What do you choose to do with your time?

Who do you say “yes” to and then realise you have said “no” to someone else?

My choice is to have one Blog, therefore my thoughts and comments will be here at www.dyanburgess.com

May you continue to enjoy.

With so many storage platforms now digital, the need for paperwork has become almost unnecessary and old CDs and DVDs no longer need to be filling up the shelves.

Kids’ artwork can be captured and stories can be shared easily amongst family and friends instead of sitting in a cupboard never looked at.

Having said this, it was funny pulling out some albums that had been put together 10 years ago with thoughts and memories of our experiences at the time.

These were a real treasure to read about the simple things that we were doing as well as remembering some of the experiences that we have had.

What is your story from 10 years ago?

Did it change the direction you were heading or reinforce where you were going?

I certainly would not change any decisions that I have had over the last 10 years.

What would you do?

There is a list of our top 11 sites (in no particular order):
1. Queensland Writer’s Centre
2. QUT Cube
3. State Library of Queensland
4. NIDA
5. QPAC
6. Brisbane Arts Theatre
7. BrisBricks
8. Sciencecentre
9. Queensland Museum
10. Powerhouse
11. ChildWrites

We found out the hard way that you miss out the best events if you are not on the mailing lists for each of these sites!!

What do you do to challenge your kids?

What activities can be done for no or low cost?

We pulled out one of our favourite books last week, Palour Games for Modern Families (https://www.amazon.com/Parlour-Games-Modern-Families-Myfanwy/dp/1846143470) by Myfanway Jones and Spiri Tsintziras.

What a laugh!! You know that laughing where your sides hurt and tears stream down your cheeks … That was the laughing you could hear in our house.

When was the last time you laughed so hard it hurt?

My sketch note gives a bit of a summary of it all, however it was really inspiring hearing the stories of each presenter.

The presenters were:
Dr. Kirsten Baulch www.medimobile.com.au
Mary Jane Bellotti https://www.linkedin.com/in/mjbellotti
Monica Bradley www.purposefulcapital.com
Kristine Carlson www.kristinecarlson.com
Megan Houghton www.citysmart.com.au
Sonia McDonald www.leadershiphq.com.au
Kim Serafini www.mindpt.com https://serafinimindspa.iamgr8ful.com/
Annette Sym https://www.symplytoogood.com.au/

Each had very different paths that took them from the initial idea to a much bigger reality.

The main focus of the talks was around innovation and how the use of innovation has assisted with providing better outcomes for the customers. Which leads to better outcomes for the business.

Innovation needs to make life easier. Sometimes the simplest things can be the hardest to see in today’s fast paced world.

What is your simple innovation that changes the pace of your world?

Also to incorporate the words in these readers to align with the Out and About App and Guildelines for the first 100 sight words.

We are thrilled to announce that these are now available on Amazon or for direct purchase from us.

We tested these on Prep students and they were thrilled with the stories. Coincidentally, one of the children had broken an arm recently, so the children became more aware of the time that would be needed to heal and how to take care of their friend.

What are some of the stories you can share to help your children understand their world?

It seems that with the ability to take digital photos, we take so many that we do not take the time to print these up as an album for people to look at, enjoy and retell the stories of those moments.

A couple of tricks that we use are as follows:
1. Matthew (Dad) is the key collector of funny quotes from the kids. This involves emailing them to a me with the key words “GIRL’S QUOTE” in the subject so I can easily locate, and;
2. My job is to put together an album of the images and quotes of each in our family members for their birthday.

It is very interesting to watch the girls open these albums. There is clearly a mix of emotions when they receive it.

They love to look back on what has been done and also there are many giggles with the quotes that they have come up with and their general observations of the world.

It is also great to see them pulling the albums out, time and again, and looking back through them and asking to be retold the stories of the adventures that they have had on the pages in the book. Asking details like, “What happened to that dress? Why don’t I have it anymore?” Or trying to work out who is who in some of the photos, seeing our four girls look very similar.

How do you collect and share your memories and take the time to enjoy these moments?

We have been testing a number of checklists and processes of late to see where we can minimise errors when working with other contractors or trying to meet time turnarounds.

There can be no underestimating the saying ‘measure twice and cut once’.

This also makes me think on what I would call ‘editor’s block'.  By this, I mean that if you continually look at the same document or manuscript over and over again, eventually you can no longer see the errors and you need to step away from it and have someone else read it.

Another option to assist with breaking up this sort of editor’s block is to read a manuscript back to front, to deliberately make your written words out of context. This is a great tool to pick up errors within individual paragraphs.

I was taught this trick by a lawyer.  As you can imagine, most of their days would be reading line upon line of documents and mistakes could be the difference between a document being valid or invalid.  There is high incentive to do things right.

The Checklist Manifesto encourages you to keep looking at what you are doing. What are your processes and systems? Are you always aiming to improve, these systems and processes? To minimise simple errors and to be able to focus on finishing a project in a timely, and cost effective manner.

In book publishing, the aim is to have our books in print, to be shared with others.

Sometimes I think we can forget the end goal, publishing the book. We need to have clear and concise systems and processes so we cannot become caught up in them.

We want to bring the story to life to share with others.

Keep your eye on the end goal. Refine your systems and processes.

Of late, there seems to be a lot of ‘whiteboard videos' to suggest the hand drawn feeling.  As a sketch noter, I do find these a little too mechanical and computer generated.

My timelapse of a sketch note that I did recently about my new businesses called The Story Curator is here.  Feedback from the husband was ‘I felt a little seasick, it is too waddly… what is the actual purpose of this'.

We don't always need a purpose.

Enjoy, with no purpose…