productivity

An Update of Sorts

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“I’ve got a school boy heart, a novelist’s eye,
stout sailors legs and a license to fly.”

– Jimmy Buffet, “School Boy Heart”

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about how I manage my creative life, it’s that I still tend to have too many irons in the fire at once and that choosing which projects to work on feels like picking favorites. I always wind up emotionally attached and guilty.

I’m sitting next to my friend Tom’s truck, having just scarfed down a weekend PREC and spent the better part of the morning exercising and deciding how best to move through the rest of the day. There are the typical chores to do, laundry and attending to the hot mess that is my nightstand in particular. The drive to socialize and avoid extended isolation as well, partially being allayed now with the warm sun, quiet company of a public space, and the classic blues and jazz coming through Tom’s speakers.

The will to write is strong, but the focus- or choice of focus rather- is not. Rereading some food writing has invigorated me, and writing this blog continues to at the very least be good practice and keeping me in the habit. I have several projects overdue, however, and I need to hunker down and pick one of them- ANY of them- to lock myself into.

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Accepting Moments of Monotony

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Behind every exciting or awesome thing you have ever seen, done, or experienced, there was a lot of mindless boredom.

Someone coils and organizes every cable for that rock concert and goes through every switch on the light and sound boards. Before that big hiking adventure, there was a lot of packing, planning, and organizing. In the kitchen, every meal you have ever had- simple or complex- involved someone doing a lot of dull prep work.

This is “paying your dues” on the micro scale. It can be meditative, or it can be mindless. It can be soothing, or it can be drudgery. Either way, if you want that big beautiful pay off, there’s always some bullshit that needs to get done first. If you can “embrace the suck,” you can embrace the bullshit too.

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Clear Your Space, Clear Your Mind

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I am definitely not a “neat freak.” Cleaning up my desk and bedside area today were proof enough of that.

A garbage bag was filled with old mail, flyers, documents I thought were too important to throw out (until I realized that I didn’t need three year old insurance mailers,) and probably every time slip and receipt I’ve gotten in the last two years. Some actually important stuff was moved elsewhere, and my desk now faces a wall rather than out into the room. The floor got vacuumed, the surfaces wiped down, and reorganized.

Yes, I am writing this from a corner table at Belmont Station with a short beer at my side (I did promise myself, after all, and rewards are important) but much like a kitchen, cleaning up your workspace (and keeping it that way!) may do more for your productivity and motivation than all the little quote calendars filling your waste bin.

See? Even an actual trash panda can clean.
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Why Multitasking Is Bullshit

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“Must be able to multitask!” “Are you a multitasking master?” “Must be quick, efficient, and able to multitask…”

It’s a pretty standard line on kitchen job postings, especially production positions (as distinct from line or service jobs.) The ideal candidate for any given production job is quick, clean, polite, efficient, honest, methodical, able to be coached but also a self-starter… and possesses this legendary ability to split their focus across several tasks but perform them all flawlessly.

People like that do exist- I have trained a few of them- but that seemingly unique ability to multitask does not exist. Not on a mental level and, in fact, not even on the physical level. Regularly attempting to divide your attention across several tasks can lead to mental fatigue and even damaging your brain.

Why do people keep asking employees to do it, then? Why do people brag about “being a multitasker,” and more importantly, how can we fix the damage it causes?

a young woman with long hair presses her fingers to her temples surrounded by books at a library table
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com
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5 Simple Steps to Do the Thing

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I have been thinking about what to write in this blog post since I left work yesterday afternoon. In the time between then and now, I was preparing myself to sit down and write.
I also went for a long hike around Mt. Tabor, enjoyed a game night with my housemates, baked a pie, had a bit too much whiskey, slept in, ate breakfast, went for a run, meditated, showered, gamed a bit, and fixed myself a cup of tea.

All of it has been in service to writing this, because if you want to write about Life and Food and Joy and Good Things, a big part of it is getting those things in your life. The bigger part is actually sitting down and writing the thing. Far from being the sole difficulty of creatives, dreamers and nutcases like me, you can find difficulty in Doing the Thing in just about any human pursuit. I think it’s something to do with being sentient robots made of meat and untanned leather, stuck on a speck of dirt rocketing through the void.

So let’s go through my Five Simple Steps to Do The Thing together!

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