I’ll be taking a brief hiatus again from daily updates to this blog. I need to concentrate more of my time on writing my novel.
We Are Away
Yesterday my fears of things going horribly wrong again were reenforced. Humanity today looks like a weathered statue, eroded by years of folly, insanity and evil. In half a century, this world will look very alien to what it seems today. Those who know what I speak of, know what to fear. Those that don’t, won’t understand why their world fell apart. I fear that these experiments will bring ruin to all. I don’t fear that no one will be left. I fear that those that will be left, will mourn the loss of civilization. Now is not the time to run or hide. Now it is the time to act wisely and decisively.
Yet Another Morning
I’m awake and terrified. OK, not terrified as in senseless shaking. No rather I take a look at my various todo lists, and my non-empty inbox, and that brings terror in the form of urgency. I guess I should be used to that already. In the past I just ignored tasks, like one ignores imperfections. But once you get them written down and place said list beside you… then they just sit there, glaring at you all gnarly and troll-like. And the question that comes down to which do I deal with first? GTD methodology says prioritize, assign to projects, delegate and so on. Easy to say, but tasks all look alike at times. And since I decided I wouldn’t sweep things under the rug, I wring my hands trying to deal with the underlying issue.
It was a busy weekend. Plants got planted. Allergic reactions came and went. Some attempts at cleaning house occurred. Some attempts proved more successful than others. I hope no one felt ignored. I rushed around but all my own work rested on the side. And as I look at the upcoming days, and the decisions, and the work… I feel exasperated. And I’m going to be a bit older, very, very soon also adds a bit more motivation to my work.
Fortunately, I feel upbeat and positive today. I realized yesterday that one of my anxieties proved unfound, and unlikely to occur. Dealing with this anxiety should bring much serenity, peace and calm into my life. This in turn will give me more energy and help me iron those last few wrinkles in my character. Sigh… Anyways I turn to watch the sun shimmer in the steel, grey sky and I know today will be a good day.
Heel Dragging
Oh man… today is one of those days. Not because it is a Friday. Not because that this weekend too looks busy. No. I just can’t seem to wake up and come with anything cohesive today. And yet I have a staggering amount of work to get done today. So everything feels a bit forced. Including this update. I’m really just dragging my heels today, because it feels like they couldn’t be bothered to get up today.
I still have a few e-mails to finish, and phone calls to make. And there goes my chair. Frack. Today will be a long day, with lots of things to setup and get right. But I just that things will kind of go my way today.
Upgraded to Yellow Stripe
A quick little update, cause I want to concentrate on my personal work today before the workday begins. Finally caught up on my immediate projects, and I can concentrate a bit more on my personal and professional development. Also I’ll crank out a good deal of writing and code in the next few days hopefully. Hence the brievity of my upcoming blogs. I need to reserve more time toward things other than blogging.
Speaking of personal development, yesterday I traded in my white belt for a yellow stripe in taekwondo. Keep in mind though, that in the past I’ve trained up to yellow belt. And I’m still some way before I can don on a black belt. But I’ll keep at as long as I don’t seriously injure myself.
Regret and Rejoice
Lets play a little game that I know call “Regret and Rejoice”. I regret not posting an update yesterday to my blog. I rejoice that this morning my mind thought cloudy and numb, is alert enough to come up with a post. I regret staying up so late, cause my mind is foggy now. Yet I rejoice since I overslept yesterday evening and still managed to perform most of the tasks I sat out for myself. Still, I regret not coming up with saner sleep/wake schedules that would avoid my crashing and sleeping at strange times. I should rejoice since I probably won’t have to think too much and maybe can reset my errant schedule today.
I regret that the first two pieces of news I heard of today is that of the anniversary of Tiananmen Square and the finding of debris of the recently disappeared jetliner. I rejoice that the Chinese enjoy more freedom today than before. I regret that the Chinese government still does evil to its society. I rejoice that in the West, we can talk freely about and remember the massacre. I regret that in China, no one seems to remember or care. I rejoice that parts of the plane were found in the ocean today. I regret that this story happened, I’d rather hear no such story and have all the parts of the plane and its passenger landed safely in their intended destination.
I rejoice that I can end this silly post now, and now will finally catch up on work yet not done.
Measuring Progress
I apologize for the lack of an earlier update. A writer with a mindnumbing case of writer’s block, is a terrible thing to behold. Hence I put off writing until I regained my bearings and inspiration. Thinking before writing should apply to all who write.
I want to touch upon something I write about often: time management. The question that often comes to my mind, is how effective are my techniques. Do I gain anything from them? Or do they simply hinder me from achieving what I planned to achieve? How can I judge if a technique that I apply to my life hinders or helps? I claim there is a manner in which one can measure if a technique works or not.
But how should measure effectiveness? I rather not use the metric of amount of free time. The simplest way to attain free time, is to get rid of work. Rather we need a metric of work achieved.
Measuring work in general is a tricky business. If it were a simple task, we could then attempt to measure the value of work. And then we could base a sane economic model on work performed based various criteria. Regrettibly the Austrian school of business shows that this is a difficult if not impossible task. Also work for the sake of work is foolish. And one of the root causes of the present economic crisis, is the fallacy of Keynes, that so long as people and capital work and are consumed, all will be well. Hence, we indirectly valuate work by pricing the services rendered and good produced by said work, against other goods and services. I propose we approach our original problem in a similar, indirect fashion.
Lets measure effectiveness not only by the number of tasks completed. We could weight the task by their complexity, size and difficult in realization. But even such a weighing is not the true cost of a task. I noticed an improvement to simply measuring tasks. We include measurements how quickly one can work on those important but oft-put off projects and goals. If a technique lets one approach more such long-term projects and goal than before, then the technique is effective.
I am happy to report, that I put effective time and spatial organizational techniques into practice. The ones that I could maintain or could help me, I stopped using. And I know they are effective, since I can finally get to work on all those important projects and goals. And all those projects I put off for months and years, I can now approach. So I can comfortably say that progress is being made. And these techniques do pay off.
Trekking through a Paintballed Wasteland
Wow, this weekend was a busy one. This week it looks like I have to start on those long term goals and not just talk about them. So I’ll keep the next couple of posts relatively short.
Friday
What better way to end the workweek and begin the weekend, but with friends. I went out with Rudy and Olga after work. The original plan of hanging out in Toronto somehow morphed into hanging out in Mississauga. We started off with dinner at Prince, a great Japanese restaurant near my work (I had lunch there too, for which the waitress gave me some grief for). Teriyaki made at the cooking table, drowned with sake. Yum! After that we wanted to catch a showing of the new Star Trek movie. But we needed to kill time first. So coffee and pastries at the Panera Bread bakery near SquareOne mall was in order. After that we all watched Star Trek. Now I’m not a big Star Trek fan. I watched a few of the movies and a bit of the series, but never religiously like I do with the Stargate series. The new Star Trek was definitely not very Trekky. The movie essentially boiled down to a science fiction action flick in the Star Trek universe. Fun, enjoyable and rather pointless. And to finish the night a slice of pizza and a nighttime stroll along Mississauga’s Lakeshore.
Saturday
Saturday turned out more relaxed. Got up late, played a round of volleyball and did some work around the house. Went to church in the evening, because my Sunday was already booked.
Sunday
Apres Saturday, the deluge. A deluge of paintballs flying in my general direction. A bunch of us VisionMAXers went up to Wasaga Paintball Park for a few rounds of paintball. The weather was cold, but warm enough for paintball. Having never done paintball, I thought I would do worse. However all those hours of FPS and archery paid off. The initial games saw me get shot early on (airplay attack & defence, Wild West and Tank Attack). As a scout/attacking player I naturally push up to engage my opponents. Which meant I drew fire first, while the rest of the team held back (as happened on Ridge Runner). But all this culminated in my taking out most of the enemy team in close quarters in one round of Blackhawk Town. Team work and cover fire enabled me to outflank the enemy. Once inside the fort, I made my way around the fort singling out and eliminating players. At the end of the round I wound up with my own collection of kills. 🙂 I ended the day with a suicidal charge in the last round. This may explain the large number of welts on my legs and hands 😀
After paintball, most of us grabbed a bite to eat at Wasaga Beach and headed home. A few minutes after I got home, I passed out in exhaustion. I’m just hoping that next weekend will be as fun as this weekend.
Echo: Quantity Not Quality
I’ll attempt at stealing Marika’s traffic again. And because my response is long enough to become a blog post:
Yes, Marika that is true. Writing is an art.
Unfortunately, in a difficult economy you need to be a generalist. I can write well too. I can code really well. But instead of concentrating on coding, I get to do a weird mix of planning, sending off communications, coding, writing documentation, system administration, et cetera. It is not fun. And while I am capable of doing all these tasks… I’d rather concentrate on what I really excel at. But…
There are programmers that can outcode, outthink and outclass me in experience. The older experienced ones especially. So I can’t compete on their level. Also I rather have “a” job than “no” job. And for most tasks in business, “good enough” bets “genuis”. For coding a website you don’t need a Linus Torvald. Nor do you need an Ernest Hemmingway for writing dry business articles about mergers and acquistions. You don’t need a van Gogh, Monet or Da Vinci to paint walls.
Why is this? Because “genius” is very, very expensive. “Good enough” means a business can keep afloat, which is what business usually do. And those profit margins for those fat cat capitalists? They are razor thin in most cases.
Reality is if you are truly great, you get that awesome great dream fulfilling job. Everyone else is on the scale of mediocre in terms of jobs. The best way for that dream job is to be so great in a particular valuable niche, that it is either you or nobody else (for that price of course). That is how the market goes. So why quantity over quality? I dunno. Maybe because markets tend toward producing commodities for the unwashed masses. The idea is to come up with a way to use resources to produce goods and services at nominal cost approaching zero. That is a good thing for everyone.
Just Another Bug Hunt
Today feels like one of those days that I’ll really have to struggle. Struggle to not fall flat on my face. I guess not sleeping much has something to do with it. But part of me just doesn’t feel right. One of those days when I’m probably going to have to work really hard, to feel comfortable in my own skin.
And to do just that, I’m going to do some bookkeeping and oodles of writing today. I hope I’ll feel better after I start transcribing some of my handwritten notes into digital form. I’ve got about two chapters to write up.