Year: 2025

Reflective practice makes better

The curtain goes up in 45 minutes.

Actually, it won’t do anything until I give the order. But the order will come on time. I’ve just put my stage manager’s prompt script on a music stand just off stage left in the wings. It identifies everything that will happen offstage to make the magic happen onstage; lighting cues, sound cues, scenery movement. I check in with the tech crew, the music director, the house manager. At thirty minutes before curtain, I call “half hour,” then “5 minutes”, then “places” and we’re off.

For the next two hours, what we’ve practiced and rehearsed for weeks plays out under my direction. Most of the people in the audience have no idea that I exist, much less what I am doing. As it should be. Knowing how the magic is made is rarely as rewarding as simply enjoying it.

There are some of us, however, who develop an interest in how to make magic. Taking things apart to understand how they work has its own rewards. There are any number of cliches I could use to talk about pulling off this kind of performance magic; shared purpose, shared struggle, traditions. rituals. They are cliches because they are anchored in deep truths. I could have chosen to simply continue to accumulate experience and get better over time.

Practice makes perfect.

Although I didn’t have the language or concepts at the time, I chose a slightly different path. Call it reflective pratice. Which I learned some fifteen years later. Rather than striving to perfect some technique, I opted for working on understanding and improving the techniques in parallel with practicing and performing them. A slower and less certain path to travel. But one that turns out to be better suited to a world of innovation and change.

Serving two mistresses

How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life came out while I was in college. One of, if not the first, thing I read in pursuit of better personal productivity.

I was in my second year of college. I had been granted what they called “advanced standing”, which meant I was on track to graduate in three rather than four years. This was courtesy of an exceptional high school education and some natural talent for standardized tests. I was also the production stage manager for a theater group’s spring production. This was an original Broadway scale musical comedy. As stage manager, I was responsible for managing all the rehearsals of the cast of 50 odd fellow students. Finally, as part of my financial aid package, I worked part time as a stage carpenter and electrician at McCarter Theater on campus.

To say that the title spoke to me might possibly have been an understatement.

Surely, I could get it all done if I was just a little bit better organized.

I think I actually believed that for many years.

This was the beginning of a love affair with two mistresses. On one side there was the “magic of the theater.” Bringing together sound, light, and movement to create a moment. On the other side, there was the work to organize and coordinate each of those elements so that they were ready when that moment arrived; systems.

Success depends on keeping both of these mistresses happy and in balance. It’s hard to create magic if you’ve forgotten to book the dance studio for rehearsal. On the other hand, no system can help you when the lead has locked themselves in their dressing room thirty minutes before the curtain is set to rise.

The challenge here is that the systems are easy to see and easy to tweak and easy to play with. They can be measured and reported on. So, you can find lots of advice on how to deal with systems.

Figuring out where to push or nudge to make the magic a bit more likely does not yield to systematic attack. Experience and a willingness to reflect on that experience can work over time. So can frank conversations with fellow travelers. There are fellow travelers out there. Your first step is to go look for them and strike up those conversations.

Beyond productivity; seeking effectiveness

Over the last several years I’ve been noodling on what author Steve Johnson would describe as a “slow hunch.” As someone who has done knowledge work and managed knowledge workers, I’ve been trying to understand what it means to set aside productivity and pursue effectiveness instead. I’m planning on taking the next several weeks to take a deeper look at that hunch.

There’s no lack of commentary about productivity. It’s relatively easy to do but I’ve come to believe that it is anchored in a mistaken focus on the word worker at the expense of the word knowledge.

Here’s a simple example. I use a program called TextExpander on my Mac (if you’re on Windows, ActiveWords would be the equivalent). These programs let you create shortcuts for frequently used words or phrases. Their sales pitch is typically anchored in productivity thinking. Every week I get a little message from the program congratulating me on the time I have saved by using their shortcuts instead of typing out a phrase in full. The premise is that I am a machine for cranking out words and the faster I crank the better.

I don’t care how fast I type; I care about how well I think. Things that slow down my thinking are a problem worth attacking. I can never remember how to spell the word “individual.” Trying to work that out breaks my concentration and flow. I can remember to type “indv” however and let a piece of software worry about my spelling. TextExpander happily informs me of the seconds I have saved by not having to type those extra six characters. It cannot track or understand how it contributes to my state of flow when I’m trying to create. That’s the difference between productivity and effectiveness at a micro level.

It’s time to bring some sustained focus to this slow hunch that productivity and effectiveness are different. Feedback on whether I am making any sense will help.