Sunday, November 15, 2009

Giving feedback - what I've learned from quilting

I took a quilt class spread over two Sunday mornings. The first Sunday, we learned the technique, and then went home and worked on developing the pieces of the quilt. The second Sunday, we came back with our ideas for our quilts and presented our quilts to the class. For the feedback process, the instructor suggested that instead of us criticizing what WASN'T working, we should talk about what WAS working. It was interesting for me, who is a person that finds lots of faults with my own quilts to instead hear what was working. I realize if I'm critical of my own work, I'm surely critical of others. I found myself being very thoughtful in providing feedback -- perhaps more so than when my feedback is critical. Thinking more about this feedback session, I realize that, of course, sometimes we need to hear what isn't working. But it seems to me that when our work is a "work in progress" hearing about what IS working encourages us to do even better. And, it was a really nice change to not hear from my left shoulder critic and instead to hear from my right shoulder supporter. Thoughts?

Oh...and here's the quilt in progress...obviously not finished. I'll post it again when finished.

Friday, November 13, 2009

Data analysis does not breed good writing!

My husband is really brilliant and a really good guy. He has a PhD in cognitive psychology, develops human cognitive measurement software, loves computer games, and is a really nice guy too. One of the things I've noticed over the years of being married to him is that I can't talk very coherently to him after spending a day doing deep data analysis which I need to do with our CedarCrestone HR Systems Survey . It's like my brain just can't go from number crunching to being verbal. But, after a day of data crunching if I play Bejeweled. I'm really good. I've gotten my best scores (over 500,000) on those days. Anyway...back to my really nice guy husband, in a roundabout way. Today, I actually got two comments about my blog and posts....both saying...do more! Thank you.... I mentioned this to my sweetheart of a husband, and he is so brilliant....he said. "Blog when you wake up before you do the data crunching." Duh..... So, maybe that's what I'll do. Blog first thing. What do you think?