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.