The 20% Time Project

Dances:  Nightclub 2-Step, Waltz, Tango
Part:  Lead
Workout:  Arms, back, and legs at the gym.

Another great day of practice.  I hope this streak continues next week.  Since I bailed out on practice yesterday, I also had some making up on the workout side to do.  As a result, I added legs to the routine today.  I paced myself well and avoided going into practice dead.

Sarah and I decided to work on the two dances that we would be focusing on in our upcoming lesson; the Tango and Waltz.  Both of us keeping mental notes on the various questions and trouble spots we have.  The Waltz is doing well.  Other than a few trouble spots (usually involving that damn Wing), I'm pretty confident about it.  The Tango has definitely improved quite a bit since our last lesson, I'm still not totally comfortable with.  One issue that spans the two dances for us is the Contra Check.  Now I've only had a brief orientation on the Contra Check so I know I'm just faking it.  It'll be good to focus on that and at least get a more concrete idea of how they are done well.  Since it's a very commonly used figure, it'll help us greatly.  One other thing I've noticed is the fact that my frame seems different recently.  I can't quite put my finger on it, but it feels like it has gotten worse.  But like I told Sarah, there's nothing we can do about it now, so I'll wait and see what Simeon says.

We also worked on our Nightclub 2-Step tonight.  We're still piecing together the figures from that YouTube video.  It's actually kind of fun having to reverse engineer the videos.  One concept I introduced to Sarah tonight is one that I hope we adopt for good.  It's Google's famous 20% Time Projects.  Basically, Google engineers are encouraged to spend one day a week to work on projects outside of their job descriptions.  So for example, you could use the time to develop something new, or if you happen to notice something is broken or always wanted a feature in something, you can use the time to fix/add it.  This philosophy of theirs has yielded many great products.  Gmail, Google Talk, Google News, and Google Earth/Sky to name just a few of the really successful ones.  I'm hoping that we start subscribing to the same philosophy and either spend one day a week or maybe 10-15 minutes a day to work on dances outside of the five Standard dances.  Over time I'm sure that will pay really nice dividends not to mention keep us from burning out.  It works for Google, so in theory it should work for us.  :)