Category Archives: Personal Development

Just for today…

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This is something I came across many moons ago, and is one of the most useful ‘secular prayers’ that I’ve ever come across.  It originated with Alcoholics Anonymous and it’s a most useful approach to take.  Apologies if you’ve come across it before, but it’s well worth it a read:

Just for today, I will try to live through this day only,
and not tackle my whole life problem
at once. I can do something for twelve hours
that would appall me if I felt that I had to
keep it up for a lifetime.
 
Just for today, I will be happy. This assumes to
be true what Abraham Lincoln said, that
“most folks are as happy as they make up
their minds to be.”
 
Just for today, I will try to strengthen my mind.
I will study. I will learn something useful.
I will not be a mental loafer. I will read
something that requires effort, thought and
concentration.
 
Just for today, I will adjust myself to what is,
and not try to adjust everything to my own
desires. I will take my “luck” as it comes,
and fit myself to it.
 
Just for today, I will exercise my soul in three
ways: I will do somebody a good turn, and
not get found out. I will do at least two
things I don’t want to–just for exercise.
I will not show anyone that my feelings are
hurt; they may be hurt, but today I will not
show it
 
Just for today, I will be agreeable. I will look
as well as I can, dress becomingly, talk low,
act courteously, criticize not one bit, not
find fault with anything and not try to improve
or regulate anybody except myself.
 
Just for today, I will have a program. I may not
follow it exactly, but I will have it. I will
save myself from two pests: hurry and indecision.
 
Just for today, I will have a quiet half hour all
by myself, and relax. During this half hour,
sometime, I will try to get a better perspective
of my life.
 
Just for today, I will be unafraid. Especially I
will not be afraid to enjoy what is beautiful,
and to believe that as I give to the world, so
the world will give to me.

One thing that I’ve found over the years is that sometimes the very biggest problems and most intractable issues can be resolved by splitting them down in to smaller steps, then solving each smaller problem in turn.  This prayer – and I will call it that – attacks the issues of lifestyle and habit in the same way.

Too often we  don’t attempt to make major changes in what we do because the idea of keeping those changes going day in, day out, for the rest of our lives, is quite scary.  The underlying message here is hopeful; by changing our behaviour and attitude for 1 day at a time, we can gradually build new habits as we go.  If we drop the ball one day, it isn’t the end of the world; we just pick up things again from the next day and start afresh.

I’ve put this idea to work myself in recent months; a year ago the idea of doing a blog post every day for the foreseeable future was rather scary; but the realisation that that just broke down to 500 words a day, one day at a time, made it much more palatable.

So…after me…Just for today….

Keep your tank full!

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Some years ago when I was engaged (in a small way) in the movie industry I read a rather interesting book of advice to low budget (or zero budget) film makers.   One of the most useful things I read was the advice to make sure that you kept the tank of your car full of petrol.  That way, if opportunity knocked, or you needed to get somewhere fast, then even if you were rock-bottom-skint you wouldn’t be caught by being unable to buy petrol for the car!

It’s a simple idea, and one that I’ve adopted to some degree with various aspects of my day to day life.  It’s always been particularly useful because I have a very up and down cash-flow – being self-employed can sometimes result in personal finances being like the Biblical 7 years of plenty and 7 years of famine. The money one is the obvious application.  Whilst it’s possible to stuff money in a savings account or, in these days of fiscal doubt, in a biscuit tin buried under the roses, it can sometimes be more useful to spend the money on things you KNOW you will need in the not too distant future – pay extra off your Credit Card, keep a few extra quid around to allow you to take advantage of ‘BOGOF’ offers in the supermarket, cheap deals in the local shops, etc.  We have a ‘stock box’ which contains cans, dried foods, rice, pasta, cooking oil, etc. that we keep topped up for use in winter conditions or as a stop gap when things might get tight.  The advantage of getting stuff rather than saving the money is that it prevents the money being spent on other things.  Of course, it doesn’t help with those ‘rainy days’ that always whack our lives, but it at least allows you to lay things aside for a rainy day. 

The ‘keeping your tank full’ approach also applies to time; whilst it’s true that you can’t store time in a bottle (except in the Jim Croce song) what you can do is make use of spare time that you do find yourself with to get things done that may need doing further down the line when you may be short of time in which to do ’em.  My own ‘favourites’ in this category of task are quite often Blog Posts or at the very least ideas for future posts.  The WordPress software makes this easy; I can write a couple of posts in the same session and use the software to schedule their publication in the future.  Other tasks that I often fit in to this category are what I call ‘errands’ – doing some of the stock up shopping listed above, collecting and dropping off dry cleaning, sorting out files – anything that will be required in the next few weeks and that may get forgotten in the ‘hurly burly’ if time becomes short for any reason.

And I’ve also applied it to my health and well being; whilst I know you can’t stock up on sleep, I have been known to go and take afternoon or early evening naps when I get an unexpected opportunity.  Whilst it might only benefit me over the next 24 hours or so, it’s good to make sure that I don’t run up a sleep deficit – especially living with 3 cats, one of whom is a royal pain in teh arse at keeping the rest of the house awake!

So…keep your tank full and don’t get caught running on empty!

The To Do List!

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todolistWith thanks to Rachel G. who gave me the idea of writing this up!

Over the years I must have tried any number of Time Management techniques – I have to say that whilst I’m much better these days at fitting what I need to do in to the time available, but it’s taken a fair amount of time to get the simple fact through my head that there are only 24 hours in a day and no matter how hard I try I can’t ‘manage’ that time – no matter what I do it still passes me by at the rate of 1 minute per minute.  I can’t stockpile it, slow it down, speed it up; just work with it.

During teh 80s I tried to run with a diary, then a Filofax; in the 90s it was a Time Management System.  They didn’t help me much at all.  Then, sometime in the early 2000s, I came across the solution to my pain which I’ve worked with ever since.  The simple To Do List – and today I’m going to share with you the secrets of my listing success! 🙂

The Book

Despite having a Blackberry (I love the calendar function) I still use a hard backed A$ notebook as my main day to day journal.  Apart from making notes in meetings, containing my To Do lists and being my general working notebook, it’s also the place where I initially record my dreams first thing in the morning and any bright ideas I have.  Each of these notebooks last me between 6 months and a year, and I label them up according to the first and last day recorded in them.  I have a stack of old ones upstairs!

The Time Slot

I was terrible at being on time for appointments and estimating task duration and completion dates.  My wife realised the problem; I tried to fit too much in to the time I had available, and was making unrealistic expectations of myself.  So, I started working on the concept of a ‘time slot’ for tasks.  the commonly used slots are as follows:

  • 0.5 hours – absolute minimum time for ANY item in the list.
  • 1 hour – simple programming tasks – simple bugs, basic functions.
  • 2 hours  –  programming tasks that involve modifying screen layouts, new database tables, etc.
  • half a day – any task requiring time away from home, client meetings.

Fitting my tasks within the day in to these slots sometimes results in me underestimating what I can get done, but it gives me ample time to deal with unexpected problems, making tea, combing cats, playing with Twitter, etc.  It also means that I can usually under-promise / over-deliver.

The List

The actual list consists of….well….a list of tasks that I want to get done within a day.  I try to write things down in order of importance (rather than urgency).  The first thing I do is take a look at yesterday’s list; anything that wasn’t done I’ll consider bringing forward on to today’s list.  Otherwise, I’ll try and split jobs from the previous day’s list as follows:

  1. Not that important, more of a ‘nice to have’.
  2. Something that I am waiting on someone else for – i.e. I need information or resources to do it.
  3. Something that I am prevaricating over.
  4. Something that is now no longer relevant.

If it’s in category (1) then I’m likely to just leave it on the previous day’s list and make a note for today to ‘take a look at yesterday’ if I have time.  If (2) then I check whether I have the resources; if I don’t then I’ll waste no more time on it but list it.  If (3) then if important I’ll prioritise it.  If (4) then it just gets dumped.  I also take a little time out to determine why I’m bringing stuff forward.  For example, did I hit snags with other tasks that caused me to over-run?  Did I try to fit too much in?

Once I’ve got the list I go through it and attach a rough time to each item, and prioritise based on the ground of urgent/important, important, urgent.  If the amount of time taken is longer than the working day, then stuff gets carried over to the next day’s list.

I’ll often put the list together the night before the day to which it refers; that way I have the list ready to go when I hit the desk.

The ‘Special List’

This is a list not attached to a particular day but that consists of things that need doing at some time over the next few weeks.  It gets prioritised and ‘timed’ like my daily list.

And that’s it!

I work through the list, sticking with the priority order I’ve set as far as I can.  If I get bogged down with soemthing, I allow myself to flip around the list a little, but will attempt to clear all the urgent/important and important stuff that I’ve allocated to myself for that day.  I don’t get myself too hung up on the list; some days there’ll be stuff that’s not finished; other days I’ll get the chance to eat in to the ‘Special List’ a little.

Things to bear in mind  If something takes significantly longer or shorter than I estimated, I’ll note the actual time donwn, but NOT less than half an hour.

If you want to try this technique out, then the following may prove useful:

  1. Old books are a guide to timings; I often estimate jobs by looking back at how long previous jobs took.
  2. If jobs keep getting moved around the lists, take a good hard look at them to see whether there are any subconcious reasons why you aren’t tackling them.  Take a look at my article on Banjo playing JEDI.
  3. Don’t try and fit too much in to the day.
  4. Sometimes you may get benefits from ignoring the priorities you initially set and just getting jobs ‘knocked off’.  This works well in terms of your lists getting shortened but just remember that the aim is to get the jobs on the list done, not make the list look good!

Saying Sorry, Contrition, Repentance and the Scorpion

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Earlier this week I commented on the words of John Healey, the Housing Minister who said that repossession is not always a bad thing.  As has been pointed out, the 46,000 people repossessed in the last year would probably disagree, and would no doubt like a word of apology from him.  You know, the ‘s’ word.  Sorry.  And, I expect that they would want him to mean what he says – to be truly sorry for the hurt that his comments may have caused.

There have been other recent stories where saying Sorry may not yet be enough – John Terry and Ashley Cole, for example.  Of course, that’s a matter for them and their families, but the bottom line is that today saying ‘Sorry’ has been devalued.  People throw the word off when they get caught out and it’s hard for us to know whether they genuinely mean it or not.  Saying Sorry should be the external, communicable expression of that internal shift in attitude and behaviour that, as a Christian, I would call contrition and repentance.

An act of contrition is a prayer that expresses sorrow for sins committed.  Repentance is the next step –  it typically “includes an admission of guilt, a promise or resolve not to repeat the offense; an attempt to make restitution for the wrong, or in some way to reverse the harmful effects of the wrong where possible.” (Wikipedia)

When we hear the expression ‘Sorry’, can’t necessarily see whether someone is contrite or not, and but we can see whether someonehas been truly repentant – they change the behaviour that caused the problem and at least make a gesture towards righting the wrong.  I’ve dropped a few clangers in my time and hope that I’ve shown enough contrition and repentance for my behaviour – only people around me can tell me that.

Without contrition and repentance – even if you don’t have any religious beliefs – all that it means when you say ‘Sorry’ is that you’re sorry you’ve been caught, and the only Commandment you’re concerned about breaking is the mythical ‘Eleventh Commandment’ – ‘Thou Shalt Not Get Caught’.  To say Sorry without truly expressing contrition and repentance is like being a child making a promise with ‘crossed fingers’ – for those unaware of this particular bit of childhood culture, such a promise was held to be breakable at will.  What may be acceptable in a child is particularly sad and graceless in an adult.

Which brings us back to people in the public eye.  I’d genuinely like to believe that folks who get caught behaving badly see the light and that they will, after apologising to all concerned, will perform some little act of contrition and then prove their repentance by changing their behaviour.  After all, no one is perfect and, as they say ‘shit happens’ in the best regulated lives that may lead us in to the path of temptation.  But therein lies the mark of the man (or woman) – to be able to not repeat the errors of the past again.  

When I encounter the ‘serial offenders’ of the world who do something, apologise, claim to be contrite, publicly change their behaviour and then get caught in a similar situation a few months later I do start wondering whether there’s something more involved than just lack of will power.  Perhaps it’s character as well.  There’s a fablethat’s been repeated in many places, about a Scorpion who wants to cross a river.  He ponders this problem for a while when he sees a frog hopping along.  He asks the frog whether it would be possible to ride on his back whilst the frog swims the river. The frog points out that the scorpion is likely to sting him on the journey and kill him.  The scorpion replies that were he to do that, then he too would drown, as well as the frog.  The frog goes along with this, and the pair start the river crossing.  Half way across the scorpion stings the frog, and as they both drown the frog asks ‘Why?’  The scorpion sadly remarks ‘It’s in my nature.’  

Fortunately, most of us are civilised human beings of good character, and not toxic arachnids with an appetite for self-destruction who also destroy the lives of those around them.

The Lost Boys of English football

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Lost_boysI’ll be the first to admit that my knowledge of football is minimal, and my interest in the game is not that great either.  However, for the last couple of weeks it’s been incredibly difficult for anyone in the UK to avoid the story of John Terry, ex-England Captain, and his personal life off the soccer pitch.  It seems to be an ongoing saga in the UK over the last decade or so – varying amounts of scandal and titillation around the private lives (often played out in public) of our leading soccer players, and how those issues affect their ability to play the game they get paid handsomely to do.

I’m not going to rehash the stories here; what triggered me to write this was overhearing an interview with Lizzie Cundy on the TV news, in which she referred to various soccer players as ‘boys’ – which immediately hit an old hot-button of mine about infantilisation in society, so here we are!

It really does concern me to hear of young men in their twenties and early thirties being referred to as boys (and also young women in the same age range being referred to as girls, for that matter).  Apart form the patronising nature of referring to a man who earns over 100,000 a week, is a husband and a father, and holds line management responsibility in the same way that I was referred to when I was a snot-nosed kid of 8 years old trying to blow up the garden shed, there is a whole raft of cultural and behavioural issues tied up in that word ‘boy’ that is at the heart of the current fuss about the private lives of these men.

The problem is that when you refer to someone as a ‘boy’ it comes loaded with a load of cultural associations.  And at the core is that little phrase ‘Boys will be boys’ – just how much of a ‘Get out of Jail Free’ card is that phrase?  So much of the behaviour of these people is probably predicated on the fact that they think that because ‘they’re one of the boys’ they’ll get away with all sorts of nonsense because that is what is expected.  The problem is that we’re not dealing with lovable, tousle-haired little scamps who’ve kicked a football through the greenhouse window.  We’re dealing with adults who, to be blunt, have responsibilities to family, team and country.

Their partners, managers, fans and more often than not large sections of the popular media support this attitude until situations like this involving the allegations around John terry arise; then we start the usual round of ‘It’s disgusting, it’s terrible, it’s shocking, etc.’  I heard a couple of Chelsea fans on the news saying that Terry shouldn’t have been fired because he was the best man for the job, etc.  I expected this sort of partisan support, an was incredibly gratified that Capello was able to dismiss Terry in less than 15 minutes.  Perhaps Capello is proving to be the stern, parental, father-figure to these ‘boys’ that they sorely seem to need.

In the Peter Pan stories, ‘The Lost Boys’ were Peter Pan’s gang – they literally were little boys that had been lost by their nannies.  Like Peter, they never grew up.  In the 1980s movie ‘The Lost Boys’, the strap-line on the film poster was ‘Sleep all day. Party all night. Never grow old. Never die. It’s fun being a vampire’.  Party all night and never grow old seems to be the teenage dream still being lived by quite a few Premiership footballers.

Perhaps we need to start addressing our own ‘Lost Boys’ in soccer and encourage them to grow up a little.  And the starting point is to refer to them as men, not boys.

Innovative is not the same as useful

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heathrobinsonI recently found this on my Twitterfeed: @jakebrewer: Yes! Note from newly devised Hippocratic oath for Gov 2.0 apps: “Don’t confuse novelty with usefulness.”  It is so true – and that comes from someone who spent part of his MBA working on the management of creativity and innovation.  There is a science fiction story by Arthur C Clarke in which two planetary empires are fighting a war.  The story’s called ‘Superiority’ for anyone who wants to read it.  In this tale, one side decides to win the war by making of use of it’s technological know-how, which is in advance of the opposing side.  Unfortunately, each innovation has some unforeseen side effect which eventually, cumulatively, ends up with the technologically advanced empire innovating itself in to defeat.

First of all, a definition.  For the purposes of this post, innovation is not the small improvements we all do to streamline and ‘finesse’ a process or product.  That’s just maintenance and responding to feedback.  Innovation is the equivalent of trading in the bike for a car.  It’s a big shift.

Innovation is an important aspect of our personal and business lives; through it we have a vital tool for adaptation and survival, but it’s important to not get hooked on the idea that innovation is always a Good Thing, and fetishise it as being an all powerful tool for all problems.  In fact:

  1. Innovation is not always useful.
  2. Innovation is not always indicative of progress.
  3. Innovation does not always benefit all the stakeholders.
  4. Failure to innovate can be expensive and risky; innovating for no reason can also be expensive and risky.
  5. Innovating is not the same as being effective.
  6. Innovation can deliver false confidence.

 

Innovation is not always useful

This usually equates to ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’.  If you have part of your life or business process that is chugging along well and is meeting the targets you set for it, then don’t bother innovating it yet.  There is no purpose or use to massive change that meets no need.  Such innovation is useless.

Innovation is not always indicative of progress

‘Progress’ is one of those words that falls in to the category of ‘hard to define but we all know what it is’.   You may think that you have to innovate to stay cutting edge; but do you?  Sure, we have to be aware of where our market is going, and risks to our future revenue streams.  But innovating to stay on the bleeding edge of technical and social change is likely to expose you to risk.  Progress for your business or life does not always reflect social or technological ‘progress’.  Innovating purely to keep up with trends is ‘running the Red Queen’s Race’ – you will never finish.

Innovation does not always benefit all stakeholders

Innovation may be great for you, but not great for people whose incomes are affected, whose role is removed and whose job in the organisation is no longer needed.  When you innovate, bear this in mind and don’t automatically expect everyone to be pleased they belong to an innovative organisation.

Failure to innovate can be expensive…as can innovating!

Innovation always costs time and perhaps money, especially if done properly.  There is no such thing as free innovation, even if the cost is in terms of the time taken to make sure your innovation won’t break what’s already happening.  It’s easier to keep existing customers than to create new ones.  An innovative approach may scare existing customers away, and not get new replacements.  Be prepared. 

Innovating is not the same as being effective

I see a lot of people in software engineering spending inordinate amounts of time on new processes, new languages and techniques who don’t seem to always be hitting the market with product.  Don’t mistake skilling up with the latest languages and software design techniques as being effective.  It’s only effective if you put the techniques to use.  I have several clients who make a good living, thank you very much, on maintaining and providing applications that are based on 10 year old technology.

Innovation can deliver false confidence

The German Enigma code machine in World War 2 was a highly advanced and innovative piece of kit for the time.  If used correctly it would have been unbreakable.  However, the operators tended to use slightly dodgy procedures in operating it and that gave the British code-breakers at Bletchley Park an ‘in’ to the machine that they were able to exploit and hence read German secret messages.  Even when the Germans did suspect that someone had broken ‘Enigma’ they were so confident in their technologically advanced machine that they thought it impossible.

Enough said.

I’m not saying don’t innovate; that would be ridiculous.  Just think about your innovations and don’t automatically follow the ‘innovate or die’ mantra.  Take time out and read ‘Superiority’ and learn from it.

Get the habit!

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bghabits1If you take a look at the section of this blog that lists posts by the month in which they appear, you’ll see that whilst recent months have been pretty regular, there have been some hiatuses in the past.  Looking back over them I can identify the fact that at the beginning of the period of silence, something happened in the ‘day job’ or in life in general that broke me away from writing the blog post.  And I stayed away from the blog for a while after that for the simple reason that I hadn’t really become habituated to blogging.

I remember reading somewhere that you have to repeat a course of action a few thousand times before your mind and body really begin to treat something as a truly ingrained habit.  Well, I hope that’s not entirely correct because I’m working on making a daily blog post a positive habit in my life.

Here are some techniques that I’ve adapted from other places and that I’ll be using to get the blogging habit in 2010.

Publicise what you’re doing! 

A friend of mine set up a Facebook group where we could publicise our New Year Resolutions to other group members and see whether we could keep them!  It’s always good to have an audience of people waiting for you to drop the ball! 🙂  You’re making a promise now to others as well as yourself; many people find it harder to disappoint others even in small ways than let themselves down.

Set a time and a place

Stephen King, in his excellent book ‘On Writing’, suggests that any writer needs to make sure that they’re at their writing desk / writing place at teh same time every day.  Excellent idea!  It effectively makes an appointment with yourself to be in a place with all the conditions just right for writing.

Remove Distractions

Make that appointment with yourself in a place and at a time where it’s possible to remove distractions.  This doesn’t mean working in Monastic silence in a plain white painted room, bare except for a desk, chair and laptop.  It’s more a state of mind – whatever might give you cause to prevaricate – despatch it.  Don’t schedule your writing time around the time that your cats need feeding, the postie arrives, or when you might expect to get phone calls.  If you like to work to music, get your music on your computer so you don’t go grubbing around to find it.  If you like a lot of tea or coffee whilst you blog, get a thermos if you need it.

Set a SMART target

I set a target of a minimum of one blog post of between 400 and 600 words a day.  It’s a SMART target because it’s:

  1. Sustainable – I reckon I can do this day in, day out.
  2. Measurable– it’s easy to see if I’ve hit the target. 400-600 words.
  3. Action-oriented – you gotta DO something, not talk about it! I will have at least one blog post to point at.
  4. Relevant– the target you set yourself should be relevant to your ultimate goals.  It’s relevant to my aim of generating a popular blog.
  5. Timely – should have a timescale attached to it. It happens every day.

So – there you go!  Join me in making good habits in 2010!

Why do people talk purple prose?

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OK.  It’s Saturday evening, snow’s falling, I’m caffeinated up on tea and chocolates and have just watched a ‘Quantum of Solace’ on TV.   When I first wrote the title for this piece I have to say that the title of this piece changed from one that involved Anglo-Saxon expletives through to the mild sentence you now read.  So, what has made my bile rise to the tip of my tongue?  What horror have I seen inflicted on the world that has driven me to put fingers to keyboard?  It’s purple prose like this:

” … is a builder, a transformer. He cherishes the electricity and challenge of growing and leading a team in the pursuit of audacious goals. The more daunting the mountain, the more exciting the adventure.”

Are we talking about an oil-field trouble-shooter?  A leader of intrepid explorers?  Captain of Earth’s first Interstellar Spacecraft?  No.  It’s a marketing fellow.  Now, if this works for him and his business, so be it.  But come on folks, be honest.  Do we really go around talking to each other like this?  Should we go around talking to each other like this?

I’m not totally free of this sort of thing myself – my own CV features:

To make full use of my unique range of IT and management skills and interests to develop technically advanced information systems that provide business advantage to users. […snip… ]As well as my technical ability, my written and verbal communication skills, project management expertise, team leading, mentoring and management skills allow me to make a consistently valuable contribution to any IT project.

It’s not perfect, but it does say what my professional services supply.  I’m not climbing mountains or fording mighty rivers; I’m doing stuff with computers and management consultancy, for crying out loud.  Don’t get me wrong – a Mission Statement is a valuable tool when phrased appropriately and meaningfully.  One excellent definition of a Mission Statement I’ve come across is:

To provide one simple, singular directive that can serve as a guidepost to solve any problems that emerge.

– the Mission Statement becomes a compass for your life or your business.  I have a personal one (and personal it shall stay!) that I use to try and keep me on the straight and narrow.  Keeping it simple and straight forward, whilst encapsulating the core values that you want to live and / or work by is crucial.  The woolier the prose is, the more purple the writing, the more ‘wriggle room’ there is in your Mission Statement and the less valuable it is at providing that ‘compass’ when things get tough.

My favourite Mission Statement (Well…maybe more of a statement of intent…)  is still from the film ‘The Mummy’ – “Kill the creature, save the girl”. 

And the heroes do exactly what it says on the tin; no wriggle-room, just get on with the job.

When does a Jedi play a banjo?

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yodaSome years ago I worked for a large UK bank-assurer as a contract software developer. One project that I became involved with was to provide a bug tracking / change management system. As with all software systems, we decided to give it a ‘cool’ name and someone in the team suggested ‘Jedi’.

After stifling an inward sigh and wondered how I, a Star Trek fan, had ended up in a world full of Star Wars geeks, I asked the chap who originated the name why he’d thought it was a good name.  The answer was simple; in this context, Jedi was going to stand for something. Jedi actually stood for Just ‘Effing Do It! After that I had no problem with the name at all.

Just ‘Effing Do It – as one of the world’s great procrastinators, anything that helps me kick the habit has to be worth thinking about, and as an acronym JEDI is great.  In the intervening years I’ve called upon JEDI many times, and I think that it has helped me break at least part of my procrastination habit.  By analysing my activity on projects (one reason why I keep a log book) I found that the actual time spent on various tasks is quite often significantly less than the time I think I might spend upon them.  However, I spend a fair amount of time thinking about doing the job, planning it, worrying about it, determining that I haven’t the time to do it, doing something that’s urgent but not important, doing something that’s neither urgent or important, drinking tea and, in extremis, having a bath.  In other words, the way of the procrastinator can be strong in me!

Procrastination is probably my biggest time-bandit; the putting off of tasks for some indeterminate and usually inadequate (and often non-existant) reason.  I now recognise that some of the tasks I put off are tedious, some just seem overwhelmingly difficult, and others – well, some are just so unpleasant that I want to ignore them altogether.  The latter tasks can just keep nagging away at you, though, and this is where the concept of a banjo playing Jedi comes in useful…

Banjo stands for Bang A Nasty Job Off – in other words, if you have a stinker of a job to do, that you find unpleasant for any reason, the best way to get it out of your life is to get on with it as effectively as possible – in other words, Jedi.

So there you have it – you want to get ahead in this world, then start contemplating banjo playing Jedi knights.

And on that note…where’s that code I have to write today?

Will no one rid me….

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200px-Thomas_Becket_MurderOn 29th December, 1170, four knights of King Henry 2nd killed Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, and thus created a martyr of a man who’s principles had forced him to behave in a manner that was anathema to his King and his one time friend.  It’s usually accepted that the King hadn’t actually ordered this assassination, but that the knights took it upon themselves to dispatch the Archbishop after they’d heard him utter those now infamous words ‘Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest’.

(Actually – it’s likely the King was more long winded than this – his actual words are thought by contemporary historians to have been “What miserable drones and traitors have I nourished and brought up in my household, who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born cleric?”, which whilst not as punchy as the short version to me indicates more of his anger with his knights and household.)

Becket eventually became a Saint to both the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches, and it might be said that King Henry began the still practised political and military doctrine of ‘plausible deniability’.  After all, why run the risk of getting caught telling someone to ‘Go kill the beggar’ when you can just as easily say, whilst winking your eye and coughing theatrically, “I sure hope that the UN Weapons Inspector doesn’t have an accident and fall off that balcony…cough!”

Whilst we might not personally be in the big politics bumping off game, I do wonder how often people second guess each other and get themselves in to a world of trouble?  One of my resolutions for 2010 is to take people much more at the value of what they explicitly say, and in return I intend saying exactly what I mean (whilst staying within the boundaries of polite and civilised discourse, of course!!).  I’m not sure that some of my acquaintances will like this too much, though, and I’m bracing myself for a bit of a backlash.

After all, one of the great advantages of playing the plausible deniability game with your friends and family is that by being suitable circuitous in what you say you can absolve yourself of all responsibility when people try and read your true desires and act accordingly.  If it all goes well, you can congratulate yourself on your subtle hints; if it goes pear-shaped you can simply tell yourself and anyone who’ll listen that ‘Oh dear, I didn’t mean that at all…’

So come on, folks – let’s get back to being straight talking, in a polite and civil manner, with those we love and care for.  It shows respect for them, and exhibits honesty in your own behaviour. 

Let’s all get back to calling a spade a spade, and not a manually propelled vertical earth slicing appliance.