The Panda's Pad

With it now being June the eleventh, I have to finally admit to myself that the summer is here. I also have to admit that I have been off of classes for over a month and have little results or gains from the past weeks. Now, to be fair I have gotten quite a bit done with faculty academy and working at the UMW history department, but my own personal missions have fallen to the wayside! As someone who desires to be a producer (i.e. make and create rather than merely consume whether that be books, television or blogs), I feel as if I have to take drastic and firm approaches to accomplishing my own goals. Unlike work or school or even perhaps helping your significant other, self goals that involve any real work or discipline take a great deal of effort, by which I mean mental discipline.

Let’s be honest with ourselves and say that watching an episode of the X-files or playing 3 plus hours of Minecraft a day are far easier and more “enjoyable” than sitting down and reading a difficult book or writing out a journal entry. When easy to consume media is at my finger tips and I can safely put aside all work during “my break,” why should I even bother doing a self directed project or six? Now that many of my friends have graduated, I have wondered what happens to the project mentality after university? Do you still have the desire to explore some small detail? Do you still seek out texts that are challenging and perhaps theoretical? Prior to college I really had no idea who Foucault was…would I even need to bother with him afterward? These questions all point to one central idea, namely making the work of projects more intertwined with day-to-day life. I want to still advance myself in ways that are not necessarily practical. An easier way to say all of this, I want to still be an intellectual explorer, or better yet a pirate (no perhaps overdone already…).

I realize it would help to speak to more concrete issues before continuing forward with this discussion of how I am going to keep honest with all of my side work and projects. As I wrote about in my last post, the student individual doing work outside of the classroom lacks urgency. There are no real deadlines or spaces to perhaps apply what ever you may be working on. While I won’t say that the classroom is necessarily the most important piece of this equation, I will say that without a space where you doing or not doing the work has consequences, there’s something lost. You no longer have a sink or swim mentality. Like going to the gym, the only one who won’t know that you didn’t read all of the classics in Russian literature are you and Dostoevsky. If you were to ever encounter a conversation about Russian literature you could make some general statements about “detailed descriptions” and “well translated works” and perhaps no one would be the wiser. Without our work operating in a “sink or swim” or urgent context it can be easily procrastinated, put off for next week, next month, or next decade (oops skipped a step). What’s worse is that you never have that jarring moment where you must utilize those skills the night before x assignment is due. That last ditch moment forces many (no exact numbers here!) students to do the work even if they procrastinated. Don’t do it get an F…okay might as well at least try to do something about it. Let’s call it Factor 1: Urgency.

While a lot of my issues hinge upon this lack of urgency, there seems to be a few other factors that cause major disruptions in my work. I am a project starter trying to become a full time producer. Anyone who has known me for a length of time will know that I love projects and talking about “cool things,” but as that same group could tell you, I stumble finishing the project. Perhaps it doesn’t move fast enough, perhaps I have some trouble midway, but whatever the reason, I finish projects with a dull luster. A brilliant, gleaming idea is now trapped in tattered rags. A sweet present is wrapped in trashy aged newspapers. What went wrong? A bit of conjecture will be going into this, yet I feel the problem lies in transparency. I will begin to talk about a project, blog about it and pontificate with friends over what brilliant idea I recently had. However, give it a month and there will be no progress. As an aside, I fully understand that not all projects leave the idea phase. I wonder if regular project updates would help to keep myself honest about where I am in a certain task. When blogging or even having someone keep you accountable to your work, you have to answer for what you have done or not done. Of course the point wouldn’t be to lie about your progress. Rather, it would force you to take note of where you are falling behind. Call it a progress report. Factor 2: Transparency.

I could talk all I want about urgency and transparency, but the practical issue lies in time management, this oft debated issue. How does one squeeze every bit of energy out of every second available to us in a 24 hour period? How should one balance work, family and having fun? For 19.95 I can give you all of my secret solutions! Right…let’s cut straight to it. I am not one for time management. I can manage when I want to manage, or said another way, I can manage time when time is easy to manage. If I have a great deal of free time and no other concerns, sure I will get a fair amount done, maybe…if I feel like it. Where does this attitude come from? I read an excellent work by Neil Fiore entitled The Now Habit which is a worthwhile read for those invested in understanding how to better use their time. I particularly recommend it to those who are workaholics, because the author is invested in producing more in less time. Anyway, Fiore suggests that we first have to master our time spending by tracking how we use our time (Fiore, 36). To those of us who are also procrastinators, this task is asking a bit much, however the tracking is not meant for locking down your ideal use but rather what you are doing from hour to hour, day to day for a week or two. The tracking and its revelation should not be the stopping point, you need to act on the new data and avoid time sinks. “Around nine pm I tend to sit down and watch three hours of television,” those sorts of issues. Understand how you are somehow your greatest ally and enemy all at the same time in relation to your projects. I realize that acting on how you spend your time requires a vast amount of discipline and energy that a day of exhausting work or social interactions seems to not allow. Knowing how you spend your time will give you a survey and foundation to work out how to take control of your day, but before you start jumping into projects, you (we) should understand the projects and tasks on which we work. Questions such as what is the most convenient, effective way to accomplish X? What is the least painful way to get started? What are the in between steps required to accomplish X? What are you ultimately trying to accomplish? While these questions are far more difficult for larger projects, no task is altogether unknowable. You should at least have a cursory idea of what steps will be required. By understanding our time and our projects, we might just unlock how best to use our time…for now. It’s always tentative and subject to change, is it not?

I have been hammering home urgency, transparency and effective time use. Furthermore, I truly desire to apply those ideas to my own work and blog about projects and readings. Over the next week I will be doing one post a day about a different project, my goals, time lines and how I intend on managing the project. I hope to also write a post concerning tasks as gaming and what to do about dreaded necessary but non-vital tasks (for example: sending a letter). If these wanderings in thought have made any sense to you as well please leave a comment!

Oddly enough I need to be more like Jim Groom. He always jumps onboard without any question and doesn’t let a lack of tools to stop him from completing his mission.