My friend Dave, who has a blog where I find cool new things, pointed to an article at 37signals about questioning your work. 37signals makes some of my favorite free web collaboration software – writeboard. Basically the post consists of questions they ask and feel that everyone should ask about their work. The one question that got me was: Is it useful. In the words of Jason Fried of 37signals, “Cool wears off, useful never does.” I think I’m going to be returning to that quote over and over again – for myself, for anyone I help with their curriculum, for the next person who wants to show me their new techniqe / form / drill. Folks are probably going to get sick of it. I try to make sure my students question things, and question me. If I didn’t think critically about what I was doing, I’d still be flooding my brain with useless techniques, doing knife defenses that involved lots of cat stances and posing, and generally being yet another kempo black belt who had no idea why he was doing any of the things he was doing. I hope that my students think and question so they can bring kempo further than I ever could.
A Blog I Admire
Years ago, I found this little Shotokan website that apparently grew out of a ‘usenet’ group. It was filled with thoughtful, incisive, and often heretical (at least to the Shotokan powers that be) articles presented with style. No, I didn’t always agree, but I was always interested. It had an archive of the forms, free. Can you sense that it might have inspired me a bit? Suddenly, one day it was gone. Thankfully, it has returned as a blog. It’s not the same as it was, but it has blossomed into a new entity containing much of what drew me there in the first place. I’m not a huge Shotokan fan, but much of what is found on 24fightingchickens.com applies to organized martial arts in general. I’ll know I’ve ‘made it’ when I start getting hate mail like he used to get…
