My Simple Community

August 29, 2010

Time is at the heart of everything. If someone asks you “What’s new?” and it’s possible to tell them you may not be doing enough with your life. Maybe it’s time to take inventory of how you spend your time. I often find my to-do list considerably heavier than the weight of hours I have to invest against it. And I think I get stuck or end up doing less valuable things because I think too much about a variety of things on the list that exist with varying time requirements – some take minutes, others take months; some are needed now, others in years.

Every day we have 24 hours in front of us, every week 168. When was the last time you thought about how your typical day or week goes, where the time goes? As a researcher, I most enjoy studying the use of time. I find it fascinating how important time is but how unconscious we are to how we use it. Can you imagine taking a job without knowing how much you would be paid? We certainly focus on where our money comes from and where it goes, but give little thought to our time.

From my research, the typical American believes they have between 2-3 hours a day of uncommitted time or “free time.”  In reality, when you analyze how they actually spent their time, the average is closer to six hours a day or 42 hours a week – the same amount of time associated with a full time job. That means we are losing track of about four hours a day.  There is nothing wrong with that.

I just want to suggest time is your greatest asset. But getting a handle on how you are spending it you will gain great insight on your priorities.  It doesn’t matter how you think you spend your time or what you say you do with your time. How you actually spend your time tells you what is important.

Feeling stuck? Take inventory. Start a spreadsheet or make a list of hours in the day. Break it into 15 minute intervals. Include all 24 hours – some people are stunned with what they do in the middle of the night. Then commit to write down the dominant activity of every 15 minute period. One day will be insightful.  For some, after a few days they have learned enough to see patterns in time they didn’t expect, for others it takes a week or more. But I assure you, you WILL be surprised and it will be worth the time invested to do it.

What does this have to do with community?  The biggest reason we have for not doing things is “I don’t have time.”  Well, guess what, you do.

August 27, 2010

I want to try something: “RAK Fridays.” Starting today, I am going to try and post an example of a Random Act of Kindness with the hope it inspires others to do it or something like it. My guess is that, initially at least, most of these ideas (like this first one) will come from www.actsofkindness.org.  Please let me know if you do this, morph it into something else, or come up with one of your own.

Kindness on an Amsterdam Tram

Submitted by Elena, Amsterdam

I just read in your newsletter that Europe is “far away.” This e-mail

brings you a little news on faraway kindness.

These pictures are from a party I threw, in which my friends got a

secret assignment in small groups. The assignment was to decorate

a bus, tram, or subway car in style of choice. One group did some

undercover theatre; another hung streamers on the back of a tram so

they went flying in the wind as the tram accelerated.

The group I was in bought about 15 packets of balloons and asked

the people in a subway car to help blow them up -- which they did!

Then we hung them up using sticky tape.

It was a funny sight because we didn’t stop when the car was decorated

in a normal way. We went on until it was absurdly crammed

with balloons. —Groetjes from Elena in Amsterdam

August 26, 2010

Every day you do things unconsciously or as part of your routine that advance simple community. Those activities maintain community. Simple community grows when we consciously decided to do more.

The thing with “conscious” activities is that they can feel like work because you think to do them, make a decision, and then do them. So you are aware of the effort. 

I would like to suggest the conscious efforts are the real game changers. When we do good things intentionally our actions just plain mean more. They can also be more focused on things that really need to be done. Knowing conscious acts might be better, however, does nothing to make them feel any less like work. So here’s something that might help.

Think about the times someone has done something out of the ordinary and intentionally to be nice to you without your having asked them to do it. Think of what that action produced in your life and ask yourself if it was worth that person’s effort to intentionally do it.

Knowing how valuable it was to be on the receiving end of intentional kindness should make it easier to muster up the motivation and energy to do it yourself. 

August 24, 2010

You may need to think of this one off and on throughout the day – and that thinking would be worth it even if you don’t follow through. Observe those around you. Think of the things they do. Some of them will be conscious of you. And I am pretty sure one of them will intentionally do something nice for you, something they didn’t have to do.

This may be someone you know or a total stranger. But the thing you will note is that they go ever so slightly out of their way to somehow favor you.

Having seen that, you can complete the loop in 5 seconds by consciously thanking them specifically for what they did.  Not “Thanks!” – which is one second community – but call out the action and even say you noticed they went out of their way.

Having someone do something kind for you is great. Calling it out doubles the favor and encourages engaged community.

August 23, 2010

Welcome back to school. If you are a freshman, I hope the excitement never wears off, but the nervousness definitely will. If you are returning to school, you have a great opportunity to have a meaningful and powerful impact on an incoming freshman. Offer a hand, carry a load, ask if they need help finding their way around. Offer to be a resource to get connected. It may never mean more than during the first week of classes.

If you are staff of faculty, you have been down this road for a lot of years and it is easy to forget how big a transition this is. In many ways, your reaching out with a kind gesture is a better offer of community than that coming from a fellow student because you represent the new extended community of young adults away from home for the first time.

Yes, it’s true. Students would rather connect with other students. But a very important part of college education today is to teach/remind ourselves as well as students that we need broader community beyond our family and closest friends. Those who work at colleges are in the best position – and the first week is the best of the best – to extend that hand.