The Secret To A Happy Family: Try

As a geek dad this caught my eye: Agile programming for your family?! Make your family a self-managing team.

Feiler’s 3-plank Agile family manifesto

  • Adapt all the time
    • stay flexible
    • don’t listen only to ‘experts’
    • hook up with new ideas
    • be open minded
    • let the best ideas win
    • weekly family meeting, 20 mins. ask
      • What worked well?
      • What didn’t work well?
      • What can we all agree on to work on this week?
  • Empower children
    • stop ordering your children around
    • enlist them in their own upbringing
    • they come up with punishments and rewards
    • plan their own goals
    • set weekly schedules
    • evaluate themselves
    • succeed and fail on their own terms
    • less what they do wrong, more on what they do right
    • give them the tools to make themselves happy
  • Tell your story
    • as bedrock context for adaptability
    • preserve the core
    • define mission, core values, family mission statement
    • tell story of family, where we came from
    • difficult situations overcome
    • family strengths and successes
    • retell the positive and overcoming negative stories
    • make a family manifesto

Happiness is not something we find, it’s something we make. Greatness is not a circumstance, it’s a choice. What’s the secret to a happy family? Try.

No More Shitty Gigs (Demo)

I’ve been working on this ska/punk manifesto for a month or so. Earl correctly suggested that it should be the soundtrack to the promo video we’re gonna make. Here’s my second draft of two verses and the chorus (45 secs for the video).

No more sitting in my cube beneath the zombie lights
Where the light is too white and the walls are too tight
I need to go outside and a get big fresh breath of air
But I can’t escape the screen and my butt’s glued to the chair

No more standing on a stage beneath a TV screen
No more trying to sing over the coffee steam machine
No more waiting hours just wait for hours more
In some far off remote hope that my foot gets in a door

No more shitty gigs I’ve played enough for one life
No more shitty years it’s high time I decided
Let’s go for a walk, I’m gonna take show outside
‘Cause it’s my show and I decide where it will go
‘Cause it’s my show and I decide where it will go