Thoughts for Today (and always)

Posted in evolution on 21.05.06@541 by pjh

Thoughts for today as I wrestle with productivity and accomplishment in the face of uncertain longterm goals. Each deserves a post of its own, and will get it.

  • Integrity in the Moment of Choice
  • Discipline as Muscle
  • Asking always, what is the most appropriate thing for me to do right now, given my goals, energy, and resources available?
  • Gain a sense of how long things take
  • Aggressive Time-boxing, followed by an assessment of quality
  • Monitor & Measure Everything

Thanks to David Allen, Gavin Gibson, Steve Pavlina, Tom Peters, Grant Rule, and others who have entered the melting-pot of my consciousness over the years.

Three Questions for Life Perspective

Posted in evolution on 17.05.06@781 by pjh

I went through an interesting exercise yesterday. In trying to get out of a recent funk, I tried to answer three questions. The three questions helped to provide focus and motivation, but I’m still waiting for fullness.

The questions are these, and I spent 10 minutes answering each of them:

What do you want your life to be like when you’re 60?

For me, that’s nearly 30 years away. If you’re older than me you might want to push it out so that it’s at least 25 years into the future. This question was interesting because it’s far enough removed that you can accomplish pretty much anything you set your mind to by then. For myself, I don’t want to be worrying about money, or needing to work for somebody else. Given my parents ill health, I definitely want to keep myself in good shape.

Also ask yourself how you want to feel at that age. Where would you live, what sort of lifestyle would you have? There’s a spiritual element to all of this, in that I’d definitely want to become the sort of person who is at peace with myself and the universe, and who energises others and myself at every point of contact. I have imperfect elements of that now, but still suffer from bouts of not-quite-depression.

What do you want to have accomplished in 5 years time?

This question pulls the timeframe so very much closer. What are you going to do with your life in the not-so-far future? For me, this brought my thoughts to more practical matters, of what could be accomplished in five years that puts me closer to having the desired life. Five years is such a long time, and yet it slips away so easily.

I know that there are things that I’ve been thinking about doing for five years, and yet am no nearer to starting or finishing than when they first were conceived. For me this question gave rise to some concrete goals, stepping stones, reasonable milestones on the way to some of the answers in the first question. There were some outliers that weren’t related to my envisioned future life, and I’ll have to resolve those.

What would you do in the next six months, if that’s all you have left?

Wow. That’s pulling the timescales right in close. The chance to do something amazing against the odds. Satisfy long-standing desires and remove now-trivial barriers that may currently seem insurmountable.

Oddly for me I found very little to answer this one. I’m largely content, with no large goals to prove or set in motion before time runs out. For practical reasons I’d probably keep my job, because that’s where my life insurance is funded. I’d like to go live in Paris, because of happy times and favourite restaurants, but I know restaurants in London too. This was a very peaceful question, but I think that for most it wouldn’t be.

Next Steps — Gaining Focus

  • review each question’s answers
  • mark the most important three or so answers for each question
  • take the list of most important answers, and reduce it further
  • choose just three answers — and make them real

This may be enough for you - these final three things might well be the goals that will motivate you to take action. For me, it was interesting that the final three mirrored the results of another exercise I’d done some months ago.

No change in answers, and yet no tangible progress either. Maybe they aren’t sufficient in themselves to motivate me. Something must be wrong, so I resolved to figure out the reason I’d chosen the same things each time. Ask yourself why each item has ended up on your list. What is the true underlying reason that it is so important to you? Maybe the answer to ‘Why’ is closer to the answer you meant to give in the first place.

Rinse and Repeat

This isn’t the end, but only the beginning. I’m still answering the why question for myself. Awareness is the first step towards changing something, and I don’t yet know my purpose, only that where I am now isn’t right for me, and that the things I’ve been trying haven’t been working to change that.

Toastmasters #2 — It’s all made up

Posted in evolution on 04.04.06@941 by pjh

I gave my second Toastmasters’ speech tonight, the one where you’re supposed to organize it. My brain had decided to forget about the commitment, so I hadn’t really prepared. Nonetheless, the show must go on. So on I went.

I’m generally a relaxed sort of person, so it came as something of a shock to find myself up on stage, heart racing, legs literally trembling. And yet I got through it. Some audience members came up to me and said how much they enjoyed the speech. All despite the fact that I was faking it.

I hadn’t really prepared, not in the way that an actor might, for example. I could give that same speech a hundred times and they’d all be different. All recognizably the same speech, but as though they were given in parallel universes, each speech a twisted copy of every other.

Remember this. It’s all made up. The speech you hear isn’t the speech I’m giving. The confidence that you see isn’t real, it’s fakery. If only you could see the mad vibrations of my legs, you’d know that there’s more courage in it than appears on the surface. And yet, fakery is enough. The world works on perception, not on reality.

If you believe, then it’s true, or true enough for most purposes. For your belief to work, I don’t need to believe too. But if I perceive that you believe, then I might believe too, and so make it real. In this mad game of Ouroborus, you and I can create something real through the imperfect reflection of one another’s fakery.

Enforced holiday — a dangling afternoon

Posted in evolution on 31.03.06@901 by pjh

I’m sitting here on enforced holiday, which is weird in itself. My company, along with hundreds of others in the UK and probably elsewhere, has a twisted holiday policy. There’s always an important project ongoing or upcoming that means that they’d rather you didn’t take your holiday at just that time, or not for so long, please. Which is fair enough, since we’re a disorganized sort of organization that hasn’t yet come to grips with the occasional absence of key people.

We’re better than we used to be, which is a good sign. No longer do you find directors and other higher-ups on leave for the whole of March. Why March? Because here it’s the end of the tax/financial/HR year. Why forced? Because company policy is use-it-or-lose it. Can’t get paid, can’t defer it, can’t carry it forward indefinitely and take a sabbatical after a gajillion years service. Gotta take it.

Which is why I’m at home today, or at least the afternoon. I had a half-day left over that somehow I hadn’t taken. And this is the last day of the year. So I’m on vacation. Unless I’d like to donate it to the company of course… nope.

Why can’t we get it together to let holidays be a normal part of working and project life, with no individual so necessary to the functioning of the whole that they can’t disappear for a week or a month? Why don’t we flex the benefit so that each employee can take or not take, get paid in lieu or store them up, as suits their temperament and stress level and distance from home?

Trust, maturity, and complexity, I suspect these are at the heart of this. Of course, enforced paid leave isn’t the worst of problems to have. But what have I done with the time?

Distressingly little. There’s this post, the work of minutes. There’s a more automated scraping of financial data to support my ISA investments. Not completely useless but not completely useful use of time. Good night all.

My Brother’s Getting Married — and she’s lovely

Posted in evolution on 16.03.06@712 by pjh

Congratulations. This could well be the best thing ever. Don’t screw it up.

Let me clarify. Marriage changes nothing. Sure you may swap surnames, co-habitate, have more kids, etc. But at the heart of it you’re still dating - divorces happen all the time, and to more people than you’d like to think about. Things can still fall apart, and so very easily. So that’s my piece of advice to you - don’t relax - don’t think that marriage is forever, because if you think that way it won’t be. Paradoxical, ain’t it? Keep up the involvement and the passion and all the rest, just as though each date could be the last and you never know, you could actually get to happily ever after. I hope so.

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