Archives for May 2015

Project Management

May 29, 2015 By Guy Windsor 1 Comment

Some stuff to be done... — Some stuff to be done…

This has been quite a month. Since May 1^st, here are the projects I have been working on, and some of the stuff I have done, in no particular order.

Finishing and publishing the first three instalments of my Swordsman’s Quick Guide series.
Working on a complete rewrite of Veni Vadi Vici.
Installing a new kitchen in our apartment
Moving back into our apartment after the plumbing work.
Working on the Liechtenauer expansion pack for Audatia.
Preparing my Realities of Steel presentation for Ropecon.
Attending Ropecon for three days, mostly playtesting Audatia, and giving the presentation.

All of this in addition to the usual:

Teaching at the Salle
Running the school, organising seminars etc.
Writing this blog
And maintaining at least acceptable competence as parent and spouse.

So, as you may imagine, I’ve been a bit busy. But I do not multi-task. So you might very well ask, how do I manage all this?

The short answer is “I don’t”. I let some things slide. Email and social media are the first to go; some poor folk waited two weeks for a reply to some queries. And it’s been a while since my last post, no?

The longer answer is, “prioritise, and do things bit by bit.”

I also delegate where possible.

Let me enlarge on this a bit.

Every project is broken down into tasks. You cannot possibly fit a kitchen. It's too much. So instead one day I laid the floor. On another I painted the ceiling. On another I sanded the worktops. On another I fitted the handles. On any given day, I have only one task. So, today might be the day for sanding down the kitchen surfaces. Or writing a blog post. Or working on Veni Vadi Vici. I start with that, and keep going until I need to stop, or until I finish a given milestone: first draft written; three more chapters proofread; surfaces oiled, whatever.

Then I start on the next project, or lie on the sofa and watch TV, or whatever else I actually feel like, because the day’s work is done. I don’t always get to choose which task is next; those with hard deadlines (like preparing a presentation for an agreed date) go before those with soft ones (finish the Veni Vadi Vici rewrite), but wherever possible, I wake up in the morning with only one work thing to do that day.

Quite often, a task I have built up in my mind as huge and difficult gets done in minutes instead of hours; but my wife will tell you that I have a terrible habit of thinking something will only take an hour or two, and it takes days instead. That’s also sort of part of the system; by underestimating the difficulty of the project I increase the likelihood that I will actually commit to it; once the commitment is there, the task will be done, just not necessarily on schedule. (I hear my Audatia supporters grinding their teeth… the Liechtenauer Expansion is a year late, and it’s my fault for underestimating the time).

I only ever work at 80% capacity or better. If I find that a task is dragging, that I can’t get into the flow with it, then I switch to something I can flow into. So up to a point, my subconscious chooses my tasks for me, and this is a skill I have deliberately developed over many years; I have trained my instinct to tell me what I should be doing. I often don’t know when I wake up in the morning what I will be working on that day. But then I find a particular file open on the computer, or I find myself assembling a tool kit in my head, and just go with it. Dammit, I do use my feelings, Ben!*

I wanted my series out and off my desk this month, as a matter of urgency. So I put that first, and duly published on May 8th. In that week, if (for example) my wife asked me something about the kitchen, I’d say “I don’t care”. Or somesuch. Because right then the only thing I did care about was the series. The major kitchen project was not the one thing I was doing right then.

Task switching has only one useful function: it can be used as a way of productive procrastination, or a rest. If I get tired typing: great, time to put up the shelves in my study. If I’m exhausted from fitting the kitchen: perfect time to run errands. This goes further: I never work late at night. Because with enough rest, food and sleep, I can get twice as much done the next day. Really, it is so much better to work 10 hours at 100% than it is to work 20 hours at 50%.

If I ever am stuck for which task to prioritise, I use a pencil and paper and write down everything that’s pressing. Usually the one on the top of the list is the one I should be working on that day. Also, projects that are likely to make money take precedence over those that cost money. [One corollary to that; when paying bills in a time of cash shortage, I prioritise them according to their impact on the creditor's cashflow. Freelancers get paid before big companies, big companies before governments.]

One trick that I find helps with managing tasks of different sizes, is get one or two of the small ones done first. For example, when I was fitting out my wife’s walk-in wardrobe, I also needed the same toolkit for putting up a shelf in the loo. I did the shelf first, because it got it off my plate, and gave me a feeling of “I’ve actually accomplished something today”, which I could ride on through the tedium of laying floor, drilling 8000 holes for shelving etc. through the rest of the day. If I had left it as something to do after the wardrobe, I would have been too tired to bother with it.

some stuff done. Tiles, painting, tidy up the dishwasher, still to do.

So right now, there are many large tasks waiting, but I also got the balcony table trimmed down a bit, something I’ve been meaning to do for seven years. Having the necessary tools here for the kitchen made resizing the table a small task, easily done in an hour or two.

Delegation is hard, especially on a tight budget when you can’t just hire someone. (I got a lot of help from my friend and student Henry on fitting the kitchen; he did much of the actual fitting on the weekend I was at Ropecon, for example.) But one thing I have delegated a lot of is food-making. My wife and I are way busy, and the kitchen appliances aren’t connected yet (long story), so we have been eating out a lot, delegating the cooking and clean up. It’s not the cheapest or best option, but an ok compromise. But I am so looking forward to getting to play with the gorgeous new induction hob and steam oven…

So, my system in brief, is something like this:

1) Prioritise

2) Do only one thing at a time.

3) Only work at efficient rates.

4) Leave things of low priority undone

5) Delegate where possible

And one last thing. When a project is not going well, or I find myself stuck or about to take short cuts, I envision a student, and teach them how to do it. While doing the kitchen surfaces, I was running into serious fatigue-related problems, but did not want to switch tasks, so I decided to take my imaginary student, and create a video for her. This is perhaps the worst how-to video in history, because it was not really made for the watcher; it was made because having the video running gave me access to greater reserves of patience. And I threw it up online on the off-chance that somebody somewhere might find it useful, but basically unedited, because I’m too damn busy right now to carefully craft a how-to-sand-and-oil-kitchen-worktops video. It’s not on my to-do list.

* Readers who do not get this reference seriously need to go watch the original Star Wars movie. Right now.

Making History

May 13, 2015 By Guy Windsor Leave a Comment

My Mum holding a baby cheetah for hand-feeding, Kenya in the '60s. — My Mum holding a baby leopard for hand-feeding, Kenya in the '60s.

There are always at least two sides to every story, and usually many more. As historians, we do our best to take all the evidence into account, and tend to rely more on first-person eye-witness accounts than on secondary sources. But I have recently been personally involved in historical eye-witness accounts, and I’m here to tell you that even they are not 100% reliable.

Now, I know you knew that already. But it bears repeating. Eye-witnesses are always biased, and always have some kind of agenda (however innocent or benevolent that agenda may be).

What am I going on about, you may wonder? Simply this: My father has recently had the first volume of his memoirs published. More Sherlock Holmes than James Herriot: the Veterinary Detectives takes the reader from his childhood in the Blitz, through Veterinary school, and off to Kenya (where photo of my Mum holding the baby leopard was taken), Nigeria, the 1967 Foot and Mouth outbreak in the UK, [me being born in 1973 gets about 2 lines] Argentina, and Botswana. It is a really odd feeling to read the parents-eye view of events that I actually recall, and to find out so much more about the various grown-ups in my childhood; I had no idea that so-and-so was a vet, no idea that this other tall person was a senior government minister, and so on. Grown-ups were either cool (played with us) or boring (didn’t play with us). It makes me wonder what my kids are thinking and absorbing as a steady stream of world-class HEMA instructors come and go from our home.

And it is also interesting to note that there are stated facts that are clearly incorrect, and stories in which the best bits are missing. From my perspective, anyway. Take for instance the trip to Ghanzi, in Botswana, where the President, Sir Quett Masire, has his farm. My father mentions that Richard (my big brother) and I both arrived from boarding school in the UK, and as we set foot in the Gaberone airport, we went straight onto the Botswana equivalent of Air Force One (a noisy military propellor aeroplane), because we were being given a lift up to Ghanzi by the Masire family. So far so good.

I have always been very susceptible to travel sickness. And Lady Masire was very nice about it when I threw up in her lap. Does that get a mention? No. He says:

“Mrs Gladys Masire was kind to them during the flight, giving them fizzy drinks and sandwiches.”

Which is true, but leaves a lot out.

And she was even nicer about it when at lunch a few days later, Richard opened a bottle of Sprite that had clearly been shaken by someone beforehand, and poor Lady Masire got another Windsor dousing. Upon which subject Windsor senior is silent, though he does go into detail about the cattle he was treating. And he mentions the infamous breakfast incident. I’ll give you his version, then mine:

“Guy had distinguished himself that morning: he had woken long before Richard and went into the kitchen to find the president at breakfast and was invited to join him. To his horror Guy found out that it was grilled liver on the menu, which was a dish he could not abide. To his credit he managed to eat it all and even gave the impression of enjoyment. He was definitely born to be a diplomat.”

Hmmm. As I recall it, Richard was already up and out, and I was late getting up. I was hanging around in the garden behind the kitchen, for no real reason, when Lady Masire came out and asked me if I’d had breakfast. I said no, so she sent me into the sitting room, where to my surprise I saw the President sat on the sofa. I sat opposite him, we chatted about this and that, and then breakfast was brought in: grilled kidneys. Kidneys, not liver. Of that there can be no possible doubt. They are burned into my mind in all their ammonia-smelling horror. But I did eat it all.

Regular readers of this blog will also almost certainly dispute the notion that I am in any way diplomatic. Perhaps being in the back of a car with a rabid dog in Argentina has something to do with it? What am I on about? You’ll have to read the book to find out. But yes, my sister and I did play with a rabid dog.

Of the many things I learned from reading this book, not least was an idea of what my father actually did for a living (he is retired now); he was at least as much a microbiologist as he was a vet: for instance, he developed the first vaccine for Contagious Bovine Pleuropneumonia. Want to know what that is, and how the vaccine was invented?

Read the book!

And if you’d like a free copy, I have five copies of the Kindle version to give away in exchange for an honest review. Please email me at guywindsor@gmail.com with a) a link to a review that you have written of any other book and b) your promise to review this one, and I’ll email you the file.

Using the Seven Principles case study: an advanced dagger class.

May 10, 2015 By Guy Windsor 1 Comment

Happy Mothers' day, from sunny Finland!

And what could be more motherly than a spot of medieval combat?

It is very hard to defend yourself against a fully-committed attack with a dagger. To be honest, it’s not something we focus on all that much; we tend to prefer sword fights. But a couple of weeks ago I ran a class on dealing with committed dagger attacks. It went like this:

First we ran a diagnostic; did everyone present have a reasonably complete knowledge of the dagger curriculum? The answer came back “yes”. There were no obvious gaps in knowledge (distinguishing carefully between knowledge and skill). Then I polled them; how many felt confident of defending themselves with a sword against a sword attack? All hands went up. Unarmed against a dagger? No hands went up.

The next step was to analyse our drills from the point of view of my “bullshit” theory. Where is the bullshit?

The attacks they were used to from basic classes were a) done with a training dagger, not the real thing; b) done singly; just one blow, or maybe two. No flurries of strikes; c) done without a great deal of force; and d) done usually in a set pattern of some kind, allowing them to predict what the sequence would be, so what techniques were likely to work.

We began with speed: the attacker had to make multiple fast strikes. This quickly overwhelmed the defender. Clearly there was no point being competitive about this, so using my rule of ‘c’s (which is there in the “how to spot the bullshit” post), we had the attacker coach the defender by easing off the speed to the level where the defender was successful most, but not all, of the time.

Then strength; instead of lots of fast blows, the attack was to be done as a single blow, but with maximum force. This generated slower, but more forceful actions. Again, the attacker had to coach the defender; modifying the force to what they could only just handle. All the students agreed that a single hard blow was much easier to deal with than multiple fast ones.

Speed and strength had been trained against using rubber or wooden daggers; it’s easy to be brave against a dummy weapon. So the students were given the option to train with or without masks, and with sharp daggers. Some chose no mask with sharps; some chose masks with sharps; some chose no mask with blunts; some chose masks and blunts. But all of them went more slowly, and more gently. Funny that. It is hard to be bold against lethal force.

It was actually at this stage in the class that I noticed that we were actually working through Fiore’s four virtues (celeritas, forteza, ardimento, avvisamento) one at a time. So I thought for a minute about how to train for avvisamento, foresight. And I came up with responsiveness drills, in which the attacker varies his response to the defender’s initial defence, and the defender has to adapt; they do not know what is coming in advance.

Of course, at each stage of this class, we were working on just one thing. We never did full speed, full force, highly variable attacks with a sharp weapon against an unprotected face, because someone would have died. But by breaking the problem down into its component challenges, we could address each area of bullshit in turn.

Readers of my Seven Principles of Mastery booklet will have recognised the principles at work here: we trained with no injuries, we differentiated between knowledge and skill, we ran a diagnostic, and we worked on the 20% of technique that make up 80% of what you’re likely to use (though we didn’t actually address the range of techniques available except to establish at the start that all the students in class had a sufficiently broad knowledge base). The practice was mindful, and the students were sufficiently challenged that they spent most of the time in a state of flow. The one thing we didn't really go into was adopting useful beliefs; perhaps that should be the subject of another post?

Swordsman’s Quick Guide Series is Live!

May 8, 2015 By Guy Windsor Leave a Comment

The first three instalments of my new series, The Swordsman's Quick Guide, are now live!

Just take a look at these covers, by Eleonora Rebecchi (the photo on part 2 is by Nathan Robinson):

I am experimenting with using Smashwords to distribute my ebooks; their formatting requirements are arcane in the extreme (they require vintage formatting, like doc files, forsooth!), so I haven't got my longer books up there (yet), but they have excellent distribution; they upload to everywhere you can think of except Amazon. So you should find these titles on Kobo, iBooks, and so on in due course. The Kindle files are uploaded; one major benefit of Smashwords is, once all the hoops are jumped through, your book goes live in seconds. Amazon usually takes about 8-12 hours, in my experience. So they should be live there tomorrow.

In the meantime, you can get them direct from Smashwords. You can also get them from my Selz bookshop here.

These bijou booklettes are each about 6,000 words, and each word has been carefully examined by a host of kind volunteer readers (whose free copy of their instalment will be delivered soon!). So let me here thank each and every one of you that has helped make these better.

In Gladio Veritas

May 2, 2015 By Guy Windsor Leave a Comment

The School of European Swordsmanship was born on a Scottish hilltop, not far from Fort William. I was at a crossroads in my life, and went up into the hills to clear my mind, and meditate on what I should do. I thought my options were to stay in Edinburgh, or move to America. It was a bit more complicated than that, but the other people involved might be reading this and would probably prefer that I not go into detail.

So I went and sat on a mountaintop (cliché perhaps, but it worked), entered a meditative state, and a voice in my head said “Go to Helsinki and open a school of swordsmanship”.

So I did.

But there were about 6 months of preparation and groundwork between revelation and the actual move to Finland, and one of the things I needed to do was create a logo for the new school. But what on earth should that logo be?

So I meditated on it, and came up with this:

Which became this:

Fourteen years later, hundreds of people worldwide train under this logo, so I thought I’d better explain what it represents.

The Shield: the principle of defence, of course. It’s a heraldic device, and a perfect image for the ideals of the School.

The Longsword: I knew from the beginning that I wanted the Longsword, and specifically Fiore’s style, to be the foundation of our practise. This is because at the time it was the type of sword that I could best practise with for spiritual purposes. It was the tool I was using to create the self I wished to be. I could rationalise it a hundred other ways, but that’s the real reason.

The Rapier: solid, practical fencing. This sword style (and I was thinking early Italian, from the beginning) is practical, straightforward, and embodies the principles of fencing most clearly. It’s the stripping away of all other things, armour, horses, knightliness, everything, until all you have left is two people in shirts, sword in hand.

The symbols on the shield are of course Fiore’s four virtues, from the famous “Segno Page”. I was working from the Pisani Dossi at the time, so here it is from there:

I thought the objects (arrow, heart, castle and dividers) would work much better in a logo than the animals (Tiger, Lion, Elephant and Lynx).

The Castle, fortitudo, or strength (see I am Weak for a post on that virtue), the Arrow, presteza or speed (see I am Slow for a post on that virtue), the Heart, ardimento or boldness (see “I am Fearful”, in Swordfighting for Writers, Game Designers, and Martial Artists, for a chapter on that virtue), and the Dividers, avvisamento, (which I refer to in The Medieval Longsword, but have not gone into in depth anywhere, yet. It’s the hardest virtue to write about).

The point of these is to remind all students that they must keep these virtues in balance: strength without stiffness, speed without losing your balance, boldness without rashness, and prudence without cowardice.

In the middle we have the circle, square and triangle, representing at one level, the basic patterns of movement, but also geometry as a virtue in itself. This puts a group of three things in the centre, surrounded by a group of four things; a trinity and a quaternity (or indeed a triangle and a square). Readers of part one of the forthcoming The Swordsman's Quick Guide series, The Seven Principles of Mastery will be on familiar ground here.

Geometry is important not only because Vadi mentions it, but also because it is a perfect metaphor for training. Geometry is perfect in theory, and flawed in practice. Nobody has ever drawn a truly perfect circle, or a truly straight line. But we can hold geometrical truths in our minds, however imperfectly they are embodied in reality. Pi has an infinite number of digits after the decimal place; it is impossible to write the number down. But you can represent it geometrically with ease; just scribe a straight line, put your compass anywhere on the line, and draw a circle. The length of the circumference of the circle is Pi multiplied by the length of the diameter. Simple.

The motto of the School is In Gladio Veritas. I derived this from the common phrase in vino veritas, “truth is in wine”, which basically means that drunk people tend to tell the truth. The ideal on which the School is founded is the virtue of Truth. One of my students, Ken Quek, wrote his thesis for Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences on the branding of the school. In it, he wrote:

The school's values are as follows:

Integrity

Security

Maturity

Equality

Integrity means respect for the truth, as reflected in the school's motto, “In gladio veritas”, meaning “In the sword is truth”. This means that all instruction is grounded in adherence to what is historically accurate: the treatises are the ultimate source of authority, and every exercise is meant to bring the school's practice closer to the historical reality as far as we know it. This also requires that the school's syllabus be constantly refreshed to accurately capture the state of the art of our knowledge, as well as avoiding, as far as possible, practices that distort our understanding and expression of the art.

Security means training in a safe and sensible manner. Safety is paramount in training and everyone, even if it is their first day in the salle, is responsible for their own wellbeing and that of everyone they train with. It extends beyond physical measures to encompass emotional security as well. While an essential part of training is to challenge people to step out of their comfort zones, they must always do so with a sense of trust that their training partners and instructors will do their utmost to keep them safe. In addition, it means that nobody should ever feel threatened, intimidated or belittled in training.

Maturity means having the correct training priorities. The watchword for the salle is respect – for the art and for one's fellow practitioners. While every student wishes to become the best swordsman they can be, this must never be allowed to hinder anyone else's development, enjoyment or safety. It also means that the community assumes the best in everyone.

Equality means not showing prejudice in any way against other members of the community. The school esteems spirit above all: what is important is the desire to walk the path together, rather than any other characteristic or achievement. Members show the same respect for male and female, tall and short, young and old, heavy and slim, new and experienced. As long as someone holds a sword in their hand and practices with diligence and responsibility, they are expressing the art and being a credit to the school.

It always blows me away when a member of the School really gets it. And this is a classic example of that. I never said that these were the values the school was founded on; I wasn't trained to think in those terms. But dammit, this is spot-on.

The motto clearly resonates with at least one of my students; Ilpo Luhtala had this tattoo inked about a year after he started training:

Now another member of the school, Titta Tolvanen, has created her own vision of the logo, and it is so gorgeous that I had to share it.

Isn't that glorious?

Archives for May 2015

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