Friday's post

Dear readers, I am not exactly sure what happened on Friday. I woke up thinking: "Oh today is Friday, I must post on my blog". Then the day unfolded, and it became...

Monday!

In between, our new dryer arrived and I had a whole host of other invaders and things to prepare for the weekend. A baby shower, baking cookies, a fabulous Sunday dinner and all the shopping that goes along with those things normally. I managed to get a lot of things done, so I am very pleased with myself for that and, my husband and I still managed some quality time with the Swiss landscape and train system ;) We love our trains!

So, today I will *cheat* a little and use a quote from another blog to which I subscribe to, Jeff Goins (www.goinswriter.com), in a lovingly titled "The Mr. Miyagi Guide to Practice" post:

There is no awesome and mundane. There is only the work that must be done.

This really speaks to me today. I know how I was as a teenager, I *hated* field hockey practice, I *hated* basketball practice, I strongly disliked running speed drills (meaning at least I understood why I needed them ;) ). I was such a kid. I wanted to just freakin' play the game already. I wanted the competition, I wanted to go play for real *all the time*. Practice was for wimps.

But, as Jeff points out, life IS practice. Since nowadays I don't compete with anyone but myself -- I practice writing, I practice dreaming, it's all practice. Just like doctors who have a practice, one cannot know everything: life, love, it is all an art, and you practice it.

Practice it for what, you say? To what end?

There doesn't have to be a what, does there? I say: "Let's let love give what it gives"

Practices and experiences and artwork, building a body of them. Feeling good within your skin, having a clear conscience about the things you've done or have not done... learning from each experience and taking the lessons learned to heart.

There are no awesome or mundane tasks. It's all good! I am so grateful for that concept. Other things I am thankful for today:

1. The cleaner finally came today, in the morning like she is supposed to
2. It's finally getting cold enough to snow down to 1,000 meters: and maybe even down to 700 meters by the end of the week!! Yeay!
3. "Redefine Possible": grateful to have witnessed live part of Felix Baumgartner's historic flight, as well as all the heroes and heroines out there who redefine what is possible everyday (e.g. Spencer West and Rachel Beckwith)
4. Believing in myself on this cold/grey October to be the "slow and steady" tortoise, I will win the race in the end. I can do it! I am the Little Red Engine Who Could.
5. Being asked to be a godmother. Gushing!

OK, back to reality: time to go make dinner. This is also a happy work for me. I love food and cooking ;) 

Have a wonderful time, and please, feel free to give me feedback!! Come back and read again on Friday!

Process development basics

Today will be a short overview of process development, in the context of how one might go about re-inventing themselves.

As one might suspect, this would be far from a recipe-like, linear process, where you simply do one thing after another, and voila! you have completed the process and got what you want. True re-invention, although similar to invention or new product development (which can be quasi-linear), is a highly non-linear process. It is similar to the learning process of a baby to a child. Inputs you receive now may not be understood or processed until months or years later, when other inputs combine with the original input to produce a "productive" positive experience or output. The nature of the input may also affect the output, and intermediate feedback loops along the way will affect the output.

Let's assume we have some inputs and want some known, measurable outputs. We know our re-invention process is non-linear, but we want to impose a time frame on it just to say that the development, as we choose to define it, is finite. Say six months. Sounds a lot like goal-setting doesn't it? Yes, but I want to make sure you remember the process is fluid, not fixed steps on a ladder. You have to be flexible and adaptable to sense "good" & "bad" inputs or process streams that will affect your measurables.

The process I would like to adapt to fit my needs is a new product development process. I list the steps (some are more obvious and/or applicable than others):

1. Idea generation / Opportunity analysis
2. Idea screening / Defining target market
3. Concept development and testing
   
4. Business analysis / Competition and customer feedback
5. Beta testing and market testing (prototype)
6. Implementation (logistics, resources, contingencies)
7. Commercialization

Note these things can happen concurrently (at the same time) and should be open to change but able to minimize the cost of change by knowing the latest responsible moment an item can be changed ("go no-go" point). In software development, the buzz word is "agile" software development. I'll let your head buzz around that for a while....if you know any "agile" project managers, please have them write to me....

As you can see, there are a considerable number of steps even before we get to the prototype (item 5). Taking this in the context of the process of re-inventing myself, the new "prototype" if you will still needs some pre-work before I can even really visualize the prototype. I would say that some of this pre-work has been done, but not clearly written down or explained to someone else (say not even my boyfriend!!!)

So I have got my work cut out for me!! More to come next week...