I Discover a Life Management Principle--The Hard Way

One of the things I am looking forward to this weekend is the reintegration of my internal clock.  I have been living in two time zones for the last month, courtesy of my husband's temporary residence in a city across the ocean from where I live.  This has made for some serious communications gaps, and a soupçon of schizophrenia.  


There have been some pleasant moments, like our dinner hour a couple of days ago, when my son and I were joined at the table by a laptop containing the image of our husband and father, ensconced in his hosts' guest room, getting ready to go to sleep.  It was one of the most peaceful dinner hours in our home in recent memory.  Maybe my husband's Skype persona is on his best behavior.  Something about being on camera, perhaps.


I can't really say the same for my own.  I have at times been my dark and overwhelmed self, less shy about letting him see the consequences of his absence than your average woman's magazine would advise.  


As I write this, I am still easing into the morning.  He has had breakfast and lunch, and is wandering the Scottish streets in search of the gifts he plans to load into his sleigh, err suitcase, to pave his way back into our hearts.  


Later today, I am planning an expedition to get our Christmas tree, followed by a boozeless Happy Hour dinner with my sons.  My significant other will probably have already turned in.


On Sunday, when his plane lands, we will re-enter the world of coterminous time.  It will be early afternoon for both of us.  But, unless he follows my sage recommendations, which he hardly ever does, he will have been awake for about 20 hours.  My day will be only five or six hours old.  Judging from past experience, I'm guessing we may be in synch by Christmas Day.  Or not.  


But at least I won't have to stay up late to catch him in his continent's morning.  Or to cram a contact into the busiest part of my day to find him available and conscious.  


Even though our normal everyday arrangements include his working in another state, occasional nights over, and some travel within the country, the resumption of this pattern will be a relief.  I am looking forward to ending the mind- and day-bending exercise we have been engaged in. 


Here's a little lesson in life simplification--a lifehack, in modern parlance--that I have discovered.  Life is less work when you live on the same continent as your spouse.   

"Let's Be Careful Out There"

As we approach "the holidays" and their communal deadlines, "last minute" advice, warnings, deals, offers, opportunities, tips and strategies are blaring at us through every form of media with increasing frequency and volume.  

For example, this message, couched in dire language:  

It’s getting down to the wire for those of you (or rather, us) who haven’t finished buying holiday gifts. Sony Style is offering some last-minute deals on Vaio PCs with guaranteed delivery by December 24.

Or this, from The Financial Blogger:  

Last Minute Holiday Shopping Tips To Prevent Stress

Or this encouragement to retailers, from Retail Online Integration:

Despite the fact that Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Green Monday are behind us, the holiday shopping season isn't over yet for the millions of Americans known as "last-minute" shoppers. This group represents an opportunity for retailers to drive incremental lift this holiday season, according to an Acxiom report titled, Generate More Jingle This Holiday Season With Last-Minute Shoppers. 

It's nice to know, as I attempt once more to pull this whole annual production out of the fire, that I am a member of such a large and valued group, meriting our very own pricing structure and guidance, and counted on to save the bacon of commercial interests as the year draws to a close.  

Dr. Timothy Pychyl observed, in a 2008 blog post on "Holiday Shopping and Procrastination," that some shoppers purposely wait until the last minute as a strategy for reducing their gift-giving outlay, observing that prices tend to be reduced as the holiday draws nearer.  He does not lump these smart and daring shoppers in with those of us who just put off the ordeal of deciding what to give, feeling guilty about spending too much or too little, trudging to the stores and/or spending hours online in the virtual marketplace, eventually falling over in a financially depleted heap, eyes glazed over, sleigh bells echoing in our pounding heads.  About the first group, he says "not all delay is procrastination;" about the second, "all procrastination is delay."

As I head out this weekend to begin and complete my shopping, I will try to follow some tips, and take advantage of some deals.  And my purchases will be much appreciated, I'm sure, by retailers focused on their bottom lines.  I will fortify myself with the Mexican Spice Latte that has recently become my favorite self-bribe.  I will probably not make it past Chapter One of Elaine St. James' 269-page Simplify Your Christmas:  100 Ways to Reduce the Stress and Recapture the Joy. . .   I picked up this enticing little volume at a used bookstore with a feeling of hope, after a conversation with my daughter.  As a young mother and part-time high school teacher, she is struggling to resist the pull of the Christmas express, that runaway train of  lunacy that hijacks so many of our holidays.  I offered to let her read the book first.  She returned it within a day, having found its simplification approach anything but simple.  Did I mention it has 269 pages?

At this point, I have no option but to wade into the fray, and try to minimize the damage to my psyche and my checking account.  I accept the conditions I have created for the penance they represent.  Perhaps if I pay close attention to my suffering, I could actually learn not to let this happen again.  But after all these years, how likely is that?  

I can also use my time in last-minute shopping hell to practice compassion for myself and my wretched fellow travelers, as we circle the mall in search of deliverance--and a parking space within the same state.  As Hill Street Blues' Sgt. Phil Esterhaus used to admonish his officers at the close of each roll call, "Let's be careful out there."  Only us nuts are out now.

Too Fast, Too Furious

It is early evening, and I am just getting to this morning's blog post.  At the conclusion of this busy day "filled with surprises," a couple of the tectonic plates that make up my brain slide into contact.   Two recent occurrences work on each other and force a realization.  Like this.


Yesterday morning, I played host to the man who had put in my new furnace two or three years ago.  That young, and much-vaunted heating system had not been keeping up with the single digit temperatures of the last several days.  As it turned out, the problem was caused by my husband's having dislodged a brace which supported a section of PVC pipe attached to the furnace.  With the brace gone, the pipe's "pitch" was off, which caused water to accumulate in the pipe.  This led to the gurgling I had been hearing in the basement for months, and to the diminished heating capacity of the furnace.  It was not caused by the fact that I had failed to change the furnace filter even once in the two or three years since it was installed.  But it could have been.  This brings to mind a dire warning I had recently run across:  "Homeowner procrastination can ruin a house."


This morning, following an early meeting I had travelled to in a preconscious state, a colleague shared her astonishment at how slowly our collaborative was moving on elements of our overall strategy that had been decided upon months ago.  What was causing people not to follow through, not to produce?  I was not one of the people she was talking about.  Not this time.  I surmised that at least part of the regrettable delay had to do with the overload that collaborative involvement represented for all members.  


What do these two experiences have to do with each other?


The too much phenomenon.   Just as there is no room on the to-do lists of my collaborators in the transitional jobs undertaking, there is no room in my head for furnace filters.  Or for the amount of time and brain-power it would take to untangle the health bills morass created by our byzantine coverage, and compounded by the broke back financial condition of the state government that employs my professor husband.  


None of these cases, nor several others, involve procrastination, in the sense that I--or my colleagues--remember the responsibility in question, and have time to take care of it, but decide not to.  As our lives become more and more complicated, and more is expected of us, we are going to be dropping more and more balls.  I am reminded of the scenes of Charlie Chaplin's character in Modern Times as he struggled to keep up with a constantly speeded up assembly line, eventually falling behind and being sucked into the gears of the machine operating the conveyer belt.  


My realization:  I will never get "caught up."  It is not possible to do everything I have to do, much less all the things I want to do.  Something has to give.  It probably shouldn't be the furnace, or my children, or my health.  I hope it isn't my writing.  And at least the minimum must continue to be done to satisfy my employers.  But I will fail at something.  Maybe I should be deciding at what.  


And now I have run out of energy and day, but not out of things I should have done.  The backlog will be waiting for me in the morning.  And I fear the line will be going faster still.

Life Management 101--Just Don't Do It

This Tuesday feature will continue to draw on Laura Stack's Find More Time:  How to Get Things Done at Home, Organize Your Life, and Feel Great About It for the next few weeks.  In Chapter 3, this week's subject, we consider  "Mastering the Third Pillar--PERSONALITY."  Five more pillars, and chapters to go.

As it turns out, "Personality" is one of the weaker supports in my productivity structure, as measured by Stack's Productivity Quiz--the strongest of my four weakest.  (Interested readers can take the quiz, on Stack's website, by clicking here.)  As I read this, it doesn't mean that I have a lousy personality, but rather that some of my "behaviors, habits, and choices" need "adjust[ing] in order to support [my] desired direction in life."  That seems apt.

My disappointing score on Personality resulted from my responses to the following quiz items, elaborated in Chapter 3.  I rated each quiz item on the following scale:  1) to no extent; 2) to a little extent; 3) to some extent; 4) to a considerable extent; or 5) to a great extent.  My responses are in red.

To what extent do I . . . 

• Control perfectionism, realizing that some things are good enough.  [2]
• Refuse requests when appropriate.  [2]
• Ask for help when I need it.  [2]
• Avoid procrastinating on what I know I should be doing.  [3]
• Know and honor my energy levels throughout the day.  [2]
• Communicate clearly to avoid confusion and rework.  [2]
• Consistently meet and usually beat deadlines.  [2]
• Focus on completing one task before getting distracted by another.  [2]
• Maintain a positive attitude.  [2]
• Stop trying to please all of the people all of the time.  [2]

No surprises here, really.  Perfectionist.  Can't say no.  Trouble delegating.  Procrastinator.  Too frequently working to exhaustion.  Communication difficulties.  Never met a deadline I didn't. . . well, almost never met a deadline.  Task overlapper.  Princess Negativity.  People Pleaser to the nth.  Isn't that why I started this blog?


But what am I supposed to do about all that?  It may just be my dreary late-December mindset, but all of the advice that Stack packs into this section on personality issues related to productivity, or the lack thereof, seems to me to consist of variations on the word don't.  Just don't be a perfectionist; and don't procrastinate, multitask, be negative.  Just don't be the kind of person that has all these traits that get in the way of living what Oprah calls "your best life."


To be fair, Stack offers lots of practical advice, and it isn't her fault that I've spent a lot of my adult life searching similar volumes for the answer, so that almost none of it is new.  So I'll keep reading.  Maybe it will be like meditating.  I'll just put in the cushion time, or in this case, the page-turning and idea-processing, and over time some change will seep into my bogged down system.  


Next week, Pests.  Not vermin, but distractions, interrupters, and other such roadblocks.  In the meantime, I'll keep trying to have a different, better, more productive personality.