The Savvy Life

I believe everyone has what I like to call a temporal radar.  Some people have a much better radarscreens that extends way out into the future, while others, like me, have radarscreens that at best extend out 12 days.  What this means is people track events and days differently.  If something occurs more than 12 days in the future, then it isn’t on my screen and it gets lumped in with all other dates.  So yes, looking at my temporal radar, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve all seem to appear on the same date. 

As you might suspect, there are consequences to having a limited view of scheduling.  I am reluctant to schedule anything that is off of my temporal radar.  Having one thing that I have to do that is beyond 12 days means I consider every day beyond that 12th day to be filled with an activity.  This is how, with only a few things on my schedule, I can feel overwhelmed.  It really links back to the fact that beyond 12 days, everything feels uncertain.

Some bad side effects of this beyond the always feeling overwhelmed is I can’t buy tickets in advance for anything.  I miss concerts of people I want to see because I can’t fathom buying tickets two months ahead of the event.  When people try to get me to commit to some date or another, I can’t… I won’t.  I leave myself huge amounts of wiggle room. 

I am curious if other people do have a temporal radar and if so, how far out does it go? 

I know, I know, if I was a true geek I’d have called it a temporal dradus.

I am the kind of person who has his hands in many different projects at once. I know it is an ill-conceived way of accomplishing anything but it is my nature and attempting to go against my nature just makes me grumpy and sad. Being grumpy and sad accomplishes very little.

Yet, when you have many different projects, some pressing, some fun, some mind numbingly dull, but all that need to be accomplished by set deadlines, it is good to know how you are spending your time.

Lifehacker.com currently has an article on the Emergent Task Tracker. This tool can be valuable when juggling multiple projects with deadlines close to each other. Every 15 minutes, the tool chimes with a request to update the status on the items you’ve entered.

I’m currently in the middle of four projects, one with a tight deadline. I plan on using this tool through the weekend and see if it helps prod me along or if I find it an annoying nagging shrewlike thing.

Being a member of Gen-X, I am fully aware of the financial vise I’ve been put in. The government would really, really (and according to the last piece of mail I got) REALLY like it if I would pay off my student loans. Yet, the jobs I’ve gotten with my vaunted liberal arts degree barely pay for rent.

To be very honest, I didn’t realize the problems I was facing are the problems my entire generation are facing. Gen-X the first generation to earn less than our parents (in terms of inflation adjusted dollars). Gen-X faces some very unique challenges when it comes to finances. Gen-X is the generation social security is going to run out on, yet Gen-X is the generation that has to pay for the long lived retirement of the Baby Boomers.

Linda Stern writes in the article Gen Xer more cynic than slacker about specific advice for Gen-X.

Watch your fees. Hedlund contends that huge fees are a trap for this generation: Bank overdraft fees, which can pile up on debit card exchanges, as well as credit card late and over-limit fees. “These people blame themselves,” assuming they deserve the fees they rack up because they’ve behaved badly. But those myriad fees have been ratcheting up faster than bad financial behavior has.

I am one of those people who ‘blame themselves’ for fees, for parking tickets, for anything institutions stick me with.  The idea of negotiating fees seems a bit absurd to me, yet apparently it is done daily.  Fees are waived all the time.

Gen-X needs to learn how to use the system to its advantage instead of letting the system take advantage of them.

There are many barriers to communication, but one of the most obvious barriers is language. The ability to communicate, even just a little, in a non-native language is a way to open doors in your professional and personal life.

Open Culture has done the tedious work of locating language podcasts in iTunes, giving us the opportunity to just focus on learning the first of many languages.

If anyone has attempted to learn a language using podcasts, I’d like to know about it.  I attempted to learn some Russian via a podcast, but the lessons were slow vocabulary building, teaching one or two words per podcast.  I liked the methodology, I just wanted more.

I know for a blog that is devoted to more hedonistic pursuits, I spend a lot of time talking about work issues and money. Since work represents such a huge amount of my day, I really desire it to be as worthwhile as possible. This means I strive to earn the most I can while there and make it a pleasant experience. One of the ways to make work pleasant is to always be learning, advancing, and experiencing new things. AllBusiness.com produced a list of ten tips to assist in career advancement.

There are two elements in this list I’d like to highlight, because I think these two specific elements are the bane to most people.

Sell yourself. Learn the fine art of self-promotion. If you have had major accomplishments or created successful programs, make sure people know about it — especially those in influential positions who could help you advance professionally. Let it be known that you are seeking a promotion or the next step up in your career.

Build your reputation. In business, your reputation is the most valuable thing you own. Be known for being dependable, professional, and cooperative. Act and look the part by dressing professionally. Make a name for yourself by attending conferences, delivering speeches, or writing articles.

Most skilled people I know do an awful job in selling themselves. It is the paradox of education. The more knowledge you gain, the more you realize you don’t know. This situation makes it difficult to promote yourself. Additionally, it is hard to promote yourself without sounding like bragging.

Coupled with this issue is building your reputation. The two are easily combined. The first step is effective communication while working on projects. Keep superiors and peers informed on the progress you are making. Make sure they are aware of key breakthroughs, insights, and successes as they occur.

The second step is a bit harder. Be passionate about what you are working on. It is possible to no really like your job, but really enjoy certain projects. Focus on those aspects and when talking about your job, don’t drone on about how so and so annoys you or how the corporation won’t budget for this thing and that, but discuss the project you are working on and why you enjoy doing it.

I know personally I get caught up on the things I dislike about my job but fail to acknowledge the parts that I find exciting and interesting. It is always easy to talk casually about the things you like and enjoy. It will come off natural and not seem like you are bragging so long as your accomplishments are tangible.

How are some ways you promote yourself within your workplace or within your circle of peers?  How about ways to build your reputation?

On NPR this morning, there was a story about weight loss and behavior modifcation.  One of the methods discussed was carrying around a list of benefits of losing weight.  The list was the essence of why the person wanted to lose weight.

I immediately saw a wider benefit to this method in application to other things.  One of the important aspects of developing a list of 8 reasons is I will be able to determine if this is truly something I want to do or if it is something I think I should do.  The difference is important.  Right now, I think I should do a lot of things, but I have little motivation to do them.  Part of being motivated to do something is understanding why I am doing it.

One of my most troublesome issues I have is exercise.  I know I should do it for general health reasons and to help lose weight, yet I lack motivation.  When the opportunity presents itself to go running, I don’t.  Part of building the motivation to exercise would be consolidating my reasons.  Create a list of eight reaons why I want to exercise.  Once I have developed that list, when the time comes to go for a run, I can use those eight reasons to push myself up off the couch and out into the world for a jog.

Whether it is saving money, networking, dating, or changing other elements of my life, of your life, sit down and write out eight reasons why you want to do something that you currently aren’t doing.

Why do you want to network more?  What benefits will you derive from exercising?  Why should you be more extroverted and ask more people out for dates?

As a practical example, here are my eight reasons why I want to exercise:

1. Stamina.  I want to be able to have more than twenty minutes of physical activity before becoming completely winded.

2. Improved self image.  While I’d like to lose weight, I’m more interested in toning my muscles.  I have no reason to look like a Spartan from 300, but I’d like to at least lean more in that direction in regards to my physique.

3. Improved mental ability. Exercise and mental acuity go hand in hand.

4. Enjoyment of food. By exercising regularly, lapses in what I eat aren’t as detrimental.  I encourage hedonism as a lifestyle, not as a form of slow suicide.

5. Better clothing options. When you have a gut, certain clothing choices aren’t very flattering.

6. Dating potential.  Being lean and more athletic increases dating opportunities.

7. Vigor. Exercise will improve my overall health, increasing torso strength, forestalling ailments associated with aging.

8. Disciplined escapism.  Exercise routines will add an element of discipline in my week where I disconnect from all the electronic media, and focus inwardly.

I so far have attempted to avoid negative postings. If I think something is bad, I just won’t write about it unless it is a review of a product/movie/etc. There is a lot of bad advice out there and I don’t need to spend my time pointing it out and commenting on it.

Yet, sometimes there is advice that on its surface seems like something good.
17 Things you Should Stop Doing falls into this category. Again, on the surface this all looks quite good at helping you save time and save money. Once I really read through this list with a critical eye, I couldn’t help but think some of this was pretty weak and poorly thought through advice.

The better points include:

Stop “manually deposting paychecks”, “looking for lost keys and cellphones”, and “partially filling up with gas.”

Yet, it also gives the following advice which seems specious at best.

Writing Checks for Bills — That is what the bill pay service from your bank is for. Use this time for something worthwhile.

I only have need to write two checks a month. It takes me a full minute to do this. In some cases, such as with my rent, it is easier to do it via a check than bill pay at the bank because my landlady would probablly be suspicous of a check that isn’t coming from me for my rent. This bit of advice on the surface seems great, but I contend that it is good to spend fifteen to thirty minutes a week looking at your checking account.

Watching Commercials — Use Tivo to skip them. Use Netflix and just skip television all together. Buy the shows you want to watch off iTunes. If you had a friend who spent 20% to 30% of your time trying to sell you things you didn’t really need, would you put up with it? (If you have a friend in network marketing, you may have already experienced this.)

How much does Tivo cost per month? How much does Netflix cost per month? Buying television programs from iTunes costs how much? I don’t watch so much tv that commercials represent that much time in my day. I do have a Netflix account, but that really is just to have a movie I really want to watch on hand. This advice is asking you to pay money in order to save a small amount of time. I have no doubt that being able to timeshift your programming is desirable and a good idea in general, but it only works if you can fit it in your budget.

Use commercial time to write emails, make brownies, sweep the floor, or shred documents.

As a general rule, I don’t find these types of lists helpful.  They make too many assumptions about how other people are living their life.  When we start listing the things we should stop doing, there is a clear indication that there is something better we should be doing instead.  Value judgments like that need to be made by the individual.

When I was in college, I ran an information simulation as a way to illustrate the concept of information overload. This simulation was regarding how governments handle world events and why, even with vast resources available to them, governments lose track of secondary critical issues. The same thing happens in our personal lives as well. We have so much information coming at us at such a steady pace that it becomes remarkably easy to lose track of things we have stated are important to us. Even the information on how to use the tools that we use to manage our information keeps changing and updating.

I’m currently working on a ‘life’ project I am calling Time Dissection where in I hope to manage how I spend my time better to optimize fun and work more efficiently. As part of this effort I have been exploring ways of creating a tickler system to help me stay in contact with friends and family. I have a habit of letting weeks go by without contacting people.

I found this article, Manage Your Personal Data Flow, to be an interesting combination of these two concepts. Here is a way of keeping track of information without occupying mindspace with information not needed at the moment and time-shift it to when it is needed.

Consistently getting the right information when you need it — but not before — is a huge time saver and career enhancer. We spend scads of time hunting for information, which wastes time and energy. Sometimes we can’t find information just when we need it, which makes us look unprepared and ill-informed.

I’ve often relied upon sticky notes to keep track of my random information, but the reality is at a certain point, I have have a huge pile of sticky notes that I keep saying I’m going to ‘digitize’ but never do because I don’t have the time.  The article does a good job of presenting a wide variety of tools to use and suggestions in ways to use them to manage information flow.

I will never forget the dull mundane details, like whether or not I need to go to work.  And I won’t forget the major things like important work deadlines.  I will forget the secondary but important things like birthdays of people important to me, grocery lists, oil changes for my car, and dentist appointments made six months ago.  Yes, I know, some of this stuff is supposed to go on your calendar, but I don’t have a unified calendar as I like to keep my personal things off of the corporate systems.

If you have any other methods of managing information flow that don’t include ‘ignoring it’, I’d love to hear about it.

I will be the first to admit that I am horrible, awful, pitiful – well, you get the picture – at social networking. I’m not talking about schmarmy handshaking business-card exchanging networking you get at some conventions, but the actual friendly connections. Developing those connections is difficult if you are the type of person who feels like you have nothing to offer. According to Networking for People Who Hate Networking, the one thing you can offer another person, what everyone can offer, is genuine interest.

People want to be listened to, and they want to feel interesting. So you can be good at networking by caring about other people. And you can’t fake being interested — it’s almost impossible. That means you have to genuinely care about other people.

The best networkers understand that everyone is interesting if you ask the right questions. So ask someone an open-ended question, figure out what they’re interested in, and ask them about that.

Your job is to discover what you can learn from people, and you can learn something from everyone. If you really try, you’ll be genuinely interested in what they have to say.

For all the grief I give myself about my lack of social graces, the one thing I think I can do well is listen. Asking questions to draw people out is a harder skill to hone, but not impossible and fairly easy to practice.

Being creative is hard work. For those of us who have a strong desire to make a living off of our creativity, we often find ourselves at a dry well. Whether it is writer’s block or simply feeling like we are in rut, there are ways to re-energize the creativity inside us. 8 Ways to Spark Your Creativity offers suggestions to refill that creativity well.

Take a trip outside your personal bubble – If you just have the same input every day it may be hard to come up with many new ideas. Take some input from outside own your little bubble. Meet new people, read book about something you don´t anything about, take up a new hobby, listen to music you normally never listen to. Do something different and get some new input into your mind. This can set off a creative spark and generate fresh ideas you hadn’t thought about before.

Nothing kills my creativity more than living in a rut. I often need new stimuli to trigger my creativity.