Why is there never enough time?

Posted in Thought provoking, Time Management by admin
May 26 2009
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Sometimes life just feels like running around from chore to chore.  Always doing little tasks occasionally takes over our lives.  Where does all that time go? Why does it feel like such a commodity?

One of the causes for this feeling could be a lack of task priority.  If everything feels important, then it feels horrible not to accomplish even one thing on your list.  Are you thinking “But every task is important!” ? Well… okay.  That may be true. But not every task is EQUALLY important.

In many cases, there are two categories that direct us in priority: 1. most significant, and 2. most urgent time-wise.

At times, these fight for priority.  Say your goal is to spend more time with your family, but you have chores that you need to get to.  You value your family time as most significant, but going grocery shopping is more urgent. How do you decide?

There isn’t a really easy answer in some cases – but…  The more that you can focus on the things that are most important to you, the more contented you are likely to feel.  The above situation is a tough one, but maybe you can go without frozen peas for one more day after all.

In many cases, you may find that the thing that is urgent is not actually very significant in your life.  There are frequently pressures applied from external sources for a task to be done quickly.  A boss might want you to volunteer for something. A client might need that project completed “yesterday”.  The fundamental issue with that is that they are not significant to YOU.  Often they are actually not essential to be completed in your life at all.

Would your job really be in jeopardy if you turned down that volunteer position?  Would you really loose your client if you didn’t put down all of your other tasks to focus on THEIR problem?

Sometimes yes.  Most of the time no.

In order to do this, you might need to take some time and energy to explore your goals and priorities.  What’s that?  Too busy?  If you can’t take the time to decide what you want to spend your time on, someone else will.

We all get the same amount of hours in a day. Make them count.

Incomplete Perception

Posted in Thought provoking by admin
May 26 2009
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We look past things.

We can be looking directly at something and just plain not see it.

Example: Take a walk down your neighborhood street, and I’ll wager that you won’t tend to notice any of the telephone wire mess above your head. In most instances you will only be vaguely aware that there are wires above but it won’t affect the scenery very much. If you actually focus more directly on those wires, you might find yourself surprised at how unsightly they actually are. The point where the lines hook up with the house tends to be particularly chaotic. There are also great big boxes or barrels suspended at the top of telephone poles that we generally don’t notice. I wonder how many times I’ve parked under one of those bad boys without realizing it.

I am particularly guilty of missing really obvious things, being an artist type. I could be looking directly at a sign. I will remember its color and it’s placement on a door, but have not actually READ what is written.

I never noticed that the brims on baseball caps had a functional purpose until I was playing softball without a hat on a sunny day. I kept using my hand to shield my eyes from the sun. I looked over at my friend Jason and realized that his cap was doing what I was doing with my hand. I am sad to report that this occurred in my late 20s. So in my case, I tend to miss some things that are extremely apparent to others – but everybody does it in some form or another.

I guess that is not surprising considering how much there is in the world to perceive. And we all come to this world with our own predispositions. I often see form before I see function. How do you perceive?

Please feel free to share stories of times where your perception has failed you.

Mood Control

Posted in Thought provoking by admin
May 26 2009
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How much control do we have over our emotions?

Not so much how you express you emotions outwardly, which we usually have a fair amount of conscious control over – but what control do we have over the emotions themselves?

So you feel blue. How long do you sit with it before you do something to actively make yourself feel better? Does a bowl of ice cream lift your spirits? A beer? A video game to take your mind off of things? We usually do something to cheer ourselves up, whether healthy or not…

And then does taking your mind off of the problem count?

Yup. I think so. We have actively guided our emotions to a more positive state. We still may have to deal with whatever is at the root of the problem (whatever was the catalyst for the bad mood), but the root cause is DIFFERENT than the emotion.

  • Example: I feel sad because my boss said that I am a no-talent hack and that they would rather look at their own feces than my artwork.
  • I then cheer myself up by playing a Resident Evil video game and shooting zombies for 4 hours. Then, once I am calmed down - I think of ways to improve my performance at work so that my art isn’t equated with a fat steaming turd. I have disengaged my emotions enough to find a solution to the issue that was the catalyst for the bad mood.

Okay. Fine. With some comfort food (or zombies in my case), we can curtail those lousy feelings and fix the problem. Is that the full extent of our control?

How about preventative measures that we can take before the catalyst? Are there things we can do to avoid whatever triggered those lousy feelings? Perhaps we can take steps to avoid the things that actively cause problems.

Going back to the poop example, I could take preventative measures before talking to my boss:

  1. Prepare myself that my feedback could be positive or negative. I know from experience that my boss is a raving lunatic*, so I will be ready to hear anything on the spectrum. That may involve preemptively killing a zombie, or drinking a shot of rum. Whatever.
  2. Because the boss is nuttier than a squirrel*, I could find a sane 3rd party to convey the feedback to me. I’ll get the proper feedback, but without the unpredictable and unproductive ranting.
  3. I could find out what the boss’s taste preferences are before I do my tasks. This little technique can save dozens of hours (or days) of work. Taking extra time to ask questions and make clarifications before you do the actual work is really, really worthwhile.
  4. Of course, I can try my best to do such a good job that my work is not compared to human dookie.

These would help to avoid the situation altogether, thus avoiding the negative feelings that come as a result. Especially #3.

Cool. So we can try our best to avoid the situation that causes the bad feelings. IF THAT doesn’t work, we can use our various vices to curtail our lousy mood as best as we can.

Is there anything else? Would it be possible to have the negative situation come about without triggering the bad feelings? Would it be possible for my artwork to be compared to poop while keeping a good mood? Just because there is a real world catalyst, does not mean that your mood HAS to change for the worst. Does it?

I know for me, there are times that where I am more susceptible to being triggered into a negative emotional space. Sometimes even a small request feels like an accusation. Other times, no matter how bad the circumstance, I just keep smiling. I have been working on this, and lately I have found myself keeping a pretty positive attitude - most of the time**. And I have some ideas on how to keep positive emotionally even THROUGH those unfortunate real world events. Here are my recommendations:

  1. Take care of your physical needs. This means getting enough sleep (whatever “enough” means to you). Eat regularly so that you don’t get low blood sugar. Don’t eat so much that you feel yucky. Drink enough water so that you are properly hydrated. Get some exercise. Your body affects your mood.
  2. Cut yourself some slack. Everyone makes mistakes. You screwed up? It happens. Unfortunately, we tend to be harsh on ourselves when we realized we have screwed up, and that makes the situation drag out longer than it needs to. Forgive yourself and learn how to avoid
  3. Prioritize your life. What is important to you? You can use time to help measure this - Will it matter two years from now whether you forgot to do the dishes? What about if you missed an episode of your favorite program? You probably won’t remember. What about if you used that same time to pursue your passions – would your life be different several years down the road?
  4. PRACTICE. Practice being positive. Practice focusing on all the good things around you. Practice noticing the things that you are grateful for. Try separating your emotions from the difficult situations. Just because you are broke doesn’t mean that you are necessarily miserable. Just because your boss called your work crap doesn’t mean that you have to feel bad about it. That does not mean ignore the circumstance. If fact, often our negativity around a difficult obstacle will keep us from overcoming it.

    So we have some degree of control over our emotions – although it is probably different for each person. We can avoid and/or prepare for difficult circumstances. We can practice staying positive through adversity. We can cheer ourselves up with ice cream if need be. Still, sometimes our emotions overpower our senses. Weird.

    I was thinking that this was going to be a tiny little note of something that I was thinking about, but it got a bit bigger. Weird.

    * Just wanted to point out that in real life that all of my bosses at my current job are the best that I’ve ever had – hardworking, appreciative, and good humored people. I’ve worked with some really nutty folks over time, though. One guy had me carry around a stopwatch to time how long it took to complete daily tasks.

    **Although the last couple weeks I have been trying to wean myself off of coffee and have had my mood crashing down a lot. I am sacrificing some of my physical needs in the meantime for a better physical situation in the future.

40 hours

Posted in Thought provoking by admin
May 21 2009
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How the crap did we adopt the 40 hour work week as a working standard?

It is so arbitrary. Ask the average worker how much of those 40 hours are actually spent doing work, and you will get widely volatile answers. Where did it come from? Did someone sit down and think, hey – ‘if we get people working a butt-load of hours, maybe they will get something done for some of them?’ Is it an intentional attempt to break people’s spirits? (Although that hardly makes sense, because if you break someone’s spirit – they do crappy work) How does time correlate to productivity?

I am becoming much more aware of output / product. What do my clients/bosses walk away with? In my field (art/animation), there is something tangible to see. But the idea is the same regardless of field – how do you help the company succeed? If your company makes more money because of your contributions, you will have inherent value no matter how many hours you are there or how hard you work. Think about it: if you were your boss, would you rather have an employee who was always at the office but got very little done, or one that comes less frequently but accomplishes a tremendous amount?

Hmmm… How would it be different if everyone worked from home?

Many of us would go crazy from social isolation. I guess a bunch of us would be even less productive without someone directly standing over us and harassing us. Or maybe we would be more productive without the crazy boss breathing down our necks. Hard to say how it would play out.

But why 40? What if everyone worked 25 hours a week? I wonder. Would we be more efficient? Probably not. I think people tend to goof off the same percentage of their day no matter how many hours they work. What if people were only paid on the output of their work? Not necessarily commission, but paid on the results of what they accomplished. That would be weird. I think that many people would be too scared. We would live with a bit less security. We would have to face up to the actual reality of how much value we are putting out into the world. On the flip side, we would have a more direct control over how much we earn monetarily. If you were genuinely working all 40 hours of the week, you could make a very generous income. If not, you could avoid those hours killing time at work until the clock strikes 5 – in favor of spending time with your family or loved ones.

Only one thing seems certain to me: in most cases the 40 hours that we are paid for does not directly correlate to the output of the efforts.