I define “downtime” as time that isn’t directed to a specific task or end but is what I do when I take a break from my work. Usually I read something, these days from some news website or the other. Oh for the days when I just read books! That type of thing seems like a distant memory. I used to gobble up murder mysteries by the ton, and when I’d be eating lunch by myself at home and reading I’d keep on eating so that I could keep on reading. (This former habit may help explain why I used to weigh more than I do now.)
Time
Fitting in Work Around Other Work
Well, I just spent at least half an hour trying to find a quotation from the British classicist Mary Beard about her writing and I haven’t been able to do so. It’s always a mistake to let a good idea go by and then have to hunt it down later. So I won’t be able to give you an exact quotation, but she said something like, “As I was sitting and working on my few sentences.” Mary Beard is one of my heroes; her book The Fires of Vesuvius is a true time-travel tool.
The Joy of Tackling a Big Project
My current Big Writing Project (BWP) is the finishing up of my commentaries on Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana for publication. I’ve been using the writing software Scrivener, as everybody who’s anybody says it’s magnificent. Well, I’d been finding it magnificently hard to use, to be honest. The final step in my project was the addition of images, and Scrivener just wasn’t cooperating. Until, suddenly, it was. I’m not sure what I did, but I think I had somehow created a table where I didn’t want one, and Scrivener was stubbornly following the
Does the Present Moment Really Exist?
I’m always hearing snatches on the radio that intrigue me; sometimes I even follow up on them. One of my favorite sources for these snatches is “The TED Radio Hour” on NPR. As you may know, and as I’ve written before, TED Talks are a great source of short talks on a wide range of subjects. “TED” stands for “Technology, Entertainment, Design,” but you can shoehorn almost any topic into those three areas.
The Marie Kondo of Personal Organizing
Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen, available in many editions and formats. Link is to Amazon page. You can also visit the Getting Things Done website.
I’ve heard of David Allen and his “getting things done” (or “GTD”) method a number of times in the past and finally decided to read/listen to his classic book which first came out in 2001. I must have been reminded of him recently in some way, although I don’t remember just how, and I got the audio book from the library. It’s read by the author, who sounds very engaging and thoughtful, and I was really fired up by his introductory chapters. Then he kind of lost me as he headed into the chapters that delineate exactly how you’re supposed to do things his way. Most of his work has been done in the business world, and so many of his examples are drawn from that arena. I think that was part of why I drifted away.
Progress Made–The Kitchen Cabinets Are In!
I said last week that every Monday was going to be a Progress Post. Well, today, Wednesday, is the first post I’ve written this week. Monday our peerless contractor and his son worked most of the day on installing our very small number of cabinet units, and I kept thinking that I should run and take a picture, but I wasn’t sure where my camera was. They were actually supposed to be on a much bigger job but they made time for us. I wanted a before and after set of pictures for today, from all the boxes on the kitchen floor to everything being put away, but all I have is this one shot that was taken partway through the process. (Pretty bad shot!)
Every Day You Live . . .
. . . is one less day you have left.
Sound morbid? It’s not. I quoted my dear friend Nancy’s father, something said at his funeral and which I wrote about last summer:
“What you do today is important, because you are exchanging a day of your life for it.”
Nothing Gold Can Stay.
Robert Frost wrote:
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay
A Timely Update
I wrote last week about the author Laura Vanderkam and her ideas on time management. She has a three-part series of short e-books that offer great ideas. I’d already read “What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast,” and when I went onto her site last week I noticed this one, which I bought for about $3 through Audible.com. (I’m an Audible member and pay a monthly membership fee of $12.95–something like that–but since these short books are only about $3 it’s not worth it for me to buy them with my credits,, so I just bought it directly.) I also bought “What the Most Successful People Do at Work,” also for around $3. And then I realized that I needed to listen to her book 168 Hours: Why You Have More Time Than You Think, which I did buy with an Audible credit. (My Audible credits are stacking up, so I need to use them.) The link to her website above will give you ordering info on all of her books.
A Third Time Tool and a Helpful Author.
I wrote yesterday about two tools that I’m finding to be useful: SwipesApp and Evernote.
Today I’m writing about a third tool that I knew about and had tried to use before and also about the author who brought it to my attention. I’m trying not to make the tool into the Next Big Thing, a mistake I often make. The tool is called “Toggl,” and I had first heard about it from an author and blogger I follow named Laura Vanderkam, a time management consultant.