Ken Burns Returns with The American Revolution

Ken Burns has directed and produced some incredible documentaries over the last fifty years. He is best known for his films about The Civil War, Jazz, Baseball, and The National Parks (available to stream via your local PBS station or via PBS Documentaries on Amazon). His work covers many topics, delving deeper into history, often through the lens of the American experience.

His most recent film, The American Revolution, has received critical acclaim. On the day it debuted, my Threads feed was pleasantly filled with many comments about the storytelling, the strength of the narrative, and, as with any Burns film, much buzz about who was doing the voice acting for which historical figure, and how the Emmy award-winning Peter Coyote voice continues to be among the best for narration.

Benjamin Franklin is featured very early in the series, among the first to propose a revolution in the colonies. I've written about Franklin's interest in keeping organized, and he was the subject of a recent edition of the Journaling Guide, which you can read and subscribe to here.

I’m watching the series slowly, as is my standard pace these days. There’s something special about what Burns does, a comfort and familiarity that comes from settling into one of his documentaries. I’m thankful he’s continuing to do it so well. You can watch The American Revolution via your local PBS station or via PBS Documentaries on Amazon.

Benjamin Franklin Was Time Blocking Before it Was Cool

Source: Wikimedia/The Atlantic

Benjamin Franklin’s daily schedule in all of its nerdy splendor. It’s useful for those of us trying to get stuff done to see that people have been trying to do time-blocking for a long time.

The morning and evening journaling prompts may be my favorite piece of this. These could be as helpful today as they were a couple hundred years ago. I’ll keep banging the drum for journaling; it helps people figure stuff out.

My role as a stay-at-home dad doesn’t allow for as much time blocking, although I’ve done it at work. At my last job, I had a lot of meetings that I was invited to (and required to attend), but I made an effort to keep Monday and Friday as free of them as possible so I could start and end the week by moving the departmental needle. Wednesday was the day that I set meetings and one-on-ones. Every day I had an hour in the morning to work on reviews and team member feedback and an hour in the afternoon dedicated to hiring and reviewing job applications. On my most successful days, I went through a shutdown routine where I cleaned up email, tidied up my task list, and reviewed the next day’s calendar and tasks.

There’s value in this kind of planning, although I’ve learned that the plan doesn’t always work out. Sometimes, life has a plan or, perhaps more appropriately, doesn’t, and you just have to ride it out. Be your best friend about this, don’t beat yourself up. So much is beyond your control; remember that.