Jim's Journal.

[Jim]

I've been rethinking of all the different skills/ideas that get discussed here on this forum and elsewhere as they relate to my own current lifestyle design, and it has helped me make the paradigm shift towards systems thinking. What tied this together for me was rereading a few books about permaculture from the perspective of frugality. A big part of my brain kept saying "uhh... I already know alot of this stuff," which wasn't untrue, but another part of my brain lit up thinking about how these things that I had learned, I had at some point abandandoned, despite their outsized relevance to my current goals and situation. Essentially I had willingly unlearnt them, assuming that the new lifestyle choice I had made (house family, jobs, kids, etc.) could not incorporate them. I'm not sure that this was entirely a mistake. Maybe I needed to set those ideas aside for a few years to establish a middle class lifestyle and all the things that entails. Maybe not. Either way I feel like I'm coming back to these ideas now and it's refreshing. Either the Kool-Aid is wearing off, or I'm having an transcendental moment where I get to appreciate the value of so many things I'd learned from intelligent and accomplished people in a new integrative way as a new integrated person.

The reason for the disconnect is that it can be challenging to adapt a system that you learn in it's native environment to a completely different context. At the monastery where I lived, night soiling was part of the the system there, the lifestyle design. It's difficult to decompartmentalize that skill in the context of normal american suburban life, just like it's difficult to decompartmentalize a profound or traumatic experience in the mundanity of a normal social interaction.

I've spent so many periods of my life adapting to new and foreign environements, that I got very good at disregarding past experiences in order to make room for new information. This is an essential skill for fitting in and learning in new places. I was able to learn Mandarin quickly, because when I moved to China I was focused on immersion in a new way of life, not on sharing my experiences. It sounds simple, but this is something many people either fail entirely to do, or take a very long time to adapt to. I find that the best lifetime learners and teachers are the ones that value dispalying competence over professing it. They are quicker to listen than to talk, even and especially to people who are trying to learn from them.

I'm not about to start a humanure project here, but I can decompartmentalize the night soiling and water conservation ideas I already know in different context as a more-needs-met (homeotelic, as is wont to say) lifestyle decision by diverting our greywater to our yard and garden. That's one example among many ideas that have come to me in the last few days. I should emphasize that these ideas aren't new to me or anyone, but new connections in my brain have shone their value to me as a new light.

The big breakthrough for me was about the relationship between ego development, lifestyle design and our cherished renaissance ideals. It's very easy to adapt the scale to a specific attribute or general condition, as is evidenced by the fact that it has an analogue in personal development, corprate leadership, permaculture, early retirement, what have you. While it's valuable to have a chart, these things need to live holistically in my head before theyr'e going to exist independently in the world.

So ego-development maps a similar path to skill-development; both require learning and input, natural maturity from investment of time, and also the requirement that one to avoid becoming mired at a current developmental level, even when that condition is adequate for your circumstance. If I take a skill at which I am super proficient and superimpose upon my development of that skill our logarithmic scales of expertise, I can create an internalized, almost kinesthetic, map of development which I can use to evaluate my skill in another field. The ability to leverage a scale built on one ability against another, is a function of our diversification in knowledge towards the renaissance ideal.

I think also a synergistic effect arises by making this internal comparison: the expertise of the old, more complete model may naturally fill in the appropriate gaps in the new learning endeavor if they share some fundamental qualities. I don't need to wrap my mind around the effect of plumbing two pumps in series on discharge volume and pressure, because I know how to wire an electrical circuit. I've known this for a long time, but I think I'm growing extra dendrites to facilitate the ability to connect what I viewed before as disparate knowledge bases and skill sets. In summary, I have added no information to this forum, but writing this has been a grand exercise in self edification, and that's probably the biggest benefit of journaling anyhow.

Edit- I just made and canned a bunch of jars of jelly from plums I picked off my generous neighbors generous tree. I haven't canned anything in probably over 10 years. Having little things like that make a resurgence in my life is a pretty welcome shift.

[Jim]

I had an interesting discussion today with my therapist, who I basically keep on retainer for when shit hits the fan at work and I have to scrape a dead person out of a car while their family is yelling at me or pull someone's teeth out of their oropharynx or something. I like the guy and having a semi regular relationship with him is important so that he doesn't seem like a complete stranger when I actually need some honest to god PTSD mitigation. We mostly just shoot the shit.

We were discussing the necessity of performing tasks that are, for lack of a better term, undesirable. In ERE parlance that might be, something that doesn't fit in with one's WOG or maybe the aspects of a job that one hates doing. Or the entirety of a job that one hates doing, as is the case for so many people. Things like sitting through a powerpoint presentation, filing taxes, changing a diaper, getting your teeth cleaned, etc.

I don't know if I have a web of goals in the traditional sense but I could just be misunderstanding the idea. For knowledge and skills acquisition the metaphor I'd create would be that I'm an explorer who would like to see whole world, but right now I need to go to Chicago, and a detour to Bermuda isn't on my way. But I can visit Champaign-Urbana, which is closer, and hopefully I'll make it to Bermuda one day. I know I'll never get to see everything, but I'd sure like to.

This attitude helps me get through a lot of tedium that my coworkers find intolerable. I actually enjoy sitting through a lecture on how electric vehicle batteries offgas when they burn or listen to a lecture by some stuffy retired paramedic talk about the particular presentation of some rare medical condition they once encountered in a 30 year career.

The issue is, I abhor the "continuing education" trend that's infecting the modern workplace like cancer growing on a cancer. Packaging information for the ease of dissemination and meeting a required time burden is inconsiderate at best, and nefarious and resource depleting at worst. One can't find it interesting, because it does not contain more than a trifle of information, and you're lucky if you don't already know the little information it may contain. One's primary task is to open and close videos, click through powerpoints and find the button to make the video play in doubletime. Typically the answer to the question is available in the text of the question itself. The training is metered to require the "participant" to suffer through an alloted time and then ask questions which a third grader could answer. I don't desire so much "freedom from" that I'm champing at the bit to be away from work, mostly because it's not hard to ignore this terrible kind of "training." I have long ago adopted a non-engagement strategy with this type of work as have almost the entirety of my coworkers. The blatant contempt and disregard for this training that is obiquitous in my job field was amplified and echoed by my therapist, who stated that he also has a number of continuing education hours that require fulfillment in a given year, and described essentially the exact same training, and the exact same non-engagement strategy.

The opportunity cost of these good-for-nothing squandered man hours is astronomical, not to the worker per se, but to the organization with the folly to ascribe the training. The bobble heads that call the shots have wasted time paying for, or designing, a terrible product and then squandered their employees time and energy by forcing participation. It's the big M Metaphor on display at scale. The cave's inhabitants are as much the successfull among us, the leaders, as they are the disenfranchised. Being at the far ends of the spectrum of affluence and influence open windows looking out of the cave, not doors. The leadership and the extremely affluent are as much members of Platos genpop as are the disenfranchised destitute transients living in tent camps in public parks buying counterfeit percocets pressed with fenanyl. The critical difference is when the leadership can't find their way out the maze there's a top down effect and everyone under their tutelage gets to wear blinders.

This makes me experience an odd tension between engaging with the upper levels of decision makers in the organization and wanting literally nothing to do with them. Either way, it's evident that at least essential services need to reevaluate this massive inefficiency in their systems and that won't happen unless more people are free from the paradigm. Yet another compelling reason to get as many people as possible out of the cave.

[ertyu]

I do wonder what an effective approach to continued professional development would look like. I assume this would vary between professions but in many areas of work, knowledge is progressing and it's a fact that many would not engage with new developments in their field unless you make them. On the other hand, the way it's currently done is clearly not working.

[ffj]

I once took a 40 hour car seat installation tech class. Before the class, I was wondering how in the hell can this class last so long? The two women teaching it took that as a challenge to make my life a living hell. Give me two hours and I can make any of you a world class technician and you can take the other 38 hours and do something productive with your life.

But by far the worst example of this waste of time was when I attended a two day man tracking class. I was so excited before the class thinking we would be tracking people through the woods like a Native American tracker but instead it was death by powerpoint for 14 hours! We actually applied our knowledge for a whopping hour and a half or so to wrap up the class. If there had been a revolver on the table in front of me I would have put it in my mouth and pulled the trigger. The dude teaching it spent over two hours explaining how to measure stride lengths. Do you want to know how to do this highly technical and complicated procedure? You put two rubber bands on a stick, put the stick on the ground onto two footprints, and move the rubber bands to where the heels contact the ground. You now have a stride length. Should have been a five minute class with an hour and 55 minutes of actual procedure out in the field.

Most of the continuing ed classes are just a way for an organization to cover their asses so they have documentation that their employee has had the "training". They are looking at number of hours, not retention necessarily. I once sat in a class where the instructor was talking about seat belts in fire apparatus. He droned on and on for a very long time until he got a phone call and had to leave. As I was the most senior he asked me to continue so I stood up and said: "Whether you believe seat belts are beneficial or not doesn't matter, it's SOP you will wear one inside a moving fire truck. Any questions? " There was a collective sigh of relief as they all shook their heads no. Class over.

@ertyu

You make it fun and hands on. Make it a competition amongst groups. Make it informal enough that people can have fun with it. Put something at stake even if it is trivial.

I have taught many classes and at best if you make them sit down and "pay" attention to you you'll have about 15 minutes of concentration, and that is on a good day. They have to become engaged or the game is over. I always tried to eliminate or severely limit formal classroom time as it just doesn't work as a stand alone. I would stop a lecture in an instant to actually do what we were talking about. Much more memorable.

[Jim]

Most of the continuing ed classes are just a way for an organization to cover their asses so they have documentation that their employee has had the "training". They are looking at number of hours, not retention necessarily. I once sat in a class where the instructor was talking about seat belts in fire apparatus. He droned on and on for a very long time until he got a phone call and had to leave. As I was the most senior he asked me to continue so I stood up and said: "Whether you believe seat belts are beneficial or not doesn't matter, it's SOP you will wear one inside a moving fire truck. Any questions? " There was a collective sigh of relief as they all shook their heads no. Class over.

You are the firefighter training officer that every department doesn't know they need, this is 100% the answer in the fire service. This reminds me of our hours long EVIP course, which is a poorly recorded video of someone displaying a powerpoint presentation. We are supposed to watch the same video, quartery. This has been our ongoing Emergency vehicles operation training for years. The entire video could be summed up with, don't drive like a maniac, even when you're going to a call. Even if we spent a fraction of that time putting people in rigs driving a cone course it would be time more well spent.

@etryu - I think the answer is to some extent is going to be pretty heavily dependent on profession, but universally, I think the obvious first step is eradicating training that people don't do in the first place. As ffj mentioned, if mgmt is assigning and fulfilling the training to meet an hourly training quota and employees are getting literally nothing from the training than it doesn't really adress the real need for professional development, or any kind of development. So all that training could get tossed out, no harm done, because no one benefits. This issue becomes some accreditation that the organization now cannot receive because they cannot complete the training. It's like a microcosm of the specialist problem, within a single job field. The worker and manger are too specialized to even appreciate the requirements and perspectives of each others respective roles.

I have a friend who works QA for a biotech company and cannot impress upon his people the importance of documentation. It's his entire world. To all the chemists, it's an unwelcome distraction to the important work they need their limited resources focused on. Again the specialist problem, not just making individual people less resilient, but making their interactions uncomfortable and combative.

[jacob]

My last physics job was at a lab that offered lots of CE which basically took the form of @Jim's description. It ranged between relatively silly and "today I learned a new factoid". I wouldn't call any of it education. I know some of the admins plowed through the long list of training/courses for fun (there were many dozens) as a way to entertain themselves during downtime.

One course was "how to ride the campus bicycles". Why was that even a thing? It turned out not everybody on campus knew what a coaster brake is or does and at some point someone ran their bike into a car.

A lot of CE is just institutional CYA maneuvers.

I had to take a mandatory course of "nuclear safety" which basically came down to "wash your hands before you put them in your mouth". The lecturer, knowing that I worked in the nuclear physics division came over after the presentation and apologized for me having to suffer through it.

OTOH, I learned the difference between A/B/C/D class extinguishers during the mandatory "FIRE safety course". Before that I didn't realize the significance of the difference.

So maybe CE is the least worst way of touching up on the random individual ignorance within an institution with the main cost being that everybody has to take the same course whether it's obvious to some or not?

[Jim]

I think one simple solution to bettering the process is a test out option. If I can answer the appropriate questions about fire extinguishers, do I need to complete an hour long course that I have done 3 years in a row? If I pass the proficiency test, my employer should be able to make a good argument that I know the material.

I think presenting the information in a text format should always be an option. Spare me the lecture and the awful videos. By text format, I specifically do not mean power point.

[grundomatic]

I think one simple solution to bettering the process is a test out option. If I can answer the appropriate questions about fire extinguishers, do I need to complete an hour long course that I have done 3 years in a row? If I pass the proficiency test, my employer should be able to make a good argument that I know the material.

Yes, so simple, but so much better.

You make it fun and hands on. Make it a competition amongst groups. Make it informal enough that people can have fun with it. Put something at stake even if it is trivial.

What's worse is when you have a room full of "top-tier" teachers and the training sessions still suck. Every year I'd comment "for a bunch of teachers, we are horrible at this". One year a non-teaching staff member was freaking out about their presentation. I offered to help, and so we structured it like a game show, with me hosting (complete with gaudy thrift store jacket) and them "judging". People that participated could win office supplies. I'm sure everyone would still rather have been setting up their rooms, but at least one of the fifteen or twenty sessions that week was slightly less shitty than someone reading a PPT slide. I was happy to put in a little extra effort over sitting through one more awful training. Another irony is that the two ladies that ran the office could always be counted on run a better session than the teachers-turned-admin. There aren't enough disappointed head shakes in the world.

[ertyu]

A test-out option puts the work on them rather than on you. Why design and score an elaborate testing system when you can not do that and instead toss the whole pre-packaged "course" at people? Jacob is completely correct, this is not done to train anyone, this is done so that if someone fucks up, the company can say, "well we trained him, we've got no legal liability here." That's also why these trainings are so idiotic - litigious people would find the most minute bullshit to latch onto in the hopes of somehow getting a settlement. The company needs to have covered all its bases.

fwiw, i would have preferred the video training any day. i can do it at my own time and with minimum attention. i'd dislike being engaged in a teamsport-like event by a rah rah instructior much more. just let me know what i need to show you i know and i'll click the appropriate buttons and then both you and me go on with our lives. that training video can run on mute in one browser tab while i do an involved sudoku, no problem on my end

[Jim]

fwiw, i would have preferred the video training any day. i can do it at my own time and with minimum attention. i'd dislike being engaged in a teamsport-like event by a rah rah instructior much more. just let me know what i need to show you i know and i'll click the appropriate buttons and then both you and me go on with my life.

I'm definitely not going to be doing this kind of continuing ed on my own time. If I'm expected to participate in this crap, I'll insist on being compensated or doing it during regular work hours.

I think FFJ is speaking specifically to the fire service and the people (ostensibly mostly ESTPs [why did they let me in again?]) who do that job enjoy that kind of training far more than they do the online videos. If they didn't enjoy going out and doing physical stuff in a semi competitive astmosphere, they probably wouldn't gravitate towards firefighting. And I can confirm that what FFJ is talking about usually works pretty well for the target audience. Also it just works better, in this context, should the goal be to actually impart anything. If you're training for competence in a physical task, best practice will be to incorporate muscle memory into the task. I'm a kinesthetic person and I abhor learning physical skills via checklist. I need to perform the task to have any ownership of it. The proof is in the pudding as they say.

This is certainly not going to be the case across professions.

Why design and score an elaborate testing system when you can not do that and instead toss the whole pre-packaged "course" at people?

The impetus to design a better continuing education system would stem from the desire to improve the working conditions of the employees in an organization, improve the knowledge base and skill set of those employees in a substantive way and thereby improve the organization holistically. As a final boon, the training could fulfill the CYA or accreditation requirements.

I'm also not sure a test out option is out of the question.

[ffj]

One of the things I have learned through instruction is that most people's certifications have limited value. It means they attended a class or classes and passed the requirements, many times those requirements being nothing more than showing up. Or the test-out is so dumbed down for a high success rate that it means little. I doubt this is limited to the fire service.

One of my sadistic strategies for furrowing out the bullshitters* from the competent people is that I would make them demonstrate whatever skills they professed to possess. You'll figure out really quickly who has potential and who is going to take a lot of effort to make competent. But it is an accurate tool to know where to begin instruction because all of those certs don't really tell the whole story.

For my Farmers Market Certification I had to watch an old video on Best Practices for safe food handling followed by a 10 question test. Guess what? I passed! I am now an expert on handling food from the field to the table. I am so smart.

* fun experiment: take a group of egocentric people such as firefighters, put them in a large circle and ask them who knows how to do a particular skill. Everyone will nod their head yep, I am a master. Now make everyone perform the skill.


@grundomatic

It doesn't have to be horrible, does it?

[Henry]

In some instances, the certification process limits competition. The fees, the remedial education requirements, the formal process provides a barrier to entry. Pest control for instance. The owner of the company I use had no reservations as to explaining why he was pro certification despite admitting it was essentially useless.

[grundomatic]

It doesn't have to be horrible, does it?

I struggle to find enough contemptuous words. Sure, I would have rather read a text document, played a video in the background, or tested out, but if you are going to make a group of EDUCATORS sit through a live training, seems like a wasted opportunity to just read slides to them. The meta-lesson should have been how to deliver instruction even when the content is boring. Not only that, It was just embarrassing. I could forgive anyone from another profession, but school administration delivering shitty lessons is to me like the fire chief not being able to do CPR or even put their boots on.

@Henry Good point. Maybe they were filtering for compliance/submissiveness to ensure we'd be able to adequately crush the spirits of the students and develop those traits in them instead.

[Jim]

My kid just had his first day of kindergarten. I heard about 10 people telling him to be well behaved, listen to the teacher, raise his hand, don't act out, etc. When he got out I asked him to tell me one thing that someone told him that wasn't true.

When people are of the age that they're considering going to college, my advice to them has always been simply, don't go, don't even apply. I give this advice regardless of whatever I think they should actually do. So far everyone who I've given that advice to has been shocked, and they've all said that no one else had recommended that. I do it partly because it's the advice I wish I had gotten and was never given, but also because I believe in helping kids think about their lives and education in non traditional ways.

I like the idea of a meta lesson. I'd like to make a point of ensuring that at least my kids are aware that there is always a meta lesson, whether by accident or design, and it's often more important to pay attention to than the lesson directly in front of them.

[theanimal]

I am considering building a system to refine waste vegetable oil, which I can then use as fuel in my truck.

Did you end up doing this?

Also, how’s it going with renovations on the travel trailer?

[Jim]

I haven't worked much on the waste oil operation. My priority has shifted to building a shop space in the backyard before acquiring a refinery. I did find some cool designs online though.
The travel trailer is sistered with the bathroom install, which I have made progress on. All the materials have been acquired, framing electric and plumbing are done.

I got promoted to the heavy rescue company at work, which has taken up most of my time/brainpower/identity. It's a welcome change, but it takes away from the home projects.