CFC Blog #176: Tithing Time
Hi, this is Pip. It is Sunday morning in Saratoga!
When our kids were about 8 years old and we started at Coburn Ventures to generate large mix-ins of folks in New York every six weeks or so at Na Thai on Houston Street, I took the advice from Keith Ferrazi who wrote an AWESOME book about connecting/community called “Never Eat Alone”. In it ONE wonderful idea is to actively include your family in your work so – BAM! – I would include Tucker and Eamon and I recall my excitement about the two of them having time over Pad Thai to talk to a world class Bell Labs physicist. But Steve is way way way more than that. He inspires people with his heart and active wide goodwill and care for seemingly everything in every moment and especially people. He has such deep compassion matched with ever expanding curiosity.
I would light up seeing Tucker and Eamon with Steve. What a positive adult impression!!!
Back in our home at dinner, we would in specific situations still to today say, “I bet Steve would know the answer to that” or “I wonder how Steve would think about that?” or a few times a year we would just cut to the chase and call him on speaker phone.
What fun.
What luck.
Well a few weeks back he and I were talking about his tithing – because he refused to take compensation in helping me. In other words, I became a specific beneficiary of his tithing time. (Frankly, as you all know, I benefit from so much time tithing from all of you even if you don’t call it that! Thank you!).
So I asked him if he might write three of his favorite recent time tithings and perhaps an uncorrelated mix. There are three just below.
A Related CFC Aside: Anti-Advising
A long time ago (1996) my incredible coach of 20 years Ken Davidson said: “Do you think I have a thought of what you should do in this situation? I truly don’t.. I have enough trouble figuring out my own life to spend any time thinking about what others should do with theirs.” And I stopped my own habit of contemplating what others should do with their lives that day as well. Why do I mention this “anti-advising” idea? It is one of the core core design principles of the Community For Change and all the writing in this series that Amanda brings to life for us. I am anti-advising. I think there is so much relief from self-consciousness when we feel we are truly in a space of zero fear of judgment and spaces filled with advisement (solicited or unsolicited) I sense can so often cut off genius and learning and community way too instantly. Perhaps I will write on this topic in the future more widely just to share the weird thinking I have migrated toward on the “advising” topic.
You might notice that Amanda makes great strains in editing the writing that is shared as she has filtered out advising. Sometimes we humans might seek advice from professionals for sure and many of you are those exact professionals we might seek advisement from. BUT inside a community, sharing without advisement may generate more power. Who knows??!!
Why I mention this:
One of the things that is way neat about Steve I experience is that he willingly shares everything he has but never preaches what ANYONE else should do. This fits for me well.
So I asked Steve to write something. I hope you enjoy it. For the past bunch of years I have heard the joy in his heart come through especially in the third example of time tithing where physics-meets-volleyball! I hope you enjoy
(FROM STEVE CRANDALL).
Steve Crandall esc@mac.com
I’ve tithed my time to the projects of friends since I was 26.
I was disturbed by the required tithes in my parent’s church.
It struck me as unfair as we were lower middle class and couldn’t afford it - my parents would pay their tithe and let other bills go if they had to. I’m not religious, but a regular offering seemed reasonable. I came to the conclusion that time made sense. I started with house building and soup kitchens, but quickly became disenchanted. I started helping friends whenever they could use an extra set of hands. It started at four hours a week, but quickly escalated to ten or eleven. My education was extremely narrow and I regularly warn others about narrow gauge STEMish paths. It’s given me something of an education from fashion to film to music to health and even sports with many stops closer to my formal skills.
A few projects from the past three years.
Happy Bob
Jutta Haaramo is a Finnish friend of almost a decade. Her son has Type 1 Diabetes and management is hellish for him and his family. Her idea was a smart interface for continuous glucose monitors that might engage a child. Of course I volunteered and have been a technical advisor for about a year and a half. She wrote a guest post on my blog:
https://tingilinde.typepad.com/omenti/2019/10/happy-bob-from-finland.html
Happy Bob has progressed and is the only app in the space that reads and writes to the CGM and also is part of Apple’s Healthkit. It also runs on an Apple watch. There are about 200 active users as part of a couple of trials including some adults (one is blind .. it has a voice interface too). There are funding issues that may kill it soon, but it’s been amazing to make a difference in the lives of kids and their families.
Senior Care for the Aging
Speaking from experience, eldercare in the US costs an enormous amount of money. Think $80k and up (usually up) for basic institutional care. What if you could help seniors live at home a few years longer for a higher quality of life and hopefully lower cost? What sort of tech could help? What if it cost $40k a year to get started .. what could you do? If you started, the price could drop. So I helped get a program going at an engineering school with that focus. It’s still growing and problematic, but it seems like a good idea and I’ve managed to learn a little.
Beach Volleyball
Several years ago, Sarah Pavan sent an email. We both have sciency backgrounds (she was a biochem major in college) and I have always had an interest in fluid dynamics. It turns out she knows something about volleyball. Since then I’ve done a fair amount of work on how beach volleyballs fly - did you know there’s the equivalent of a knuckleball in the game and most explanations for how knuckleballs work in baseball and soccer are wrong? I'm learning a lot about the game from a world class athlete. In December, Sarah was named the best blocker in the women’s game and her teammate Melissa Humana-Paredes the best defender. They were named the best women’s team in the world last year and are the current world champions - a feat that gave them the only automatic bid to the Tokyo Olympics. I’m their volunteer science advisor. It probably doesn’t help much, but it’s been fascinating and something no one would have expected.
Here’s a video of their world championship match. Watching from 55m to about 1:07 will give you a sense of how competitive the game is. If you like sports the match is great. The other team is one of the three or four best in the world - an American team. Sarah and Mel are in red .. Sarah’s the tall blonde.
