i have an innie

Some people have a strong sense of outer direction. Finding things like work in the world is easy for an outie. Outies know where to go, and they how to get there. They don’t get lost. All they have to to is look at whatever else is going on outside, and they know what to do.

I have an innie. I know because I can feel it. It’s inside, right there in the middle of my tummy. If I slow down and listen, my innie will give me the direction I need. And I need direction often.

If I try to be like an outie, my innie gets all confused. I get confused. I try to catch up with other people outside, and I just end up more lost than when I started.

I am slowly learning to trust my inner sense of direction. My innie will let me know which turn to take, how to get unstuck, who to trust, when I’m doing good work, when to stop.  And right now my innie is telling me that it’s getting stronger all the time.

just put it off! (how to properly procrastinate while while bringing your ideas to reality)

Just follow these 20 simple steps.

1.      Come up with a Really Good Idea.

2.      Feel inspired. Feel so inspired that you put everything else on your list to the back of your to do list.

3.      Enjoy the heightened energy, improved mood, and raised self esteem this inspiration affords you.

4.      Make a commitment to do what it takes to make your Really Good Idea a reality.

5.      Introduce everyone you know to your Really Good Idea.

6.      Go to the office supply store, art supply store, hardware store and buy a bunch of things that help you properly organize your life so that you might do a great job in finishing the work on your Really Good Idea.

7.      Look up a bunch of things on the Internet that will help you to learn more about the topic on hand and then let those things inspire you to look at more things.

8.      Learn a whole lot of things that are just as inspiring as what you first set out to do to fulfill the Really Good Idea you had.

9.      While you’re on the Internet, find other people who are doing something similar to your Really Good Idea. Realize that what they have is really a Better Idea because these other people are doing a much, much better job than you will ever do by actually doing what it takes to make their Better Idea a reality.

10.    Spend more time thinking  about other people’s Better Ideas and less about your Really Good Idea.

11.    Start feeling guilty about time spent coveting your neighbour’s Better Ideas and go to the refrigerator for a beer or a spoonful of Marmite to help you feel better.

12.    When you get to the refrigerator, forget what you were going to the refrigerator for in the first place.

13.    Go back to your computer and watch a rerun of some old science fiction series you’ve been meaning to watch.

14.    Remember what it was you forgot at the refrigerator and go back to get it.

15.     Return to your workspace with a renewed feeling of guilt for not having gotten anything done.

16.    Revisit the web for more Better Ideas than yours. Wallow.

17.    Having wallowed sufficiently, remember an older Good Idea that you Never Completed from a Long Time Ago. Seems easy in comparison to your Really Good Idea now, huh? Go ahead, abandon your Really Good Idea and get to work on that Old Good Idea from a Long Time Ago.

18.    Feel newly energized with fresh guilt for having abandoned your Really Good Idea while you finish the work on your Old Good Idea that you Never Completed from a Long Time Ago.

19.     Lose yourself in work on your Good Idea from a Long Time Ago. Make your Good Idea from a Long Time Ago a reality.

20.    Come up with a new Really, Really Good Idea and repeat.

Slow Learning Hall of Fame: Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore with nothing but time on his hands
Slow Learner, Philosopher, Artist, Musician, Composer, Poet, Novelist, Playwright, Nonauthoritarian Learning Leader, Nobel Laureate, School fund-raiser, Doodler, Underneath-the-tree-sitter/thinker

Born May 7, 1861
Died August 7, 1941

“Hunger for the Epic”

Highlights of Slow Learning Super Powers:

• Wrote  first poem at the age of eight.
• Started painting and drawing at the age of sixty.
• Wrote songs, including two national anthems
  
• Founded schools (an outdoor children’s school, university, and rural school)
• Proclaimed that learning might be natural, sympathetic, and pleasurable
• Extreme multidisciplinarian
  
• possibly gifted with Attention Surplus Syndrome (aka ADD)
  

Tagore on feeding hungry children:

We have come to this world to accept it, not merely to know it.  We may become powerful by knowledge, but we attain fullness by sympathy.  The highest education is that which does not merely give us information but makes our life in harmony with all existence.  But we find that this education of sympathy is not only systematically ignored in schools, but it is severely repressed.  From our very childhood habits are formed and knowledge is imparted in such a manner that our life is weaned away from nature and our mind and the world are set in opposition from the beginning of our days. Thus the greatest of educations for which we came prepared is neglected, and we are made to lose our world to find a bagful of information instead.  We rob the child of his earth to teach him geography, of language to teach him grammar.  His hunger is for the Epic, but he is supplied with chronicles of facts and dates…Child-nature protests against such calamity with all its power of suffering, subdued at last into silence by punishment. (Rabindranath Tagore, Personality,1917: 116-17)

Tagore on the pleasures of slow:

A Moment’s Indulgence

I ask for a moment’s indulgence to sit by thy side. The works
that I have in hand I will finish afterwards.

Away from the sight of thy face my heart knows no rest nor respite,
and my work becomes an endless toil in a shoreless sea of toil.

Today the summer has come at my window with its sighs and murmurs; and
the bees are plying their minstrelsy at the court of the flowering grove.

Now it is time to sit quite, face to face with thee, and to sing
dedication of life in this silent and overflowing leisure

For more on Tagore as Slow Learner and Slow Learning activist: Check out Kathleen O’Connell’s post on Infed.