Until the white goddess or one of her kin decided it would be otherwise, I intended last night to 'blog about Time (making the best use of).
One Dave Pollard has been writing about it. So has Rainer, over in Brazil.
In the Factory today, I found a brochure in my pigeon-hole.
"If the locals only knew what they offer you here" at AFP HQ, said colleague Gerry, back from Chicago and other adventures, shaking his head.
Yeah. Well. What "they", managerial types up in their stratosphere, offer we more permanent fixtures is annual training, paid for by the company and on working time.
But some of the courses! I can tell our bright "local hires" and short-term contract employees that you're probably not missing much. Every recent year, they've included such gems as these (rough hewn to make more sense):
- learn to master the workplace console (one half-day)
- learn essential editorial skills (one half-day)
- learn to speak in public (two days; I always thought that one was slipped in there by some union guy as petrified as I used to be of the microphone at big meetings)
- learn to organise your Time (two days)
- analyse your current use of time
- learn to plan your priorities
- etc.
If memory serves me right, there used to be one called "Learn to Organise Meetings" -- three days! Or was it just two? That was back in the days of a managing director who adored holding weekend meetings, flying people in from far and wide. Before he got the boot.
Time has become one of my most valued "commodities", always at a premium even on the days I'd rather hibernate. Unlike Dave 'How to Save the World' Pollard, I don't find 'blogging "an ordeal, especially when I am plagued by deadlines or a heavy workload."
The answer then is "Don't 'blog. It's not an obligation!"
But Dave deserves many "trackbacks" for the "time-savers" he posted last month, 14 of them.
I only spotted these recommendations a couple of days ago (via Rainer, now he's released Zingg! for Panther) because I already observe Dave's idea n° 2, "Read what you do read less often."
With two or three exceptions, I check out the favourite people in my 'blogroll about three times a month at length, like catching up on friends. That's why the occasional deceased link can go unspotted for a little while.
And if these writers have RSS.XML feeds, they certainly go into my newsreader so that I can keep more frequently up to date on their headlines. I've also learned not always to have NetNewsWire update automatically at selected intervals, since this can prove, with experience, to be a false time-saver.
Do that, and you're at risk of jumping on to a blogosphere bandwagon every bit as insane as the other rat-races of life, determined to keep up with the pack, even be competitive and get ahead of it.
I'd rather be "late" and have something possibly interesting, even analytical, to say, than turn 'blogging into an echo of the deadline pressures we agency journalists and many other people face every day at work.
Being ridiculous, absurd, irreverent and funny is fine, as long as people really find you more entertaining than boring. Experimenting is fine, as long as you don't mind when it doesn't work out. But being shallow or superficial is what I'd call the CNN style of 'blogging. Flashy, but without depth, understanding and, ultimately, any significance.
It took me many years to learn the paramount importance of what Dave makes his last idea, which I'll quote in full:
"Give yourself time to think, to experience offline, and to think creatively. This is the most important time-saver of all. Don't just react to what you read and see in the news. Get away from reading and your computer and other media, take a walk, do things that stimulate your creativity and give you unique material to write about, talk to people to get different viewpoints and ideas, clear your mind, think about what's really important to you, what you really believe, what you think needs to be done and said, and then write about that. The time you spend in unencumbered thought will be saved many times over in the process of reading and writing: you'll know exactly what you want to say, your enthusiasm and creative energy will make your writing easier, faster and more entertaining and valuable to readers, and you'll find it much easier to say 'no' to wasting time reading and writing about things that are suddenly much less important."
To that I would add this:
If being "confined to quarters" for six months with the Condition last year taught me anything, it was that I valued my solitude.
Even when my guts were getting me down or giving me physical hell, I relished my freedom of mind, the time to sort out my priorities and say "hallo" to the many important aspects of life I'd buried in the name of the Job and career.
Paradoxically, the more time I had, the more quickly it seemed to pass.
But Dave's also right on the ball with this: "do things that stimulate your creativity and give you unique material to write about, talk to people to get different viewpoints and ideas."
Though I couldn't stray far from this immediate part of town, when I was not alone I found myself talking to people and listening to them as almost never before, really getting to know a mixed and lively neighbourhood I had resided in for almost 10 years, previously just skating over its surface.
Without that kind of feedback and the sense of community, this log would be very different from what it's become and would reflect far fewer interests.
Never one for small talk, I still learned that even this and gossip, both apparent time-wasters, can stimulate creativity in the most unexpected ways. Time invested in a bit of polite chit-chat with strangers can lead on to extraordinary discoveries and much reward, if you find that they turn out to have interesting interests.
In conclusion, but for fellow Mac-lovers only, I'd add that Zingg! and other contextual menus now available in Mac OS X 10.3 amount to substantial time-savers when you add up all the little short-cuts they allow. There are lots of clever people like Rainer out there who have thought of things Apple hasn't.
And of late, I've become a big fan of the "Services" menu.
The one in the screenshot.
It takes a little while to learn -- and to remember -- to make the most of what you can now do with it, in an ever-increasing number of applications. But that too is time well spent.
10:40:34 PM link
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