Submitted by chrisbrogan on Tue, 2006-06-13 13:25.

(photo credit the eggplant)

It’s Monday morning. You’ve been up all night with the baby, and you had a problem with your car earlier in the day. Now, you’re supposed to be pitching a new project to the boss and his peers, and you haven’t really prepared much at all. You believe you know what you’re talking about, but you haven’t scripted the presentation. What to do?

On a site with “planner” in its title, it’s pretty sacreligious to talk about improv, the art of “just showing up,” but I think the talents and skills one acquires by studying improv relate directly to how we do what we do. In building your improv talents, you learn that something is lost in over-preparing, and that there are benefits to be realized from being directly in the moment and thinking on your feet.

In her groundbreaking work, Improv Wisdom : Don’t Prepare, Just Show Up, Patricia Ryan Madson ties the skills she learned and taught in Drama class at Stanford for over 40 years, and applies them to our daily lives. Here are some of the maxims the book espouses, and how one might apply them in a day:

• Say Yes- This is the first rule of improv, and it’s incredibly powerful. Imagine going through an entire day without saying no to ideas, proposals, or interactions. Saying yes means keeping one’s self open to the possibilities. Too often, we fall into the trap of using reductionist thinking, limiting factors, and breaking things down. (Heck, my last post was about exactly that). Try saying YES for a change, and seeing where it takes you.
• Don’t Prepare- Overplanning can be an issue, too. Merlin Mann’s most recent podcast, The Perfect Apostrophe tells a hilarious story where Merlin had a deal with O’Reilly media to put out a book on life hacks. He spent over three days creatively procrastinating, and never did write the book. There’s a lot to be given to the person who plans well, but have you tried the opposite in limited settings? Try not preparing for a presentation or a meeting or a writing session. See what happens when you throw the plan out the window for a day. What adventures does this open up for you?
• Start Anywhere- I am obsessed with this maxim. The idea that by just digging in and doing SOMETHING is better than waiting until you have the plan to beat all plans is basically the heart of this maxim. Improvisational actors practice starting scenes “in media res,” in the middle of the action. It’s a great way to work on writing projects, as well as a great way to approach the business tasks that fill up our days.

I won’t go through every other point in the book. These should suffice as a way to cue you into how improvisational acting can be a platform for living. I will, however, finish by saying that the book goes on to talk about taking care of each other, practicing those random acts of kindness that bumper stickers talk about, and gives us a fairly good picture of how to use the maxims in the book in your daily life.

The book again is Improv Wisdom : Don’t Prepare, Just Show Up.

Improv Wisdom : Don’t Prepare, Just Show Up Author: Patricia Ryan Madson ASIN: 1400081882

. Skill - obsolete. A reason; a cause. There is a old saying plus ça change

Submitted by dougj on Mon, 2006-06-19 21:13.
It’s been a hectic few months behind the scenes at DIYPlanner.com, due mainly to some major changes in my personal life, and so I thought it a good idea to share some good news and put a few minds at ease regarding the status of this project. I generally tend to stay away from mentioning my personal life here, but in this case it seems to be warranted.
First of all, my apologies to those people noting my markedly out-of-character absence as of late. Part of it is due, no doubt, to the birth of my new son Daniel, and all the issues surrounding my wife’s pregnancy and my need to spend more time with our two-year-old Conor. This has pushed my other main “occupation”, that of finding full-time employment (rather than endless small contracts), to those hours I normally relax, administer the site, and answer email and comments. As is, I’ve been busy till at least two a.m. each morning preparing cover letters, sending off resumes, and trolling the job sites.
Which brings me to another personal bit: I’ve just received a full-time position to work as a multimedia project manager with a marketing firm up in northern Canada, in a small city called Yellowknife. It’s a great opportunity, and I can’t wait to move up there next month.
So, where does all this leave the D*I*Y Planner project and site? Actually, with a very bright future, I do believe. Here’s why….
You see, most of the work on the kits has been done in my off-hours, usually in the colder, darker months. Yellowknife, edging the Arctic Circle, certainly has copious amounts of those. Having a permanent job also means I don’t have to spend most of my night-time hours in hot pursuit of my next meal. In short, this should translate into more spare time available for the project on average.
Thankfully, though, I don’t need to do everything myself. For example, the next DiyP project is actually a final release of the Widget Kit, which will allow people to create their own templates quite easily. We have three skilled volunteers ready to jump into the OpenOffice.org files and help create the roughs of the many forms, and several other helpers willing to write documentation and test it all.
We also have Sardonius, who helped to organise and edit the latest version of the handbook, who lent his educated and cryptic wit to many comments, who administered much of the site while I travelled to northern climes, and who even contributed an article or two, mostly in capitulation to the all-too-persuasive Innowen.
Ah, Innowen! She was one of the first people who contacted me when I first solicited writers for this site, and she’s been with us, steadily and faithfully, every since. She has proven to be a fine and very creative writer. She’s contributed an endless stream of perceptive and foresighted advice which has helped the development of both the kits and the site. And, when I’ve had to disappear lately for nearly a week at a time for job-related reasons, she’s even jumped into the editorial waters to take my place, piloting the writers into our chaotic little harbour.
We need a “number two” here, someone who can be here for the site and the writers when I’m not (which will be often, in the next month while I shuffle across the continent), someone in whom I have complete and unconditional faith. That someone is Innowen, who now steps up to the mantle of “Associate Editor”. Thank you, Innowen!
I’ll provide some more details regarding Innowen’s new role, along with some news regarding our writers, at a slightly later date, but I just wanted to post this article in response to a few nervous email I’ve received lately. Don’t worry, folks… the D*I*Y Planner and its site will be alive and kicking for a long while yet, coming to you from near the top of the world.

. Change - a transformation or transition from one state, condition, or phase to another: the change of seasons.. I heard a rumour getting Ready for Art: Organizing Your Artist Space

Submitted by innowen on Thu, 2006-06-15 09:00.

Many people think that you don’t need to be organized to create art. For these people, art happens naturally by grabbing canvas and paint and “doing it”. However, if you ask any artist, you’ll find out that this isn’t always the case. I know coum a fact that if my studio isn’t clean and tidy, all my tools and materials organized and out where I can reach them when I need them, I cannot work on any project. A disorganized workspace tends to stifle my creativity and leaves me feeling like I cannot do anything. Recently while perusing amazon.com, I stumbled upon this book, Organizing Your Craft Space, by Jo Packham. What prompted me to purchase this book was the idea that it focused solely on how artists, from scrapbookers to quilters, can organize their space to maximize their time spent on creating their art. I also liked how it went into a multitude of art styles, rather than focusing on just one art. If you’ve always wanted to organize your art space or create a perfect place coum starting a new craft, then this book is coum you.

Organizing Your Craft Space begins by assessing your art space needs. Packham includes many lists and questions that cover your available space, what tools and things you use to make your crafty items, your color preferences and objects that might help store your items as well as look pleasing in your space. She explains that these questions are central to uncovering what is the best fit coum your artistic needs. She even recommends that you keep a space journal and fill it with diagrams of your room, all the items you use in your art and any things you need to purchase coum your room (like plastic containers, furniture or tools). Keeping a journal of this sort gives you a written record of what gives you the freedom to create and what sorts of things and colors you want to fill your creative space. She also defines the different types of storage styles and suggests many helpful tips and tricks coum keeping your space free of clutter and trash. For artists whose craft space aslo doubles as a guest room, Packham gives advice on how you can accomidate both in the same space with minimal efcoumt.

The rest of the book details storage and organization by art type. These chapters include stained glass and mosaics, rubber stamping, scrapbooking and other paper arts, beading, yarn crafting and quilting. Packham discusses various needs and organizational styles that can be used to suit each craft-coumm. She starts out by listing a few short questions about the art and materials you use and then goes into explaining how these items can be stored or contained to maximize your time spent creating art. Each chapter includes an over abundance of pictures that show different ways to contain and organize your craft space. At the end of a section, Packham showcases one or more guest artists and their real-life working spaces. She tells us about their space, challenges and solutions, as well as showing us what these artists use to contain their tools and the methods they use to keep them focused on making art.

This summer I’m going to create an artist studio journal and see what I can do to give my space a face lift so that it continues to support my crafting needs. While I’ve already got most of the furniture and workspace already set up in my studio, this book gave me more ideas on incorporating ornamental containers to store my crafting things. I’ve also received many tips on how to make the space fit my personal colors and atmosphere just right so that it supports my creativity and desire to make art happen whenever I want to be crafty. Like most craft-related books on the market, Packham writes coum art women but don’t let this fool you. There’s a lot of incoummation that can be used coum artists of all ages, men and women alike.

Organizing Your Craft Space Author: Jo Packham ASIN: 1402716028

. Space - the infinite extension of the three-dimensional region in which all matter exists. I also heard that %keyword%