About

Because Hacking It Ain’t Hacking It

Productive Flourishing is for people who are sick of learning a new productivity system every month and not getting any more productive.

It’s for people who can’t press pause on their life while they learn how to fix it. People who have to fix the plane while it’s flying.

It’s for recovering productivity junkies who have had enough of Getting Things Done and want to start getting things done. People whose MIT for the past 10 days has been “try out that new productivity system from Lifehacker.”

It’s for people who realize they’ve saved a bunch of time but aren’t any happier as a result.

It’s for creative people who will throw up if they see another bulleted list or “Top Ten Ways To Hack Your Mousepad.” People who just want more time to play.

It’s for parents who are too busy being everything to everyone to start learning a new system. Parents who don’t have time to read and if they did, they wouldn’t be reading a productivity manual.

Productive Flourishing is for everyone who wants to spend less time doing what they hate and more time doing what they love. Because isn’t that what productivity is all about?

About the Author

Hi. I’m Charlie Gilkey. Here’s a little bit about me and why I’m qualified to write this blog.

I’m currently teaching philosophy, working towards finishing my dissertation, managing a career as an officer in the Nebraska National Guard, finishing my basement, writing for this blog, and developing another website.

When I’m not working, I try to find the time to travel, play music (I play guitar, bass guitar, and keyboard), ride motorcycles, dance, backpack, canoe/kayak, and camp.

Basically, I’ve been busy since I was six.

Throughout my life, I’ve learned how to teach myself the hard way and to teach others the easy way. I’m writing this blog to share with you what I’ve learned, what I’m still learning, and what I’m hoping to learn.

Some Back Story

I was born in Fort Smith, Arkansas in 1980, the fifth of six kids. Being raised in the south as a multi-racial child was interesting enough and to add further spice to my life, we were pretty poor.

I stayed in Arkansas through university and after that spent the summer in Europe, traveling off a grant I wrote to do so. I graduated in 2002 and joined the Arkansas Army National Guard that same year. I spent some time working part-time jobs in between military training and applied to graduate school that year. The pace of life was starting to accelerate.

On a bit of a whim, my high school sweetheart and I got married in the spring of 2003. We had been together since 1997, went to the same University, travelled through Europe, and had lived together for a few years; we decided that the time was right to make legal what had been real for years. We’ve been (mostly) happily married ever since.

We went through a few years of military training and grad school and moving followed by more military training and more grad school and more moving. Unfortunately, nobody’s written a book on how to be a scholar and an army officer at the same time, and we had our work cut out for us. I really don’t remember much from that time, although I think that maybe we were a little happier–perhaps freer.

While at military school, I got the happy news that I would be deploying to Iraq as a transportation platoon leader right after I returned. And when I say right after, I mean right after. I returned from a 17-week military school only to be told that I would be reporting to a mobilization station four days later.

So, I deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom for a year from September 04 to September 05. I spent half the time as a platoon leader and the other half of the time as a staff officer. I made the mistake of writing a few reports for some of my higher up bosses and they decided that my abilities would be better served working for them than for the troops I had come to know, love, hate, and lead. I can’t discuss a lot of the details, but it proved to be the best and worst time of my life. Adversity does build character, but it also increases wrinkles and hair loss.

A month or so after I returned, my wife and I bought our first house. All first houses are adventures, and we embarked on ours with gusto while I tried to adjust to civilian life. I finally got around to signing the forms and getting my Master’s in philosophy in the Spring of 2007.

And here I am today, writing the blog you’re so graciously reading. If you’d like to get in touch with me or have any comments, please go here and use the contact form or just comment below. Thanks!