This week’s Back to Work podcast looked at how the word “priority” gets used in productivity circles versus what it actually means. For example, if you didn’t do anything towards a “priority” this week, does making it bigger, redder, bolder on your to do list actually do a damn thing?
It got me thinking about my own priorities in relation to the progress I’m making (or lack thereof) and the general frustration I’m feeling as a result. For the purposes of this post, I’m going to conveniently ignore the point Merlin Mann made that if you have more than one or two priorities, then maybe someone should be quoting Inigo Montoya at you: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means”.
So, if you’d asked me before listening to the show what I thought my top five priorities were, I would have said (listed in order of importance):
1) Immediate family
2) Writing
3) Exercise/Training
4) Relaxation/Downtime/General Geekery
5) Keeping the household running smoothly (cooking, cleaning, chores)
However, looking at that list with fresh eyes, I can already see that doesn’t reflect how I invest my time and focus, and which things get sacrificed most easily when something else comes up. A true list representing what I actually do would be:
1) Keeping the household running smoothly (cooking, cleaning, chores)
2) Exercise/Training
3) Relaxation/Downtime/General Geekery
4) Immediate family
5) Writing
It’s interesting that the thing I like the least (household chores), has the most guilt attached and time spent on it and therefore is more “important”. Whereas the thing I will freely profess as my life goal (writing) is regularly the first thing to get bumped when time is tight. “Relaxation” while time is spent on it isn’t really “fun” it’s wasted procrastination time or mindless surfing to fill the evening when I haven’t got the energy to do anything else. My kids and husband may get time but not necessarily the attention they deserve.
It’s an interesting exercise to see just how much I lie to myself by looking at the gap between my perceived priorities and how I actually behave.
Dinosaurs – the source of geeky pleasure for a great many children and my sons are no exception. Eldest has unwaveringly wanted to be a paleontologist ever since he first watched Walking With Dinosaurs five years ago, and dinosaurs are youngest’s topic at school this term. Plus, if I’m honest, I never really grew out of my own dino-nerdery.
So to celebrate the first day of half term, we hunted down a dinosaur exhibition at Bristol City Museum – the only source of dinosaurs I could find with bank holiday opening hours and not cripplingly expensive. In fact, it was free entry – result!
There were also lots of other exciting things to see, including an Egyptian life and death exhibition (which eldest and me loved, but youngest was a bit spooked by) and lots of taxidermy animals (which both boys loved but creeped me out a lot).
Sadly, most of my photos didn’t come out well – the perils of low light photography where the flash is prohibited. But what I did get, you can see in the slideshow below:
It’s been an odd week. Half the household has been abroad and with the resulting extra chores, life stuff and apathy most of my projects have been severely neglected as a result.
Writer
Writing23 (out of 66) scenes complete – structural/continuity revision
Discussed in more detail in yesterday’s post. I’ve done very little editing this week.
Reading“The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Verbal Self-defense” by Lillian Glass
This has turned out to be a huge disappointment and doesn’t live up to the promise of the blurb or the opening chapters at all.
The writing style often becomes hectoring and assumes that you are completely incompetent in every conversational scenario, not just coming across a couple of difficult people you need help to manage. There are some good tips, but you have to wade through an awful lot of fluff to find them.
The advice given in the majority of sections is vague enough to unhelpful at best and downright dangerous at worst, particularly in the scenarios where you could put yourself physically at risk – many of the tips here are contrary to the advice I’ve seen elsewhere and may make the situation much worse.
Fighter
Kettlebell: 8kg
I am continuing to focus on the beginner routines. They must be doing something, because I’ve felt really stiff this week, particularly in neck, shoulders, knees and ankles. Still taking extreme care and keeping reps low.
Geek
Current obsession: old episodes of Grey’s Anatomy.
Also have been sharing funny YouTube clips with my ten-year-old. His current favourite:
I could reel off a load of excuses: a ton of mundane life-stuff got in the way, I’ve been distracted and frankly my heart hasn’t been in it for a while. I know logically that I should have knuckled down regardless – next week is half term, so writing opportunities will be thin on the ground for a while.
But, today I watched the season finale of Grey’s Anatomy instead.
Then I started again from Season 1 Episode 1.
By the time I was half way through Episode 3, I realised something important: Grey’s Anatomy was the series I was obsessed over while I was in the discovery process for this book two years ago. I’m not sure whether I reached for it subconsciously, or it was just coincidence.
Either way, from that point on I started to pay more attention. I noticed how different plot threads were brought together to fit a theme. I noticed examples of external and internal conflict. I admired the excellent character portrayal and how dialogue was used to place higher significance on what wasn’t said than what was. I found myself getting excited about story again and thinking about how I would apply that to my own characters.
Of course, I’d love to retroactively claim that my day of slobbing in front of the TV was purposeful, guilt-free and well-deserved, but it would be a lie. However, sometimes it pays off to be lazy. I made progress on the book today, even if that progress can’t be counted in terms of scenes complete.
As most of you probably already know, today is Towel Day and in honour of the great Douglas Adams, I have selflessly wandered the web to find you some suitably time-wasting links.
I’ve always thought that the iPad is clearly the forerunner of a true Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy and this Don’t Panic wallpaper is just what you need to help defend yourself from Vogon demolition.
Of course, as a proper hoopy frood, you’ll know that Towel Day is incomplete without an actual towel. There are loads of HHGTTG themed towels out there, but I feel that’s a little too obvious. How about this super Space Invaders bath towel instead? I’m sure Ford Prefect would have approved.
And if you’re killing time squelching in the mud in front of a bulldozer, you can do a lot worse than play one of the two illustrated versions of the classic adventure game courtesy of the BBC.
Happy now? Good. We’ll move on now and completely avoid mentioning that god-awful film.
I read a great post over at Chiron yesterday, which looked at the physical and psychological differences between men and women in martial arts and how that affects their training.
I’ve quoted an excerpt below, but you should really check out the entire post for context:
Women are attacked differently and for different reasons than men. They are even intimidated differently. The average women can be knocked flat with a single blow from a fairly athletic men. Women know this. Athletic men teaching self-defense tend, it seems, to forget. When a guy gets knocked down, we don’t like it, but it has happened before– playing football or rough-housing as kids.
When a woman gets knocked down it is often new, a blatant expression of power she can’t match and with an emotional element men rarely grasp. You knock me down, I’m a guy. This is now a contest. The message is, “This is what I’ve got. What have you got?”
You knock down a woman, it is a stark affirmation of something she knows: men are powerful. The message received is not about a contest. It is about worth and power and inconsequence.
Are the messages true? Doesn’t matter, because they are often received, true or not.
This verbalises for me something that I’ve been struggling with for a while.
On the one hand, I find it frustrating when a training partner is treating me too gently, just because I’m a woman. It does me no favours and leads to a false sense of security. Ditto when I play it safe by selecting training partners of a similar size/build. Odds are, in a real self-defense situation I’m going to be facing someone bigger and stronger than me and neither will they be cutting me any slack.
On the other hand, I have been in situations where training partners haven’t been careful enough. Regular training bruises I don’t object to. Hell as far as I’m concerned, they’re a badge of honour. But I have been in a situation in the past when I couldn’t train for a few days until the swelling in my arm had gone down after basic footwork drills. I’m not prepared to take that kind of injuries in my training. It’s made me over cautious and very wary of any partner that appears out of control or not considerate of my safety.
So I oscillate between taking risks of over-confidence or succumbing to a sense of futility that nothing I can ever physically do is going to make a difference in the real world. Sometimes several times in one session!
I would love to hear how other MA women deal with this.
It’s been a much better week. I’m feeling much more well-rested and interested in projects again, which is a great sign.
Writer
Writing23 (out of 66) scenes complete – structural/continuity revision
It’s been a difficult writing week. I’m struggling with the current scene – it was originally part of the previous scene and needed heavy structural reshaping. Then my characters wouldn’t play ball and each little part I fixed seemed to break something. However, in the last couple of days I seem to have made a breakthrough and it’s all coming together now.
Reading“Accelerando” by Charles Stross
Still reading this! The underlying story is good, but I find him a very dense writer and I have to pay lots of attention to follow the plot. Not always good for bedtime reading when feeling a little sleepy!
“The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Verbal Self-defense” by Lillian Glass
I’ve chosen a non-fiction book to alternate with “Accelerando” and this was a great choice. It takes a look at speech patterns/situational awareness/body language to give you cues on when you’re ‘under attack’ and how to most effectively defend yourself in those situations. It blends quite nicely with the situational awareness I’m learning for Krav – being able to use verbal early warning signs is an essential skill and good to have in the self-defense tool-kit.
Fighter
Kettlebell: 8kg
I’ve been looking at the final move in my arsenal of basic kettlebell exercises, the military press:
I’m now focusing on three different beginner routines with different emphases: cardio fitness, body shaping and power/strength. I’m keeping the reps small (only half the recommended, this week) to make sure my form is correct while I’m learning the routine and not going to do myself any damage.
Geek
I’m feeling decidedly (and shockingly) ungeeky recently. Probably because I’m between games and I’ve been too tired/busy to find anything else that holds my interest.
So what are you playing? Anything you’d recommend?
