Overwhelmed

12/20/15 • 3 min read

This post was originally posted on December 21, 2015 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.

Four.

As Advent comes to a close, I’m still working on my Advent Resolution of preparing for 2016. In fact, last Friday, in the post-Star Wars euphoria, I took a day off and sat down to put in writing all the ideas and plans that I’d been working on.

I quickly became completely overwhelmed.

I started by grouping my goals into four categories… fitness, family, professional and household. And then started trying to figure out how to make all these things happen. But the list of things I want to change are long and two things happened:

1. I got discouraged: How am I ever going to do all these things next year?
2. I got depressed: I have to change all these things to feel like I’ve accomplished anything.

And planning and preparation came to an abrupt halt. Friday night though, I came to a conclusion: I really love my life and I don’t have to change anything. But I want to be healthier, more organized and more connected to my family. I can’t make all these things happen at one time. They have to happen gradually as part of a lifestyle change.

I tackled my list with renewed energy. I tried to prioritize items as I grouped and I noticed a pattern: Every category had a foundation.

For the fitness and health, the foundation goal is walking at lunch. When I walk at lunch, I eat better and feel better, and I’m more likely to work out more and log my food in Lose It. All my other goals start to fall in line if I make time to walk around downtown Columbia at lunch.

For my family, it’s eating dinner at home as a family around the dinner table. With our busy schedules, it’s too easy to eat out. Things just run better when we eat at home and get all five of us around the dinner table.

For professional improvement, it’s the blog. When I’m posting regularly, I’m more creative and energetic. Writing about design and creativity typically sparks ideas and projects.

And for household, it’s sitting down with my wife to plan the week, figuring out meals and schedules for the week ahead. Life’s a lot easier when we are on the same page.

As I started to structure my goals, it became clear that if I do those four things, lots of good things tend to follow. I’m going to add a few more things like using my phone less and some specific long term fitness goals. But I’m starting with my four foundation goals.

And I’ll build from there.

What I loved about Star Wars: The Force Awakens

12/17/15 • 2 min read

This post was originally posted on December 18, 2015 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.

I saw Star Wars: The Force Awakens on opening night and completely loved it. J.J. Abrams did an amazing job capturing the spirit of the original and building an awesome new environment for the future of the franchise.

It’s not a perfect movie, but it is amazingly fun and I enjoyed every minute of it. If you haven’t seen it and are even remotely a Star Wars fan, go and see it.*

You can find spoiler-free reviews all over the internet. I’m not going to do a review or spoil any plot points, but I want to talk about the things I really loved in the new movie.

• Rey. I have daughters. And I couldn’t be happier that Rey is a strong, independent and awesome character in the Star Wars universe. The original trilogy didn’t have any strong women outside of Leia. I can’t wait to see what my daughters think of Rey.
• Droids. BB-8 steals the show. Seriously great. And great moments from C-3PO and R2-D2, too. Funny and comical in the same way that they were in the original trilogy. Not obnoxious and slap-stick like the prequels.
• Spoiler Free. I went into the movie completely spoiler free. I hadn’t read reviews or online spoilers. I watched the trailers, but that was it. I didn’t have any idea what was coming next. And it was perfect.
• Mystery. Lots of mysteries are revealed, but even more are teased and not answered. Plenty to reveal in the next two movies.
• Production Design. The movie looks incredible. It’s a perfect visual extension of the original trilogy. The ships are great. The planets look amazing. And the whole thing looks like Star Wars.

I’m going to see it again tonight with my wife and will probably have more thoughts. But as a Star Wars fan, I’m happy. Thanks, J.J.

* And see it now, before the movie is spoiled for you.

Speeding along

12/13/15 • 2 min read

This post was originally posted on December 14, 2015 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.

Three candles.

Advent is speeding by and my preparations for the new year are moving forward. But I feel like I’m running out of time to prepare for 2016.

I tried this week to limit my phone use and honestly really struggled. I made a couple of simple changes that I hope will help. I turned off virtually all notifications to limit the “pull” of the phone. And I reordered my apps so that only the necessary apps — like banking, calendar and to-do list — are on the home page. Social media apps like Twitter and Facebook are now on page two so hopefully I won’t get sucked into other apps on my phone when I just need to check and appointment time.

This week, I’m going to think about health and fitness. My biggest challenge is our crazy family schedule. We eat out too much and don’t always make time to work out. I’ve got some ideas for how to plan a little better and work out more consistently. I’m hoping to hammer out details this week.

I bought a Fitbit Charge recently and I’m tracking my activity. I’m going to start using Lose It for food tracking again. Personally, I find that having those data points help me be healthier.

Solving problems... in the future

12/11/15 • 2 min read

This post was originally posted on December 11, 2015 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.

Today at work, I mentioned that I had participated in a Future Problem Solving competition and, much to my shock, someone else on my team not only knew what it was, but had also participated in one as well.

When I was in junior high, we lived in Illinois and the Future Problem Solvers Bowl was an after school program where we worked with teams to examine scenarios and work through a problem solving process. We went to regional and statewide competitions where we were presented with a scenario and had to work through the process to develop a solution and then present our conclusion.

When we moved to South Carolina, there wasn’t a Future Problem Solvers Bowl in the state. But in retrospect, I still use many of the tactics that I learned every day.

The Future Problem Solving Process is:

1. Identify challenges
2. Select an underlying problem
3. Produce solution ideas
4. Generate criteria to judge solutions
5. Evaluate solutions with criteria
6. Develop an action plan

It’s basically the foundation of a good design process. And in competition, you learn to apply the process quickly, under pressure, with a team and then present your findings.

I hadn’t thought about Future Problem Solving in years, but in retrospect, I can’t imagine a better foundation for my design career.

Bob Wertz is a creative director, type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina. His blogging journey started in 2008 with a Squarespace hosted blog.

Stars on the beach: A moment of focus

12/5/15 • 3 min read

This post was originally posted on December 6, 2015 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.

Two candles.

My wife and I took a trip to Hilton Head a few weeks ago. We got to the resort late, but decided to take a stroll around and check it out anyway. We walked out to the beach.

It was pitch black.

A clear and moonless night. We could barely find our way down the path. (Hilton Head significantly restricts night lighting to protect sea turtles.) We stumbled down the path with our pitifully inadequate iPhone “flashlights.”

We reached the beach and turned our flashlights off. Looking out over the Atlantic Ocean, the stars were brighter than I’ve ever seen in my life. Stunningly beautiful. It was remarkable how much more vibrant the stars were without the distraction of the light from the ground or moonlight.

But as beautiful as the stars were, you couldn’t do anything else but enjoy the night sky. You could hear the waves, but couldn’t see the water. It would have been very challenging to find our way back to the resort without our iPhone flashlights. We almost fell a couple of times looking for the path back.

Focus.

As I reflect on my Advent Resolution, “focus” keeps coming up. How do I focus on the important things and cut back on the distractions? But it’s not as easy as that.

Just like on the beach. When you hit that moment of maximum focus… When you are completely locked in on the stars in front of you… You can’t easily do the other things in life that you need to do.

So while I have goals and objectives for 2016, I’ve got to figure out how to focus without losing sight of the other important things in my life.

I need to figure out how to focus, while still maintaining balance. I think one of the easiest ways to find focus is to minimize the main cause of distraction in my life: My iPhone.

I’m going to experiment with a couple of different things this week:

1. Changing how and when I use my phone. I’m going to try to minimize my phone use during the day in attempt to focus on the task at hand. That means that I’ll be on social media a lot less, which I also think is a good thing.
2. Set time to handle emails and administrative tasks. I’m going to try and block some time in the morning, after lunch and at the end of the day for email. And ignore it for the rest of the day. My hope is that I’ll be more focused and effective at the task at hand. We’ll see how it goes. All notifications are off.
3. No phone use when the kids are around. I want to have time to focus on spending time with them. No Twitter, no Facebook, no random games, no surfing. The only exceptions I’ll make is for things like entering food items into Lose It, taking a picture or adding something to the shopping list. I tried this the other night and it worked well, but I can’t tell you how many times I reached for the phone.

My hope is that these things will allow me to focus on the task in front of me and enjoy the moment of focus. I’ll try it this week and see if it’s something I want to adopt for 2016.

I’m writing about my Advent Resolution. Read the background here.

I finally found a travel mug that I like

12/4/15 • 2 min read

This post was originally posted on December 5, 2015 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.

This summer, I got an electric kettle for my birthday and I’m really getting into making tea and french press coffee. I started grinding beans and making coffee in the morning. I love the smell and process of making french press coffee and can’t believe it took me this long to discover it.

My newfound love of coffee at home had a limitation, though. I could never find a travel mug that I like. I always preferred the old school ceramic coffee mug and no travel mug felt like that.

I had a couple of stainless steel mugs, but I didn’t love them. I tried the Tervis tumbler style mugs, but I didn’t like them either. I was looking for a mug that was a little more substantial and didn’t have a plastic lid.

A few weeks ago, I was in Starbucks and noticed a ceramic travel mug. I hadn’t seen a mug quite like it and bought one. It didn’t take me long to figure out that it was exactly what I was looking for so I bought a second one, too.

The Starbucks Double Wall Traveler is a fully ceramic travel mug. Even the lid is ceramic. The lid has a silicone seal to keep the coffee from spilling. It’s heavier than most travel mugs and fits perfectly in my car cup holders. There’s a little rubber circle on the bottom to keep it from sliding around.

There are tradeoffs. It only holds 12 oz. of coffee (but it looks bigger than that). You can’t microwave it and they recommend washing by hand. But none of those issues are a problem for me.

The designs that I bought aren’t available online right now, although the Navy one is similar to the first one I purchased. Starbucks seems to continuously add and retire designs. There are a couple of nice designs in the store right now that weren’t available a couple of months ago.

If you are looking to give a gift this holiday season for a coffee-loving loved one, these mugs might be a cool gift.