favour.

It was a day full of excitement, costumes and fun.

To be honest, it was one of the best Halloweens we’ve had.

The only thing broken about it was a tradition that, maybe, needs to be rethought.

I’ve been intrigued over the past year with the surge of interest in the Zettelkasten note taking system as popularized by sociologist scholar and systems theorist, Niklas Luhmann.

As someone who makes tons of notes, scattered all over the place (paper and digital on multiple platforms), having something standardized would be a welcome addition to my life. Especially when I scurry through my old notes and find absolute gems I should really follow-up on.

However, the more you look into how people have been adapting his system, the more puzzling it becomes.

Luhmann originally designed his paper slip box system as a thinking partner. A way to connect ideas together and to think through the ideas running through his head.

His methodology is hailed as outstanding because of its forward thinking nature of interlinking notes (rather than being hierarchal) and the fact it helped him write hundreds of essays across multiple disciplines and over seventy books.

Yet, I question how many people assume that rushing to replicate his methods will somehow result in them becoming prolific academics (I also question how many people have actually read his work).

Being a prolific writer, for instance, is a matter of sitting your butt down and spending time at the keyboard. All those words you create add up very quickly over the months until they become mountains over the years.

Likewise, sitting down every night to think through your notes, write your thoughts and find connections with your previous thinking will compound quickly over the years.

But… here’s the catch… you still have to do the work and it needs to be for the long haul.

You still have to sit down and think, write and create.

Instead, what I’m seeing are posts, articles and conversations about how to tag, link, title and what content should go into notes. I fear this is nothing more than people creating an overly complicated system in an attempt to find a shortcut to doing the real work.

In other words—glorified procrastination.

Sure, take his ideas, but do so under the context of a much bigger question:

What is all this for?

Never miss the big picture of what you’re doing.

the power of stupid people in large groups.

This quote is attributed to George Carlin, but I’m sure it’s served as a general axiom for humanity over the past ten thousand years of civilization.

Unfortunately, when tech designers made the Internet easy and accessible to anyone… one of the byproducts is it allowed these groups to form… en masse… globally.

And an even worse byproduct of that is they are no longer gathering digitally, but banding together physically in order to affect things.

I only hope history books don’t write about this era as the one time in history where civilization fell because of mass stupidity.

It’d be a shame, considering how far we’ve come.

I’ve been sitting on a manuscript for quite some time.

It was completed, read through, polished and even had a cover drawn up. But… for some reason… I was too hesitant to release this one.

Call it imposter syndrome or just feeling like a broken record with nothing insightful to say, I kept it in my digital drawer.

I kept asking myself, does the world really need another book about teaching?

Underneath that question was another question that requires an honest reflection:

Am I really the person to talk about good teaching?

I have so far to go and when I think about my beginnings, I still shudder.

I was bad.

But… I was willing to learn. Or rather, I needed to learn and needed to do it in a hurry.
Confession: one of the biggest reasons I’m doing the podcast is to learn from the best. While I care if it serves the listener, I’m selfishly asking questions for me so I can improve.

And yet, despite the many things I had to learn and the long road ahead, I still had students telling me how much they enjoyed my classes.

In the last few years, I’ve been touched by the number of students (and parents) who email me at the end of the year. I’ve kept every one of their positive notes of encouragement in a special notebook to help build my confidence on the days when I’m really feeling low.

Then, last month, I received a pile of notes from my first cohort of students at the end of our first virtual course. This one really struck me:

“Hi sir,

I just wanted to say thank you for this course! It’s the best religion course I’ve taken, even though it was all online.

I also wanted to say thank you so much for looking at my work and seeing potential in it. It is a super huge deal to me.

My last thing is, you’re literally the best and most realest teacher I’ve ever had. Surprisingly, this is the best course and most enjoyable course I’ve ever taken in the last four years and it’s made me the most honest I’ve been about myself and my life in a very long time.

Once again, thank you so much!”

I don’t put it up here to brag, because goodness knows I can be taken down many pegs, but it made me realize that maybe… just maybe… I was on to something in my approach.

That’s when I made the decision to pull the trigger.

I’ve released a new book (and possibly my final non-fiction one for a long time) called “Teaching Outside the Curriculum.”

The digital version has launched, with the hardcopy forthcoming.

However, as a thank you to you, my reader, and to the many mentors I’ve had over the years, I’m posting the PDF for free on my site for a while.

Maybe I’ll keep it on here permanently—I don’t know yet.

What I do know is that I’m ever thankful to the many people who encourage me, support me, mentor me and keep me going.

Check it out!

One of the best practices a magician can commit to is filming themselves as they run through their performance… and the performances themselves.

Filming is important because if there’s one thing you learn about watching yourself—it’s the camera doesn’t lie.

It clearly shows your awkward movements, fumbles, overall body language and stage presence. While tough to witness, it gives you honest feedback to work on for the next performance.

One thing I’ve come to appreciate about the podcast I’m running with my friend Chris is listening to myself speak. Even after the editing that is done, it’s educational to hear:

– How often I ramble
– Excessive use of filler words
– Stories and anecdotes I repeat over multiple episodes

This has been helpful in being mindful about my speech patterns in daily life. It’s been especially useful in the classroom… not to mention on current episodes of the podcast we are recording (you actually hear stark improvements every four to five episodes).

As a self-reflective exercise, recording yourself isn’t a bad idea. You don’t need a podcast, or a career as an entertainer, to ask friends if you can record a conversation one night.

You’ll be amazed at what you might learn.

After all, the camera (or recorder) doesn’t lie.

The real question is, are you ready to hear the truth about yourself?

National Novel Writing Month is just around the corner.

This is the time of year I normally gather a group of students, a few close friends, and we challenge each other to write fifty thousand words of a book while encouraging each other along the way. The challenge is very motivating.

However, after doing this for close to ten years, I’m bowing out.

While I do really well with ridiculous challenges (writing a book in a month, reading the Bible in two, etc.) and they help me accomplish great goals in a short amount of time, I find I burn out at the end of them.

While recognizing my mind works great in sprints, what I really need is the motivation of smaller steps compounded over time. It’s the small, consistent steps that lead to the biggest changes in the end.

After all, for a writer, every month should be novel writing month.

Time to set my sights smaller and for much longer.

Is we often end up on the wrong one. Or worse, we get knocked down from the one we’re on.

I’ve often fell prey to shouting loud and clear on one, only to realize later how my thoughts have changed. It wouldn’t take long for someone digging through my posts to find some of those abandoned boxes over the past five years… never mind the last twenty five.

There are a few I still have a pretty familiar footing on and the combination of my conviction and stubbornness will keep me on there for some time, but I can assure you of my severely bruised ego from coming off some of them.

While some may be important, are they even worthwhile?

One thing to consider is, most often, the contents of the box are usually more valuable than what the person on top has to say.

This year, I opted to step up and teach in an entirely virtual environment.

While my initial thoughts regarding the matter revolved around selfish reasons (the least amount of contact and exposure to others as a means of protecting my family), other ideas percolated:

• I love a challenge
• the merging of digital platforms with education is long overdue and so I might as well jump on the rail line
• it’s an opportunity to learn and prove you can teach an old dog new tricks
• the worst that happens is I pick up some new ideas

However, as I work through this new frontier, some bigger thoughts have been coming my way.

Working in a completely online platform isn’t simply a matter of translating what you do in person to doing it online, it’s rethinking how you approach education in the first place.

I used to think that once we can program AI tools that use adaptive methods of responding to individual student needs, there would be no point in having a human in the room. Technology that can respond to you individually and keep you in the optimal zone of development is a far superior learning mechanism than mass instruction.

However, now I see a weakness of that idea:

It can’t adapt to the holistic person.

People are more than just the “left side” of the brain and while social media has done a tremendous job of manipulating people through their behavioral change algorithms (fancy way of saying, “keeping users addicted”), the reason people flocked to the platforms was for connection.

It occurs to me that what I’m doing right now is trying to merge the best of both worlds. And a scarier thought occurring to me is that what I’m actually doing is creating my own obsolescence as an educator.

If done right, I melt into the background as a support system rather than an active ‘sage.’

And while this idea originally disheartened me, I actually find it motivating. If we can create an education system that actually works in the benefit of each student, providing for their needs… why wouldn’t we rush to do this?

It’ll require an incredible amount of creativity and careful planning, but that’s how all great leaps forward happened. Time for another one.

Looking at a blank screen, figuring out what will go on it, is a practice onto itself.

With nothing on it, the mind begins reeling for something interesting. It craves novelty and hates being bored.

Boredom is the state in which the brain must work overdrive to accept its condition. It is in a vacuum and needs to be filled.

Of course, thanks to our programmed biology, it wants the easiest way out.
One click away…
One swipe away…
One check away…
and the blank screen is replaced with a temporary feeling of satisfaction.

A gambler pulling on a slot machine whose high only lasts as long as the wheels are spinning.

However, boredom is also the state in which we can bring forth our creative self. It’s our greatest state of being because it means all our needs are met and we have an opportunity to elevate ourselves further.

Hence, staring at the blank screen.

It’s an opportunity to say, “Okay, what are we going to do together?”

Some days, there might not be an answer. Other days… it just might provide the answer you need most.