Structure is an interesting concept. Some people LOVE structure. They do well in school, when they graduate, they head off for the corporate job and climb the ladder. They take orders well, and learn to give orders to their underlings. This is “Success” with a capital “S” in this society.
Other people LOATHE structure. Here I’m thinking of artists, high school dropouts, entrepreneurs….
Now I normally would think that I’m in the latter category. But I have to admit I “accomplish” more when I operate under structure. For example, I just set up a list called “Things to do before leaving Seattle.” It’s already got 5 must do items on it, that were, just before I made the list, floating around in my head BOTHERING me. Now they are safely on a list and I can relax. The structure of having a list, caused several good things to happen.
Having the structure of a weblog caused all sorts of good things to happen.
1) I now journal a little bit. I wasn’t doing that at all before.
2) I got really interested in reading other peoples blogs. I learned about trackbacks, rss, moblogs. Things I hadn’t heard of before.
3) I bought a camera phone to have my own mob, and now have captured pictures online for family and friends.
4) Met interesting people in email who wrote me as a result of the blog.
Writing a blog entry is good structure. Ideas float around in my head. The act of writing them down, and editing, makes my thought clearer even to me. I’ll probably spend an hour on this post editing and rearranging, before I post it.
Other good structures? When you wake up in the morning (at the same time?) do you go through the same ritual? Shower, coffee, paper, cereal, drive to work on the same route? Inventing a new routine everyday would just be mentally exhausting.
People say kids need structure. There is some truth to that, I have to admit. I think you have to be careful and only give them what they need and no more. In my experience, they tend to know when you are going overboard, and rebel. But some structure they internalize. For example, Quentin was complaining yesterday morning that he had forgotten to eat dessert the night before. I said, I guess you could have it now, and he said, “You can only have dessert after dinner!” I said “Oh yeah, sorry!”.
So what’s bad structure? The key difference as far as I can tell, is WHO came up with the structure. Do you have to sit in a desk working when it’s a beautiful sunny 81 degree day? Do you have to write a blog entry everyday because it’s required for your english class?
I would love to read more about this. If you know of any good books on structure, please post a comment!
Structure: Can’t live with it, can’t live without it.
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