Time with Benefits

Last Sunday I gave a talk in church. I was really grateful for the opportunity because it made me realize that I am rather unorganized with all my success information and that I lacked focus.

When writing my talk I wrote a little gem about time and procrastination. It had to do with washing dishes. Simply put, dishes may require about a half hour to wash, dry and put away. I do not like doing dishes but accept that they just need to be done. I procrastinate thinking that it will be easier later, or that maybe the wife will end up doing them. The gem I found is that a half hour will pass, I can guarantee it will pass in the next half hour that you read this or any time that you set a half hour timer…that half hour is starting now and will end in exactly a half hour.

THE DIFFERENCE is wither or not you did the dishes. The half hour that passed wither you wanted it to or not, could have yielded a benefit if you did something with it. Which comes to the point and fallacy about procrastination. You CANNOT SAVE TIME, and in many ways you cannot save your personal energy as well. If either fallacy were true we would have couch potatoes with all the time in the world and enough energy to run a triathlon any moment they wish!

Knowing about these fallacies have helped me tremendously. When I want to procrastinate I just remember that I want each possible hour or half hour to have a benefit when it passes.

Better Than Not

So many times I have thought that I just cannot do something.  I waited too long, I’m too old or too young, there is no point and so on.  One day I was giving the missionaries from my church a ride to a town that was an hour away.  I was busy with oil pumps and had to work late, and even later since I gave the missionaries the ride.

When I told my wife about it later I remember saying, “It’s good to be around the missionaries, or at least it is better than not being around them.”

For whatever reason that really stuck out to me.  How many things that we decide to do or not do are better for us if we do them?  Many times things are binary, it is simply better that we did them.  Of course there are those things that we have done that it would have been better that we didn’t, but I find that there are many more things that we should have done that we didn’t.

Safeguarding time by not using it?

One of my faults is that I won’t do many things cause it takes up time…time that I could be doing something more important…as soon as I find out what that is.  Or time that I could be sleeping…since I always need to catch up on sleep.  It seems that I always hoard my time thinking that it will help me, when really, the time passes whether I do something with it or not.  So, simply put, it is better to do something with the time you have, rather than nothing.

Are you hoarding your time?

Digital Discipline Part 4: Scattered Brain on the Computer

When you sit down to the computer you (or at least I) have either a million things that you want to do and maybe do a little in all of them…or you have nothing to do and you fabricate things to do that…really…is still not doing anything.  Such things as:

– update Twitter
– update Facebook
– Fill up my Buffer queue for Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
– Build a website
– Learn more HTML, CSS, Javascript or PHP
– Read the news about whats new and cool
– Read your social media feeds
– Read or write blog posts
– Build an android app
– Work on a clients project
– Create computer courses curriculum
– Stream music
– Download podcast
– …..Listen to podcasts….
– Listen to audio books

And this is just a quick and dirty list of things that eat up all my time when I sit down at the computer.  But the sad thing is that I never do any of them well.  Just try to develop an app or a website while listening to a podcast.  You will either not hear anything the podcast says and struggle through making a website and having to re-align yourself with what you are trying to accomplish.  Or you will somewhat hear what the podcast is saying and be dabbling at best in your development.

The scattered brain is just that, scattered, and technology will not solve this for you.  All the todo lists, reminders and widgets will simply add to your scattered attention.  While nothing in my quick and dirty list is a waste of time in and of itself.  But dabbling in all of them thinking you are making progress in any of them…well then it is all a waste a time in my experience.

The solution that I have found and recommend is tunnel vision.  Take one thing such as learning Javascript, which is what I have been working on lately, and focus just on that for an hour.  Then you will make strides in actually learning and retaining!

Also…and possibly more important…is not getting on the computer if you have no reason…that will lead to wasting time or even doing stuff online that you really shouldn’t…

Does your computer help you stay organize or give you a nightmare of more stuff to deal with?

Social Media is a Big Investment

I see that everything is on either Twitter or Facebook. My kids diapers, the place that changes oil and even kids toys.

I got on Facebook and Twitter quite a few years ago and was frustrated back then that social media was just everyone posting at you but no one ever listening. I swore off social media for awhile, just looking at it once in a blue moon.

Then I went on a reading binge when I had a Kindle for awhile. I read Michael Hyatt’s “Platform” and it, of course, stressed the importance of having a well maintained social media presence.

So I decided to get back into the game. But I know myself, I have super productive phases and then phases where I can only do the minimum. Lucky for me there is a service like Buffer that will queue up my posts when I think up a dozen in one sitting and spreads them across the days and weeks ahead when I don’t post at all.

I have been researching the negative affects that technology is having on actual social interaction and also seeing that unless you are a big company that can have a social media team, then social media pages and posts don’t make you sales or money.

I am not anti-social-media but I just want to take about the illusions that we have about it and how we should develop the discipline to waste our lives on it.

Do you think your investment in your Social Media usage is giving you a good Return?

Get Away from Being Blank

I have written a few post on where I was completely blank, I could not think of anything to write and so I wrote some dribble and posted it saying I was blank.

Today I had the same problem.  I was sitting in front of the computer and not able to do anything productive…I knew this was a problem and I just could not let it continue.  So here are some ideas that I enacted to help get me moving.

*  Do something else that needs to be done:  My boss sent me an email that he needed a sign back.  I thought I would do it latter since I really needed to be at the computer getting something written.  But I was blank, so I just grabbed the sign and took it to him.  Then came back home to the computer.

*  Make a list of stuff you want to do:  I grabbed a notepad and wrote down 10 blog post ideas, then instead of my mind wandering all over the place, I took those ideas and started on a post staying inside the topic that I had written.

*  Just do it:  So even after these things I was still struggling.  So I just did what I could, as I wrote and starting putting a post together I was catching momentum!  And now you have the post that you are reading!

Being blank sucks, move around, read a book, put on some music on your computer.  Being blank is for when you are relaxing and watching TV, not for the whole day when you want to get out there, make money, or improve your life in general.

What are some ways that you escape being blank?

Wasting Time

So I have fallen a little behind on my blog with the trip to Utah and doing a lot of tasks at work.  My blog seemed like something that I would just drop.  As I played Starcraft II to try and relax, then losing a couple games, then it became personal, so I had to play until I won…When I finally did I exited the game and thought “You could have blogged.”  Well I did right after closing the game.

I think it is important that we give priority to things that matter to us, I will never stop playing Starcraft, and I wouldn’t say you shouldn’t play until every other thing in your todo list was done, but don’t whine if you don’ have time to do something important and you play countless hours of a game in a row.

“And see that all these things are done in wisdom and order; for it is not requisite that a man should run faster than he has strength.  And again. it is expedient that he should be diligent, that thereby he might win the prize; therefore, all things must be done in order.”
Mosiah 4:27