OK, on to my second post of today, this one actually for today. It boggles the mind, how many things there are to do. I keep circling around, revisiting all the time management theories and techniques I've been learning about, slowly integrating them more and more.
Some of them have to do with habits. What I mentioned in my previous post, about 'keeping up the streak' is something mentioned often in productivity books. the story goes that someone asked Jerry Seinfeld how he got so good, and he said he just got a calendar, and every day he wrote a joke, he drew a big red X on that day, with the intention of writing at least one joke every day. After a week, he had a whole line of red X's, and was feeling pretty good. After another week, it started becoming a bigger deal for him, he really enjoyed seeing all those X's in a row, and after a few months it had become like a religion. He got a lot of satisfaction from his unbroken streak, and it became inordinately important for him to keep it up. It was a small enough thing that it was possible to do it, no matter what else was on his plate, and it was fundamental to him becoming what he wanted: a great comedian. He didn't have to write a good joke, he just had to keep writing jokes.
There's another story in the same vein: an art professor, working with a scientist, tried two different approaches with his pottery students: with one group he said they'd be judged on just the two best pots that they made, from the whole semester. They were encouraged to work long and hard on just a few pieces, trying to perfect them. The other group, he said they'd get an A if they made 50 pounds of pots. When comparing the quality of the two groups, the 50 lb. group consistently scored better in quality. That is, thought they were just focused on churning out a lot of pots, they ended up making better pots overall. The lesson the books highlight from this study and others that do similar things, is that it's not important that you do something brilliant, it's more important that you do something every day. Just showing up consistently beats waiting for 'inspiration.' 'Inspiration' comes more often to those who are working their skills regularly, taking risks, experimenting, etc. They made more failures, but they made more successful pots, and they learned more about pot making, in the end. Same with Jerry. Most of the jokes he wrote got thrown out, but some got kept, and he mastered his craft, by practicing consistently.
There is much more to mastery than that. I don't think my once a week blog post is contributing much to my mastery of the form. For that I would need deliberate practice, where I am focusing on the elements of the skill that need improvement, and drilling them specifically, and it requires almost immediate feedback on my output, so I can correct and try again with that feedback.
In any case, I think the main point I was making is that the very slow incremental progress isn't discouraging. It's encouraging. It may be slow, but it's fairly steady, so eventually I will reach my goal, as I have with previous goals in the past. Though I do hope it happens more quickly than it has in the past or I'll be an old man before all my ducks are in a row. Thankfully, past experiences seem to indicate that in general I'm getting progressively faster at achieving my goals (though the size of them also seems to be scaling up.)
OK, that's unfortunately it for the week, I gotta go and get back to the rest of my list. My dear friends and family, I think of you with love and gratitude, especially at these times when I am also grateful for... I'm not sure what to call it, whatever grace has allowed me to become self-conscious and determined and focused enough to act with force and persistence and efficiency on my goals.
Love,
I
Sunday, October 27, 2019
Keep up the streak
I'm two posts behind. I didn't do last week's and now I have this weeks due as well.
It's a beautiful fall day. Crisp but not too cold, blessedly sunny, beautiful brightly colored leaves falling in the wind. My room is finally, finally starting to look and feel not like a disaster. I'm only a few steps away from having a working inbox that gets checked regularly. I feel like I've been working in a deep hole for a while, and I've finally almost crawled my way out of it, onto neutral ground.
But that neutral ground is actually just a much larger hole that I can then start climbing out of. I suppose you could say that I'm getting close to the point where I can put out all the fires that are cropping up around me (and continue to crop up) and begin working on the longer time horizon issues that are just as important but don't demand immediate action. Like the pile of homework that's due next summer and refinements I'd like to make to my teaching process. I'm not there yet. And frankly there's probably a long way to go till I actually get there. But I can see the end goal in the distance at least. I can see that I've made progress, and that's encouraging. The main way I've made progress in my life is tiny steps, taken one after the other, that add up over a long period of time.
OK, I think that's enough for a short catch-up post. In good habit formation style, I set the bar for my weekly post extremely low, just one sentence counts, for my streak. I'm getting pretty flexible with the timing though...
In any case, I'm going to publish this and then immediately write another short one, for the sense of completion and satisfaction it gives me, to 'keep up my streak'. ^_^
It's a beautiful fall day. Crisp but not too cold, blessedly sunny, beautiful brightly colored leaves falling in the wind. My room is finally, finally starting to look and feel not like a disaster. I'm only a few steps away from having a working inbox that gets checked regularly. I feel like I've been working in a deep hole for a while, and I've finally almost crawled my way out of it, onto neutral ground.
But that neutral ground is actually just a much larger hole that I can then start climbing out of. I suppose you could say that I'm getting close to the point where I can put out all the fires that are cropping up around me (and continue to crop up) and begin working on the longer time horizon issues that are just as important but don't demand immediate action. Like the pile of homework that's due next summer and refinements I'd like to make to my teaching process. I'm not there yet. And frankly there's probably a long way to go till I actually get there. But I can see the end goal in the distance at least. I can see that I've made progress, and that's encouraging. The main way I've made progress in my life is tiny steps, taken one after the other, that add up over a long period of time.
OK, I think that's enough for a short catch-up post. In good habit formation style, I set the bar for my weekly post extremely low, just one sentence counts, for my streak. I'm getting pretty flexible with the timing though...
In any case, I'm going to publish this and then immediately write another short one, for the sense of completion and satisfaction it gives me, to 'keep up my streak'. ^_^
Saturday, October 19, 2019
Saturday Morning, not watching cartoons
I'm a full week behind with my postings. I'm trying so hard to be really efficient and smart with my time, but there is so much important stuff that needs doing that switching into that mode ends up feeling like I have even less time. I hope, I think, If I keep at it eventually I will reach a place where the important stuff has mostly been handled, and I can take a bit more time for fun and rejuvenating things. But for now, the fun and rejuvenating things need to be just as much as necessary to be sustainable. Not more. (but not less either. Being exhausted is inefficient for intellectual tasks, so I try and avoid it if I have a choice in the matter.
I was recently reading about time management, and ran across a dialoge between Cal Newport and James Clear. Cal wrote "So good they can't ignore you" and "Deep Work" and James wrote "Atomic Habits" (Which is one of my favorite self-improvements books of all time. Not just the content, but particularly how he writes. If I ever write a book in that genera, I'll try and copy what he did that made the book so good to read.)
Among that and Al Druker ("the effective executive" and a huge number of business productivity books. He is like the grandfather of business productivity books) talking about doing the most important tasks first, I got to thinking about minimizing. Perhaps it's better, like Marie Kondo does, to focus on the most important things, and keep/do those, rather than focusing on all the things you want to get rid off, but whatever the case may be, it's becoming clear that because time is fairly inflexible, what you are managing when you manage your time, is priority and focus: what is it that you are choosing to do with your time. You can't make more of it. We are all equally rich/poor, in terms of hours allocated per day. Just about everything else is variable: energy, money, inherent qualities, circumstances. But time is somewhat egalitarian (minus lifespan considerations but those are somewhat unknown and unpredictable, when they vary significantly from the norm)
In any case, I'm doing my best to focus my allotted hours to useful, to the most useful, tasks that I could be doing. And I'm trying to be more mindful of what I'm doing, to avoid the trap of being productive with unimportant things. That requires additional focus though, because the trivial often is easy low-hanging fruit, something you can do quickly and feel accomplished about, and it's often hanging there, obvious, calling your attention to it.
A squirrel digs through a pile of mulch outside my window. My dear girlfriend is being a good aunt and taking her nephew to tiny music (I think that's what it's called?)
And I am starting in, a bit late, trying to re-establish my habit of getting important work done first thing Saturday mornings. Here we go.
I was recently reading about time management, and ran across a dialoge between Cal Newport and James Clear. Cal wrote "So good they can't ignore you" and "Deep Work" and James wrote "Atomic Habits" (Which is one of my favorite self-improvements books of all time. Not just the content, but particularly how he writes. If I ever write a book in that genera, I'll try and copy what he did that made the book so good to read.)
Among that and Al Druker ("the effective executive" and a huge number of business productivity books. He is like the grandfather of business productivity books) talking about doing the most important tasks first, I got to thinking about minimizing. Perhaps it's better, like Marie Kondo does, to focus on the most important things, and keep/do those, rather than focusing on all the things you want to get rid off, but whatever the case may be, it's becoming clear that because time is fairly inflexible, what you are managing when you manage your time, is priority and focus: what is it that you are choosing to do with your time. You can't make more of it. We are all equally rich/poor, in terms of hours allocated per day. Just about everything else is variable: energy, money, inherent qualities, circumstances. But time is somewhat egalitarian (minus lifespan considerations but those are somewhat unknown and unpredictable, when they vary significantly from the norm)
In any case, I'm doing my best to focus my allotted hours to useful, to the most useful, tasks that I could be doing. And I'm trying to be more mindful of what I'm doing, to avoid the trap of being productive with unimportant things. That requires additional focus though, because the trivial often is easy low-hanging fruit, something you can do quickly and feel accomplished about, and it's often hanging there, obvious, calling your attention to it.
A squirrel digs through a pile of mulch outside my window. My dear girlfriend is being a good aunt and taking her nephew to tiny music (I think that's what it's called?)
And I am starting in, a bit late, trying to re-establish my habit of getting important work done first thing Saturday mornings. Here we go.
Monday, October 7, 2019
Value over Time
I've updated my strategy a bit to be more in line with what I seems reasonable to me. I mainly just clarified for myself that I don't have to pretend I've already achieved my goal. I just have to have the goal and believe I can achieve it. (and if I don't believe it, I don't have to force myself to, I can just set a slightly more modest goal) This has scientific backing as an effective strategy set, whereas imagining you've already achieved the goal does not. In addition, I may try using mental contrasting and implementation intentions in a system with the acronym "WOOP" along with my own homebrew addition. Gabriele Oettingen is the one who came up with WOOP, along with her husband, who was responsible for the implementation intentions research. So, that's the current modification, we'll see how that experiment works. Hopefully I'll get a lot accomplished but not get sick from overwork.
I've already started and it seems moderately effective. Which is more than enough, if it is sustainable. The problem with most methods of change is they start strong but don't have maintaining power. Like a determination to lose weight or gain muscle that goes for a few weeks and then dies off. I'd rather go slow but continue on forever, than go strong and stop shortly after. I suppose the best would be both, but I'll start from the sustainable base, and build up intensity as that becomes habit.
As I'm researching and experimenting with time-management, I'm noticing that a lot of it is not exactly time management. Getting more granular about it, much has to do with priority management: what am I choosing to do? One of the biggest problems is not that I'm not getting things done, it's that I'm getting less important things done. There's a quote that's bouncing around in my brain from Peter Drucker, something along the lines of, "I've seen a great many people who are magnificent at getting the unimportant things done. They have an impressive record of achievement on trivial matters."
There is always a whirlwind of little things that need to get done, and there probably will continue to be, what you need, if you want to get important things done, is give those important things first priority, and then let the little niggling things fill up the extra spaces. There's some other advice I'm chewing on as well, but speaking of time management, that's all I have time for now.
I went to a wedding with my girlfriend, and the travel had a lot of issues, but we still had fun, so it looks like we travel well. Fall has come all at once. It's cold now. There is still so much to learn about teaching. And I need to get my practice teaching dates figured out ASAP.
Good bye, have a good week, and I hope you find some time for what is most important to you.
-Isaac
I've already started and it seems moderately effective. Which is more than enough, if it is sustainable. The problem with most methods of change is they start strong but don't have maintaining power. Like a determination to lose weight or gain muscle that goes for a few weeks and then dies off. I'd rather go slow but continue on forever, than go strong and stop shortly after. I suppose the best would be both, but I'll start from the sustainable base, and build up intensity as that becomes habit.
As I'm researching and experimenting with time-management, I'm noticing that a lot of it is not exactly time management. Getting more granular about it, much has to do with priority management: what am I choosing to do? One of the biggest problems is not that I'm not getting things done, it's that I'm getting less important things done. There's a quote that's bouncing around in my brain from Peter Drucker, something along the lines of, "I've seen a great many people who are magnificent at getting the unimportant things done. They have an impressive record of achievement on trivial matters."
There is always a whirlwind of little things that need to get done, and there probably will continue to be, what you need, if you want to get important things done, is give those important things first priority, and then let the little niggling things fill up the extra spaces. There's some other advice I'm chewing on as well, but speaking of time management, that's all I have time for now.
I went to a wedding with my girlfriend, and the travel had a lot of issues, but we still had fun, so it looks like we travel well. Fall has come all at once. It's cold now. There is still so much to learn about teaching. And I need to get my practice teaching dates figured out ASAP.
Good bye, have a good week, and I hope you find some time for what is most important to you.
-Isaac
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