May 2007

The idea behind plate-spinning is to keep as many of my projects up in the air and spinning as possible, with as little effort as possible. Read about it here, here and here too.

With my recent lapses in brain-care, you’d think my productivity would have gotten off track, and my projects would have all fallen by the wayside.

My focus was poor, my energy tanked, and I generally felt like I didn’t get a thing done. Funny thing, though… when I sat down to look at where I am from a plate-spinning perspective, it ain’t at all bad. What I think I’ve gotten done and what I’ve actually gotten done are two different things.

Here are my current plates/projects, all of which are in beta-test mode right now.

• This Blog: Spinning I’ve manged to post decent content regularly. I’ve kept up with comments, commented on other blogs, and done some fine-tuning to the design and code.
• Personal Finances: Spinning Everything is up to date, and paid on time. Those taxes still need doing.
• Housework: Spinning This one is a shocker. But I’m actually getting somewhere, starting to keep up, and even <gasp> get ahead. Granted, my inbasket is overflowing, but that’s just an hours work or so.
• Fine & Graphic Art: Spinning I ordered supplies, and the projects I’ll be working on next are pretty well defined in my head.
• Health: Spinning Though this wobbled badly while I had the poison ivy, by noting the problems here, I put them back into my head, and they’re sort of auto-correcting.

So While I lost focus for 2-3 weeks, my projects had enough momentum that they took very little effort to keep moving along. I didn’t put any new projects in the air, but nothing is wobbling. I apparently caught all of the problems before the projects could crash.

How cool is that?

Plate Spinning actually works as a productivity method. Without conscious effort, I’m balancing my projects, maintaining momentum, and as an added benefit? even better is he shift in my attitude after completing this review.

When I started this review post, I was overwhelmed. I felt behind on everything, anxious, and upset that I had slacked off while feeling sickly.

Now that I’ve looked at the situation, I realize that instead of being “behind” and in danger of a crash, I have some room to breathe. None of my plates are in danger of falling, so I can put my energy wherever I like, whether it’s with one of these projects, something new, personal, or just goofing off

I’d really like to make a chart of some sort to give the review process a more visual aspect, so I’ll add that to my Next Projects List:

• Used Book Sales (pre-alpha)
• Book Writing (alpha — the software is ready to go)
• Plate Tracking Chart (pre-alpha)

So there you have it. An MT original method, that is actually, actively working.

MindTWEAK: Isn’t it great when things just work?

My friend Ken over at GhostDogAlpha has a new podcasting productivity project : EightyOut.com

It’s a blog, it’s a podcast, it can leap tall buildings in a single bound, it’s.. well, ok, I might be overselling it a bit.

Still, it promises to develop into something pretty cool. EightyOut will chronicle my very own webguru’s “lifestyle redesign” based on the current blogosphere-buzz-book, The 4-Hour Workweek

The idea is to get more benefit out of your effort, while putting less actual effort in (a variation on the 80/20 rule-of-the-universe). The attitude changes suggested by author Tim Ferriss amount to a set of pretty effective mind tweaks. I haven’t read the book yet, but some of the keys seem to be learning to outsource the stuff you aren’t good at (and never wanted to do anyway) as well as how to enjoy yourself *now* rather than postponing the good parts of life ’til some vague and mythical “retirement” date.

I’m especially interested in the EightyOut take on the subject; Ken’s brain works very differently than mine in some ways, but we both get stuck in similar inner-conflict loops when making choices about where/when to invest our energy.

So check it out!

Eighty Out: Episode one

MindTweak: Being overwhelmed is often as unproductive as doing nothing…
-Timothy Ferriss

…In which your humble blog author bravely puts herself in harms way to provide readers an abject lesson of what not to do. Ok, I admit I may have taken reverse engineering a bit far with this one. Don’t try this at home kids, we’re (un)trained (non)professionals here!

I had good intentions: carefully pulling the poison ivy out of the garden so someone else didn’t wind up with a bad rash. Unfortunately, I wasn’t as careful as I’d hoped, and I wound up with that lovely allergic reaction we all know and love. My reaction to the ivy made my seasonal allergies worse, and soon the whole thing cascaded into a cumulative effect of Severe De-Tweakage. Here’s how it happened:

The brain needs sleep to work well, and I wasn’t getting enough.

It’s hard to reach deep REM cycles when you wake up every 90 minutes scratching, and the allergy part of the rash causes problems too… apparently, histamine helps regulate sleep patterns, by making you alert, and allergic reactions involve an increased histamine production (that’s why antihistamines can people sleepy).

Established routines are important for the mind to work at its best. I know this, but in my sleep-fogged state, I disregarded it.

I decided I would just sleep a bit later, sneaking an extra hour or two of rest between itch-cycles. Nice idea, for the first day or two… but since the rash took 2-3 weeks to reach its worst and start healing, NOT such a great idea. My body began to adapt to “poison ivy hours” as the new standard, staying up late and sleeping in, further fogging my brain.

Sunshine helps the mind and body to function well, lift spirits and speeds healing

… but I was boycotting nature. Evil nature. Nature was responsible for this misery, and I was not going to grace her with my presence!

The rash made me feel like I had a bad sunburn, and so I instinctively shied away from the light - - and besides that, my new night-owl hours and afternoon spring storms meant there was very little sunshine available to me.

Water, good food, and exercise are all important to top-notch mental functioning.

Since I was exhausted and wasn’t feeling well, I decided to cut myself a break. I’d eat comfort food. I’d ignore the bottles of water in favor of Diet Coke (I love the bubbles when I’m allergic). I wouldn’t start my new exercise routine, and I’d minimize movement. After all, it was pretty uncomfortable, brushing my blistered forearms against things whenever I moved.

Luckily I didn’t have any Twinkies in the house (and I was too lazy to go and get any) but even without the sugar-overdose, I managed to do everything wrong brain-health wise.

It’s a no-brainer: stay on your regular supplements/medications when sick.

Of course, by this point, I practically had no brain. With my routines so disrupted, I started forgetting not only my vitamins, but the St.Johns Wort that keeps my mood up these days, the Valerian that could have helped me to sleep, and even the daily antihistamine dose that would help with the poison ivy reaction. I wasn’t motivated enough for even the simplest self hypnosis, guided meditations or software aids like Pzizz or Mind Stereo. I settled into a grumpy funk.

All of my self indulgent choices would have been fine for one day, but the end result was that for the two weeks when I most needed to be doing everything *right* to get well, I was slacking off and doing all the wrong things. The less I did right, the worse my mind worked, and the harder it was to do *anything* right.

Now that the rash is healing and the itching is at a minimum, I have to pull myself out of this downward spiral, so it’s back to basics for me.

Advanced mind-tinkering is good stuff. I’m soooo all about alpha waves and hypnosis and neural path ways and meditation and framing and new perspectives, but even the best aftermarket brain-hacks don’t amount to a hill of neural synapses if you neglect the basics of mental maintenance.

I’ll keep you updated.

MindTWEAK: Knowing is not enough; we must apply.
Willing is not enough; we must do.
- Johann von Goethe.

Today <cue ominous music> is Towel Day.

“A towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have” says the The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It then then goes on to explain a towel’s extreme and flexible usefulness as a beach blanket, security blanket, various items of clothing, a weapon and, surprisingly, for drying oneself off. But most importantly, your towel is a device to convince others that you are such a really amazingly together guy, they should help you.

The logic is explained in the Guide itself:

“For some reason, if a strag discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel, he will automatically assume that he’s also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet-weather gear, space suit etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that might accidentally have been ‘lost’, on the grounds that anyone who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still know where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.”

For those of you who are unfamiliar with The Hitchhiker’s Guide, it is the single most popular reference book in the galaxy. It is also the name of the best-known work of author Douglas Adams. You do know Douglas Adams, don’t you? Late surrealistic literary genius, total nutcase, and one of my personal heroes.

But back to Towel Day.

Each May 25 since Adam’s death, Hitchhiker’s fans and fellow fruitloops wander through their day proudly sporting their towels as a tribute to Adams, spreading the gospel and proving to others what really hoopy froods they are. So here I sit, in solidarity with other Douglas Adams fans, my towel draped artfully over my shoulder, doing my best to convince others that I am a really amazingly together person, and that I am deserving of their assistance in all ways.

All of this has me thinking.

Metaphorically speaking, what is my “towel” and do I know where it is at all times?

Is there some item, some skill, some trait of mine which I keep handy because it is infinitely useful, something that I keep on display because it convinces others that I am a generally accomplished, together and worthwhile human being?

I have this feeling that I do indeed have a metaphorical towel…. but that I’ve temporarily lost track of it. Worse, I’ve forgotten what, exactly, it is… there’s just this vague sense of loss and puzzlement, of something important that has slipped my mind.

So while I search my memory and my laundry basket, I’d like your opinions…

Do *you* have a metaphorical towel?

Or, perhaps, do you think you know what mine is, and where I have misplaced it?

MindTWEAK: Sorry. I have no time for pithy quotes today. I need to find my towel.

I didn’t post yesterday, and it was starting to look like I wouldn’t post today, either. Then I realized that I could fall back on a post about not posting. Ha!

More specifically, I could write about what i do when writing seems to bog down under its own weight.

Which my writing has done, these past few days. Bogged down, I mean, sinking into a pool of quicksand and punctuation.

Sometimes I know what I need to write, but it just won’t come together. The workload gets heavier and heavier. Each phrase, each word, each keystroke seems to take me further away from the point I’m trying to make. I can’t find the right presentation, the right tone, the right connection, and there is no flow. I find myself wandering off on tangents again and again, until finally the whole thing stalls. Thud. Crunch. Creak. Silence. I’m ready to declare defeat, and — Stop!

Yes, you. You with the bogged down post. You with the tangent.

You who are about to dramatically declare that you have Writers Block, and use it as an excuse to flop in front of the TV and break out the Twinkies.

Just… stop. I mean it. Put down the pen, step away from the keyboard. And for gawds sake get away from those Hostess snack cakes.

Ok, so you’re stuck.

You’ve lost the original point you were making, and your words keep going off on a tangent. But look at that tangent. Really look at it.

Most likely, you’ve got a good point, with that tangent. Most likely, it’s something worth pursuing, and that’s WHY it wants to be written.

Maybe the tangent even deserves to be written.

But ask yourself (and it) if that tangent part of your article, or is it really a separate thought, worthy of it’s own article?

(or scene, or painting, or whatever)?

I thought so.

You’re trying to do too much at once.

Now listen up, ’cause I’m going to give you one of the secrets of creation.

Most creative blocks don’t come from “not having enough ideas,”
but from having *TOO MANY* ideas.

Here, I’ll say it again.

Most creative blocks don’t come from not having enough ideas — but from having too many.

Creativity begets creativity. The more you write (or paint, or dance, or photograph) the more ideas you will have. Sometimes, the ideas get all muddled up. They tangled each other up in a gordian knot, until you can’t sort them out, and you trip over the wealth of ideas.

What you need to do is to step far enough back to see just how many story lines, ideas, concepts and points you’re working with here. You need to figure out if they work together, if they depend on each other, or if they’re actually separate concepts that can (and should) stand on their own.

Take a look at that article you’re stuck on. Think about that last paragraph you wrote. I know I know.. you deleted it. That’s what undo is for. So hit undelete, and read over it.

Now, does it actually develop your original article, or is it a separate idea? Are you trying to cram too many ideas into that one little space?

Take out those separate ideas. Plonk them onto a new document. If they haven’t been written out yet, write them out. If one of them is just screaming at you for further development, go for it. Follow through on any of the ideas that simply won’t shut up and be still. Give them a voice, get them down in a rough form.

Then, and only then, go back to your original point in your original article. Chances are, it will cooperate with you now.

Oh, and… no more Twinkies until you’ve finished.

MindTWEAK: You know the hazards of trying to do too much at once. Now learn to recognize when you’re doing it.