Stories

My sewing class in fantastic! The woman is a Russian seamstress with a heavy accent. She has all of these intricate stories to help you remember how to do things on the sewing machine. For example, there is an odd story of Pete who lives in the basement and never comes out because he's eating pecans and peanut butter and doing other P things. You have to go down into the basement and ask him to come out and when he doesn't you have to yank him out. In case it's not clear, that's how to thread a bobbin!

Stories like this really help me. It's very childlike, but amazingly clear and simple.

We learned to pivot the fabric to turn corners this week. She described it as planting your tree (the needle) and then dancing around it (pivoting the fabric around the needle). Lovely! At one point my fabric was getting stuck when I was trying to pivot so I raised my hand and said, "I'm having trouble dancing around my tree!"

She also teaches kids to sew, so I think that is where these stories are born. But it just goes to show that what works to engage the minds and imaginations of kids can work the same for adults! Stories add an element of fun and simplicity to our lives.

If only businesses operated in this way - by breaking down the be picture into playful stories that everyone can understand. Life would be so much more fun and clear! My company recently reorganized for the third or fourth time since I've been there. It's never really clear to my why they do these things or what the thought process is. Imagine if the CEO stood up there and explained, "You see, it's like we're planting seeds for a farm. In order for our corn to grow big and tall every year, we need to rotate our crops so that they get new soil."

That's not even that kid-like, but honestly re-orgs suddenly make so much more sense to me!!