wponthego – The Dangling Pointer

Focus & The Non-Permanence of Pencils

On February 7, 2017

I’ve been trying to brainstorm ideas on paper lately before committing to an approach on how to solve a problem. For some reason I wasn’t getting a ton of satisfaction switching back to pen & paper – it wasn’t helping my focus. Then I realized something from my days in school. I used to prefer pencil over pen because of the feel of the graphite on the paper and the non-permanence it implies.

The biggest obstacle I have to starting something is my brain trying to understand an entire solution before I’ve started it. Brainstorming like this should be helping me with incrementally breaking down a problem into pieces and finding out what I don’t know. For some reason the permanence of ink makes me feel like I need to put more thought into things before writing them down. That defeats the point of brainstorming!

So for me, I’m back to a pencil.

Experience Life as a Beginner

By Aaron Douglas

On February 3, 2017

In Uncategorized

I’m nearly four years into my challenge of hacking my brain to be successful at working remote with Attention Deficit Disorder. I’ve struggled with trying to understand my behaviors and challenge myself to change incrementely over time. There’s one repeated concept that always comes up in my practice – my past experiences both help and hinder my progress. The key is being able to experience life as a beginner.

Beginners have a great platform to learn knew things. First off they realize they have a set of things they need and want to learn. There is motivation to better yourself and usually a fairly well defined place to gain the knowledge from. Beginners have (or will quickly) admit they don’t have all the answers. Those of us with experience trying to learn new things may think we understand things well enough. We’re not open to seeing things as a whole.

So my challenge to myself is to start seeing things as a beginner. Challenging assumptions I have will make me more open to learn new things and become more effective at working and living.

Here’s to starting off with a less full cup! 🙂

Apparently I ❤ Swag

By Aaron Douglas

On January 13, 2017

In Uncategorized

Sonic Energy

By Aaron Douglas

On January 10, 2016

In Uncategorized

I love that you can add energy to anything at Sonic. I am feeling a bit run down today – still have a cold – so I juiced up a Cherry Limeaid with Energy!