Yesterday I hung up a flat-screen television and afterwards lay on the sofa with youngest son on my chest, my head in middle son’s lap and my legs on oldest son’s lap. We watched Ben-10 together.

And that is what it is all about.

Yesterday I walked the dog and took a moment to look at the local windmill reflected in the lake. I was wearing my brother’s shoes and my father’s coat. I remembered that when I got married I wore the bow-tie given to me by a friend who’s young husband died suddenly in a car accident.  The world is throwing symbols at me thick and fast.

And that is what it is all about.

Yesterday we sat down and ate Mexican takeaway at the big, slightly scratched and dented wooden table that Marjolein and I bought because we wanted people to sit round it and talk to each other.

And that is what it is all about.

Yesterday I drove away to pick up my middle son’s repaired Nintendo DS. Marjolein found a repairman. Middle son was bitterly sad when his DS broke and he will get it back from Saint Nicholas tonight.

And  that is also what it is all about.

Yesterday my oldest boy sat by youngest and said that youngest could squeeze his hand as hard as he wanted when youngest had to have stinging disinfectant on his poorly toe.

And today will be just as amazing.

And  that is indeed what it is all about.

This is hard to write.

A week ago my brother died. He had been ill for a number of weeks with a rapid form of Leukemia and went quietly in his sleep.

There are no words for how I feel, that is something that bulks too large for my skills to encompass, but I can draw some wisdom from this.

The thing I am proudest of doing in all the world right now is that I made a small  aeroplane, red biro on notepad paper, borrowed scissors from the nurse, cut it out and hung over his bed. He had to lie back because of a lumbar puncture he had had and it cheered him up a little. It was a tiny, hopeless little gesture in the face of the towering, dark wave of his illness, but that and sitting quietly with him was all I had.

Sometimes there is not a lot you can do, so just do that.

Somewhere out there you may have the privilege of  hanging up a small, red aeroplane for someone, maybe making a difference, no matter what the odds. Be brave. Seize the day, you may not get a second chance.

There is a sad misconception that D&D is a refuge for the socially inept. I would say that is probably born of the fact that, as an intensely socially educative game, it enables people who would otherwise fall out of contact to find a framework. You notice them when they are playing D&D when they would normally have scuttled out of sight. That has to be a good thing, liberating and enabling.

I have written before about D&D for kids but since then a few things have occurred to me that have convinced me that everyone who has smart children should play D&D with them…

Some quick generalisations about smart kids. Full of ideas. Easily bored. Challenged by working with others. Tendency to grandstand and demand attention. Outliers from the herd who are challenged to fit in and have a hard time finding peers.

Take a few typical attributes of D&D and see how they can engage and develop your smart child.

1. It is a team game. When you venture into the catacombs you have an elven wizard (Maria, from your class) at your shoulder, a shaggy barbarian fighter (Joe, who shares your passion for dinosaurs) watching the rear and the stout Dwarven cleric (Luke, Joe’s older brother who is very good at math) struggling along behind. Fellow players immediately have common ground and temporarily many shared goals. People who game together develop friendships.
2. It is a game of the imagination. D&D stimulates and rewards imagination. It presents a living story, a realm of fantasy. Just for once having vivid ideas that do not fit into the day-to-day of school has a payoff. Just for once you can share a world of imagination with others.
3. It is all about problem-solving.  The goblins are attacking and the mysterious rune-encrusted door will not open. Which of the three gems you have found will fit? How can I swing across the chasm without being shredded by the dire bats? Ideas zip across the table and advice and cunning plans are everywhere. I have never yet run a session where someone did not solve the problems I set them in a way I did not expect.
4. It demands cooperation. Anyone that has ever played D&D knows that you need each other just as much as the players in any other team game, but with an added twist: each character is different. So each player has a unique contribution, a specific set of skills an capabilities that will not always be fully in play, but which will certainly at some point be utterly crucial. My son plays a rogue, a slight but light-fingered fellow, skilled at opening locks, defusing deadly traps and avoiding danger. The heavily armoured fighter stands between him and the fangs and claws, but waits (far) behind him while he disables the explosive runes on the the door of the treasure room.
5. It structures communication. D&D has a lot of crucial moments, traps, combat and test of skill in which the whole table of players participates. That means that people have to take turns speaking, listen carefully to what others have said and thing on their feet. It is like being in a meeting with committee rules but without the stifling boredom and frustration. It is highly structured (though chaotic shouting does break out on occasion) and teaches communications skills, brevity and listening. Anyone that does not listen when the dungeon master is speaking may well miss a vital clue, not hear the troll creeping up from behind or the secret door creaking open.
6. It rewards creativity. It is a game in which almost anything is possible. Though there are rules and limits, (jumping off a high place remains a bad idea… unless you can fly of course..), there is always another way to approach a problem, a wierd, out-of-the-box way of solving it. Creativity is rewarded. The problem-solving part demands creativity, but story-making and world-building do too. You need to flesh out an imaginary character. Imagine how she would talk to the local king, or to the butcher who’s wife is a witch. I recently challenged a highly numeric and analytical boy who plays in a game I run to describe what the spell he was casting actually looked like: arrows of fire, luminous serpents? He had to step out of his analytical comfort zone to do it… Similarly, the story-teller at the table often has to concentrate to work out if his character’s glittering shurikens actually hit the target.
7. It is fun. Fun with people who think like you and revel in ideas and cleverness. It is a space in which football, physical coordination and the social pecking order do not count for much, so for the geeky kids it is a heady taste of freedom from conformity.

Sometimes what I need to say seems to obvious. One of the things I am still learning is to say it anyway.

I am a deeply fortunate person. I have a family I love,  a cheerful disposition and there are moments in my day which are eternal, where I am breathless with the glory of the world. I do not feel grateful because there is an obligation or that it is expected. I feel grateful because it is a natural state and so profoundly mixed with what I understand of happiness that I cannot seperate it out.

So I say to my sons “What goes around…” and they answer “comes around” and they know that I mean that the large and small generosity and acts of kindness that others show cannot be repaid, but only transmitted.

My oldest boy biked off to see his good friend home and  got lost on the way back. It was getting dark and everything seemed strange and threatening to him. He did not dare talk to the big, tough-looking teenagers he saw in the park. Fear and embarassment gripped him and held him back from finding help until tears came, until Rosanna came. I have never met Rosanna and I probably will never find her, but she put him back on the right road and guided him home.

Thankyou Rosanna, for sending him home. I was very scared too. May you be helped in all your journeys.

I have laid upon oldest boy a debt of honour. “Someday”, I said “you will find someone lost and afraid when you are a big, perhaps tough-looking, teenager. Then you will remember Rosanna and a scared ten-year old.” So much of what we say to children fades, but I hope that that will remain.

I do not know you and perhaps I never will. I am writing this out into the strange, busy echo-chamber of the Internet. Wherever you are, I hope that you will always be guided home. If some day a lanky great guy helps you out, it may be that my son remembers Rosanna.

There is something that I want to say, somewhat out of the ordinary for this blog, please be patient while I find a way to say it.

I am a scarily cheerful person almost all of the time, particularly on diamond-bright blue-skied winter days like today. Things are actually pretty grim in the Netherlands, where I live, right now. The economy has taken a hit under the waterline and people are losing jobs, businesses and houses. Such times are of course sent to try us and they have one gift to give: perspective, they force you to focus on what is truly important.

I may lose my job.

But, I have a close and loving relationship with my wife and children. I am healthy (though a little overweight right now) and live in comfort and safety. I consider myself fortunate beyond all reckoning.  If was going to have a problem with something I would definately have chosen the economy and work. I am therefore filthy rich in any coin worth counting.

In these times it is tempting to “turtle”, pull the covers over your head and wait for it all to blow over, but that is not what we are for. If you do have perspective and strength this is the time to reach out to others. I spent various moments this week with people who are overstretched by their work, put at financial risk, or worse dunked in confusion and sadness by turmoil and tough decisions in their personal lives. There is little you can do but listen attentively and perhaps offer a little practical help and perspective. You can be gentle. So that is what the title is about. Even now, even when money markets lurch around like drunken giants there is no force, no dictum greater than love and the ability to care for your fellow-person.

Gentleness is your super-power. Use it for good.

Use it.

I have been running a Dungeon and Dragons 3.5 game for my 10-year old son and four of his friends for the last few months. Though they are all geek-kids with video-game experience and lively imaginations, it is, on occasion, very challenging.

For anyone not familiar with the basic concept of Roleplaying games, the idea is that players create characters that have skills and attributes (like strength and dexterity, but also perhaps magical power) which determine how well those characters can do things in an imaginary world (break down the door with your strength, cast a sleep spell upon the guards by expending magical power). As you character has adventures she gains experience, becomes stronger and more skilled: the thief gets better at picking locks and the wizard learns new and more powerful spells.

One person takes on the role of “Game Master” (GM), creates the adventure and helps the players by

• Describing the things they encounter (“you push aside the vines and find a dark passageway leading into the heart of the forgotten temple”)
• Working out the effect of their actions (“your spell causes the giant spider to flee”, “you failed to pick the lock, a tiny poisoned dart shoots out at you”, “your search uncovers mysterious symbol carved into the wood of the door”, “your strengh is insufficient to lift the sarcophagus lid”).
• Looking after the story (“If they search the temple they will have to defeat five giant spiders, but may find a crucial amulet”, “The amulet gives the crucial answers which will lead them to the hidden cultists in Persia”)

Running a roleplaying game is pretty complex and many Roleplaying systems have reams of rules designed to help the GM deal with moving around the world: how much can a strong barbarian carry and still fight off monsters or sneak past a guard, far can people travel in a day etc etc. Getting to grips with all these rules can  be a real chore and get in the way of the fun, storytelling aspect if you focus on it too much, but I did want the support and consistency a system provides, so we are running “Dungeons and Dragons”. D&D is the Microsoft of roleplaying: not everyone’s perfect system, but ubiquitous and standard. It is easy to find other players who can play D&D.

I started the group of 10-year-olds when my son wanted a Dungeons and Dragons birthday party. Marjolein made Dutch versions of character sheets from the Basic Game and they set off to explore the underground dungeon of the evil dragon Tussenmaug. His friends had a very good time and we have been carrying on the adventure every few weeks ever since. Today they got to the culmination of the current adventure and killed Tussenmaug, who had been planning to enslave the town.  When the beast finally died (having given them a tough fight) they jumped to their feet and cheered. That, of course, made my day. There were some great moments during the adventure: everyone holding their breath while the thief delicately disarmed the trapped door, trying to set the greasy hair of the harpy on fire.

I have been gradually increasing the complexity of the rules as we go on, drip feeding the more complicated stuff as it became relevant. My advice to anyone running a game for kids is to prepare thoroughly. We used a lot of stuff from the Basic Game set of D&D, simplified rules, nice maps etc. I also made cool backstories for each of them, including “hooks” to hang new stories on, reasons for them to be together  and simple keywords to spark roleplaying (arrogant, careful, generous etc).  In the adventure I tried to make sure that everyone played a vital role: the cleric turned back undead, the fighter slew the dragon and the thief disarmed deadly traps.

Given that keeping a group of ten-year-olds sitting around a table for any length of time is difficult had plenty of munchies  and regular run-around-outside breaks. I was firm about taking turns and not shouting: the best way of doing that was to keep the action moving and speak quietly. Every time I said “something’s happening…” they concentrated and listened, because it might well be a horde of orcs coming round the corner or knifes flying out of the wall…

I am just on the point of moving them over to 4.0, largely because it will simplifiy some of the mechanics.

Having read that Peter Drukker was a major influence for aspects of GTD and having come across more Drukker-isms in the work of Steven Covey I decided a while ago to read “The Effective Executive” for myself. It is now forty years old and not in the least bit out of date. His examples refer to, now historical, figures but the situations he describes and the advice he provides is still cutting edge. I regularly see yet another “new insight” pop up in management and effectiveness forums that sends me off to my battered paperback copy to find the half-page he devoted to make precisely that point, forty year ago.

That is not to degrade the thinking of now. Mr Drucker is just a very, very hard act to follow and there is much valuable work to be done in getting those insights actually implemented in current behaviours and with recent technology. The latest case of this phenomenon is working from your strengths. The premise is simple and, for me, convincing: people spend much too much time trying to eliminate weaknesses when they should be leveraging their strengths. The “fully rounded” person who can handle every aspect of the job with ease is a myth. If someone looks like that they are almost certainly under-challenged. I have some strong and some weak suits. I use some behaviours, including GTD, to compensate for the weaknesses and put my coaching, facilitating and analytical skills into play at every opportunity. I cannot do everything well, but I can certainly arrange my situation so that everything is well done.

I have a confession to make…. Recently I let my home inbox pile up for more than three weeks. It got bigger and scruffier all the time and started lowering at me while I tried to do other things. Of course something like that has a double whammy for me. I have all the guilt about stuff piling up that anyone has, plus the fact that I am a GTD coach, I teach this stuff, and should of course never have that kind of problem. Ahem.

But of course GTD does not stop you being human and fallible, in fact it rather assumes that you will get out of control sometimes: that is what the Weekly Review is for. So after me and my stack had stared at each other for a while I shelved the useless guilt and just got stuck in and processed the damn thing. Of course, once you actually attack something like that, it is nothing like as fearsome as it seemed. In fact I had the whole thing sorted in fifteen minutes. The rest of my system was fine, so I could process, grab next actions and dump to my heart’s content.

When I was done I felt much, much better: just as if I had finally got a hot shower after a long, dirty bike-ride. I have been living with “zero in” for long enough that I got a really itchy feeling from having a stack in there.

I also found the cause of the backlog at the bottom of the pile: it was a small repair job that my wife had left for me and which I had not been able to decide how to do. I had been picking this thing up, looking at it and racking my brains about how to fix it and then putting it back into in until it got covered over and “fossilized” by accumulating stuff. Once I uncovered it I was on enough of a roll that I tried the first thing that occurred to me and that worked just fine. Sometimes the next action is just “do the most obvious, simple thing that you can think of to solve this problem”. Another thing I learned from this is the danger of only doing a Weekly Review at work: you can find yourself avoiding tackling things at home.

You must have noticed: I learn a lot of GTD from doing things with my kids. I find children a good model: the main difference between kids and adults being that grown-ups are way better at inventing some specious reason for the daft things they are doing…

My latest little anecdote was another floor-cleaning clinch. My eldest son, Matthijs, was looking at his highly untidy floor in resignation, so I made him a bet that he could have it entirely clear inside two minutes. That sparked his competitive nature and he was done inside one minute and forty seconds.

But this is not about motivation: the reason I made the bet and the reason he got done so fast was that there was nothing on the floor but knights and lego. All Matthijs’ knights go in one drawer and all his lego goes in another. He did not need to spend any time deciding what to do with the thing he had in his hands.

For us adults: be very aware of the effect of sharply defined storage and filing. If you can take the e-mail, report, technical specification you currently are looking at and file it instantly in a place where you are sure to find it you will have no difficulty letting go of it. If it is neither knights nor lego you may have difficulty getting it off your “floor”.