Tagged: metallica

How To Use A White Board

(If you’re short on time, skip to the bottom for numbered instructions.)

According to Malcolm X’s autobiography, he constantly scribbled little idea-notes on any and everything all the time.  While I found that part of his personality fascinating, it wasn’t enough to convince me that I should follow suit.  Later, I watched Some Kind of Monster where I saw Metallica using a white board to capture creative impulses before they escape.  It shouldn’t surprise anyone to learn that a white board was hanging on my wall within days.

I immediately put it to good use.  Any idea accompanied by a, “This is brilliant!  I need to make sure I don’t forget it!” feeling was recorded on my white board.  I was rather vain about it.  Scratch that, I am rather vain about my white board.

Thinking about Malcolm X’s little notes and Metallica’s colorful white board is always inspiring to me.  Seeing my own white board covered in ideas makes me feel good about myself.  Over the last several years of recording my ideas, however, I’ve come to realize that I like something even more than looking at a white board teeming with my ideas.  Erasing those ideas.

Yes, erasing my ideas.  I would have never guessed this, but in retrospect it makes sense.  Reflect on this for a moment.  What is the point of capturing ideas in writing anyhow?  The point is not to simply write them down.  Nothing magical happens because a good idea is recorded.  Something magical happens, though, when a good idea is acted upon.  I’ll go further and also argue that the same magical something happens when what appeared to be a good idea is permanently discarded.

And whether you’ve acted on a good idea or decided it wasn’t that great, regarding the white board, the end result is the same.  It is erased.

Everything begins as an idea.  *Begins*  If you use a white board to record ideas for later use, when is the last time you erased it?  When is the last time you made decisions about the ideas?  If it’s been a while, you may be misunderstanding how to use a white board.  No worries, that’s why I’m here.  Simply follow the below instructions, and you’ll be in back on track in no time.

Instructions for How to Use a White Board:

Step 1 – Write possibly brilliant idea on it.

Step 2 – Act on idea or Discard idea.

Step 3 (Most Important) – Erase idea.

We Need Time Keepers

It turns out James Hetfield with his rhythm guitar, not Lars Ulrich with his drums, is really the one who keeps Metallica in time.  Okay, truthfully this is probably debatable.  Nonetheless, there is an opportunity for a great metaphor here.  Who among us would dispute music’s inherent power?

Aside from what some noble, lofty lyrics of poets and dreamers say about finding music in nature and what not, in order to create music someone must keep time.  If no one is keeping time, no amount of effort can transform noise into one of humanity’s most powerful expressions of itself.  Music.

What about life?  Cannot life itself be interpreted in a similar manner?  In the end, noise and music are probably not perfectly distinct.  There is likely a continuum with one end being noise; the other being music.   What would it hurt to place human potential along a similar continuum?  One end being not reaching potential, possibly not even seeing the potential; the other being maximum potential realization.

And if somewhere on the noise to music continuum there appears a time keeper, would not the human-potential continuum also need a time keeper?  Need people who actively prescribe the standard of measure?  Not some ultimate quality control dictating to all whether the music is good or not, no.  These people would simply be keeping time.  Might these human-potential metronomes even borrow similar tactics from mechanical metronomes and repeat themselves steadily with regularity?  Asking, “How are you today?”  (Click) “How’s your goal coming along?”  (Click)  “What’s the next step?”  (Click) “I care about you reaching your potential and am here to help in any way you think I can.”  (Click)

And just like the wind-up metronomes, might even these human-potential metronomes occasionally need to be re-energized every once in a while?  Remember then, it is the same fingers that make the music which are the ones that have to take a break to reset the metronome.  Wouldn’t it be the same people busily reaching their potential that need to take a break and reset these human-potential time keepers?  Notice even that winding up a metronome still requires purposeful effort.

Thank you Cherry Creek Toastmasters.

Yes.  We need time keepers.