Labor Day is a great day to do a annual review! September and October are the last months to really get a lot done before the holiday season hits, so take a look and see what you need to get finished up before 2009.
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Americans both love and hate pioneers and cowboys at the same time.
Our cultural icons are those hard-working men and women who do their own thing and become really successful. Yet, on a day in and day out level, we teach people to get in line and follow the route laid down before them.
We see people work their entire lives and peacefully retire, all the while never rocking the boat. We see those hardworking but line-toeing people get replaced by younger people with fresh ideas. We don’t want to be those people quietly ushered out the door, but the majority of us show up and toe the line.
Part of the problem is that we have conceptually tied together financial security and happiness. We see artists and creatives struggle and assume that they’re desperate and unhappy because of their financial situation. We don’t see that they’re happy doing what they love - we just see their broken-down vans. Continue reading →
I like to do Food For Thought posts on the weekends here at Productive Flourishing. The particular idea I’ve been thinking about is particularly well-suited for a podcast, so here we go!
The Paradox of Fortunate Misfortune deals with the basic human phenomena in which misfortunate things happen that benefit us later on. No one wants to go through misfortune, yet misfortune and adversity build human character. Learning to ask the “what” question rather than the “why” question empowers us to turn that misfortune into fortune.
The background of the idea came from listening to the song below. It’s not required listening, but it may be helpful, and plus it helps me spread the word about an under-discovered artist. Take a listen if you’d like to hear the emotion that got me thinking:
If you’d like tips on asking yourself the right questions and turning misfortune into fortune, get FREE updates by RSS or by Email. Thanks for reading!
(Before I start storytime, I wanted to thank you all for continuing to bear with me as I adjust to my new job - I’m about settled in, and your regularly (un)scheduled programming will continue. Also, there’s a moral to the story you’re about to read.)
Angela and I were hanging out in Kansas City last Thursday, seeing the sites. We saw Amos Lee in concert Wednesday night and were going to see Jack Johnson Friday night. Neither of us had ever really seen much of Kansas City - her parents love suburban malls, and mine were always too poor. It was like seeing a new city.
But we ended up in Union Station. It’s a lovely building with great architecture, but we soon discovered that there really wasn’t much to do there, except for see the controversial Bodies Revealed exhibit. And it was expensive.
As we stood deliberating whether or not to fork over the money to go to aforementioned exhibit, this guy walked in front of me.
He was carrying a car seat and had two young boys (probably 3 and 5) in tow. He was wearing a green T-Shirt, some cargo shorts, and a backpack. He looked really familiar - I knew who he was, but it took me a second to realize it.
It was Jack Johnson. Yes, the Jack Johnson you’re thinking of. The same Jack Johnson that’s my favorite artist and why we were even in KC in the first place. Continue reading →
You might want to create a shared Google Calendar, adding your boss’ email address, then letting him know about the calendar.
I have a long history of trying to get my bosses to adopt parts of my system. The problem I’ve run into is that they’re much the same as other people in that they don’t want to change, and, sadly, they’re in the position such that they have others, like myself, that run things for them.
You really have to make a strong sell to them that what you’re asking them to do is a better system than the one they already have - “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” seems to be the operative rule. That they’re taking up your time and mental energy does not figure in to the system being broke.Continue reading →
One of my bosses has a habit of telling me to remind him about something in a few days. Rather than ranting about why I have to be his psychic RAM or worrying about it, I’ve developed a way that let’s me follow-up with him without having to remember to do it. It works like a champ.
Draft an email containing the information you need to remind someone about. Unless they specifically ask for a phone call, correspond via email.
Save the aforementioned email as a draft. Do not send it.
Run to Backpack. Create a reminder to “Send draft email to [person].”
Forget that you were supposed to remind that person of whatever you were supposed to.
When you get the reminder from Backpack, hit send on the email.
The end result? You look like you’re on top of things without having to actively be on top of things.
Why this works:
You write the email while it’s fresh, so it contains the information it needs to. Since it’s done, you can stop thinking about it.
The reminder, if you use it correctly, gets rid of the psychic tag of remembering to do it. You can completely space it and still get it done.
The keyword here is: Focus. Since you’re not mentally juggling something, you can devote more of yourself to other things that do require your attention.
It’s been a nice, productive week at my new job. I’m working on a lot of projects that I’m looking forward to talking about, but I’ve got drill this weekend and am going on a trip at the end of next week. I’ll not make any promises…but I did want to give a quick tip that I’ve been using a lot here recently. I’m sure there may be other techniques, but this one’s FREE! and really easy.
If you liked this post and would like to learn more tips (quick or otherwise) to help you focus and become more productive, get FREE updates by RSS or by Email. Thanks for reading!
Kelly from SHE-POWER was awesome enough to interview me and then still put my answers up on her blog. She asked tough questions, and I made it tougher for her by giving long, un-webfriendly answers (don’t worry, she did a wonderful job editing the answers). Fun times were had by all.
The questions and answers don’t end there, folks! If you have anything you want to ask me, shoot me an email at charlesgilkey AT productiveflourishing DOT com, use the contact form above, or just drop a line in the comments.
The pine looked at the oak and said: “All these years we’ve grown together and I’ve always been envious of you. Every year, you sprout beautiful leaves and acorns, and in the fall your leaves embellish the forest with reds, yellows, and oranges and your acorns feed the squirrels and animals that nourish us. I feel so ugly standing next to you.”
The oak replied: “All these years I’ve been envious that throughout the winter, when I’m bare, you give color to the forest and provide warmth for the animals that nourish us. I stand naked and frail, yet your beauty is evergreen. I feel so ugly standing next to you.”
Fall came, and the oak’s leaves dried and changed to hues of amber and red, much to the delight and envy of the pine.
Winter came, and the pine’s evergreen hues of green and blue gave the forest a tranquil beauty in the darkest hours of the day, much to the delight and envy of the oak.
Spring came, and the trees both flourished in their new growth. The leaves of the oak began to grow and the pine developed the rich hue of spring.
Summer came again, and they both marveled at the other’s beauty and were ashamed of their own, none the wiser that they each have their own beauty and that no amount of envy or wishing will change their natures.
How many times have you wished that you were taller?…
or were blonde?…
or were on a slimmer frame?…
or had larger boobs?…
or had broader shoulders?…
or had a smaller chin?…
or had wider hips?…
or had cuter feet?…
Nature always wins. Work with your nature and manifest your natural beauty, or continuously hack, paint, dye, augment, lift, bake, and starve to become a shade of it.
If you liked this post and would like to learn more about leveraging your nature rather than working against it, get FREE updates by RSS or by Email. Thanks for reading!
A couple of weeks ago, I was having lunch with Kelly from the Honeycomb and we were talking about productivity, planners, and life, in general. She later emailed me with a question that we didn’t have time to discuss. Her question was:
Where do you draw the line between blogging and focusing on “productive” output, or, in other words, when to write publicly vs. privately (or for eventual publication)?
What a straight-shooting question!
Some backdrop: I’ve currently written 99,311 words in posts and 2,918 words in pages - so I’m up to 102,229 words total. Okay, so words don’t mean much - what does that amount to?
Writers often use 250 words as an estimate for a page, so with that number of words, I’m up to 409 written pages! I expect that my dissertation will be about 150 pages when all said and done and an average article in a philosophical journal is about 30 pages. So her question hits squarely: had I spent the time I’ve spent writing for this blog on writing for publication or research, I would be much, much further along than what I am.
(This is a bit of an oversimplification: it takes me longer to write academic philosophy than it does the stuff I do here. I doubt I would have been able to finish my dissertation and kick out a few articles, but I’m fairly confident that I could have done one or the other. Another thing that’s not considered is that it takes me about three times as long to work on the planners as it does to write, which partly explains why I’m backlogged on them right now even though I have the concept for a few new ones drafted.)
I started blogging, though, to work out problems I’d been having and generate some sort of productive motion on something. I had way too much to do in not enough time and I turned to sources that were owning up to the problem. The productivity systems, planners, and hacks all were only loosely translatable to the academic existence, and I spent a lot of time trying to make those translations work.
As I started talking to people and reading more about it, I recognized that it wasn’t just academics that had the issues - it was essentially everyone who worked outside of the corporate, time-driven structure.
A lot of what I write about here still has that nature: it’s either based on something I’ve been thinking about (extracted from my own problems) or deals with issues other people are having. This blog serves, then, as a creative outlet to talk about issues we’re having with productivity and personal development and (hopefully) come up with some strategies to help us flourish while being productive. Hence the name Productive Flourishing.
It’s also the place where I can get some things out of my head without driving Angela crazy.
That still only partly answers her question. I’ll have to reframe the question, though, as it seems to imply that what I do here is not “productive output,” or, perhaps more charitably, there’s the work that I need to do to advance my academic career and then there’s what I do here.
I now consider blogging (and my other web-ventures) as something resembling a career path. I enjoy it as if it were a hobby - and, in fact, it’s pushed out all other hobbies except for playing music - but it’s something that’s now on the chart as a life goal. It’s not something I could walk away from easily.
That said, what I do here counts as productive in the same way as writing academically - each word I write in either dimension moves me towards a meaningful life goal that I’ve set. The unfortunate fact of the matter, though, is that what I do here does not pay the bills, so, at the end of the day, if there’s a choice between doing what’s required to put food on the table and doing what I enjoy doing, I choose the former. Eating trumps playing.
There’s one last way to think about this. I’ve been “getting by” academically - were I to invest the time I spend here in that one career, I may be doing much more than getting by. I may be a much better scholar, researcher, and teacher.
But I’d be much less whole all the while. I’ve come alive in ways that I haven’t in a long time because of what I do here. This blog serves as a catalyst for creative, expressive pursuits that are not ruled by institutional guidance. The only criteria for whether doing something here is worthwhile is if I enjoy it - and that makes all the difference.
As long as Productive Flourishing contributes to my own flourishing, it’ll be something that I do. When it ceases to serve that function…well, we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.
Have any questions you’d like to ask me? Shoot me an email at charlesgilkey AT productiveflourishing DOT com or use the contact form above. It’s a free link and a question answered!
If you’re just really cool and would like to learn how to flourish while being productive, get FREE updates by RSS or by Email. Thanks for reading!
Amos Lee - “Careless”
