Clare Dibble

Blog

  • Pop-up Pitch Book Review

    The Pop-up Pitch by Dan Roam is a fast method for tapping into your visual brain to organize any pitch into a compelling hero’s journey story in 2 hours or less. If you prefer the content as a video, you can find it here. If even this is too much work, he’s made software to make the pitch even easier.

    The first main step is getting the components of your story on paper using the 6 simple sketches in the folded blank sheet of paper that is the Visual Decoder. Quickly identify the main players and actions in your story and feel like a kid again.

    The second step is to arrange the components into a Hero’s journey using his 10-Page Pitch Storyline.

    Act one- Opening

    Title page- clearly establish who and what (#1 payoff the who wants) by (Insert action you want the Who to take.) Trigger phrase- There is a way to get what you want…

    Common ground – show them you know them for real, build trust with positive statement. Either establish the problem in the best possible light or that you are intimately familiar with the awfulness of the problem and are willing to face it with them. Trigger phrase – In our world of X, Y is going really well. As your colleague, I find that the best part of our job is to…, I’ve only been here a short time, but I can already see how effective X is. Or We’ve all been suffering with the shifts in our industry. Recent news hasn’t been good for any of us. (in the mix and willing to talk about the hard stuff. Can’t fake this part. Must know your audience through experience or research. We are in this together and we know these things are true. What is the common ground we all share? What do you know that they don’t know I know? What is a goal/ opportunity/ or challenge? What is a memorable shared experience?

    Coming problem – Facts and numbers no one really wants to see. Things are about to get a lot worse. Real fear as an extension of common ground. Clear eyed assessment solidifies trust. Only by boldly meeting the truth and addressing it realistically will we find a way to redefine it and thrive within it. We can’t meet a truth that is not said. You may or may not know this, but… It’s scary, but this turmoil is not going away. Using honesty about undeniable scary truth invites aspiration to do the right thing. What wakes you up in the middle of the night? Big problem on the horizon is We might not want to think about X right now, but we can’t wait any long because Y.

    Emotional win- What it will feel like to have solved the problem. Hope and shared Joy. Imagine a world where… it feels like … Picture how it will feel when this is all over and we are safe and free. On the other side of this problem is the world we’ve always dreamed of. Visual Happy tomorrow state map.

    Act 2- Things get real

    False hope- Conflict between desirable easy path and why it won’t work. Avoidance. This time around the safe approach isn’t safe at all. Misplaced trust in business as usual. What got us here won’t get us there. Despite what people might thing, business as usual won’t solve this problem because… The easy answer that everyone defaults to here is… What makes this problem thornier than usual is… Visual decoder – Today state in disarray

    Audacious Reality – What will work. Problems as puzzles. To solve this once and for all, we will.. The real solution we need. What if there were a way to … (something counterintuitive)? Reluctant hero turns Instead of the old way, here’s what we need to do instead. Name new solution and it’s uniqueness (2 -3 features). Visual Decoder -Today step simplified.

    We can do this – Scariest operational details with proof we can do this. Trusted experience and solid plan. Experienced based reason. High level plan (5 steps maximum). We’ve done this before. If we approach this with the same rigor as …, we can do this. When we break the whole thing into three phases, it is actually straightforward. (first page audience goes back to) Insight or technical change that supports bold new reality. Visual decoder – timeline

    Act 3: Close- Future can be even better than the best of the past

    Call to Action – Make 3-5 point action plan, show commitment by taking personal responsibility for 2 points and ask for help with the other 1-3. You have skin in the game, but can’t do it alone. Handful of steps to first milestone with deadline. Phrases: Suggest how the team can find early suggest. All you need to do to get started is… The first steps are as easy as 1,2,3. What is this new path we are committing to? What are the steps we need to commit to…, The first 3-4 things we need to do is…, Visual decoder- zoom in on beginning of timeline

    Early benefits >= 2 near term quick returns, realistic timeline, ease transition to bigger steps later, justify time and money spent, lays foundation with incremental success Phrases: The momentum we build by starting soon … Just by getting started we already gain… One benefit we see right away from taking action now is… Visual decoder- Chart

    Long Win – unexpected giant win of long win once the change becomes the new normal. By the way, can you imagine what else we might accomplish by getting this right? Be Bold. What comes next is better in ways we can’t seen yet. Life is amazing and different when we reach this goal. The most amazing result will be the parts we can’t even imagine yet, new things we find along the way. When we get this right, we won’t just solve the problem that got us started, we will reveal capabilities we never knew we had. Lessons learned are worth the journey. Asperational. Opportunities we can’t even imagine yet could be… Just think what it will mean when we can finally… Visual decoder- new map, lessons learned

  • Causes & Effects

    Today’s Bloganuary prompt is, “What is a cause you are passionate about and why?” The prompt brings charity and non-profits to my mind. While I support organizations trying to make the world better in that manner, I think my cause or principle is more closely related to seeking a specific kind of truth related to figuring out how things effect things. The joy of discovery is why I am drawn to data and science.

    To that end, I have enjoyed seeing some of the effective altruism movement. I am fascinated that supplementing salt could be a cheap and effective education intervention or that reducing poverty clears up some historic problems on its own.

    However, I also believe that we will never have a perfect understanding of the world and that there will always be more left to discover. That means leaving respect and room for what we can’t measure. It’s still worth being kind to me, even if there is no measurable benefit. I believe in throwing sidewalk earthworms back to the dirt after a rain even if I know I can’t help them all. I aim to live in balance with nature and our environment. I’d prefer to invent a systemic engineering solution that solves this problem for all earthworms everywhere, but that’s not the world I live in yet. Until then, I do what I can where I am.

    In that sense, I am passionate about principles of how we relate to each other. I’m passionate about democracy, though I hope to see an even better solution emerge in my lifetime. The fundamental rights that I care about include voter’s rights, freedom of speech, press, belief (also referred to as religion or opinion and expression), assembly, protest, privacy, travel, and equal protection under the law including rights of the accused to a trial where they are innocent until proven guilty. Whenever possible, I think communities should be self governing in that they should both have agency and responsibility for their decisions.

    It is also important to me that when we disagree, we do so with decency. It feels to me that the society I participate in has gotten meaner and more self-centered in my lifetime and I try to counteract that, but am also pragmatic that survival requires a certain toughness. Life is hard enough. Let’s not purposefully make it harder on one another.

    earthworm crawling on green grass
    Photo by Karolina Grabowska on Pexels.com

  • Life lessons

    The life lesson that I think nearly everyone can benefit from learning and that I try to remind myself of regularly is that we each only get one life. This is not a dress rehearsal. We can create do-overs in some senses (if you are both still alive, it’s never too late to apologize), but the river of time flows ever onward. There is a balance between sufficiently planning for tomorrow and remembering that tomorrow is not guaranteed. Celebrate that you woke up today by doing something for the you you are today, but also do something for future you to appreciate.

    Obscured Future

  • One Perfect Day

    There are two different types of ideal days in my mind.

    One is the exceptional ordinary. That’s the day that you wake up rested just before your alarm, and do the normal everyday things you have to do in a healthy body. It’s productive, but not remarkable. You have dinner with your family or friends. At the end of the day, you are closer to your goals than when you started. I have heard that these are what people miss when they get sick, but they can be hard to appreciate because of their regularity when you are in the midst of them and can still leave you exhausted.

    The other kind of ideal day is an exceptional ideal day. People make bucket lists to describe these special once in a lifetime experiences they want to have. I have some of these checked off and some still incubating. Exploration is a true joy for me. Travel is one method for me to tap into that joy. My honeymoon hiking in the Galapagos Islands twice a day and relaxing on the boat the rest of the day with my new husband would be hard to top. But then, exploring the Greek Isles with the family we created together was also pretty spectacular.

    But are those trips better than a beautiful day walking the same route around our home that we have journeyed hundreds or thousands of times together? Or the forest where we watch the seasons come and go in a never ending cycle that still holds surprises no matter how many times I experience it? Better is not the right word. They are certainly different. I do not think there is just one perfect day. I am lucky to have a bunch of both kinds of perfect days in my life.

  • Challenges & Opportunities

    This is one of the prompts that I have been waiting for, as this idea of meeting a challenge and overcoming it can be so ubiquitous in our current culture. We greet a challenge and win, making ourselves the Hero of our Own Story.

    This is all well and good. We certainly don’t want to be our own antagonist (adversary or person who actively opposes our desires), but it seems to have become a dominant narrative. So much so that I have actually gone out to research other story structures besides the Hero’s Journey. It seems the Hero’s Journey is credited to Homer’s Odyssey, supposedly told since the 8th century BC and published in English since 1614.

    Before every story was a Hero’s Journey, people also enjoyed Tragedies and Comedies. In a Tragedy you watched someone, typically talented, ambitious, and powerful, become somehow undone and typically die, through an error seemingly anyone could make. In a Comedy, there is also some sort of error or challenge, but instead of leading to death and destruction, it leads to humorous situations. If you’ve been around long enough, it might also seem to you that life could go either way too. One thing that either a Comedy or Tragedy constantly has that is not as much of a focus in many Hero’s Journeys is a supporting cast.

    Perhaps we could do better if we could figure out how to better navigate the modern world in small or medium size groups of real social support. Yes, these types of bonds can lead to drama, like the kind that would be featured in a Comedy or Tragedy. Your friend tries to make your life easier and inadvertently triggers mayhem by switching identities. Or you accidentally sleep with your cousin or mother because you meet them in a context where you don’t know you are related. These things don’t happen to me, but they were popular story themes for a while.

    The structure of trying to have everyone be their own epic Hero, alone on an adventure with an audience of adoring fans, can be lonely. Your heroic journey might not be trying to pass advice about herbs down through the generations. So right now, I am more interested in stories that happen in the context of a larger group and society at large.

    One of my perennial challenges is keeping my mental health in order, balancing the twins of anxiety and depression. Anxiety was never a problem in my youth, but has increased as now I have some stuff to loose. Depression on the other hand, has somewhat reduced overall, but I tend to be seasonally affected and living further north than I ever have is a challenge every single year. But these are not a Dragon I can slay and declare myself done and over. They are managed by an ensemble cast of myself with the partnership support of loved ones, and must be enjoyed as a comedy to keep it from becoming a tragedy.

    The pandemic we are all living though is also a continuous challenge. Certainly it has shifted the world in ways that have revealed and accelerated trends. I am sure that for some it has created opportunities, while for others it has been an ultimate tragedy. While we all live with it, it does not affect us in the same ways or provide the same risk to us all. One of the crazy parts is we don’t even know exactly what risk it poses to us specifically. I suppose that is true of every challenge. Managing risk seems to be best done with clear decisions and continuous small corrections.

    Some of my most meaningful challenges are not so much overcome as managed and integrated. It is not that there is a win or a loss. It can be either, depending on where you stop the story. Most of my life now takes place in my happily ever after, but it still is not without challenges. The challenges that define you and become part of you are the real opportunity – making the most of getting up and trying again until you actually can not.

  • Emojis

    ❤️💌😉🙏🏻🎉🤷‍♀️😝 are my top emojis, and I would say they feel representative of my life right now. I can communicate just fine without them, but they do add a little extra color in friendly notes.

    On the other hand, here are the emojis my daughter does not want to go without: ☺️😏😌😂🤣🙄🏠❤️🧡💛💚💙💜🖤💔❤️‍🔥💖 I guess emojis are another language where she is more fluent than me. And she really is a full spectrum of love and laughter.

    Emojis as a topic did get me to blog on my phone with the app. I can do everything I want to make a post except use a plug-in to set an external featured image.

    A nice thing about forming a habit is that when I’m not crazy about a given day’s prompt, I can look forward to posting again tomorrow.

  • Go Boldly

    Since this question focuses on the meaning of living boldly, I went to the dictionary. My general sense of audacious, brave, courageous, and daring was reinforced. The negative view of bold is to be unabashed, brash, cheeky, and defiant.

    The part that surprised me was the origin of the word. Bold comes from the German “bald”, which roughly translates as soon. Bald is a relatively common German word, common enough that I know and use it at my relatively low level of usage. My most common usage is with “Bis bald,” which roughly translates to “see you soon.”

    Fortune favors the Bold.

    Latin proverb quoted by Virgil in the Aeneid

    So apparently what it means to live boldly is to not wait… until then, for permission, for approval, for a special occasion to use the good stuff, for recognition that might not come, for an apology, for better weather, for retirement, for this pandemic to pass, for anything Dr. Seuss lists about getting stuck in the Waiting Place in his guide to life, “Oh the Places You’ll Go.” Since we are talking about living boldly and I need a reminder, I went and found the relevant verse and put it at the end of this post in case you could use a reminder too. There is a good reason that people give this book when people graduate and go out into the world.

    My take away from this reflection on what it means to live boldly is a reminder that living a bold life requires both bravery and beating procrastination. There are some areas of my life where I tend to be good about this and others not and it can shift which is which. Maybe living boldly in all areas of our life all the time can be too much. But not living boldly at all is worse. Luckily every day, every minute, every breath is a new chance to choose to be bold. So, right now, if you are reading this, choose one area of your life that might be waiting for some fresh energy, pick one small thing you can do now, an action you can accomplish today, and do it. Then build on it tomorrow. And again the next day. That’s how it is done.

    How will you choose to live more boldly today? 

    Wherever you go, you will top all the rest.

Except when you don't.
Because, sometimes, you won't.

I'm sorry to say so
but, sadly, it's true
that Bang-ups
and Hang-ups
can happen to you.

You can get all hung up
in a prickle-ly perch.
And your gang will fly on.
You'll be left in a Lurch.

You'll come down from the Lurch
with an unpleasant bump.
And the chances are, then,
that you'll be in a Slump.

And when you're in a Slump,
you're not in for much fun.
Un-slumping yourself
is not easily done.

You will come to a place where the streets are not marked.
Some windows are lighted. But mostly they're darked.
A place you could sprain both your elbow and chin!
Do you dare to stay out? Do you dare to go in?
How much can you lose? How much can you win?

And IF you go in, should you turn left or right...
or right-and-three-quarters? Or, maybe, not quite?
Or go around back and sneak in from behind?
Simple it's not, I'm afraid you will find,
for a mind-maker-upper to make up his mind.

You can get so confused
that you'll start in to race
down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace
and grind on for miles cross weirdish wild space,
headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.
The Waiting Place...

...for people just waiting.
Waiting for a train to go
or a bus to come, or a plane to go
or the mail to come, or the rain to go
or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow
or the waiting around for a Yes or No
or waiting for their hair to grow.
Everyone is just waiting.

Waiting for the fish to bite
or waiting for the wind to fly a kite
or waiting around for Friday night
or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake
or a pot to boil, or a Better Break
or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants
or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.
Everyone is just waiting.

NO!
That's not for you!

Somehow you'll escape
all that waiting and staying
You'll find the bright places
where Boom Bands are playing.

  • Gratitude

    Five things I am grateful for today:

    • I woke up today in a warm bed, next to a loving husband, with my kids in their rooms, all of us reasonably healthy.
    • Today was the first day back after Christmas Break, and it seems to be going pretty well.
    • The sun is out, which is not a given here this time of year so I appreciate it extra when it happens.
    • I got in a bike ride to the grocery store. Exercise + errands = winning!
    • My dragon fruit/ pitaya seeds are sprouting. I love growing plants and I love the idea that we might be in one place long enough that I can grow something from seed. May we all appreciate the opportunity to germinate when we are warm enough after a period of rest and dormancy, break out of our shell, stretch out into the world, find a place to put down roots, and reach toward the sun.
    Dragon fruit sprouts

  • Assumptions

    Today’s post is about assumptions, but it is interesting that the prompt jumps to incorrect assumptions. Shared assumptions are a foundation of a functioning society. For example, most successful drivers assume that most fellow drivers on the road will follow the traffic rules, and move away from cars that seem to be having a hard time doing so for safety reasons. We all rely on a lot of assumptions to get through a day. They are the things we can take for granted, do on autopilot, and suppose will just work the way we expect.

    Typically violated assumptions result in interest, because we are checking to see if we need to update our mental models of the world. For example, in the area of Germany where I live, people frequently assume that I’m Belgian or maybe Dutch when I struggle with the language. That’s because I could literally bike to those countries from here. When I tell them I am American, usually there is interest in what I am doing here and so on. If the people we are interacting with file their error in judgement as an exception or update their heuristics, everything works well.

    Assumptions only become limiting or dangerous when we both do not fit the norm and it is not easy to update someone else’s assumptions or it has some sort of cost to do so. For example, if the person I am talking to either loves or hates Americans, things can get weird if I don’t further follow their idea about this thing they abstractly love or hate. While almost everyone has many properties that are close to average (stereotypes come from somewhere), almost no one follows all averages or stereotypes exactly, because we are all our own collection of traits and experiences. We also use our own assumptions and the assumptions of others to fashion together our identity.

    In my experience, the more we are completely ourselves and transparent about it, the more space we make for others to also be authentic. Exploring my own assumptions has given me way more benefit than worrying about what other people are thinking about me. On the other hand, being able to effectively influence others relies on understanding their assumptions and manipulating them. Maybe I would be better off with a better understanding of when others are making incorrect assumptions and fixing them or using them to my advantage.

    So tell me, how do you identify incorrect assumptions about you? What do you do in that situation?

    A recent self portrait- what can you assume about me from this photo?
    A recent self portrait- What can you assume about me from this photo?

  • Writing

    Today’s Bloganuary prompt is: What do I like most about my writing?

    One reason that I chose to participate in Bloganuary is that I feel somewhat out of practice in writing. I have been reading a fair amount. I enjoy poetic language in fiction, but more straightforward prose in non-fiction. I like reading things that reveal layer after layer. Poetic language takes more effort to come up with than I have to give sometimes. And while reality can be implausible and improbable, fiction should not be. So creating fictional layers also counts as too much work.

    I like that writing helps me organize and crystallize my ideas. It gives structure to my thoughts. But I like my writing best when it reaches someone. Either my present or future self, a present or future friend or colleague, or a present or future fellow human.

    So tell me, what reaches you?