time and energy management, timing, tools and strategies
A really smart somebody or other once opined that time is what keeps everything in a story from happening all at once. Since we humans are all engaged in making up some kind of story or other, this is an important concept. I know. All kinds of people have weighed in with opinions – esoteric, scientific, and mundane – about Time. You have probably heard them all before. Basically, under all of that pretzel-brain making cascade, we are told that…
I am reading Andrew Santella’s book, SOON: An Overdue History of Procrastination from Leonardo and Darwin to You and Me. Again. This little book is setting off all kinds of firecracker strings in my head. Santella, like me (and maybe you too?), is a self-confessed procrastinator so he’s at least well-practiced in trying to suss out the whats, the whys, and the wherefores of that almost universally censured habit, procrastination.
For years now, I’ve heard about the “Slow Movement.” The ideals of keeping to a human pace, puzzling out and enjoying inherent creative processes, caring about human interactions and needs, and savoring life’s little moments one by one have always resonated with me. But, hey…I’ve been busy! As the consensus-world kept picking up speed and going hyper, all kinds of interesting things were popping. The razzle-dazzle got brighter, and the pyrotechnics were grand. Busy, busy, busy was the order of…
It occurred to me that the most effective “time management” stance is basically saying “no” to all the things you’re asked to do – either by your own self or by other people — until you get to a thing to which you can or want or have to say “yes.” The “yes” is your “Go.” Ideally whatever task pulls that “yes” from you is one that you think will make some sort of difference in your life – one…
Crossroads are an everyday, ordinary bit of magic. Each one is the meeting place of potentialities – where you can pause to consider all of the different Maybes of your mind. Each one is a demand that you make some sort of choice. Legend has it that a crossroads is a meeting place of time and space, a magical but dangerous place where a traveler is likely to meet witches and demons. Crossroads are sacred to Hecate, an underworld goddess…
As a Perfectionist in remission, I am here to tell you that wabi-sabi — a Japanese way of seeing the world — works as an antidote to the never-good-enough, shiny-new-thing madness induced by the classical hyper-focus on perfection and the kind of seamless orderliness that arises from the mathematical, mechanical precision that evolved in the super-industrialized Occidental West where more is always better. I grew up in a pineapple plantation camp on Molokai. Many of my neighbors were Issei, first-generation…
We are walking through interesting times, we humans. The world is going through a time of rapid change on a scope that is a mind-boggle. It’s all coming at us at a furious pace as we try to get some kind of handle on it. When our only effective weapons of defense are washing our hands with soap and water, avoiding sneezing and coughing at each other, and stepping far away from one another as the complex constructs we’ve built…
Another IPS (Inner Peace Symptom): a tendency to take action opportunely. Not tied to past accomplishments, not attached to any outcomes, you’re free to take effective action. [It’s another water thing, I am thinking. If you watch a stream, you notice that the water moves the best way it can over, under, around…and gets to the sea eventually just doing that. Cool.] I bet you’ve heard it a time or two, the old chestnut about how “timing is everything.” I…
For more than 20 years now, I’ve beaten my head against the concept of wu-wei, an esoteric bit of a mind-boggle that underlies a lot of the Taoist way of walking. What to say about wu-wei? Even trying to describe it makes the people doing the explaining dizzy.
In 2011, a video of a kid speechifying after learning to ride a bike went viral. His dad “interviewed” him after his accomplishment, asking him whether he had any “words of wisdom” for all the other kids who wanted to ride a bike.
