The freedom of limitations

 

Photo by Gaelle Marcel
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When I was a child my mother and I made regular trips to the local library to change our books.

At that time the library had a number of limits placed on borrowing: you could only borrow ten items at a time, and you could only borrow them for two weeks. You could, of course, renew the items you hadn't finished with (provided no one had placed them on hold), but there were limits to the amount of times you could do that, too. If I recall correctly, you could only renew something twice before you had to bring it back in.

So we had a regular day when we would go through the library and pick the 10 things we wanted the most. If there was anything we hadn't finished before we went back to the library for our next visit, we had to think carefully about whether we wanted to keep it for longer (and thus have even fewer new books to choose) or call time on it and look for a better book.

When most of the books I borrowed were picture books, I'd chew through those quite quickly. As I progressed to longer books, it started to become more of a challenge to finish the books I borrowed before the next library trip - but the limit of 10 books always meant there was a fighting chance I would be finished with everything I actually cared about before our next visit.

Then the borrowing allowance increased, and so did the borrowing time. At the same time fines were removed, so there was less incentive to actually pay attention to due dates.

Like most voracious library users, I saw this as a good thing, but I realise now that the old restrictions gave me something that the "new" freedoms took away: focus.

To be honest, the old restrictions weren't a burden. They didn't restrict the number of books you could read or finish. Just the number you could have on your "To Be Read" pile at any given time. At any time, if you wanted more books, you could get them. You just had to bring back the ones you were done with first. The whole library was still your playground. Just with more structure.

When you can only have 10 items at any given time, you think about what you actually expect to read this time. You think about what is most appealing to you. You think about what you're going to read next.

Now the current limits in the public library are 25 items for 1 month, which doesn't seem like a lot extra, but it oddly is. It's more than enough rope to lose track of what you have and how long you've had it - and more than enough to encourage me to borrow a book in case I get around to reading it (which I might not). And since they don't have any real consequences for ignoring the due date, I'm less likely to notice when it's due (yes, I'm the kind of person who needs incentives to make my brain pay attention to things). 

The library I work in (which is a different library) is worse. Staff and students can borrow unlimited books which automatically renew an unlimited number of times (as long as no one requests them). I realised, at one point, that I had almost two shelves worth of books that I had checked out to read "at some point", which I had barely looked at for months - some I'd had for years. When I looked at my account recently, I noticed that I had checked out a book in 2019 that I still haven't finished. It's just sitting in my house, waiting for me to get around to it.

When the sky is the limit, what's to keep you from floating away?

As I have been going through my house trying to wrangle it into some kind of order, I noticed a large part of the "clutter" that was weighing on me was the number of books that didn't belong to me that I had to get around to reading so I could return them.

So I've recently started to impose my own 1980s borrowing limits. I'm a little over (I currently have 11 books from each library), but my goal is to only ever have 10 items on loan from any given library, and to return them by the due date without renewing them (it's going to be tricky with the autorenewals, but we all need goals).

To help me focus on only what I actually think I have time to read, to give myself the incentive to borrow only what I most want to read "next", and to stop filling my house with books that don't belong to me, I'm going to take away the "freedom" that my libraries have given me and go back to the limitations they so kindly removed years ago.

Perhaps the limitations will set me free...

All That Can Be Contained: A Book Reflection

Photo by Jake Nebov
on Unsplash

(This is Part 3 of a group of book reflections about the same book. Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here.)

As you may recall from the previous posts in this series, I've recently listened to the audiobook version of Decluttering at the Speed of Life, by Dana K. White (read by the author).

One of the central tenants of White’s book is something she calls the Container Principle.

The Container Principle is both incredibly simple and obvious, and deeply profound. I suppose most fundamental principles are, whether they were discovered by a monk in a remote mountain cave or a mother of three with a clutter problem.

The Container Principle states that any given container (be it a drawer, a cupboard or your whole house) has two fundamental aspects – two things that make it a “container”. The first is, obviously, that it holds things. The second is that it limits what can be held. It contains, in multiple senses of the word.

We have a tendency to forget about that second aspect. We keep trying to put more into our containers than they can hold, but you can’t really do that. If you try to put more into a container than it will hold, you will put the container and everything in it under stress, which could lead to damage. Or it will overflow, and everything will spill out, and then gets out of control.

White’s definition of clutter (and I am very much paraphrasing at this point, as it has been several weeks since I listened to her book and I can’t remember the exact way she phrased it) is something that is out of place, out of control and causing stress. If it has a place to be, but it’s not in that place, then it is clutter in this place where it isn’t meant to be. If there isn’t a place for it to be, then it’s just clutter.

If it doesn’t belong, it’s clutter. I’ll come back to this in a moment.

Things that are spilling over the confines of their container are, in a very real sense, out of place and out of control. When your threshold for this kind of clutter maxes out, you find yourself under stress. It’s very likely that the “things” that the container is supposed to hold are also under stress (you can’t squish too much into a given space before something gets squished), and the container might very well be under stress as well.

When the stuff you're trying to fit in the container gets beyond what the container can hold, then the best and most sensible thing you can do to make sure things are properly cared for and don’t get damaged is to scale back so that you only have what will fit in the container.

Take it all out and evaluate it – as a whole, and in relation to everything else you wanted to put in that container. Don’t just look at each thing on its own and say “I want this”, look at each thing in relation to all the other things and say “I want this more than that”. Prioritise the most important, the best, your favourites – these go into the container first.

When the container is full, everything else that isn’t already in the container doesn’t fit. It wasn’t a priority, or it would already be in the container, and therefore it doesn’t have a place. It doesn’t belong in the container. So, if it doesn’t belong, it’s clutter.

If you want to avoid putting the system under stress, you have to be able to accept that you can’t keep everything all the time. If this thing that doesn’t fit isn’t more important, more loved or more useful than the things that are already in the container, then it has to go. And quickly – don’t leave it to become a burden.

Whenever you think of adding anything new to that container, you have to consider it on a “one-in-one-out” basis. Is it more important, useful or loved than something that is already in the container? If not, don’t bring it into your life. If it is, then the less important/loved/useful thing has to go.

You might think the obvious solution is to get a bigger container, but space isn’t infinite. A bigger container for this means there’s less space for something else. If you dedicate a second drawer to hold what doesn’t fit into one drawer, then you have less drawer space for what would otherwise have gone in the second drawer – you’ve moved the problem, you haven’t solved it.

White was talking about drawers and cupboards, but many things in our lives are containers.

Time is a container. Your mental or physical capacity is a container.

Any given container can only hold so much. You can only do so much in a day. You can only make so many decisions. You can only keep on top of so many tasks.

It’s harder to see these containers and their capacity (and certainly a lot harder for other people to see them and respect their limitations), but it’s actually quite easy to tell when they’ve been overstuffed and can’t hold what you are trying to contain: they are under stress, over flowing and getting out of control.

If you get to the end of your work day and you feel you have to stay back and keep working because you could not do everything you “had” to do today, then there is too much in your work day. It spills over and puts the system under stress. There are only so many hours in the day, so if you spend more time at work, there’s less time to spend doing all the things you “have” to do at home. You have a smaller container to try to fit your domestic tasks into. And so that spills over and takes time away from unwinding so you can get some rest…

So of course you feel like your days are overflowing and you have so many things you couldn’t get done today. You’re trying to fit too much into your day, and there are limits to what your container can hold.

If you find you are doing this every day, then there’s a bigger container issue at play. You’re trying to fit too much into something else. Perhaps your job has too many tasks to complete? If it’s more than you can do in the time you have available, then it’s too much work to fit into your job. If the “job” is supposed to fit all of this work into it, but it doesn’t, then perhaps that job doesn’t fit into your capacity – it doesn’t fit into your life.

We don’t like to think about this – we don’t like to admit it. We think we should be able to fit these things in, so we refuse to accept we can’t. We think we need to keep cramming stuff into the container until the container finally grows enough to accommodate all of it.

But that’s not how containers work. There are limits to what they can hold. If you keep pushing them beyond their limits, something is getting damaged, even if nothing obviously breaks.

So we need to look at everything we’re trying to fit into that container. We need to see everything in terms of whether it is more deserving of a place in that container than something else. We have to prioritise what is most important, most useful, most loved. And when the container is full, we have to be willing to say “there is no place for this – it wasn’t a priority and it doesn’t fit.”

And then we have to find a solution to that which doesn’t involve us continually trying to cram it in. Something that leaves us with enough space in our lives that we can actually enjoy what we have, rather than stressing about what is overflowing.

We also have to look at every new thing in relation to what is already in the container, and be honest about whether it’s more valuable to us than something that is already in there. Then we have to let something else go.

And that’s the hardest thing, I think. We’re so used to pretending we can do it all; we struggle with admitting we can’t and telling people that this is beyond what we can do. Also, we know everyone is in the same boat – everyone is stressed out trying to fit it all in and do all of the things. For some unfathomable reason we see that as a reason for why we should keep struggling, instead of realising we’re all making a mistake.

What if…

What if we gave each other permission to only do what we can – to stop trying to cram in more than our containers can hold? What if we gave ourselves permission to do this, and extended this kindness to everyone around us?

My Home is not the Tip: A Book Reflection

publicdomainvectors.org

 (This is Part 2 of a group of book reflections about the same book. Part 1 is here, part 3 is here.)

As you may recall from the previous post, I've recently listened to the audiobook version of Decluttering at the Speed of Life, by Dana K. White (read by the author).

Like Part 1, this is more about a revelation inspired while/by listening to White's book, rather than necessarily something she said in the book itself - although she did touch on it closely enough that I feel it's legitimately something from the book.

At one point, White was discussing the fact that we (well, some of us) feel guilty about throwing things in the bin if there's any chance it could be put to use somehow. Perhaps we can turn that frayed T-Shirt into a craft project and give it a second life. Perhaps someone who is desperately poor will be desperate enough to want because it's better than the crap they currently have.

She didn't go all out and say this, but it was strongly implied: poor people don't deserve your trash just because they're poor. What she did say is something well worth saying: don't give something to charity that you wouldn't be willing to give to a friend.

If you ever do feel the compulsion to try to give something you regard as unworthy of your own friends and family to a poor person because "surely some one truly poor will be truly grateful", image that instead of saying "poor person" or "someone in need" you said "peasant." Because that's sort of where that mentality evolved from: the peasants should take whatever we give them and be grateful. Let's not be that person.

But the main reason most of us feel a need to hold onto something that's not completely in rags is the fact that we don't want to be wasteful. We want to try to find a way to keep it out of the rubbish tip by finding a way to reuse or recycle it. Surely?

That's a real problem I struggle with. I want to reduce the amount I throw in the bin by being less wasteful, so I hold onto something that could potentially turn into something else. But...

Many years ago I read an article (I wish I could remember the author - or even the source) written by a young mother, who had started using a mantra: "I am not the kitchen bin". She didn't want to waste the food her kids weren't finishing, or the scraps she had cut off the food she was preparing for a meal, so she'd eat them. She was gaining weight and her health was suffering, and one day she realised that if she was putting something into her own body to keep it out of the bin, then she was the bin. She had to get over her guilt about waste and respect her own body and boundaries instead.

"I am not the kitchen bin."

I've often thought of that over the years, as I've found myself eating food after I was full just because there wasn't enough to put aside as left overs and it seemed a waste to throw it out. Or as I ate something I had actually ruined and wasn't enjoying at all, simply because I'd made a batch of it and didn't want to be wasteful.

But I'm not the kitchen bin, and I'm not doing myself any favours by putting something in my face that I should be putting in the bin.

As I was listening to White talk about rubbish and the guilt we sometimes feel about throwing out something that could, potentially, maybe, some how, by some stretch of the imagination, be "still good", I suddenly realised:

"My house is not the rubbish tip."

If I'm not doing something with this rubbish, but just holding onto it in the hope that I find something to do with it later, I'm using my own house to store landfill. This is not, in any tangible way, less wasteful that sending it to the actual landfill (where at least they might do something to reduce its size, as the professional rubbish people are always looking for ways to handle rubbish volumes better). It's just sharing the rubbish between the tip and my house.

You "reduce" rubbish before it comes into your house. You look at anything you're thinking of buying for its potential rubbishness and you either come up with a better idea then and there, or you accept that you're going to be throwing something away.

This is something I really have to focus on: not keeping things I should throw away (because I don't like throwing things away), but rather making better choices at the start of the process so I don't get stuck with choices I don't like when that item has reached the end of its life.

I am not the kitchen bin, and my house is not the tip.

Ten-Year-Old Me Never Visits: A Book Reflection

(This is Part 1 of a group of reflections prompted by this book. Part 2 is here, part 3 is here.)

If you’ve read any of my “book reflections” before, you’ll know they’re a bit of a cross between me talking about a book I’ve read and me just rabbiting on about myself. This one is probably going to be more rabbiting on about myself than usual.

I’ve recent read yet another decluttering book (actually, I listened to the audiobook): Decluttering at the Speed of Life, by Dana K. White (who also read the audiobook).

If you read back over the posts I’ve written about books over the years, you’ll probably find quite a few books about decluttering, cleaning, tidying, organising… You may find yourself wondering if I’m some sort of neat freak whose house is unspeakably tidy, or if I’m a complete slob who reads decluttering books for inspiration but actually never properly gets her house in order, which is why I keep reading decluttering books.

Well, mostly it’s the latter, but I also just like reading decluttering and cleaning books. Like Romance novels, I find them a nice light “holiday” read – something comforting and familiar for when I don’t want to have to think too deeply about a plot or meaningful information.

I have to say White’s book is up there among the better ones I’ve read. She isn’t – how shall I put this? – noticeably insane. Rather, she’s someone who has noticed that decluttering is actually a lot like cleaning – it’s a constant process that never ends because you keep gathering new clutter, and eventually you’re going to have to declutter again. She’s also a recovering slob and a bower bird, so she writes from the perspective of knowing how stuff creeps up on you and how hard it is to declutter your “dreams”.

As I was listening to her read her book, I found myself often saying, “uhunh – you got that right” and “yeah, I hear that.” Unlike Marie Kondo, who was apparently raised by Home Beautiful magazines and has always had a compulsive aversion to untidy spaces, Dana has more of a relation to stuff that matches my own, so I could relate to what she said a little more. She also has a really good reading voice. You can tell she’s been a podcaster for a few years.

I often listen to these books while I’m sorting through a cupboard or doing housework, and there was a point during the middle of listening to this when I realised some of the things I’ve been holding onto for years as “favourite things” or “beloved treasures” weren’t actually for me at all. Well, they were, but they weren’t…

I realised I have been holding onto a lot of stuff in case 10-Year-Old Me comes to visit. This isn’t the first time I’ve noticed this, but this time it really hit home.

My mother was a single parent. Most of her friends who had kids around my age moved Down South almost before I was born, and her other friends either had grown children who had left home or didn’t have any kids. When she would go visiting her friends from university or Church, I would get dragged in tow because there wasn’t anyone to babysit, and I’d end up going through whatever “treasures” were at the homes of her friends. Looking at their nick-knacks, photos of holidays, boxes of old comics and random books…

These were the things people dumped on me to keep me occupied while they had proper conversations in the next room, and I loved them. I loved looking at the weird ceramic thingies people had collected over the years, I loved pouring through old holiday brochures from the 70s – and I especially loved getting to go through someone’s old comic book collection or the toys their kids played with 10 years ago.

Essentially, I loved this clutter that other people had kept, and so part of me was keeping the same kind of clutter – not because “Adult Sharon” still looked at it or paid any attention to it at all, but because I instinctively knew that if 10-Year-Old Me dropped by, she’d love looking through this stuff.

And I guess I have sort of been keeping it for the next kid. The grandkids I’m never going to have because I never wanted children. The nephews and nieces I’m never going to have because I have no siblings and the only cousins who have kids aren’t close and aren’t visiting. The “friends’ kids” who aren’t going to visit because the only friends I have with children usually leave them with the other parent when we hang out – and we usually go out to socialise, we don’t visit each other’s houses.

I’ve been keeping photographs that no one is going to care about except me – and I stopped caring about half of them years ago. I’ve been keeping books, toys and trinkets for “some kid” to play with, but the only way any child is going to play with them is if these things leave the house. And I’ve been keeping things that I don’t particularly want and no one else is going to want either (because they’re old and ratty or damaged), because if I manage to go back in time and meet up with my younger self, that kid loved playing with them – but no child is ever going to play with them again, and neither am I.

So much of what I’ve held onto has been for a version of me that doesn’t exist. If not 10-Year-Old Me who loved looking at old junk kept in boxes, then 20-Year-Old Me who collected stuff out of some weird idea that the collection itself meant something – that one day I’d have some sort of tourist attraction consisting of my ridiculous number of DC Superhero posters and DVDs or my massive collection of Tarzan movies. I have movies I’ve never watched and books I’ve never read, but carried with me from place to place and spent vast sums of money accumulating, because they fit in with some collection that meant something to me… once.

But quite frankly, I’m never going to open a “Museum of Pop Culture Hero Crap”. And no one else is, either. This was someone else’s passion that they were trying to turn into a project. I’m holding onto it for them, but the truth is they don’t exist anymore. I know, because I replaced them.

And while a part of me knew that I was no longer interested in these things, some part of me has still been keeping it for the next kid. But there isn’t going to be a next kid. I’m holding onto it for a ghost and a phantom.

And let’s not forget the unrequited dreams – all the things I was going to be. The person who made toys out of scrap material, who whittled, who played dozens of musical instruments, who took up all sorts of hobbies for which I have some of the stuff. I still don’t want to admit I’m never going to do that thing or be that person… but…

Ghosts and phantoms. I’m holding on their stuff. But maybe I’m finally reaching the point where I don’t want to.

Journal Club: Leading the Library

 Sharon’s Journal Club (if you’re reading this, you’re in the club) Presents:

 

Leading the Library (When You’reNot in Charge)

By Beth Boatright

As I was adding some fresh journal articles to my “to read” pile, I decided to flick through the pile and read some of the ones I hadn’t gotten around to yet. This article is from 2015, and I don’t know if I got it at the time and forgot about it, or if I came across it more recently while researching something else, or if someone had recommended it and I’d downloaded it but then forgotten it.

Either way, it turned out to be a very interesting read – one I recommend for everyone who works in a library, no matter how “lowly” the position. If you recommended it to me – thanks! I quite enjoyed it.

Some advanced warning: I’ve been reading about Permaculture Design Principles lately and toying with applying them to non-gardening situations (everything you work on is your garden, if you think about it that way), so some of my reflections on this article talks about that. Boatright’s article itself is completely free of all permaculture references.

Boatright’s article is an interesting angle on what I’d think of as “engaging with your job for productivity and work satisfaction.” She comes from the angle of seeing yourself as having a “leadership” role, even if you have absolutely no authority in the library whatsoever.

Effective library operations requires everyone to “lead” in their position – to have a leadership team, if you will, in which each person is “taking the lead” in their role, and thereby being a “leader” within the scope of their actual job position.

I’ve read similar things before that were talking about “mindful” or “active” engagement in your work to create opportunities for advancement and job satisfaction, and I think Boatright has read many similar articles, but wants to call it “leadership” rather than “active engagement” or any of the other buzzwords that have been buzzing about.

I suspect she’s trying to speak to that “If I were in charge, things would be different” grumbling that sits in the heart of many librarians (and, oddly, continues to be there no matter how far up the food chain you find yourself – even people in management positions in libraries are not actually “in charge” – that’s usually some bureaucrat who has very little interest in or understanding of libraries).

Well, you are in charge (of your piece of the puzzle) and you can make a difference (even if it’s just a small one). The main beneficiaries might very well be you and your immediate co-workers, but it will flow on in all directions. Whatever positive differences you make in your work will flow downstream to the clients, and upstream to the other members of the library team.

To start with, you need to embrace the first Permaculture Design Principle (I warned you): Observe and Interact.

Guess what? This is exactly what we should be doing for our PDPs (PMPs?... whatever they end up being called). You “identify and thoughtfully consider the mission, vision and purpose statements of your college, library and/or department’s administrations” (345) – in other words, check out the strategic plan of the library, but also (if you can) take a look at whatever “this is what we want to achieve” visionary-type guff the division and the university have made available. Then you look at your own job description to see what’s expected of someone in your role.

Then what you do is look at how you, being in that role, can contribute to the library/division/university achieving what it needs to achieve. How can you “lead” your team from your position so that goals are set and accomplished in order to make a positive contribution?

Back to “Observe and Interact”. You start by taking a look at the bigger picture – not just the day-to-day stuff of your specific job as you’re doing it right now, but the “garden” as a whole. The environment it sits in, what is happening, where the energy is flowing or getting lost or stuck, where we’re overusing some resources or underusing other opportunities…

When you see what needs to be done for the health and success of the “garden” in interaction with the “environment” (not just what you think should happen sitting in your current job dissatisfaction and saying “If I were in charge…”) then you can interact – see what is within your ability to achieve with your efforts, and make measurable goals where you know what you want to accomplish and you can see how you will go about doing it and how you will know it has been done.

Oh, look, we’re back in the PDP again.

This also involves another Permaculture Design Principle: “Design from Patterns to Details”. And, potentially also, “Obtain a Yield” – at the end of the day, you want to have something to show for your efforts. The “yeild” you want to obtain should be part of the plan you come up with as you design the details out of your patterns.

The article goes on to talk more about goal setting and time management and stuff like that from a “leadership” perspective. I won’t recount all of it because that would be silly (and why would you read the article if my commentary on it was twice as long and covered everything it said?). But I will draw attention to the simple four-square time management technique Boatright recommends: ask yourself if this is important or not important, and if it is urgent or not urgent. Schedule time especially to work on the “important but not urgent” tasks as they’re probably where you’ll get the most bang for your buck.

Don’t let the things that are urgent but not important distract you from doing what is important but not urgent.

The other things Boatright mentioned that I want to especially draw attention to (while still leaving it worth your while reading the article itself) are communication and responsibility/accountability.

A good leader communicates with their team. They tell them what challenges are being faced and what progress is being made. This is something I personally need to work on, because reports are one of those “important but not urgent” things that usually get shunted to one side by the myriad of “urgent” things that seem more important to me at the time. But reports and other forms of communication where you let the rest of the team know what is going on… these are good and useful things. We should be using them to good effect.

The idea of accountability dovetails with learning from the outcomes of what you’ve been doing. We talk about learning from our mistakes, and that is part of this. So is learning from our successes, and learning from everything else (this coincides with the Permaculture Design Principle, “Apply Self-Regulation and Accept Feedback). Good, bad or indifferent, we need to look at what has happened as a direct results of our actions and recognise them as our responsibility. The buck stops with us, and rather than hope nobody notices it so we don’t have to “fess up”, we should immediately start thinking about “how can I/we improve this situation?”

The last thing I want to touch on is the idea of “build[ing] your team” (351), even if you don’t have anyone under you. Whether you are the absolute bottom of the food chain or a team leader with a group of people who answer to you, you still work with others (you might not see them, but you work with them). You still have the power to make their jobs a joy or a misery. A leader focuses on “effectively building relationships, motivating others, communicating, and collaborating” (351).

It’s really quite simply achieved. You know what kind of support you would need from others to do your job well – look at the jobs of your team members (from the colleagues sitting “next” to you right up to the Director) and ask yourself what support they need from you to do their jobs well.

I’m going to be chewing on this article a bit as I figure out what kind of librarian I want to be this year (I just hope to God that Boatright’s “encouragement” that I might be given more responsibility as a result is wrong).

Meanwhile, here are my “quotable quotes” from the article:

“Whether or not you have organizational authority, you can still make things better for other people, and in doing so, you will make things better for yourself as well” (351).

“One challenge and opportunity of leadership without authority is to rally behind the ideas and strategies of our administrators and find ways to make things work for everyone involved” (352).

“The more engaged you are, the better your library’s outcomes will be” (355).

Boatright, Beth. "Leading the Library (When You're Not in Charge)." College & Undergraduate Libraries, vol. 22, 2015, pp. 343-57, Taylor & Francis Online, doi:10.1080/10691316.2015.1070702.

A prediction of the future: Aerobics studios

About a week ago I was answering a survey for the gym I frequent, and I suddenly had a premonition of the future.

I feel like recording it somewhere to see if it actually "comes to pass", and here is as good a place as any. I may as well pretend it's a proper prophecy, so here goes:

And lo, it shall come to pass that aerobics shall step out from the shadow of the gym. It shall no longer be sullied by the franchise model promoted by Les Mills and other such "Fitness Workout" providers, but instead become an individualised work of art, delivered unto us by practitioners who design their own classes and produce their own playlists.

And behold, aerobics shall move into "fitness studios", and share space with yoga and Pilates rather than weights and treadmills. The classes shall become more pure, leaving behind names like "Grit" and "Pump" and standing simply and proudly under the name "aerobics". While there shall, verily, be multitudes of aerobics classes to chose from, they shall be known by such terminology as "Strengthening", "Gentle" and "High Energy".

Upon one's voyage home from one's place of employment, one may "pop in" to a fitness studio for a round of aerobics one night a week, and another night of the week visit that very same studio for yoga, though no gym junkies may be seen to pass through the same doors. 

While the gym may indeed - yay, is more than likely to - be located in the same building as this "fitness studio", aerobics will no longer be considered a "gym class", but come forth as a separate entity once again, with classes offered at various times convenient for the working aerobic yogi as well as the stay-at-home aerobic yogi.

Thus I have seen.

Didactic teaching

 We've been updating our training statistics form at work, and I've been finding myself in the middle of some very interesting conversations about words I thought were better known than they are.

First, I used the word "narrowcast" to refer to the lessons we teach via the LMS or Zoom, and then I had to explain to people what "narrowcast" meant. Apparently that's not a common word. In case you were wondering, narrowcasting is like broadcasting, only you have a precisely delineated audience (for example, only people who can log into your electronic classroom).

To wit: if anyone can get it as long as they know when and where to look, it's broadcasting. If you can only get it if you are in the group that has access to it, it's narrowcasting. Public radio = broadcasting, police band radio = narrowcasting. You get the picture.

The second word that brought the discussion up a bit short was "didactic". Rather than talking about "lectures" and "workshops", I was going to suggest "didactic" vs "activity-based" classes. Most of the people in the room had only heard the word "didactic" used in the same context as "preachy" - if they'd heard it at all. Apparently, that wasn't a common word either. Turns out most people don't just randomly talk about pedagogical methodologies unless they've done an Education degree at some point.

When writing up my notes, I wanted to link to something that said what didactic teaching was in a nutshell, but couldn't find something I liked - so I'll just write my own:

Didactic Teaching in a Nutshell

Didactic teaching is the presentation of information to an audience.

It's commonly (and often derogatorily) referred to as "Chalk and talk" - the idea being that the teacher stands in front of a board and simply talks to (or "at") the class, who sit passively and listen, theoretically taking notes.

Didactic teaching isn't necessarily passive, though. Or, rather, it isn't necessarily unengaging just because it is passive. Like anything, it depends on the execution (and the audience). You can regularly ask the students questions to check their understanding, and you can field questions from the class members who wish to clarify matters or offer comments. Active listening is a thing, and you can encourage your audience to listen actively. Technically, using questions is bringing in a spot of dialectal teaching (see below) but it's still a didactic class.

You can also be interesting and humorous in your delivery of the content, so that your audience finds your presentation engaging, even if they aren't engaged in any interactivity at the time. A stand-up comedy routine is technically a didactic presentation.

However, didactic teaching can be very boring, so if you are a naturally boring presenter (or you have a class that refuses to engage in active listening), it is a dangerous method of teaching to use - even if it is one of the most common.

And now for a digression:

Lectures are considered to be didactic, as the lecturer presents/delivers information to people who aren't engaging in any kind of "activity" per se. The word "lecture" actually means "read" - in the olden days, the lecturer would literally stand at the front of the room and read their notes aloud. If you tried doing that these days, someone would complain (unless you got someone like Stephen Fry to read them for you, I suppose). Interestingly, "lecture" is often used with negative connotations - like "didactic" and "preachy". It seems people don't like being expected to listen while someone talks at them.

Not didactic teaching

Traditionally, the opposite of didactic teaching is dialectal teaching. In this method, the teacher and the students participate in a conversation in which they both talk about the subject matter (even though the student might not have had any information "presented" to them yet) and let knowledge and understanding unfold from the conversation.

The famous Socratic Method (okay, possibly not famous if you haven't studied Education or read much about Greek philosophy) is a form of dialectal teaching that actually consists of the lecturer asking the student questions in order to walk them through thinking out the logical conclusions. It's probably much more suited to philosophy than the inner workings of volcanoes, but I expect the right teacher could make it work for anything.

Most non-didactic classes these days are based around activity-based learning or problem-based learning. In these classes, students are presented with something to do or a problem to solve. The teacher should make sure it's possible for them to find all the information they need to complete the challenge before them (although not all teachers do this). In the process of doing the thing, they actively engage with and apply the information, theoretically making it more memorable.

Work-integrated learning is a cousin of activity-based/problem-based learning, in that students attempt to do the job they would be doing in the real world, had they already learnt what they are learning right now. It's sort of what an apprentice does, learning on the job.

You may notice a slight shift in  language for these methodologies. Rather than didactic/dialectal teaching, we've moved to activity-based/problem-based/work-integrated learning.

This is because the focus of the class has shifted - it has moved from teacher-centred to student-centred.

Now, if you're anything like... well pretty much everyone who talks about this in any kind of professional capacity, you're probably thinking "well that all sounds fabbo - so much better than that awful teacher-centred didactic teaching crap we've been forcing on students for generations!" I'd just like to point out that, once again, it's all down to the execution.

Activity-based learning needs to be really well designed to work well. I've been in activity-based classes that were about as engaging as having someone read their lecture notes to me, and I felt like gauging my eyes out with a spoon rather than doing their stupid activity. I've also heard many a student make similar comments.

The fact of the matter is, a good didactic class can be more interesting and engaging than a bad activity-based class. It all comes down to how engaged the teacher is. If you are connecting with the content and the students, the students will connect with the content as well.