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Saturday, February 27, 2021

Pondering Effectiveness In A Day

Just a short post about engineering your days to make the most out of the productive part of them. For me, that's the pouring of the first cup of coffee up until about 1030. After that, things get dicey and by 1500, I'm looking forward to the first beer. If there are too many of those, then the next day's coffee-1030 segment is much less productive.

When I give in to the beer, it's because I'm maximizing the now instead of maximizing the day.

What if your whole day was designed to make your most productive time maximally efficient? That is, you recognize that 1500-1700 is practically worthless and you allow yourself some laziness. All you want from the end of the workday is to set up the next morning. All you want from the evening is to not ruin the productive time the following day.

Thinking about this topic, I went back and was reading all of my blog posts about goals. There's enough there that's new to me, even though I wrote it, that I'm going to stop here and absorb it. I did find one tidbit from this post which might explain why I go on and on about the destructiveness of our racial obsession.

As a parent, my progress this summer with my daughter has been fitful. She's improved in some things, but still simply will not take ownership of her life. In her mind, things just happen to her; her failures are not a product of her own actions. Meanwhile, I continue to dig her out of all the messes she creates, expecting practically nothing from her. She's just a few short years away from living on her own, either with a job or at college. If she leaves the nest with her current mindset, she's doomed to a life of failure and sadness.

I've parented alone and I've done it with a wife. When I was single, I had whole years where all of my considerable annual leave was used on my children. No false modesty - I was several standard deviations above the mean in terms of parental effort.

I can promise you that it isn't possible to do as well as a single parent as it is when you have a loving, married partner. It cannot be done.

Anyway, I need to spend time reading some of my own ravings, so I'll leave you with a flower photo. If any of the nonsense above made you think, I'd love to hear your own wisdom in the comments. I hope you and yours have a great day.

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