Words. Ideas. Actions.

16 March 2023

I am exhausting. Not exhausted. I mean, I am that, too. But what I mean is I think being me is also exhausting. I might be exhausting you as well, but at least you can take a break from me. I never get a break from me. I’m always here. With me. Making me do things. Which is exhausting.

In an effort to avoid going down an Izzard-esque monologue, let me explain. One of the many fascinating — but frustrating — features about my brain is that it keeps making demands of myself. Let’s take these posts as an example. Nobody walked up to me in November and said, “Hey, Stephen, I dare you to write a three-to-five-hundred word essay every weeknight right before you go to bed.” Yet, here I am, clad in my jammies, watching a recorded episode of “World News Tonight with David Muir” on the DVR, typing these letters into a few digital boxes. So, why am I doing this to myself? The honest answer is I don’t really know. I’ve often given myself lofty goals or tried ambitious projects. But I’m not really sure what motivates them. Or why I finish them. 

Well, that last part isn’t accurate, is it? I finish them because I tell myself I have to finish them, right? Would something terrible happen if I didn’t? I mean, seriously, if this post didn’t show up here tonight, would you have been disappointed? Yes? No? Would you have even noticed that one was missing? You’re not reading these that closely are you? I mean, did you even catch that every sentence in this paragraph has ended with a question mark? And why should you? You have other things to do, right? 

Whether it’s this Not Tweets blog, my Journal Journey look backs, #The100DayProject called ”Choose Must” in 2015, and the revisiting of them in 2016, or even my one EP a month in 2018, I keep signing myself up for extraneous tasks in addition to either working or looking for work, and — more importantly — being a partner and a dad. I know I need creative outlives. In fact, I love these creative outlets. I hope that after I’m long gone, our daughter can look back at them and learn aspects about me she’s now too young to quite comprehend. But why am I pushing myself to get through the entire list of original Soundgarden song titles I’m using to quantify how many of these blog posts I intend to do? If I tell you there are only two dozen left, what does that make you feel? What about if I told you there were only a dozen left? How ’bout six? And what if I said tonight’s was the last one? Do you have different feelings about each number? I know I do. So, I keep typing, hoping that as I do, a new thought spurs an inspiration for just one more post. Is it the attention I’m looking for? Seriously, I have no idea. But it’s definitely come up in therapy. The only real reason which makes any sense is that if I don’t finish these projects, I feel like a failure. And that’s unacceptable. At least to my brain it is.

As I leave you tonight, I can tell you this isn’t the last one of these. At least it‘s not intended as such. I have a few more ideas for posts, and more than a handful of song titles to use. I don’t know if I’ll ever have a satisfying answer to why I sign myself up for these kinds of journeys, but I am glad you’re on this trip with me. You’re still here, right? Hello? I’m exhausting. 

See you tomorrow?

26 December 2022

This is a weird week for a lot of people. Are we working? Are we pretending we’re working? Did we just go ’head and take the week off? I didn’t have to work today (it was our observed Xmas holiday), but before I started typing this tonight, I did take a glance at my calendar for tomorrow to gauge how many meetings I have. Any wagers on whether the two which are scheduled get canceled?

So, what should I do with this quirky, holiday-shortened week? At the risk of creating a BuzzFeed-esque Listicle™, here are a few items I’ll be tackling in the next few days as the lull between years sets in:

1) Cataloging- This is something I’m not great at, but I’ve found it’s a really valuable resource when performance reviews come around. I’ll look back at significant launches, big projects, and notable accomplishments, summarizing what I did, why they were important, and any obstacles we overcame to bring them to life. Bonus points if they happened long enough ago to have some meaningful metrics already attributed to them.

2) Calendaring- We have too many meetings. I can almost guarantee this is true, no matter who you work for. Use this week to take a look at your calendar for every work day in January. Any recurring meeting you see on there, delete it. Or at least ask yourself if it can be deleted. There’s a good chance — if your calendar is anything like mine — that your days are already pre-scheduled with a handful of meetings which could instead be an email. Or at least reduced to once a month. Scrutinize what’s already scheduled for you, and make some changes to how many, and how often, you and your peers are getting together just to share the status of things. Most of these tend to get in the way of actually getting some things done.

3) Clearing- The other impediment to productivity, for me, is email. But every year, one of my favorite habits is to empty my email inbox. Just get rid of ’em. Delete anything from 2022. Now, I know that some of you may have recoiled in horror. There may be a couple of reasons why causing you to question this advice. Here are a few: 

“Stephen, did you know that  practicing ‘Inbox Zero’ would keep the number of incoming emails at a manageable cadence?”  
Absolutely not. I wasn’t hired as an email manager. My skills (and time) are better spent doing the job I was hired for. I set up a system of filters and triaging time, and spend time working instead of replying. I check my mail three times a day, and trust my filters to sort items I’ll only need as reference. One good practice is to remember that your inbox should not work as your to-do list.

“Stephen, my company has policies in place which compel me to keep each and every electronic missive I have ever received, so I can’t just delete everything, right?”
Fair enough. But you can move them out from in front of your face. My favorite trick is to create a folder (you can even call it something super creative like 2022) and move everything in your Inbox to a newly created collection. This way, you won’t lose anything, but you also won’t have to face each and every unresponded-to missive like it’s a Xmas card from that aunt you forgot to mail a gift to.

“Stephen, there’s important stuff in there that can’t just be deleted, can it?” 
Let’s get a little real for a moment, shall we? If there was really something important in that inbox of yours, you would have already taken care of it before the holiday break. And, if there is something truly essential that you need to get to in the first few days of January, odds are you’ve either noted it elsewhere or you’ll be reminded of it soon enough to knock it out before any early-in-the-year deadline.  

I have a few other habits that I like to restart at the beginning of each new year, but they don’t really have cleverly alliterative “c” names, so maybe we can talk about those later. And if you have any yearly habits which help you in your work, please let me know.

See you tomorrow?