Dancing Geek

Apparently, the time it takes for my blog post writing page to load up is long enough for whatever thought came to mind to up and fly away again.

Ah, there we go, it’s back.

I was chatting with a group of friends recently (online friends via phone – does that count as IRL?) and I happened to mention how I found that if I just picked up the camcorder and prepared it that in that time I usually had an idea about what I could film for my dance vid of the day (which has been lacking these last 2 days, possibly because I haven’t picked it up – but I’m sat here in my pyjamas and right now there’s some stuff I’m not prepared to put online).

It’s a version of the ‘take a small step’ idea but with the added twist that once you’ve taken that step the terrain looks different, and what you thought would be the next step won’t necessarily be the step you next take.

This would explain why whenever I declare with ‘certainty’ that I’m going to do something, or go through a process or basically get to some end point which is not at the end of just one small step I seem to end up somewhere completely different.

And you know what?  I like where I end up – mostly.  The other times are just because I forget to stop fighting what is.

Completely unrelated

I was reading another of Jonathan‘s posts, this time about non-conformity.

I had a total flashback.  You see back in school I made a decision not to pretend to be someone else just to make people pretend to be my friend.  That falseness I could not stomach.  Only somewhere along the line it got twisted into a pattern where I always did what was contrary.  No mindfulness there then.

Being true to myself therefore has some baggage attached, hence it’s taking a bit of work to cast off some of that ballast.  Good news: I’m starting to get a feel for it.

Turns out it maybe is related

Jonathan mentions at the end that being true to yourself includes acknowledging that who you are changes, and therefore what you did 5 minutes ago may no longer be true to who you are now.

This could be used as an excuse to others to explain odd changes in behaviour (or yourself for that matter) but there’s no real point in either of these things.  Just learn to navigate by knowing who you are in the moment, by being in touch with what feels right to you as you are right now.  If other people need an explanation that’s about their stuff, not yours.  The only explanation that will abate them is one which makes them feel safe and protected.  The people who feel safe don’t need explanations.

Do note by Paul Watson

This post is inspired by a twitter friend (there’s got to be a flashy Web 2.0 shorthand for that) who posted “To-do lists make me feel guilty – out out damn to-dos!!”

To do lists are evil

I hate to do lists. I either put too much on them and feel guilty about not getting it done. Or feel bad because it looks so small when I manage to put just a good day’s list of work down.

Whatever I do with them, they sit there and every time I see them they suck my energy.

My problem with to do lists

Having read around various productivity blogs and books I realised that the only way I would do a to do item was if it took like zero effort, however I would quickly get sick of breaking down every project into tiny, tiny steps – for I am lazy. What I needed was motivation, and since I love completing projects the one thing that really motivates me is the thought of finishing something.

An alternative to to-do lists

This actually came about from trying to keep track of all the different projects that I love to have on the go. I realised that I would start to feel overwhelmed and not know where to start, so I needed a quick way to record what I had going on and what needed doing. This managed to organically turn itself into something that actually helps me get things moving without hanging around and making me feel bad.

How to make my “it’s not a to do” list

• Take a sheet of paper, and make 3 columns, one small then two large.
• In the first column write the name of the project or worry or thought that you want to capture and get moving on.
• In the last column right what it will be like when that worry has been resolved/project completed/task done – the motivation bit
• In the middle column right something that will move you forward on this and feels like something you could do right now

The last part is the key part. I found that just writing these out made me feel clear-headed and less panicky and that I then started to want to get a few of these little jobs done, not because I ought to or because I had to but because I could see that they would move me closer to what I really wanted and so I wanted to do them.

Keeping it going

This is only useful if you can turn it into a system that you can follow over time, so here’s what I do to make it work for me.

• Keep the pages and pages of ‘friendly’ to do lists in a folder. I use a nice bright yellow one, it’s cheery from the get go
• Review it when you feel like getting something done. I only look at the folder when I’m looking for something constructive to get done, I hate the idea of doing something because I ought. If I’ve done some tasks since I last looked then I’ll cross them out, write new ones, and see which I feel like doing. Fortunately, with so many projects on the go, there’s usually at least one or two that I fancy having a play with.

So what do you think? Just another to do list, or something that you might find helpful? Please let me know in the comments below.

Want to see what else my creative little problem solving brain comes up with? You can click here to get updated when I’ve written something new.

Magic is true! by photographer padawan

A brief explanation

Ok, so this is the second post in my Lazy People series and I’ve a title which is a contradiction in terms, so now I have to try and make this make sense. You ready for a little linguistic magic?

Last week I established that being lazy isn’t necessarily a bad thing and that it depends how you go about it. This time I want to talk about how being lazy does not prevent you from getting stuff done. So, linguistic trick number 1 goes like this:

“Lazy people are productive” becomes “Lazy people are productive (sometimes)”

See how the way you say a sentence can totally change it’s meaning? And hey presto, we can move on to the interesting part.

Being lazy as a default starting position

Being lazy is my natural state, which means that when given a choice between action and non-action, all things being equal, I will choose non-action. So yes, I’m disinclined to exertion. However, I will take action if all things are not equal. And in life, things are rarely ever equal.

All that a default position of non-action does is require that any proposed action be justifiable. This seems like a fairly sensible way to make sure that you don’t run around doing stuff that is a waste of time. So if lazy people only take action on the critical tasks, they must be super productive!

If only life were that simple, right?

Of course, I’m over simplifying to make a point. It’s possible to carried away at a task or set of tasks and keep going long after it stopped being justifiable, and it’s quite common for our ‘justification’ to either perform certain tasks or not to be biased at best.

In order to prevent such heinous corruption of the beautiful, pure essence of laziness I have a nice, neat, simple and very difficult solution: stay aware. Be conscious of your motivations and your reasoning. A lot easier said than done, I admit, but I would happily argue that this is true whether your default position be action, or inaction.

Tower Complete by teotwawki

But any action is better than none, no?

It’s true that common advice would say that doing something is better than doing nothing. In fact, I think I wrote exactly that in an earlier post. So I guess I need to explain a little more.

Whilst it is true that to get yourself moving, to get out of a rut and to start seeing some kind of results you have to take action, there are times when purposeful non-action is the best thing to do. To wait, see what happens, see what turns up for you and how you are feeling about a situation and then, once you have a direction to head in, take action.

You could spend forever waiting but that’s where the staying aware part comes in. If you remain aware of the situation then you will be able to decide when action is right for you and be ready to take it then, not waste time, energy and money rushing around getting nowhere but neither waste away watching life from the sidelines.

It’s a tricky balance – as I think most things in life are – but the more practice you get at balancing, the better you become and the easier and more automatic it will become. It works for training your body to do pirouettes and it works for training your mind to find the point between the two extremes where you can stay in a state of flow.

Next week I’m going to let you know how to use the above information to get a lazy person to do something. Then after than how lazy people can apply this themselves to learn skills like self-discipline (and even why the hell they’d want to!)

If you want to catch these you can subscribe to my feed.