The chief problem many of us face when we make our ToDo lists is that we try to list everything that we’re thinking about doing. The result is that we end up with lists that are far too long to actually complete - and, despite how much we actually got done, we focus on what we didn’t and get frustrated.
But it’s incredibly useful to purge all of the things that you’re thinking about just to get it off your mind. Thus the tension: if you don’t capture the things on your mind, they’ll be there harassing you. Yet if you list everything, you’ll be frustrated about not getting it all done.
The brute fact is that most of us have far more to do than we will ever have time available to do. At least, until we learn how to do less. But until we learn how to do that, our lists contain more than we’ll ever be able to do.
A tactic that I’ve been trying for the last three or four months is to indicate which of the tasks on the list are Exit Tasks. What are exit tasks, you say?
Exit tasks are those few tasks that you absolute must complete to have some modicum of peace after you’re done working. If I were being strict GTD, I’d say that they should be the only tasks on your ToDo lists - but getting there requires a lot of discipline, and sometimes it’s just more frustrating trying to figure out what to do with those tasks after you’ve culled them than it is to just keep them where they are for the day.
Why do I call them exit tasks? I got the idea from the motivation people get before it’s time for a vacation. If you’ve ever witnessed people trying to cleanly get the hell away from work before a vacation, you probably noticed that they dropped the pretenses about what all they were going to do and did the very minimum they have to to be able to take their two weeks off without a phone call.
When you’re put in that situation, you recognize how much is actually important and value-added and how much is just the mind’s reaching into the future. The point, though, is that you clean house as much as you need to, but no more.
Unfortunately, many of us don’t take the “free time” we have on a daily basis nearly as seriously, so we don’t try to compartmentalize and prepare for our free time. The result is that time not at work becomes some kind of quasi-prep time for the next day.
I got tired of my leisure time being that way, so I started being serious about the fine line between work and play. I began asking myself exactly how much I needed to do to be able to exit work and begin to play.
Hence the name “Exit Task.”
An application:
To see how this works, I’ll show you my ToDo list for the day:
Recreate Portfolio for Client X (name of client and project removed for privacy)
Process Guard Actions
Answer Comments on Productive Flourishing
Rewrite ‘About’ Page
Write “Exit Tasks”
Look at requirements for Adobe Creative Suites
Fax Stuff for Angela
Do financial review
Look at Reviews for Adobe Products
Those were all of the things that were on my mind at the time I started purging. I didn’t try to sort them by priority or context or anything like that - it was just the unrelated brain stew of things I was thinking about doing.
Looking at the time I had available to execute these tasks, it was clear that I wasn’t going to get through them all. So the next question - which of those do I absolutely have to do to get some peace?
The first two were external requirements - so I really had to do them. The third was one that I’d put off for a few days and it was starting to bother me - so I did that one. The rest were negotiable.
So those three got an (E) put behind them - my cue that those were the Exit Tasks for the day. The rest stayed on the list, but not as things I had to do. When I was done with those three tasks, I simply reevaluated what I most felt like doing. Turns out I wanted to write this post next, but I’ll probably call it quits after this.
The main point, though, is that I could have walked away with a clear head.
What about the rest of the items I didn’t complete? They stay there and are reviewed the next day - I’ll either plan to do them, postpone them, or drop them. But I won’t forget them.
Mastering the ToDo list comes down to three things:
Learning to do less
Learning how to complete what you have to do
Learning how to walk away when you’ve done what you had to
The “Exit Task” paradigm has been helping me with 2 and 3.
This model works well when there’s a clear separation between what you don’t want to do (i.e. work) and what you do want to do (i.e. leisure). As I start doing more income-generating activities that I want to do or that I enjoy doing, it’s harder to find that fuzzy line precisely because the work-play dichotomy breaks down at that point.
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that makes organizing your information incredibly easy. Backpack lets you make pages which can contain any combination of notes, to-dos, images, files, etc. You can keep these pages to yourself or share them with colleagues, co-workers, friends, or family.
I first used Backpack last year and, to be honest, I wasn’t impressed. 37Signals acquired Backpack and made a lot of positive changes since then and I decided to give it a try again. I’m glad I did.
I’m done with DotMac….what now?
One of the reasons that I decided to pick Backpack up again is because I decided to stop paying the Annual Apple Tax for its DotMac services. A review of DotMac is it’s own blog post series - and since I don’t want to reenter counseling sessions for broken promises - I’ll let it wait until then. Needless to say, I wasn’t getting enough juice for all the squeezin’ I was doing with the service.
But I was getting some functionality. What I lost when I stopped my DotMac service was the online storage for reference files and a shareable calender. I didn’t use the rest of the service, so not having some of the other features didn’t bother me.
Let me briefly touch on the online storage piece. As some of you know, I’m an officer in the Army National Guard. The Department of Defense has some fairly strict security processes in place such that you can’t plug in personal computers into their network. So, even though I kept all of my files on my personal computer, I would constantly have to shuffle them back and forth between the government issued computers and my laptop. That got annoying.
I used my online storage as a good way to still have access to those files without having to transfer from computer to computer. Furthermore, I never was in the position such that, if I forgot my laptop, I didn’t have those files.
(Note that I could have gotten around this with a mobile harddrive. I never got around to buying one because I didn’t need one as long as I had one of my online services, and they proved more functional for me.)
I would also occasionally be somewhere where I needed access to my files for the teaching and research that I do at the University. With DotMac, I had everything synced in my iDisk, so I was never without a file that I needed. I could have just gotten some online storage through another service like Mozy, but I wanted a more integrated solution.
Enter Backpack for all my file and calendar sharing needs…
Calendar sharing is also a huge feature for me. I’m horrible at telling Angela what I’m doing, even though I often put it in a calendar. My old DotMac service automatically updated her computer when I made changes - so when I no longer had that feature, there was considerable tension as my shifting schedule changed and I didn’t tell her. Having your spouse cook a meal because it’s her turn only to tell her way too late that you’re going to stay late for work causes considerable frustration.
Backpack stepped in quite nicely there, as well. Now when I update my Backpack calendar, she gets an RSS notification that I’ve done so.
But I gained more than those two features. I also really started using the Reminder feature in Backpack, as well. I schedule reminders for important things to remember, and I can set it so that it reminds both of us or one of us. For instance, she had surgery last Thursday, and the doctor informed her that was not to take anti-inflammatory meds for one week prior to her surgery. Rather than try to remember that, I just programmed a reminder that emailed us one week prior indicating that from that she wasn’t supposed to take anti-inflammatory meds during that period. Simple and efficient.
I’ve also been continually using their Pages feature in many different ways. One time I used it to keep a rolling ToDo list for things I needed to do during Annual Training. Another time I used it to keep track of the wines that we like. Another use has been as a shared project tracker. It’s really so easy and modular that you can use it for about whatever you need.
Rarely have I used a product that was so easy, and I dare say fun, that it encouraged me to use it more. Backpack does that to me on a daily basis.
Another thing about pages: each one has its own email. So you can set up a page to email all sorts of information, and Backpack diligently adds that information to the page. Combine that with the ability to easily drag the contents from one page to another, and you can hack out Backpack to be your own Capture and Process Center, GTD style.
I also have been using the Writeboard feature more and more. Writeboards are shareable documents that allow different collaborators to make changes to the document. I’ve used them to log meeting notes and to prepare agendas for teleconferences. I could see using them as a Wiki in a Small Business Structure, although it does have some limitations that wouldn’t make it ideal.
Backpack, again, provides a cohesive, integrated solution by allowing you to share documents for collaboration.
To my pleasant surprise, 37 Signals added another feature that I’ve been wanting but haven’t asked for: The Journal. The Journal is just a place where you can write down what you’re working on so that everyone in your Backpack group knows what’s going on. I think it’ll turn out to be a more productive Twitter.
How I think it’s going to be most useful to me, though, is it’ll give me an easy way to write down what I actually did at the end of the day so that I that I don’t have to remember that I fertilized my rosebushes today - I can just search for “rose”, and as long as I put it in to Backpack, it’ll show what I did to my roses on what day. That’s friggin’ handy.
Yet again, Backpack delivers.
That’s great, but I’ll have to spend time and money to use Backpack…is it worth it?
Switching to any new system like this requires time You have to learn a new way of thinking and teach yourself how to use the system. Learning Backpack has been insanely easy. It’s probably taken me twenty minutes, all together, to figure out how to use it.
However, you can spend a lot of time tinkering with it to figure out new ways to use the service for your context. This feature is a double-edged sword - being able to tailor the service for your actual needs and wants also makes it so that you can spend a lot of time fidgeting with it - but I’d rather have a more modular service that does what I want it to do than one that’s constrainingly fidgetproof.
I suspect what’ll keep most people from really using Backpack is the cost. Though there is a free service available, you’re really not getting the best of Backpack - as it’s a really handy service for integrating family and group activities and information. And to do that, you have to pay a minimum of $12 per month.
However, it’s worth it for my needs, and I have been paying for the service for several months now. Consider it this way: how much of your time do you spend sharing schedules, information, messages, and trying to remember stuff? It saves me at least an hour a month - and my time is worth far more than $12 an hour. Not to mention the sanity saved from not being curtly reminded that I didn’t tell Angela what I was doing.
The way that Backpack can be tailored to an individual or groups needs is a huge feature that makes it hard for me to limit who I would recommend the service to. Backpack is so flexible and modular that it can serve the needs of anyone who needs an integrated place to share calendars, information, reminders, and (recently added) their status with others.
[Update on July 10, 2008: If you have more than 6 people that need to share information, you'll probably want to start integrating some of the features of 37Sig's other services. At that point, it would be more cost-effective to host your own server somewhere and set-up the information exactly the way you need it. However, that would require at least one person who knew how to set up such a service, but an organization of larger than that will need some organic way to help manage information and scale that structure. More on this in the future...]
Right now, the thing that’s most likely to pull me away from using Backpack is not another online service, but rather the likelihood that I’ll be setting up my own home server. If I do that, though, it’ll be because using Backpack has shown me how having my own flexible, tailored intranet can help me and my family’s productivity.
The Changes I’d Like to See in Backpack
Despite the fact that Backpack is already a really good service, I think it could be even better with the addition of the following features:
A daily calendar view with beginning and end times
Although the Newsroom (the dashboard where Backpack displays your latest activity and what’s coming up) does a great job of showing you the hard landscape of your day, it doesn’t have end times on the activities. For instance, I know that Angela’s physical therapy appointment is at 1pm and her allergy shot is at 3pm. What time does her physical therapy appointment end? To figure that out, I’d have to return to another source of information - which defeats the purpose of me keeping it in Backpack.
This one should be an easy one, as Backpack is already able to understand the syntax of multiple day events.
The ability to attach notes and files to reminders
Backpack’s reminder service is really handy and easy to use, but to take it a step further, we need the ability to attach files or notes to them. Having the ability to have a reminder that tells me to call Bill at 3pm while having the agenda for the conversation included with the reminder saves me a few extra steps. Yes, this is simply the ability to time-delay an email to yourself or your group, but it’s a service that can easily be integrated into Backpack.
Time stamps for listed items
It’s very, very easy to make lists within Backpack - so easy, in fact, you’ll probably want to start making lists of a lot of your important data. One thing a lot of people will likely try is to set up some rolling ToDo list - it works pretty well for that, especially because the list items are draggable on the page (you have to do this yourself to see how addictive it can be).
What keeps it from being the end solution for me is that it doesn’t tell me when that item was completed. For what I do, it’s important to know that I completed this portion of that project on this date rather than some other - to do that, I’d have to go back in and edit the list item to say COMPLETED ON MAY 27th. Clearly, Backpack understands timestamps, for it does it on everything else - I want it to do it on list items, as well.
The ability to enter status for the past in Journal
Yes, this is a relatively new feature, but since I’ve been using it, I’ve been slightly frustrated that I can’t quite use it the way I want it. When you put in an item, it puts it in under today’s date - but if you did something yesterday and want to put it in that you did it yesterday, you can’t. You have to put it under today’s date. I know the Journal is designed to be used as a current status board, but being able to back enter status would be really helpful - especially if you want to capture working actions done when you’re away from the internet.
A Systematic Review of Backpack
I’d like to end this review with a more systematic summary using the criteria I set out in A Special Theory of Productivity. As a brief recap, in that post I stated that the three functions of Time Management Systems are to help us plan, execute, and evaluate our actions and that the principles of simplicity, usefulness, aesthetic pleasure, connectedness, and cohesiveness make Time Management Systems better or worse.
Backpack wins high marks in its ability to help us plan and evaluate our actions - it would be even better at it with the features requested above. Its interface is simple and aesthetically pleasing, and it’s so useful that many people will have to discipline themselves to not use Backpack to list out their lives.
Until we get a better daily picture, though, Backpack will not be an end all solution for executing one’s tasks. That being the case, it gets lower marks for connectedness and cohesiveness, since to see how those tasks are connected to anything I’ll have to refer to another system. The features requested above will help with this aspect without breaking the simplicity and usability.
Give Backpack a Try (For Free)
I encourage you to give Backpack a try if you haven’t done so already. The banner below will take you directly there so you can see the tour for yourself. Remember that there is a free trial - if you use it and find that I’m wrong, please come back and call me out.
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Today is Memorial Day in the United States. The holiday commemorates those who have fallen in military service for their countries. Many of you already know all of this.
These types of holidays used to be another day off for me. While I appreciated, in general, what those who had fallen had done for me, I didn’t really appreciate in a real meaningful way. Until I became a veteran myself.
(Sidebar: It still feels weird calling myself a veteran.)
Now holidays like this are a time not so much of remembrance, but of a reminding of the present. I remember what others in earlier times have sacrificed and what that means for the present, but more than anything it reminds me of the people on the frontlines today, and those who have fallen in the present.
It reminds me…
Of the urban kid who got out of the ghetto, become proud of himself and led others…
Of the farm girl who had never left her town before joining…
Of the new, young father who never had a chance to see his baby girl…
Of the college kid who joined for benefits that will never get to use them…
Of the mother who left her eighteen-month old son before he was weaned…
Of the parents whose set of kids all joined the same unit at the same time who came back on separate planes…
Of the many nieces and nephews who now where yellow for aunts and uncles that they used to play with…
Of the bank teller who joined for the excitement but who’ll never count money again…
Of the teachers, cops, firefighters, and EMTs that served our hometowns and our Nation…
Of the boys and girls who became men and women moments before their lives ended…
Of the retirees who joined again once the Twin Towers fell but who never got to retire for a second time…
Of the communities that sent their best and never got them back…
Of the families who get folded flags rather than hugs from their loved ones…
They deserve being remembered, not as the nameless masses and numbers on TV, but as the individuals that they were. They deserve much more than we’ll ever give them or the people in line behind them.
Regardless of whether you agree with the State of the Union, please remember those individual men and women who stand watch in faraway lands or who train and prepare to do the duty that our Nation has called them to do.
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What’s the difference between offline friends and online “friends”?
(If you answered that online friends are ones you made online, you get 10 Smartass points. Proceed directly to the university nearest you and sign up as a philosophy major with said points.)
Sure, it’s a Web1.0 type of question, but I think in the digital world we live in, it’s become an even more pressing question. We now have so many ways to connect with people we’ve never physically met, and our connectedness gets tighter and tighter every day.
Yet many people think there’s still some qualitative difference between the types of friendships such that offline friends get the status of true friends and online ones are “friends,” with the quotation signifying something like people we’ve met online, talked to, and like - but not to be confused with friends sans quotations.
Here’s the deal, though: through blogging, I’ve met more people that I actually like than I generally do in the real world. It’s also much easier for me to get to know people online than off - you don’t have to worry with sometimes-inhibiting social factors like gender, status, and race.
But there’s also the weird feature with online “friends” that I know more about them and less about them at the same time. I can tell you how old their kids are, what their kids like, what their favorite type of music is, what they’re most scared of, and all sorts of very personal facts - yet I don’t know what they’re kids’ names are or whether the name they use is actually their real one.
It’s strange, really - we expose more of our inner selves through online relationships at the same time that we hide more of outer selves.
I find this interesting because it’s the exact opposite of what we do in offline relationships.
I was reading an offline friend’s Facebook page the other day and he mentioned some things that he liked and disliked. I’ve known this guy for thirteen years and I didn’t know some of the stuff - and it was pretty basic stuff that should’ve come up in the course of our friendship. That happens to me quite often, and I don’t spend much time crawling around on Facebook and Myspace.
Something else to consider for those with blogging “friends”: consider how much time per week we spend reading each other’s writing. Sure, a lot of the stuff can be very impersonal - my blog being no different - but in some ways those are conversations that we are a part of sometimes on a daily basis. I don’t talk to my offline friends on a daily, or sometimes weekly, basis - yet I leave comments and shoot emails to my online friends everyday.
I should note that one of the things that makes blogging “friends” so nice is that they are dealing with the same issues and you don’t have to introduce them to the blogosphere at the same time you’re talking about something you’re thinking about. They get it because they’re doing it - so you can get down to the meat of the conversation without trying to explain what RSS is so that they understand why RSS subscribers matter.
My point: many of us are spending more time and attention on our online “friends” than our offline friends. From one perspective, that would seem to make their friendship more important to us than offline friendships.
Yet, at the same time, most of us place more weight on the offline friendships, and they still remain friends sans quotations.
For many of us, this issue is not merely an academic point any more. The online world is a critical part of our reality - and part of that reality has a very social component. Our lives are enriched by people we have never, and likely will never, physically meet - yet they still get second-class status as far as the type of relationship we have with them goes.
Is it time to drop the quotations? Is it time to stop the favoring of physical friendships over the non-physical ones?
(The worry here, of course, is that the people reading this blog have a much higher likelihood of saying “Yes” because they are already on the blogosphere. But consider what the answer would be if you were answering someone who wasn’t already part of the choir.)
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Sometimes the best thing to do as a designer is to recognize and admit that one of your designs is flawed. The Weekly Productivity Planner is flawed.
I’ll tell you what I was trying to do, how it passed the review process, and why it’s flawed.
All of my planners have a few common themes. The first theme is that they are driven first by your productive capacity. The basic idea here is that there are some blocks of time in which your ability to be productive is much higher than others. So I tried to capture that.
The second related theme is that productive capacity comes in more or less regular intervals. In How Heatmapping Your Productivity Makes You More Productive, I presented time as a circle. For presentation purposes, I needed to switch back to something more intuitive in the Daily Productivity Planner (DPP) and Weekly Productivity Planner (WPP). The theme is still there - it’s just presented differently.
The last theme that runs throughout the planners is that I design them based on a need. Traditional planners don’t work for me, so what I do is go back and redesign ones that do better for me and then offer them to you all. What I normally do is use the design for a little bit to work on the flaws before I put it out. While what works for me may not work for you, I know that a bad design won’t work well for anyone.
In my excitement to show the design and get it out, I didn’t use it “in the field.” Had I done so, I would’ve caught some of the glaring flaws.
What’s wrong with it, then?
It tries to do too much.
One of the overriding themes I’d like my planners to have is simplicity and focus. I definitely broke that in the WPP. The WPP was meant to be a weekly dashboard that allows you to focus on the things to do that week and then incorporate those things into the DPP. Instead, I ended up presenting the same information that would show up in the DPP.
In my discussion of the principles of time management systems, I wrote about the principles of simplicity and cohesiveness. In the case of the WPP, I broke simplicity for cohesiveness. Just an example of how the different principles can be in conflict with each other.
The new planner will be more focused on the weekly perspective, which means a lot of it will go. The information will be split correctly between the DPP and the Monthly Productivity Planner, which should be out in the next couple of weeks. I’ll need to design the WPP and the Monthly Productivity Planner in concert so that I get it right.
It doesn’t give enough space to write
In the past, I’ve measured my actual writing space requirements and used those to set the length for the blocks in the planner. I didn’t do that this time around, and ended up with a planner that you can’t write in. I jammed too much information into the WPP, which makes my spacing messed up, with the result that the blocks are to small.
Using the principles I’ve highlighted above, I broke usefulness for cohesiveness. Yet another example of the principles in conflict.
The Daily Heatmap is out of context
I included the heatmap on the WPP because I thought it was relevant information for the planning process. Turns out, it’s relevant for the DPP, but not for the WPP. It’ll be removed - whether I can get it in the DPP is undetermined.
What I have been considering is weekly cycles of productivity. My week goes in cycles, as well - but it’s harder to see the trends in weeks than it is to see the trends in days. Perhaps an even better reason to have an aid that helps track it, no? The trouble is to get that into an intuitive form that presents it rhythmically. But yes, I’m working on that, too.
If you’d like to speed up any of these projects, please leave a comment indicating what you’d like to see. But, for now, the Weekly Productivity Planner is banished to the Isle of Misfit Forms.
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There’s an interesting trend going on in the productivity niche. For the longest time, the focus of productivity has been on how we can get more done. Here recently, the trend is on quitting.
That we’re at this stage in the dialect is fairly predictable. After years of being led by acolytes of the corporate masters into thinking that we need to get more done, we’re tired. We recognize that we can’t get it all done - so now we’re quitting.
Another reason we’re at the quitting stage in the discussion is due to the overwhelming popularity and influence of Tim Ferriss’ 4-Hour Workweek. Tim makes a very strong and persuasive case for quitting - and the quitting bug has bitten many people.
But I think we need to think about something here. While I completely agree with Tim and the Quitting Cult that quitting is a logical option and, in some cases, the most reasonable course of action, let’s be real here - not too many of us are in the position to quit.
Take a second to consider that many of the disciples of the Quitting Cult share an important feature: they’re single.
Before I get tons of comments (okay, my readership is not that big) that cite many cases of married people with kids quitting and becoming happier or accusing me of blatant ad hominem, let me just submit that quitting and facing the prospect of not making ends meet for a few months is fine when you’re making that choice for yourself. When you’re making that choice for others, though, the consequences take on a completely different weight.
So, I think the Cult is right that many people are afraid to quit, but I also think that many people choose not to quit because they have obligations to others that they feel they need to see through reasonably, and quitting, often times, is not conducive to filling obligations to others.
But the Quitting Cult is also right that something has to give. We can’t continue to live the lives we live the way we live them, and something has got to give.
Rather than being taught how to get more done (being more productive), we are in serious need of being taught how to do fewer things that are more valuable. What the rest of us need to be taught is the art of the strategic withdrawal.
What’s the difference between strategically withdrawing and quitting? The former is a program that allows us to fulfill the obligations that are value-added or important while not taking on any more that aren’t. It recognizes that there are some obligations that we have that we really don’t want, but that it’s nonetheless important to see them through. The starting point for strategic withdrawal begins with internal conditions, i.e. it starts with the type of life you want to live, rather than external conditions, i.e. being in a job you don’t like.
To be fair, Tim does a great job of designing a program that allows us to strategically withdraw without simply quitting. Those following in his footsteps may be stressing quitting more for the rhetorical point, and, if that’s the case, we may be advocating the same course of action.
At some undetermined point in the future I’d like talk more about the steps for strategic withdrawal in detail. But since I hate critiquing without supplementing it with an alternative, I’ll make some preparatory suggestions.
Don’t take on any more externally-motivated commitments from this point forward
You’ve already made commitments in the past. Whether or not you’ll be able to see them through is not quite the point yet. The point is to stop taking them on. Learn the art of saying “No.” Your default answer for all future externally-motivated commitments should be “No.”
Figure out what living from the inside out means for you in your context
So few of us have know how to live our lives from the inside out, meaning that we let our talents, desires, and goals rather than societal standards dictate how we live our lives. Until you figure that out, you’ll continue to do the wrong things unless you get lucky through experimentation.
I stress in your context because being homeless while starting a new business may not be for you and your family. So it may turn out that you can’t live from the inside out right now - but you’re making a plan for what it looks like so that you can start acting on it.
Determine which of the obligations you are actually important to your vision for yourself to complete
You may find that it’s important for you to finish something you’ve started even though you don’t like that task or don’t want to do it. The important thing is to do this on a case-by-case basis and not to decide that, holistically, you are going to be the type of person that fulfills obligations. Commitments are not all on par - some really do need to be let go.
Get out of commitment debt
Okay, you’ve figured out what needs to go. If it’s something that you can quit - do so NOW and don’t lose any sleep for doing so. If you can’t, figure out which of those obligations you can get out as soon as possible with as little work as possible. What’s most important here is that people know that you are downscaling and you want to see things through, but you’re not taking any more additional work than you need to.
Take the resources you gained from quitting or fulfilling your commitments and put them to completing the other unwanted commitments.
Not what you were expecting, eh? It’s better to clear the plate of unwanted crap rather than leaving it on there to irritate you as you start your new lifestyle. The sooner you can get rid of the unwanted, the sooner you can start living your life commitment-debt free.
The key thing throughout the program is to quit making commitments in the areas you’re trying to get out of. The reason people are recommending quitting is because it immediately gets you out of the tug of the future from those things you quit. The truth is, continually withdrawing is hard because so few of us know how to say no and we’re all too likely to keep committing to things we don’t want to do.
Quitting may be the route to go for some people. But strategic withdrawal is the way to go for the rest of us.
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This last week has been a bit strange on the writing front - I’ve mentally written a lot of posts, but I haven’t actually written them. Now we’ll just have to see whether they actually materialize into something worth reading.
The reason for the strangeness of the week has been due to me being on military orders for Annual Training. I had a huge list of things that I needed to have my company and myself do - so that took some time, but the real reason was mostly psychological. It’s always that switch for me when I start working to time and not to task.
Needless to say, I’m back.
Since this weekend was really busy, I didn’t get to put a Food For Thought post out. The pondering this week is a result of the conversation between me and Bill in the comments of 12 Ways to Practice Courage. What’s bothered me for a long time is what makes a particular act courageous. (It didn’t help that Kelly had a post some while ago about the most daring thing she’s ever done - that started me thinking about it all over again and I declined to comment.)
Before we start, this is not purely an academic point that I’m presenting. It’s prompted by situations I’ve been in.
I’ve been in mortal danger no less than five times throughout my life. I could talk about all of them, but it’d be a really long post that may or may not be interesting. The one that really pops into my mind, though, is from a convoy gone…weird…in Iraq. I’ll keep it as short as possible.
On said weird convoy, we ended up going through a largish town during Market Day. Going through towns during Market Day is very much akin to driving 30 tractor-trailers through the middle of a fair - people and animals are everywhere, meandering with their wares, and really, really pissed that this huge trucks are coming through the middle of it. It doesn’t help that those trucks have people with guns, and some of those people are quick to point them at you.
My convoy also had the fortune of escorting Third Country National drivers - so for every one military truck, we had two or three TCN trucks. These guys were usually scared shitless because they had no idea where they were going, couldn’t speak English, and they knew they were in danger.
What would inevitably happen in these types of situations is that a TCN truck would not follow the truck in front of it closely enough and people and goats would start running between that truck and the one in front of it. The natural thing to do is to stop, because running over people is not something people naturally do. Once that one vehicle stops, it becomes a crosswalk from one side of the market to the other. The end result is that you end up with your convoy cut in half - and that’s bad.
Once our guntruck had ended the crosswalk situation, the second half of the convoy rushed to catch up with the first. In the excitement, another of our TCN drivers hit a curb really hard and the generator he had poorly secured on his trailer fell off…in the middle of Market Day. He stopped - and he was the third to last truck of the convoy. Still left in the convoy was my mechanic’s truck, my truck, and the trailing guntruck.
The crowd, out of curiosity, immediately swarmed that truck and the generator. There was no moving of any of the vehicles. My mechanic radioed up, but I still couldn’t see what was going on, so I got out of my truck to go see.
The crowd parted around me with a buffer of about 3 feet and then would close up behind me. For about 75 meters this happened - and I was completely isolated from my truck and my driver.
(I doubt many of you are transporters, so I have to make clear two major points: being unable to move your truck is terrifying, and being isolated from your truck with a crowd of neutral to hostile people is bone-chilling terrifying.)
As I approached the mechanic’s truck, it began to dawn on me that we were in a bad situation - for he had that “deer-in-the-headlights, what-do-we-do, I’m-scared” look on his face. The only two things that went through my mind were 1) please, Specialist, don’t start shooting, and 2) we have to get the fuck out of here. If he started shooting, dozens of people would have died, because everybody would have started shooting. And if we didn’t get out of there, something bad was going to happen.
There was no way to recover the generator, and we had to get out there, so I went against standing orders, placed an incendiary grenade on the generator, and we left (the crowd parted enough due to the intimidation of our guntruck.)
(I’ve left out a lot of detail to make the story shorter.)
Only when we meet up with the rest of our convoy outside of town did I realize what how bad that situation was. It would have been really easy for someone to jump from the crowd with a knife, or shovel, or any of the other tools they were carrying and overwhelm me. There were people walking on the rooftops with AK-47s.
But at the time, I didn’t think about any of that. I didn’t worry about my personal safety and I didn’t think about the danger I was in. My overriding thoughts were: 1) please, Troops, don’t start shooting, and 2) we have to get the fuck out of here.
I didn’t sit in the truck to deliberate what was the courageous thing to do. I didn’t fight the urge to sit in the truck because it didn’t really dawn on me that I had the option of sitting in the truck.
None of this is meant to be bragging or boasting, but rather, I’m just making it clear that I wasn’t thinking about the actions I was taking. I was just acting.
But is “just acting” worthy of moral praise? For it seems to me that a lot of people “just act,” but they act badly. The married man who can’t control his sexual urges comes to mind here - for, presented with certain situations, he can reasonably say he was just acting. He didn’t mean to hurt his wife - he didn’t think about it. But the fact that he didn’t think about it doesn’t seem to make any difference to the nature of his actions - although if he did it knowing it would hurt his wife or so that he would hurt his wife, that seems worse.
Of course, if the analysis for courage works, then it should work for truthfulness, friendliness, and the other virtues. If it’s the act itself that counts, why do we stress intentions?
What do you think?
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We live in a world where tragedy befalls millions on a daily basis. The world may be better than it once was, but that doesn’t mean that it’s were it could be. It’s not hard to imagine how the world could be better.
But it’s hard to make the world we imagine a reality. What can we do about all of the problems when our hands are only so big? Imagine, then act!
I teach applied ethics, and the most common reason students give for not becoming active about social and political change is that they reason that their efforts will be fruitless since they, individually, can have very little effect on such large problems of international conflict, world poverty, genocide, AIDs, global warming, etc. Since they can’t have a marked impact on the problems, they conclude that they’re efforts won’t help.
What they fail to see, though, is that the small efforts of large groups of people make a huge impact on the problems. Or, conversely: we don’t remember the faceless hordes of Nazis that slew millions of people during the Holocaust - we remember Hitler. One man.
Why should we think that one man can be the cause of so much suffering and yet conclude that one person can’t be the cause of the same amount of progress?
I didn’t really explain any of this when I wrote about the Problem of Dirty Hands, so the tone of that post perhaps make me sound as if I take myself, and my efforts, way too seriously. Quite the contrary: I take myself, and my efforts, seriously enough.
By that, I mean that I know that my small efforts can have an impact and I feel responsible for those actions that I don’t do that would make the world better. We each have an obligation to help with the talents that we have - and that help is through action.
Here are some easy actions you can do to help:
Find one pet issue or area you’d like to help
We can’t solve everything at once, but we can make one thing better. This is the “Imagine” part.
Become educated about that issue
While wanting to help is admirable, it’s critical that you become educated about the issues. It’ll increase your confidence that what you’re doing helps, and it will better help you…
Persuade others to join you
An easy way to “own” an issue is to get T-shirts for the issue and actually wear them. It markets the issue, but it also places you in the position to be an advocate for the issue. Warning: this requires some courage.
Write your politicians
Draft a well-written, but personal, letter to your politicians letting them know that you care about the issue and that you expect them to do so, as well. If you have a small coalition forming, cite that coalition so that they know they’re not dealing with just one person but a block of voters.
Develop a small way to help with that issue that you do on a regular basis
Evangelizing is great. Donating money to organizations that champion your issue is even better. The best thing you can donate, though, is your time and elbow grease - for that’s what most groups don’t get.
The point here is to start small. Don’t become the regional president of Amnesty International without attending a few meetings. But attend a meeting. Volunteer (for one day) to hand out fliers or mail newsletters.
While I’m not necessarily encouraging you to become a full-time activist, I am encouraging you to become active.
I’ll refer to Martin Luther King, Jr. again: it’s not the small majority of evil people that make the world as bad as it is - it’s the silence of the majority that stands by while the evil occurs. Don’t be a part of the silent majority.
My pet human rights issue: World Poverty. Because the right to free speech, for example, is useless if one doesn’t have the energy to speak.
My favorite non-government organization for World Poverty: The Heifer Project International. Because they not only help people in ways that make sense for their culture, but they also promote the “Pay it Forward” ethos through their program.
(Pick up the album, Instant Karma: The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur, that the entry song comes from on Amazon. Proceeds from the campaign will go directly to support Amnesty International’s urgent work on Darfur and other human rights crises worldwide.)
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In my last post I ran through a list of Big Days that I’ve done a horrible job of honoring. One Big Day that’s not on the list is Mother’s Day. Of course, if we had children, it would be on the list.
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Last Wednesday was, hands down, the best day I have ever had in Nebraska. It was my five year anniversary with my lovely wife, Angela, and boy, was it nice.
Especially considering how much of an idiot I was.
See, I’m horrible at Big Days, and I’m fortunate enough to have several of them to make it through a year. My wife and I started dating on September 24th nearly eleven years ago, so the 24th of September is a Big Day. Her birthday, annually, is a Big Day. Valentines’ Day is a Big Day. And the 7th of May, the day in which we forewent tradition and said “I do” at the Justice of the Peace, is a Big Day.
So, you’d think with four chances a year, I’d get at least one of the right. In which case, you’d be wrong. After every Big Day, we have one of “those talks.”
I’ve mentioned in my bio that my wife is a very supportive and patient women. She puts up with my shenanigans on a daily basis and does all those things that the wives of scatterbrained men have to do, like remind me to eat and change pants after a few days. It would be one thing if I were utterly brilliant at something or the other, but supporting a man that’s hovering within arms’ reach of mediocrity in everything that he does is an entirely different matter.
To my credit, I do a pretty good job on the daily things (after years of “those talks”). I’m supportive, spend lots of quality time with her, and am generally her biggest fan. But I’m horrible at Big Days.
What frustrates her even more is that I’m a trained logistician - I can develop a plan to get both large and small resources from one spot to the next within certain limits like a madman, but I can’t orchestrate the simple movement of two people to a date to save my life. Let alone figuring out the logistics of getting a thoughtful gift from the store to the house before the Big Day.
I had it all figured out this time around (I always do). I had set aside some time Monday night to do nothing but figure out how I was going to blow her mind on an awesome date. Until Monday rolled around, and I got behind and tired, and ended up talking to my parents - and I hadn’t reviewed my daily tasks to see that that time was reserved for Big Day planning. I had the sneaking suspicion all day Tuesday that I forgot to do something the day before, but couldn’t figure out what.
It’s important that I take a minute to explain why it takes a lot of planning. I’m in the unfortunate position of being married to a lady that defies normal gift giving. She doesn’t want flowers, shoes, jewelry, clothes, or candy, and I have had little to no luck at actually getting her something that’s thoughtful that she’ll actually like and use. The best hit, in nearly eleven years, was an UnderArmour warmup suit and assorted underwear (yes, it’s that awesome, ladies and gentlemen). We’ve since filled out her wardrobe with UnderArmour stuff, so that option was out. I lost the list I had made of gift ideas for her, and, anyway, all of the items on the list would’ve taken longer to ship than Monday night, so I would’ve been SOL eitherway.
She feels much the same about dating venues, as well. So, clearly, Mario Kart and Rock Band wouldn’t do, but what else counts? Knowing that it would take some serious mental juice to figure out what to get her and what we would do, I reserved some time to think about it. Oh, were it as easy as buying jewelry, flowers, and taking her to a romantic restaurant!
So, I went ahead and finished all of my other work for Tuesday and was spent. I managed to get everything taken care of so that we could spend the entire day not-working and spending quality time together. When I emerged from the office, Angela let me know that she had a wonderful day planned for us. Panic hit me, as I realized that I hadn’t planned anything - anything - for the next day. She reassured me that it was okay, and I believed her. (Idiot!)
We had a peaceful morning on the Big Day, and she let me know that we needed to be ready for couples’ massage that afternoon. I’d never had a massage before, so it was a nice experience - I probably won’t be doing it again, but it’s still cool to do new things together. But, before it was time to go to the Spa, it dawned on me that I hadn’t filled out the card I got for her. So I spent the last few minutes locked in the office, frantically trying to find the card and then writing in it. (Idiot!)
After I came out, Angela let me know that she had found my “stash” some weeks prior. I had hidden my stash in my office desk, and she had been through my desk looking for notecards that I told her were in there.
Now, folks, my stash is not what you’re thinking. It was a stockpile of cards that I had picked out a few months prior. After I bombed the Big Day in September, I made a note to stock up on cards so that I’d never be running behind on cards again. As a result, I’ve been a card rock star since then - if she were having a bad day, I’d pull out one of the cards, write something thoughtful in it, hide it somewhere sweet, and then she’d find it. Or if I just wanted to show I was thinking about her, I’d write one up and drop it on her unexpectedly.
What made it seem so sweet, apparently, was the fact she thought I was going and getting the cards in response to her bad days or because I was motivated to go get a card as a result of me thinking about her on that day. My romantic credibility, always in jeopardy anyway, dropped considerably when she found the stash.
And that I was running behind filling out a card that I had bought months before made it all the worse. So much for Getting Cards Done. (Idiot!)
The events of the day went along spectacularly (as she had planned) and we had recovered from my stupidity…until dinner. Throughout dinner, she began to pull successively larger surprises out of her purse. It started off with my favorite candy, moved to a iTunes gift card, and ended with tickets to Jack Johnson’s concert in August - all really wonderful, thoughtful gifts. From my side of the table, there came nothing. Nada. Zilch. We hadn’t discussed whether we were getting gifts, so I assumed that we weren’t. (Idiot!)
It was a quiet ride home from the restaurant, and the quietness was made all the more intense because we had driven to Omaha to go to our favorite date restaurant. Sadly, during one of “those talks” the next day, she let me know that the day was awesome and met her every expectation. She expected that I would be an idiot, and, predictably, I was.
The truly wise learn from the mistakes of others. That said, I’ll make a short list for all you men of what TO DO to have a better chance at getting Big Days right:
Take time to plan the day well in advance
The day before the Big Day does not count as “well in advance.” At one week out, you need to have all the gifts, reservations, and any other important activities planned out. That gives you enough time to get stuff shipped to your buddies’ houses so you can hide it from her.
Get her something, even if it’s not thoughtful
Effort counts here, fellas. Sure, she may never actually use what you get her, but that you took the time to try is what is important. Avoid items that make her more productive or efficient around the house, and I don’t care if the vacuum cleaner needs replacement - it doesn’t count as a Big Day gift. (Save those for unstated surprises: a new vacuum cleaner should mysteriously, without announcement, appear in the closet. You should not attempt to take credit for it, for that will backfire upon you in ways untold.) If you can get something thoughtful and really cool, great; if you can’t, try like hell but do not show up emptyhanded.
Listing off all of the things you thought about getting but didn’t does not help. Beware statements indicating that she doesn’t want anything or that you don’t have to get anything for her. Better to be a thoughtful idiot who doesn’t listen than an unthoughtful one who listens. (Sidebar: If Angela is reading this, she’s cringing at the fact that I’ve associated household chores with women. Why can’t the vacuum cleaner be a gift for a man? How dare I continually divide the labor up so that women get the domestic chores! Why is she married to such a patriarchal idiot?!)
A card is not optional!
That you don’t care much for cards is neither here nor there. Get one, and have it filled out before the Big Day. Filling it out on the Big Day is a NO GO at this station.
Under no circumstances are you to refer to any of this as something you have to do
Yes, the efforts that you are undertaking may not be fun, but do not, on pain of death, shoe-caused concussion, or food poisoning, refer to it as anything resembling work or something you don’t want to do. Statements such as “I have to plan what we’ll be doing on that day” that sound like “I have to prepare this report for work” should not issue forth from your lips, despite what you’re thinking.
You are enjoying thinking about the time you will spend with your beautiful lady. You are looking forward to spending quality time with your loving wife/partner/lover. You are excited about surprising her with your gifts of love on your Big Day. You are not taking your mother to her colonoscopy.
I love you very much, honey, and I’m sorry for being an idiot.
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. Tim makes a very strong and persuasive case for quitting - and the quitting bug has bitten many people.
, that the entry song comes from on Amazon. Proceeds from the campaign will go directly to support Amnesty International’s urgent work on Darfur and other human rights crises worldwide.)
