Show and Tell (And Thoughts About Efficiency)

[Janice in NJ]

I read Joan's post. Efficiency is one of the things I struggle with. I like it. I get charged up when I find ways to do things better and faster. Gosh I feel so validated.

 

But there is something missing. Nuance is lost. Shaved off in favor of something else. And yes, I must admit that very often those nuances can be the difference between ho-hum and something great. Which begs the question, "Has efficiency caused a decrease in productivity?"

 

Dog starts chasing its tail. The paralysis of analysis.

 

Ds - perfect example. Among other things, this boy reads slowly. (Drives me bonkers! Over the top bonkers! I can actually feel my skin crawl when we are arguing about this!) "You've only read eight pages in the past twenty minutes. HURRY UP! You HAVE to hurry up!" Inside the mothering discussion starts swirling, "Is pushing him the right thing to do? (Not really) But yes, it is. (Oh, come on. So he reads slowly. Who cares?) I do. He has to learn to focus and read faster. It's going to trip him up in the long run. He needs to work at it. (Maybe, but you shouldn't make him feel bad. He's not being naughty. Just slow.) But, slow is a problem. Isn't it my job to help him to improve on things he should improve on? And maybe he is being naughty. (No he's not.) Shut up! I told him to focus. And he's not listening to me. So that's wrong. Right? (Silence.) Both of me feel wrong." Can you see me circling through this ridiculous argument with myself. Yuck! Hate this! After all, no one wins here. Ever!

 

Honestly? His mind wanders. Terribly. He's bored. And so he stares at the page while his mind ping-pongs around to 8 zillion different places. "Oh. The page. Where was I? What?" Read. Read. Read. Oops....gone again!

 

I asked him once, "What's your favorite thing about playing the pipe organ?" His answer, "I'm focused. My mind doesn't wander. It feels so good to be entirely focused."

 

So is the boy efficient? No. Not really. At least not generally. But he does some things well.

 

There is a mechanical blanket that I feel when I'm efficient. It makes me feel valuable. I don't think this boy is burdened by that same blanket.

=================

The lad is playing this piece for the postlude in church on Sunday. Here are the notes his teacher included in the bulletin:

 

Dieterich Buxtehude! In 1705, Johann Sebasan Bach walked 250 miles to sit at the feet of this master of the North German organ school, for many years musician at the famed Marienkirche in Lubeck. (Staying three months, Bach was in a bit of trouble when he returned home!) In 1703, Handel also made the trip. He was most likely being considered as a replacement for the retiring Buxtehude but, in the end, was not interested in the part of the job description that included marriage to Buxtehude’s supposedly less than attractive daughter! A great composer of vocal and organ music, Buxtehude’s Abendmusik concerts were legendary and his contribuon to the genre of organ music continues to be felt. The prelude this morning is a passacaglia, a set of variations occurring over a recurring pedal theme. The postlude, Praeludia, is one of the great examples of a musical form for which the composer was especially famous. It consists of various free sections interspersed with fugal sections which use a variety of colors of the organ. David Higgs once described the final fugue as the “Ha Ha Fugue” …listen closely to the pedal line.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txFdGds5av4&feature=youtu.be

 

Peace,

Janice

 

Enjoy your little people

Enjoy your journey

Edited November 10, 2012 by Janice in NJ

[Sunshine State Sue]

There is a mechanical blanket that I feel when I'm efficient. It makes me feel valuable. I don't think this boy is burdened by that same blanket.

 

Janice,

 

I'm not sure I understand everything you are saying even though I consider myself to be the queen of efficiency. I even have a degree in Operations Research, which is all things efficiency. I do know the 2 males in my household could care less about it.

 

I feel that part of my job as a parent/teacher is to help my child to identify his strengths and to give him every possible opportunity I can to develop his strengths. Another part of my job is to identify my child's weaknesses and work with him (or get someone else to work with him) on improving those weaknesses so they will not hold him back from whatever it is he might like to do with his life. It looks to me as if you are doing the same.

 

I love having a complex problem at work that I can focus on with tunnel vision especially if it's quiet in the house. The grey matter doesn't get to fire on all cylinders all that often anymore. I practice yoga at the YMCA and some of the teachers are so slow and methodical that my mind is barely there. I see the value of sticking it out because I'm sure I'd be a crippled old lady if I abandoned it. I hope my ds will eventually see the value of sticking with the boring, tedious aspects of life for the long-term benefits. But, ya never know...

 

Loved the organ piece. It amazes me how he can make his hands and feet move in all different directions for a purpose.

[Joan in GE]

I've never seen the feet of someone playing the organ - what a feat! It must take a certain gift to multitask like that....Does he dream about playing the organ? Thanks for sharing....

[Janice in NJ]

 

 

I feel that part of my job as a parent/teacher is to help my child to identify his strengths and to give him every possible opportunity I can to develop his strengths. Another part of my job is to identify my child's weaknesses and work with him (or get someone else to work with him) on improving those weaknesses so they will not hold him back from whatever it is he might like to do with his life. It looks to me as if you are doing the same.

 

 

I hear you, Sue. Yes, I think we are doing the same thing. I am trying to help him improve where he can.

 

I just get frustrated when I give my kids the impression that inefficiency is somehow connected to a moral failure. Rather than an attribute of a process, efficiency becomes one of the moral aspects of a process. Efficient = good. Inefficient = bad.

 

If you are lazy, chances are that you are inefficient.

Inverse?

If you are inefficient, chances are that you are lazy.

 

Umm... an inverse is never guaranteed to be true. And in this case, I have found that this one is only true sometimes.

 

Sigh. That's the thing I struggle with.

 

Peace,

Janice

[Sunshine State Sue]

I just get frustrated when I give my kids the impression that inefficiency is somehow connected to a moral failure.

Ah. I totally understand that. Ds is on his way to a B in Biology at CC this semester. He could make it an A if he <god forbid> interacted with another living being connected to the class (ex. teacher, tutoring center). While I am totally fine with a B (I got one myself in HS Biology - a class I detested), I am not fine with him thinking that he's doing the best he can because he's not. OTOH, this is no moral failure. It's just that he's not particularly interested in the topic and he's not willing to put forth any more effort than he's willing to put forth. Human nature most likely. I know I see that in myself.

 

And, as dh reminds me often enough, I ought to praise for taking CC Biology rather than be disappointed in the B.

[regentrude]

I just get frustrated when I give my kids the impression that inefficiency is somehow connected to a moral failure. Rather than an attribute of a process, efficiency becomes one of the moral aspects of a process. Efficient = good. Inefficient = bad.

If you are lazy, chances are that you are inefficient.

Inverse?

If you are inefficient, chances are that you are lazy.

Umm... an inverse is never guaranteed to be true. And in this case, I have found that this one is only true sometimes.

 

This makes perfect sense to me - because I notice that I judge myself very much for my use of time. I feel somehow that to justify my worth, I need to be engaged in productive pursuits, and being idle and wasting time makes me feel very bad. When I say productive pursuits, I do not just mean work; I consider anything that stretches my mind or deepens my spirituality or cultivates relationships with people to be "productive" - so reading a book, seeing a theatre performance, walking in nature, calling my mom, helping a friend all count. (Funnily: reading here on the High School board and having a productive specifc discussion counts; reading on the General Board and chiming in about hostess gifts and cleaners does not and feels as bad as watching TV.)

For several years, attending our weekly homeschool group made me deeply unhappy: we meet once a week for the kids to hang out for 3-4 hours, and I always felt that sitting there was not something I could afford and felt terribly guilty. I started by bringing work, but grading papers on a noisy skating rink or in a windy park simply does not work. I think it took me three years to reconcile with the idea that i did not have to feel guity about sitting there and just chatting with the other mothers (with whom I was not close or felt that I had much in common). Pathetic, isn't it?

Edited November 10, 2012 by regentrude

[Joan in GE]

Pathetic, isn't it?

 

No, I don't think so....You come from a country where there were enormous changes and who knows what it has taken to adapt to the US...I was wondering how old you were when the Wall fell (realizing that could be too personal) and if you were raised with a sense of efficiency in your family? or it's something that has become part of you in all your adjustments?

 

I remember long lines just to wait for a simple ice cream cone on a visit to Moscow in 1989.....so my guess is that efficiency was probably not so common in the East....

 

I think my time awareness came from my father....

 

Joan

[regentrude]

You come from a country where there were enormous changes and who knows what it has taken to adapt to the US...I was wondering how old you were when the Wall fell (realizing that could be too personal) and if you were raised with a sense of efficiency in your family? or it's something that has become part of you in all your adjustments?

I remember long lines just to wait for a simple ice cream cone on a visit to Moscow in 1989.....so my guess is that efficiency was probably not so common in the East....

 

I was 21 years old when the Wall fell. The political system caused an extremely inefficient economy: you'd go shopping twice every day to see what they might have in the store, line up at 7am on Thursdays at the butcher shop to get a good cut of meat for the weekend, stand for two hours in line at the produce store to get a pound of strawberries. Everything took waiting, begging, organizing. You ordered a car and waited for 13 years for it to be delivered (no, I am not kidding). Also, technology was far behind the US: we had coal stoves, you'd carry buckets of coal up and buckets of ash down several flights of stairs to heat your rooms and make hot water for baths. I remember my mom boiling cloth diapers in a pot on the stove.

 

OTOH, my family were efficient. They had to, because organizing the daily life took such a huge amount of time and effort (and, btw, almost all women under 60 worked). My parents got things done. During the war, my Grandma had to evacuate her family and flee across Germany multiple times alone with three children. She ran our household, was 72 when I was born and pretty much rasied me the first years while my mother was working in another city and only was home every few weeks (she only stopped working for a few years when my mentally disabled brother was born).

My other grandmother was widowed in the war, raised my father alone and ran a business and later started working from home. She worked until she was 85 years old.

So, in our family, you got things done. I was no exception. I went to school, graduated, submitted my PhD thesis at age 25. My sister became pregnant in highschool and went to college and medical school as single mother of a child with cerebral palsy.

 

Coming to the US was no adjustment at all in this respect (it was in a lot of other areas), so I can not blame my attitude on the changes. If anything, I can attribute it to family culture.

Edited November 10, 2012 by regentrude

[Joan in GE]

Janice - my first post in this thread was made as I was about to go out the door....

 

I confess that I couldn't quite figure out why you would start a second thread about efficiency and decided that it must be to do as you said in the title - show your son playing the organ....thus my response about his playing.

 

I wasn't being facetious when asking if he dreamed about playing ... Watching him reminded me of the dreams I've had about 'jumping waves' after being in the ocean....and having to focus on your hands and feet seems like it would take a lot of skill/ ability and might give dreams about it..

 

I get charged up when I find ways to do things better and faster. Gosh I feel so validated.

 

I can quite relate... But in the last year...I started to wonder about those feelings - thus the thread after coming across the book...

 

I'm having trouble having 'two' conversations about efficiency though...

 

I was 21 years old when the Wall fell. The political system caused an extremely inefficient economy:

 

regentrude - I find your answer sheds so much light on your previous posts about this...but I want people who are following the other thread to see too....so - I hope I don't get in trouble for this :001_unsure: - I've answered your post on the other thread....

 

Joan