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Time Management Tips - Before 9:00 AM
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2324
Frequently people will ask me how I manage to get so much done in a day.
The trick is, of course, to get absolutely nothing done.
First, you start with the dishes - if there are still unused dishes in the cupboards, or at a nearby thrift store, then the dishes don't need to be done.
Laundry is the same. If there's still clean clothing to be worn, laundry obviously doesn't need to be done. And of course, what with all the semi-clean laundry strewn about the floor, there's no way you can make the bed. Or even find it, but I tend to search harder for it in the evening than in the morning.
Work, unfortunately, has to get done. After coffee. So get the coffee done first, and then worry about getting work done.
Once you have the coffee done, before starting on the work you need a plan. Maybe a plan for the work, maybe a plan for the day. But nothing gets done without a plan. I find a cigarette with my coffee helps me to work out a plan in my head.
Often at this point I get distracted by all the things other people feel I should get done. Like the dishes and the laundry. But through careful disciplined thought I'm able to get these distractions out of my head....I've got my coffee, so I can't REALLY need to do the dishes. And the fact that I'm dressed, outside on the porch smoking, is proof that the laundry situation isn't as bad as I thought.
So I get back to my plan. Sometimes, if I'm really organized, I write the plan down. A list of things to get done.
If I'm lucky at this point the phone rings. Sometimes it doesn't so I keep working on the list.
There's the work that needs to get done. And if I'm smart I'll break up the work into little bite-sized "chunks" so I can scratch them off my list when I get them done. Then there's the blogging. A big list of things I should blog about. And some art projects that have stalled. So little lists grow and grow and sometimes grow some more until they become big or giant lists and I start to get discouraged. There's the shopping lists, can't forget those. The list of bills. The list of projects and the list of things that need to get done on each project. The emails that have to be sent out. The list of birthdays and special occasions.
Once I have my list ready I make myself another pot of coffee. The first one was good, but nothing will get done until I've had at least 2.
I could empty the compost, I note, as I throw away the grounds, but that's not really a listable thing to do, so I just push it down a little bit more in the bucket and consider it done.
Now I think I should have written it down, because if I had I'd be able to scratch it off the list of things that need to get done and feel good about how productive I am. And I review the list and I prioritize things, because that's how really efficient people get things done. I write down deadlines or dates beside the things I need to get done. And I try to prioritize things according to their relative importance. Work things are always #1. Blogging, writing and artwork always seem to come in last. Still, with luck, if I work hard I can get them done too...
Now by now I've probably checked my email and there are a few people wondering if I've got things done. I haven't put this on my lists, but I answer all my emails and tell people that I'm busy doing their things or will be doing their things shortly and they can count on me getting them done.
They trust me because I'm so organized and good at getting things done.
Then, because I'm now already on the computer I begin to check the news. I like to be well informed.
None worth recording
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Dreams
- Hits: 1709
The book is beside my bed, and the pattern's the same. I wake up, often in the middle of the night, but am too tired to get up and write the dream down. Or I wake in the morning, and am too tired to write it down. Or I find it too disjointed, meaningless, unpleasant to write down.
An example: Saturday night - following the Darfur film at the Marda Loop Justice Film Festival, I awoke in the middle of the night, strange dream of me in an Arab store, killing a blue turbanned Arab, cutting his throat, garish, obvious, blood, the arabs around me reassuring me that he deserved it, then Horatio Cain from CSI Miami comes with his team of crack-investigators to investigate, I've blood on my hands, they find the body in the freezer....I wrote it down, but hated it, couldn't bring myself to post.
It was too obvious. The CSI Miami comes from the barber where I get my haircut, it was on the TV as he clipped my hair, the cutting of the arabs throat a reaction to the film. Unpleasant, unworthwhile.
Maybe tonight there will be something better.
Roulette
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2216
"It's impossible to beat", or so they say, but I muse upon it late at night, it cheers me up, consoles me for the wreckage that are my finances.
By "They" I mean the mathematicians, the statisticians, the physicists. The "Experts".
Still I think about it. I've always fancied I'm a bit of an undiscovered maths genius, my talent dormant, undeveloped, undiscovered. Like that janitor in that movie I didn't see. And if you could beat it, would you say? Really? Would you announce your discovery to the world, package and sell it on the internet in easy-to-master systems and lessons? Or would you simply go to the casino, lie quiet and low and slowly make a fortune. Because if people knew there was a system, a way to beat the wheel, they'd change the rules. No one is allowed to win at the Casino, unless by accident.
So maybe there is a system. The experts have been wrong before. Think of the world being round, think of flying. Think of the recent financial disasters on Wall Street.
I follow news stories about big wins, about Romanian gangs in Europe that travel the casinos and track the speed of the ball, about biased wheels, about strange runs of luck and chance....
And I think about my system. I should test the math, run simulations, hundreds of them, thousands, but that would defeat the purpose.
I muse upon it, late at night, to console me for the wreckage that are my finances.
Serendipity
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2290
Now, there is nothing I need that is new. With the exception of socks and underwear, because I happen to be a bit fastidious that way, almost everything I buy is from a thrift shop, rummage or yard sale. Which makes it tough, for instance, when I decide that I need something, a bed, for example, as I have to comb the local thrift shops and rummage sales until something suitable turns up. And often it would be far easier and more economical, considering the time and effort spent, to simply go to "Mattress Depot" and plonk down on a new posture-pedic, but that's not the point.
It's about recycling perfectly good furniture and household items that were otherwise bound for the landfill and supporting local charities. It's about thumbing one's nose at the rampant consumerism that tries to govern our lives. It's about challenging the conventional ideas of wealth and beauty and turning rubbish into art. It's about finding beauty and function in the old and worn. And it's about being unique in a homogoneous society that values only the new and generic.
It's not about finding what you thought you needed or were looking for. It's about finding what you weren't looking for, the thrill of the chance find or discovery, the rare book, (think first edition of Eddington's "The Expanding Universe", or Speake's "Journey to the Source of the Nile"), the 150 year old candlesticks, the 1930's Rolex watch, the vintage clothing or broken scientific instruments to be used in your impending art exhibition....the list is as vast and endless as your imagination.
Invariably, with patience, you will always find what you're looking for, and having found it you will forget that you were searching for it and begin searching again for something else, because in the end it wasn't about the bed, it was about the journey, the countless happy chance discoveries and finds you made along the way.
It's a philosophy...
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