skill

Conjunction Junction (Interpersonal Communication)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

Language sure is weird.

Did you ever hear the expression “all dogs are mammals, all mammals are animals, therefore all dogs are animals?” Well I’m sure you have dear readers, but I have to wonder if you know the reason why it’s used fairly commonly (read: not that commonly) in academics or by people who want to be academics.

This statement is a syllogism associated with predicate logic; a type of logic which shows how the subjects and predicates of such statements relate to those in other statements in an argument. To put it another way, syllogisms are an instance of reasoning in which a conclusion is drawn from propositions that share a commonality and one final statement that combines second terms of the initial propositions in a way to infer a conclusion.

Another very well known example is that “all men are mortal, Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal.”

Hooking up words and phrases and clauses.

The Challenge Of Language

Communication is exactly that though. Making sense of language, verbal and nonverbal, as well as written, in order to best exchange information, feelings and meaning between a pair of people or to a group of people.

This is where interpersonal communication comes in. It’s a communication process that happens between two or more people. It is a face-to-face interaction that further addresses two of the three previous topics we’ve already covered in the communication basics series. Verbal and nonverbal communication.

To Put In

Interpersonal communication skills really are the most essential of skills in life, in my opinion, of course. We deal with so many daily challenges, rare opportunities and unexpected encounters throughout our time on this spinning ball of dirt that we need to be prepared to communicate well, whether at work or in our personal lives. The truth of it is, well, the truth is that people who have invested the time in developing their interpersonal skills get further along in life.

Probably because those people are more charismatic and appealing. And if we’re being honest, we can all benefit from being more appealing. Also, you can’t stop interpersonal communication from happening. No matter who you are and where you are going in life, you just can’t stop interpersonal communication from happening.

Because even when we are silent, nonverbal communication works in full force. And just as the old adage says, once you say something, you can’t take it back. We make silent judgments of others all the time.

That person should go to hell. He looks fat in those pants. She wears too much makeup. Who raised this kid?

That internal dialogue happens whether we want it to or not. But as I’ve mentioned in the previous posts, it is possible to work on both your verbal and nonverbal communication skills. And even more importantly, it’s so necessary. The single best thing you can do to become better at both arenas is to work on your listening skills.

And that is going to be the next major topic we’ll focus on in another post. I don’t want to spend too much time today digging into it, but I will say this – The better of a listener you are, the less people will concern themselves with your verbal and nonverbal skills.

theories Summarized

When you learn to use your interpersonal communication skills effectively creative cuties, not only will you have excellent verbal and nonverbal communications down, but you will get more accomplished in life. I know that sounds like a quick fix, because it takes time, but you can expect a lot more discussion on this in future months. For now, I’m out of theories.

Tim!

Explore Some More (Megan Warkentin preview interview)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

 

Exploration is important, it allows you to learn things about yourself, to make friends, find lovers, to live life in a more productive and harmonious state. And in the most obvious of ways, to experience that which you did not even know about – gaining in wisdom and knowledge.

Cameras, laptops, smart tech, mobile phones, all of these things are the result of exploration. The same can be said of conceptual exploration. If we don’t stay active with our thoughts, we stagnate and we die. Metaphorically or sometimes quite literally. That’s one of the many reasons for timotheories, a way for me (and the ever-expanding timotheories squad) to communicate ideas and activities to you which are obscure and not readily available.

As you know, I meet with artists on the regular in the hopes of communicating key principles of business, creativity, and social skills we all need, yes myself included dear readers, in order to function properly as an artist, also emphasizing that exploration never ends. We have to embrace that uncertainty and exploration in order to continue along our merry way.

Which is what this month’s featured artist has her eyes keenly tuned toward. In fact, she thinks exploration is vital, so much so that she’s made it part of her artistic practice to paint individuals risking life and limb in order to test their own mettle. But more on that later, I still have to release the complete interview folks.

Using metaphor and the literal, Megan Warkentin is a graduate student at the University of Alberta who is the final chapter of her degree, preparing for her graduate exhibition this fall semester. A born and raised Edmontonian, Megan has been involved in the art scene for quite some time, but her major contribution has always been in the arena of painting. I’m incredibly proud to have the opportunity to share a sneak peek of our interview with you today, because she has some great ideas on how explore as an artist.

I’m jumping off the walls in anticipation, I can’t wait anymore, so here is a preview of episode 12 of timotheories interviews, enjoy.

I must be a fan of long weekends, because I did the same thing last month. Releasing a preview over the long weekend is a great way to explore my own timing, but I got it to you didn’t I?

I’m out of theories for now, dear readers! Have a fantastic night, I’ll be back tomorrow with a review on the new Bon Iver album. It sound be a good one.

Tim!

Contest, Context, Concept (Fairness In Art)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

My parents tried their very hardest to impart ideas of fairness in us from a young age. “Share with your brothers and sister”, “make sure that everyone gets a taste of that pizza”, “you all need to do your part to keep the house clean”, “don’t forget that it’s your turn to do the dishes”, and so it went, on and on.

joeydoesntsharefood

Every family deals with these challenges.

But I more time I spent with fairness and other moralizations as I grew into adulthood, the more I struggled with that notion of fairness, because each of the four of us had unique interests, talents, and levels of influence within the family hierarchy.

Fairness is supposed to represent a way of making value judgments that are impartial, and many well defined roles and responsibilities are given their own value sets to help establish fairness, in particular for activities and institutions which revolve around instruction.

For example, I often think of teachers and their responsibility to uphold an objective. Yes, anyone can take on a teaching role, but professional teachers are the group I’m going to focus on.

Back to the objective of teachers.

The objective of teachers is to educate students in skills and knowledge. Where it falls down for me though is through the method of instruction employed (pedagogy) by many teachers – that they know best because they’ve been trained to know the best. Pedagogy assumes that there is an ideal way to learn and an ideal way to teach, and thus the practice concerns itself primarily with how best to teach. Professional teachers are trained in pedagogy. Now, let’s put a pin in that idea for a second.

When we come out of post-secondary education, no matter our specialization, many students with a bachelors, masters or doctorate, assume an expertise in that particular field.

And we each gain a sense of fairness particular to that subset of knowledge, but going back to the family example from earlier, the problem is that if you have four children who all grew into unique roles, for example a BFA Art & Design, a BSc Psychology, a BFA Drama and BE Drama and Chemistry, and lastly a BSc Physics and BE Physics and Drama, each family member has refined their “fairness” through a different learnt pedagogy.

So almost all university graduates walk away with a sense of rightness or righteousness, depending on how you look at it. Then some time passes, and hopefully that code eases off somewhat, because another skill that post-secondary education is supposed to teach you is to continue to pursue education throughout your life.

Which leads me to my theory for the day.

I don’t think that fairness exists in life. Shock. Gasp. Awe.

whoa_ho_ho_omg_double_rainbow-14301

From a young age we are told to do our best and worry about ourselves, but that still stimulates us to try harder, and in a family setting, it can simultaneously instill a sense of competition amongst siblings.

Which is actually a good thing. Because life is competition.

We compete for grades, jobs, sexual partners, games (sport, video, tabletop), and status. But that ideation of fairness is just part of the conscious desire to simplify the world around us. Which lets us determine what is right and wrong, and gain a sense of control over the world.

But the world functions purely on those levels of success, so whatever morality we put into art making, education, business, and any other aspect of life is purely personal. When we stop to reflect on the problem at hand and look at the scale, it comes down exactly that.

Individually we might love something or someone, but that doesn’t mean that song is a popular song or that person should love us back. Decision-making is not resigned to one person or one subset of people, but to the broader picture of humanity.

So stop considering what you internally feel is correct or worthy, and consider what you have done for your community or the people around you and that will help guide the art you create.

It’s about impact.

The greater the impact, the more people who want to reward the efforts of the person who created that ripple. If you can move a stadium of people with your music, or entertain a crowded street with your improvised unicycle and ball juggling act, or even divide a whole city with your graffiti that addresses the automation of industry and complacency associated with it, you’re going to get recognition.

If you share your song with one person, one person cares, but if you shared it with influencers on YouTube, then you are all of a sudden an instant success.

Someone once said that life is unfair, but that’s not really true. Life is very fair, but we try and assume authority over fairness and change it. Fairness is competition, realized by what we are able to accomplish in our community.

Going back to the point I made earlier about families and fairness, I think families should work to achieve the workload, but we should cut that word right out of instruction, children need to learn their strengths and contribute to society in a way that they are best capable, and educators need to facilitate this via models of instruction, with tempered positions of authority.

But that’s just a theory.

Tim!

 

The Best Laid Plants (Plan To Make Plans)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

Remember a week ago when I said we were done with the preliminary series of Life Hacks AKA Skills To Invest In?

Well while that was true, I wasn’t telling you that we were done altogether, only that we were done with the basic concepts.  This is because we did touch on each concept in one way or another dear readers, but we didn’t spend dedicated time on 2 topics in particular, and I want to get to them this month.

Which is why today we’re going to focus the first topic – Planning To Make Plans. Before we dig into it, let’s take a peek at the skill summary:

Plan regularly! Build routines to start your day AND end your day. You are going to have to organize throughout the day too, so make an outline to insure you aren’t starting from scratch over and over. Please also set deadlines for major projects by planning ahead. You’ll benefit from organizing your desk/workspace, minutes save hours, believe me.

We will definitely hit all four of those highlighted points dear readers, but if you’re patient with me, you just might foresee the great plan being laid out.

1. I don’t care who you are or what stage of life you are at, it’s important to have a daily routine and to schedule your days in a way so that they always start & end the same. How do you accomplish this you ask? Try theming your days

Monday – production and creating
Tuesday – management, company identity, and running your business
Wednesday – production and creating
Thursday – marketing, communications, and partnerships
Friday – production and creating
Saturday – FUN, aka relaxation
Sunday – reflection, feedback, strategy for the upcoming week

2. Organizing throughout the day can be daunting, especially with all the various forms of distraction we have so handy in our lives. But if focus on what exactly you want to accomplish that day, or to put it another way, what positive influence do you need to make on the world and that follows your passions for life, you can then set up an outline that will cover your needs. Especially with so many internal or external distractions, model your days (on Sunday) so that you hit four or five points throughout the day each day of the week

WORK – 2-3 tasks you need accomplished that day
PLAY – dedicated time for fun and recharging activities
FOOD – both prep and eating should be identified
HEALTH – to slot in exercise and self-care
MIND – for reading, learning, and simple reflections

3. Deadlines always seem scary, but guess what? You’ve already started to lay the groundwork to fit them into your routine. By coming up with a weekly and daily schedule, you can very easily develop a monthly schedule too. This is where deadlines can be helpful – You should never set deadlines for the non-creative work, as a creative professional, but you should set deadlines for projects, within reason. Where the reason comes in is somewhat subjective, but essentially you don’t want the deadline to be so far out that it loses meaning, or so close that it overwhelms, you need to find that 2-4 week sweet spot.

4. Organizing your desk and/or work space: Or how to keep your creative space inspirational. No matter what kind of creative person you are, you must know that your environment effects your creativity. But the question remains, how do you make your space both visually interesting & comfortable to work in?

– Have beautiful objects around you and music that motivates
– Organize based on your personal aesthetic and make it functional, -with stocked supplies
– You need to control the light – have access to daylight, but be able to to dim for abstract thought
– Comfort is crucial – your seat, your clothes, your shoes, the temperature… all important
– Remove distractions (phone, social media, TV, children) and troublesome clutter

This might seem like news to you, common sense or somewhere in between, but no matter what stage of planning your life is in, we all benefit from these types of theories because our current technologies are incredibly efficient at depriving us from focus – Dangerously so. But that’s just a theory after all.

I’m out of theories for now, but be sure to check back tomorrow when I examine something timely and lay out the monthly schedule.

Tim!

One Hit Wonder (Communication Is Key)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

Communication is a pain in the butt. Well, that’s what I used to think a long time ago. Being an artist, I was set up to be a recluse, because artists were outcasts. And it was a loneliness I chose.

That was what I told myself anyway.

When you are in your teenage years, and even early 20s, it can be incredibly convenient to look at the world in black and white. If you don’t fit in, it’s because you shouldn’t, so rebel, rebel, rebel. Hell it’s a rebel yell.

hqdefault

You know, I know adults who still do this. Walk around with a very limited view of things and an expectation that you either accept the “truth” they are hawking or they judge you and separate themselves from you. It’s a result of seeing the world the way you want to, and not the way it actually is.

I’m going to share a nugget with you, all you cute and wonderful and dear readers of mine. The truth is that nobody cares what you do with yourself and your time. People aren’t trying to get in your way, they are doing what they can to live their life (exist), escape their life (survive), or fulfill their life (thrive). I like to call it the EST models of life.

You want to thrive, trust me.

This is why it’s so incredibly important to follow the basic principles of communication. Anyone can do it. That’s right, we are reviewing another one of the key 10 skills to invest in. Artists can learn these skills, and everyone really should.

Communication is key.

Let’s recap. In a time when texting, email, and social media are the new favourites, try to use the phone more often. It saves on countless back and forth. And speaking of back and forth, be concise in your emails. Respond to calls and emails as quickly as you can, and when you can’t do that, set up a regular time to respond to your contacts.

But we’ll go over this in more detail because I have at least 200 words left to write. Ever heard of the 7 C’s of Communication? No, well it’s a fantastic way to keep your communication on point.

  1. Clear – it’s important to define you purpose for communication, and keep the number of ideas to a minimum. For example, one idea per sentence. In a three line email, that’s a maximum of 3 ideas, capiche?
  2. Concise – Get rid of all the filler words in your life. And don’t repeat yourself. Ever.
  3. Concrete – You have to explain why people should care, that means using some MF emotion, passion, and keeping focused.
  4. Correct – Oh this one’s a lot of fun. Make sure that you keep your communication error-free. And don’t use big words to make a statement. You can use relevant words, but don’t swim in pomposity.
  5. Coherent – Remember when we were talking about clarity in point no. 1? Well you need to keep all the points in a communication relevant, otherwise people get overwhelmed. One topic per meeting, phone call or email.
  6. Complete – Your message needs a call to action (when required) and details to keep the audience informed.
  7. Courteous – Be friendly in your communication. Tell the truth and be open-minded. The book How To Win Friends and Influence People comes to mind.

And there you have it, I’ve just given communication to an artist who needs it. No greater gift for you fine folks on a wisdom Wednesday. That’s all she wrote though folks. I’m out of theories for the moment. I’ll see you tomorrow with something rather timely.

Tim!