Randolph I posted this quote on Twitter earlier today, in capital letters, because it’s true.
I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I AM DOING
— Randolph West (@rabryst) December 3, 2014
This past week, M and I made a big decision. We’re all about big decisions in this family. We got married when it was still a new thing for queer people in South Africa. We’ve bought houses and cars, gone on major trips, and moved halfway across the planet together, to a place where everything is just slightly different.
I said that he was my best friend, in my previous post, and it’s entirely true.
Big decisions are easy.
Little decisions are hard.
Tidy my desk. Scan these invoices. Unpack the dishwasher. Shovel the driveway. Make the bed. Brush my teeth. Shave. Make tea. Feed the dog. Eat breakfast.
Those decisions are really hard for me. I don’t know why. I use Due for these things. For work, I’m trying to get into OmniFocus.
Today I realised that I’d stifled my inside voice. I have a burning desire to do stuff: read a book I got last year in December, write some C# code, architect a large distributed system, prepare that SQL Server talk for the user group next year, work on the myriad books and stories I’ve abandoned.
I should feed the monster. I really should carve out some time, and do things that are not read-the-RSS-feeds-and-the-social-media-and-the-email auto-pilot activities I usually spend my time doing.
Time management. It sounds hard. I explained to my better half that if you trick me by saying “please do X” instead of “you need to do X”, my brain says “Sure!”.
Maybe I can trick my brain back into a rigorous schedule that I know I would thrive on. One hour of writing, one hour of reading, one to two hours of writing code, one hour for email. One hour for news and RSS feeds, and the rest would be a break between each activity. That would be a good day.
I try to schedule meetings with customers on specific days of the week, because they are such a productivity killer, so that means a good three days a week of being productive outside of what I normally do in the evenings. That is usually when I do my SQL consulting work, as it’s outside of business hours.
This could work. I need to trick my brain so that the small decisions are as simple as the big decisions I’m really good at.
I agree R. We should stop spending all our time on stuff we do not remember the next day. These things do not matter, not in 10 years, not in a week, and it is also (very likely) not extremely important today. The sky is not going to fall if I don’t check my emails today. I will not cause a tsunami by not liking all the facebook statuses? And whether I like it or not, the uncontrolled diabetic’s blood sugar is still going to be high next week.
So read that book. Stop and smell the roses!
Missing you. See you next week.