Wall Planners & Financial Year Diaries!

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, dear Reader, but it's time to start planning! Whether just for yourself, your family, your workmates, your accountant, or for whomever, a plan has always made a big difference and remains more relevant than ever. A brief look back at some lessons and examples of planning has shown me that most of what I've ever been exposed to on the theme of Planning is kind of inadequate.

Let's start at the start. As with most life lessons containing a moral, planning has been addressed in the canon of Aesop's fables. The Ant & The Grasshopper is worthy of most primary school classrooms but strikes me as completely deficient in 21st century relevance. There is an ascetic Ant who spends all his Summer days storing food, even though it's really hot and unpleasant to haul grain from A to B all day long, while a self-indulgent Grasshopper takes it easy, enjoys the shade and lives high on the hog for half the year. Inevitably, of course, Winter rolls round and the Grasshopper ends up more or less starving while the Ant and his brethren enjoy the spoils of their summer toils.

I need to check myself here. Aesop wrote this circa 600BC when work was probably about as simple as storing grain, so I'm sure it would have been a box office smash in Ancient Greece. But nowadays, it just doesn't apply. This is not the fine juggling act of options, decisions, people and tasks that we now call planning, it's more like a single choice played out day after day.

So if Aesop fails us, to where do we turn? If you're like me, when you're in a bind you will Do What Cook Would Do! Captain James Cook, of course. History's greatest Navigator and Discoverer, whose ambition took him 'not only farther than any other man has been before me, but as far as I think it possible for man to go.'

Cook was the last Hero of the Age of Discovery. Indeed, his efforts brought that era to a close, along with the rise of the industrial revolution. As brave as Cook was, ever stoical in the face of disaster, and as smart and ahead of his time as he was, he wasn't really a planner extraordinaire. In fact, the best back up he had when losing track of his second ship was to write a message in a bottle, bury it under a tree and carve into the trunk 'Dig Here' before sailing on. This isn't James's fault, of course...what else could he do?

Cook does provide one lesson about planning that applies to us today. He is often lauded as a great polymath because his journals reveal all kinds of insights on botany, geography, ethnography, people management, resource management, political science and philosophy. Cook was none of this and even if he was, nobody in their right mind would take this approach these days. Dilettante now has a negative connotation because the amount of knowledge required in any one role these days is so overwhelmingly large that if you try to cover 3 or 4 bases you'll inevitably be found wanting in all of them. We are in an age of specialisation that requires many people coming together across many facets of a task and each doing a relatively small part expertly. Quality over quantity indeed!

So here we stand. Aesop has let us down simply because he dealt with a time that was far too simple and completely lacked the complexity we now confront every day. Cook even lets us down because, well, it was the Age of Discovery and there was a complete lack of information on which to base a plan and technology with which to implement it. Neither of these conditions exist nowadays, so how do we plan many people coming together across broad and multiple projects with expertise rather than plain old amateur enthusiasm?

I find the answer in a science fiction novel (here's hoping the boss doesn't read how we do things...) by Theodore Sturgeon from 1953 - More Than Human. The novel runs in Sturgeon's methodical, pseudo-macabre style and presents the idea of Homo Gestalt. Six extraordinary people with really strange, unique traits and abilities blend together to act as one organism, becoming this great gestalt consciousness. Sturgeon presents this as the next stage of human evolution but I see it as the ideal way to plan tasks in the 21st century!

Now we're not yet up to literally blending multiple minds into one but with work these days, we have so many specialised tasks each contributing to such a large, overwhelming edifice that it would kind of be ideal! Failing Homo Gestalt, we can actually kind of get close with planning, right? Sturgeon's creation develops ridiculous powers and abilities because all minds are as one and all talents can be directed via the one channel...to me, Homo Gestalt is little more than a well maintained Wall Planner!

As there are many facets to any task there are many facets to any plan. Individuals need to diarise tasks and run their own schedules but without that central gestalt consciousness, you'll end up with 5 one fifths of Captain James Cook rather than 5 experts. The difference is the well planned broader scheme, the context for work and effort, the common grey matter that those efforts are channeled through. If we think of consciousness as nothing more than the state of being aware, then Wall Planners, Team Planners and big, obvious, readily available business plans become your gestalt consciousness - a single conductor that waves its baton for your orchestra of specialists!

So do it now! Get planning! You can grab your 18 Month 2013 Moleskine Diary now and you will enjoy a Winter in Ancient Greece flush with grain. Or you can grab your Financial Year Diary for yourself and some Notice Life Wall Planners for your team, leave Ancient Greece behind, forget about getting lost in the pacific and touch the next stage of human evolution, vis-a-vis the 9 to 5.

NEW Lamy Safari Apple Green

The newest Lamy Fountain Pen, the Lamy Safari Apple Green, has just arrived and is looking very, well, Australian...it's almost the ideal Granny Smith colour and bright enough to help me ignore the slow descent into the colder winter months. In other words, a welcome addition! Every time the Lamy Safari is brought to my mind I like to go back to my own, write a few pages and appreciate how really amazing this pen is. I'm talking here about the Safari Fountain Pen. The Safari Rollerball is really great, an excellent rollerball ink, and i still place the Safari Ballpoint in my top 5 ballpoint push buttons of all times, but the fountain is where this pen struts its most self-assured stride.




Coincidentally, I was reading recently about the Argentine Tango, of all things, and I can't help but see a parallel...well, it might actually be a tangent...between this most famous of dances and my experience with this most reliable of pens. Not the pen itself so much, but how it and I have gotten along over the years.




Unsurprisingly, I guess, there haven't always been Milongas (Argentine Dance Halls) filled with the romance of pairs of dancing lovers. The tango grew up in the harsh suburbs of Buenos Aires around the end of the 19th century and it has a fairly dark story. I'm no expert but it traces its roots back to the indolence of unemployed Argentines (as well as Hungarians, Italians and plenty of other frustrated men) who saw the city as their route to economic independence only to be disappointed upon arrival. To fill their days, I suppose, these men would get into scrapes which quickly became knife fights which then evolved (probably after somebody pointed out how much better a knife fight would be if there were a) no knives and b) no fighting) into the Tango.




It satisfied a lot of needs. The days were filled with something to do, nobody was getting hurt anymore but there was still this intense undercurrent of belligerence between two men fighting (in quadruple time) for supremacy, an alpha-male need for dominance being gratified. For a long time, the dance was only done between men and even after women had been introduced, men still danced on their own for a long time trying to perfect their steps. What i like here is that something that started out as unmitigated hostility was turned into what we now recognise as possibly the West's greatest monument to passion and romance. From something difficult was born this great love affair.




This evolution is a big part of the creative process. One example brought to my mind recently was of Nick Cave writing his books with pen and paper. His reason being that writing with a pen helps, or rather makes, you appreciate the value of words. With word processing, you can delete whole swaths of text in a single stroke, cheapening the meaning of each word therein. If you're writing, the process is often slower and more difficult but the very closeness of what you are doing takes you deeper into the task, each part now subject to more thoughtful scrutiny. From something difficult is born a more profound engagement to the task at hand.




And this evolution is also a nice way to explain my relationship with the Lamy Safari. I'm Australian. I used a ballpoint pen, and only a ballpoint pen, right through school and by the time i first encountered a fountain pen I had over 13 years of ballpoint habits to break. This ballpoint technique of writing, the pen nearly vertical, hard downward pressure as you move the pen over your paper, is a terrible way to approach a fountain pen. Fountain pens have a continuous flow of liquid ink just dying to get out of your pen so you don't need any downward pressure. To make matters worse, positioning the pen vertically is just killing your wrist and hand, those little muscles under constant strain.




And so here is the hostility stage of my fountain pen relationship. I really didn't see the appeal, it was too difficult. Soon enough though, this stage evolved, after somebody pointed out that I should trust the pen's design, into a great love affair. The Safari has these neat little rest points on the grip section (we've done a full Lamy Safari Review you should read for more) and if you just let the pen lead, all of a sudden there's no strain on your hands and the pen is angled beautifully towards your paper. The Lamy nib is also cut to allow optimum flow of ink at this angle...two left feet to a pro, just like that!




After a little practice of writing with 'proper' technique, I found myself really getting into the romance of fountain pen writing. There's something so expressive in a medium-nib line, each character a personality of its own, dark and shaded here, lighter and more nimble there. You can look over the page and get a reflection of the writer, whether it was scribbled in the fervent haste of a creative burst or whether it came more methodically, perhaps with some deeper understanding. You can look over the page and see, rather than a bleak wintery pale-blue, a vibrant green, yellow, pink or blues that recall to mind the sky at sunrise or the wine-dark sea after sunset. As a comparison, I can come back and read what I've typed above here and have absolutely no idea if it took 5 or 50 minutes, if the first paragraph flowed naturally or was revised 10 times. This is really why I love the Lamy Safari fountain pen. It has the potential to take any task at hand, even if as unappealing as something tantamount to a knife fight, and imbue it with the potential for romance, a freedom of expression that lets a stationery fan like myself see any piece of paper as a Milonga Perfecto.

Defy Bags & Craftsmanship

The video above from Defy Bags actually encapsulates a lot of the story of manufacturing, and as such, of society, over the last few decades...it's quite interesting (you can watch a nice big version here if you like).

Defy bags was founded by Chris Tag. Chris makes every bag, from start to finish, in Chicago and openly admits that a seed for craftsmanship was planted in his personality during childhood, watching his father and grandfather coming home from work at the General Motors factory in Dayton, Ohio. This was a time when American industry was unrivalled in its power. The American mainland escaped World War II relatively unscathed and so they found themselves, in that most o-matic of decades, the 50s (you know, cut-o-matic, slice-o-matic, grill-o-matic appliances), with a lot of hands, a lot of money and a lot of resources. One of the great industrial booms in recorded history followed as factory after factory was opened, staffed and producing goods, goods, goods!



 For a lot of people, though, the boom wasn't so sweet. As things progressed, all of these amazing machines, inventions and automated processes were being developed and a lot of those hands suddenly found themselves without too much to do! Machines overtook that unscathed landscape and manufacturing went away from the idea of a bunch of people in control of a few relatively simple tools to a bunch of relatively complex machines being operated by a few relatively simple processes.



This was great for quality of life compared to a time when there were no washing machines, no vacuum cleaners, no household appliances but not so great for the quality of those things that had forever existed. Have you ever compared, say, a flat packed dining table to a beautiful dining table from the 40s? There is no such thing as a dining table from the 40s that isn't beautiful, they were made by men with their hands, no bolts or screws or clips, just timber at the mercy of somebody engrossed in what they're doing.



Here's the main point about hand made stuff: there is no loophole for apathy. The work becomes engrossing, the responsibility all yours, the ownership of the task is unmistakable. You can look at the finished product as a direct reflection of yourself...in fact, you can't look at it in any other way. In short, you do it well.



But back to the 50s and society in general. The space race was on between the Soviets and the States and with each thrilling instalment, this infatuation with automation, with 'technology' just got bigger and bigger. Using your hands became passe. By the time Neil Armstrong was on the Moon, Americans had nothing left to hang on to but their household appliances and unrivalled material quality of life. Vietnam was a disaster, Watergate was around the corner but nobody lived more comfortably than Americans. People were ignoring the aforementioned loophole, because things were comfy.



 But then a cruel twist of irony as the 80s came along and Japan was all of a sudden ruling the world of automated manufacturing. Where Hirohito had failed, Akio Morita and the Sony Corporation had succeeded. All of those once mighty factories, initially staffed with skilled craftsmen, later staffed with shiny machines, were finally shuttered. Veil American manufacturing.



All of these forces still exist; an infatuation with technology, a desire for a comfortable quality of life and a reliance on the economy of automated manufacture. But they are not everything. They are great for basic things but here is where the script gets flipped. We, most of us, the lucky ones, are no longer in a daily struggle for quality of life. Things are comfy. Nor is the idea of 'technology' so novel that we pay attention to informercials about kitchen appliances. Where hand made things used to be passe, we now understand that it is quite the opposite. As Shakespeare wrote for the Merchant of Venice, 'but at the length, truth will out' and we now crave the very things which were taken for granted and seen as archaic 60 years ago - for something that is handmade!



Why? Again, it's that loophole for apathy. The fact that when you hold something handmade, you are holding a direct reflection of the maker. To take the present subject matter as an example, each Defy Bag really does carry this story, that once there were proud men doing work they were proud of, that we lost our way but that at the length, truth will out. Chris puts it well: "I believe you don’t just create with your hands and brain. But with your hands, brain and heart."



There is an individual story, a uniqueness, a personality to each finished piece. It may manifest itself as something trivial and simple but in principle it is everything. If you've seen bags made on an assembly line, you've seen a worker put a piece of fabric into what looks like a giant transparent barbeque, and stand aside for 30 seconds while some science-fiction stitch-o-matic does its work. It looks kind of neat, and I'm sure a child would be really impressed with the speed and I'm sure the robotic accomplishment is an engineering masterpiece but in none of these qualities do I see signs that somebody has put their heart into what they are doing and that the finished piece is a reflection of a craftsman's principles and integrity.