Someone Else’s Life

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I’m sitting at my computer flipping through pictures from and old shoebox that I had scanned a few months ago. There are pictures of me as a child, and of my sister, and my cousin, and the rest of my family. There are pictures from a Christmas at my grandparent’s house when I was a kid. Pictures from high school. Pictures from when I joined the Army. Pictures from when I lived in Germany. Pictures from my trips to Paris. A picture of me smoking a cigarette in front of the White House. Pictures from the 1996 Olympics (spectator, not athlete). Pictures of pets. Pictures of me playing hockey. Pictures of friends that I have known and lost over the years. Pictures of my wife and son.

When I look at these pictures, I see disconnected chapters in a poorly written book where the protagonist’s life fails to follow a coherent narrative. The more I struggle to find a thread to follow, the more I feel the seeming randomness and general lack of plot. At the same time, I look at these pictures and am envious of someone who has done so much and who has been to so many places and who seems to be more fearless than random. I’m sure these pictures document someone else’s life, though, because I’m quite the chicken and could never have been so brave to make those choices and strayed from the traditional path or so lucky to have had all of those amazing experiences and to have know all of those incredible people.

I have always measured my life against everyone else’s, and mine has always fallen short. Not always. I couldn’t imagine anyone being luckier than me when it comes to my wife and our amazing son. But the rest of it, no matter how far I’ve traveled, both figuratively and literally, I’ve always felt like everyone else has done more, or has done it better than me. I could compare my life to any random person and find a way to feel inadequate, and so I’ve often wished that I was leading someone else’s life.

The longer I look at these pictures, though, I see a pattern emerge. I found a thread that ties all the stories together. I see the story of a life well-traveled, of someone who has experienced a lot of different things and learned, and grown, and who was as is surrounded by amazing people. The narrative is intriguing and diverse, filled with twists and turns, and heartbreak, and tragedy, and love.

This is the first time that the someone else’s life that I wished I had living is actually my own.

Filling The Tub With Love

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Our new house has a number of amenities, including a swimming pool sized tub for the Mrs. to unwind in that takes most of the hot water from the house to fill. Tonight, after she was resting comfortably in her bath, Junior insisted on taking one himself. But even after waiting for one full episode of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, there was not enough hot water in the tank to create even a moderately warm bath, so I headed downstairs to boil some water on the stove.

As I walked up the stairs tonight carrying a pot brimming with boiling water, I remembered those days in my grandparents house when there were too many kids that needed baths and not enough hot water to go around. My grandmother would boil water on the stove and add it to the tepid water that filled the tub of every bath after the first one of the evening.

wpid3088 20120906103233 00245A 494x387 Filling The Tub With Love

We never fought to be the first one in the tub because we knew Grandma would make each bath equally warm and inviting. Apparently, that is among the tasks called out in the job description of being a grandmother, and our Grandmother was overqualified for the position. From the warm bath each of us enjoyed, the home cooked meal on the table for every meal, the extra money she snuck us each time we passed “Go”, and the way she said “Oh, my” to every one of our exaggerated tales, there was love in everything she did.

When I was putting my son to bed, I told him the story of my grandmother filling the tub with boiling water from the stove. She was so excited when we told her that my wife was pregnant, but our son was still in my wife’s belly when we sang at my grandmother’s funeral almost four years ago. My sadness at the loss of my grandmother was matched only by the thought of my son never getting to meet her.

Simply telling stories seems so inadequate, so incapable of encompassing the brightness of her star. But there are other ways to honor her memory, and to follow the example that she set forth for me. And so from making sure the bath is warm to watching the same Mickey Mouse Clubhouse for (literally) the hundredth time, I hope to keep a piece of her with me, and to do everything for my family with love.

 

5 Simple Ways To Increase Your Productivity

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bigstock Productivity Doodles 25491731 494x494 5 Simple Ways To Increase Your ProductivityI’ve never been one for systems. I’ve read “Getting Things Done”, or GTD, and rGTD, and ZTD, and all the other offshoots and variations of the sure-fire solution to increasing your productivity and “shipping”, as the kids say. But none of these systems ever stuck.

For me, the problem is that these systems spend so much time setting up rules and structures, and coming up with names for the different constructs, and it all feels very religious. Having grown up Catholic, that means when I violate one of the edicts of the doctrine, I feel guilty, and I’m tired of walking around feeling guilty.

Much like traditional religions, though, there are a core set of fundamental principles that are common between the productivity systems; the efficiency equivalents of the “golden rule” and the Ten Commandments that I learned in Sunday school that are common in just about every other theology, worded just differently enough so that each system can claim its originality and superiority over the others.

Some people like the rules. They like the structure that these productivity systems give them, and it works for them. And that’s just great. For others, the rules and the structure wind up being a road block from taking advantage of the nuggets hidden within the system. That was me. I wanted to write more, but couldn’t seem to find the time. I wanted to work out. I wanted to work on my iOS applications. I had all these things that I wanted to do, but ten times the number of reasons why I wasn’t doing them. I looked to GTD and other systems to help solve the problem and get me writing more, but all it did was frustrate me.

Instead of focusing on finding a system to commit to, I looked at my situation. What was keeping me from doing those things I wanted to be doing? That’s when I stopped focusing on what these systems were trying to trademark and realized that many of them were talking about the same basic concepts. I looked past the implementation details and nomenclature differences and tried to find those concepts without the noise and apply them to my life.

Below are the five biggest changes that I made in my life that resulted in the most dramatic changes to my productivity level. They have also had a huge impact on my stress level since I wasn’t walking around feeling like I was failing at any particular system and I was actually seeing positive changes in my daily output. There is nothing new or innovative about these ideas, and many of them are buried beneath the lingo and rigid rules of the productivity systems. They focus on setting yourself up for success by addressing some of the common barriers to production. Here they are, in plain English, without buzzwords.

1. Get Organized

No, I don’t mean 47 folders to file things in to, or carrying around a series of notebooks, although if that is what it takes for you to get organized, then do it. But find something you can use to introduce some order in to the chaos. Knowing where something is can be the key to using it. If you’re inspired to write but spend 45 minutes looking through a stack of random paper for a note you wrote an idea on, by the time you find the paper your inspiration might be gone. If you are trying to get handle on your budget but can’t seem to find all of your receipts to make sense out of where your money is going, you’re probably never going to stick to your budget. Whatever your goal is, figuring out a system to organize your life is a fundamental building block for everything else.

For me, that turned out to be going digital with everything, and then using tools like Evernote and DropBox to manage those files. I track to-do lists for projects in Evernote, as well. I also use tools like Mint to track my finances. With these systems in place, I can easily access all of my notes, I know where my money is going, and when tax season comes around, I have all my receipts ready to go.

Like most things, the more you put in to it, the more you get out of it, but even a little effort can produce benefits.

2. Automate Everything

Technology is a wonderful thing. It allows us to put so many things on autopilot. Ten years ago, I was writing at least 10 checks every month for my mortgage, utilities, magazine subscriptions, and whatever else I needed to pay for. Now, I rarely write a check. Instead, the gas company e-mails me a bill that automatically gets forwarded to a folder in Evernote. I review the bill electronically and tell my Mint when the due date is and how much it is for. When the bill is due, the gas company automatically deducts the amount I owe from an account, and Mint reconciles the two transactions. It takes 2 minutes. The same goes for using automatic payments with your bank. If you have something that is due the same time every month, why waste brain cells thinking about it? Automate it. If you are afraid of giving out your bank account information, choose a bank that offers bill pay and take advantage of it.

3. Schedule Everything

My wife and I use Google Calendar extensively. She has her personal calendar and her work calendar. I have my personal calendar and my meal planning calendar. They’re all visible every time we pull up the calendar on the computer or on our phones, and she knows what I’ve got planned and I know what she has planned so that when we’re trying to make plans together, we save a lot of time and hassle e-mailing, texting, or talking back and forth. Having things in the calendar also means you get reminders as often as you need them and in any format you want them in. If I need to go to the grocery store after work, it goes in the calendar. If I need to remember to bring something to work the next day, it goes in the calendar. I’ll have the reminder pop up the night before and the next morning. Put it in the calendar and forget about it until it’s relevant.

4. Get Ready The Night Before

Even though I am a morning person, those early hours my brain is still not at 100%. If I wake up late and rush around, my focus and recall is even worse, and I either forget something I was supposed to do or bring with me that day, or I run out of time to do whatever it is I needed to do and it doesn’t get done.

One of the biggest boosts to the likelihood that something I wanted to do the next day would be to get it ready the night before. Want to stop going out for lunch but always forget to pack a lunch? Do it the night before. Want to work out but always forget your gym clothes? Pack them the night before.

5. Watch Less Television

My nighttime routine used to be get home from work, make dinner, eat dinner, play with my son, put him to bed, then watch television until we went to bed, which was usually one to three hours worth. Now, we might watch one show and then I’ll head to the office to do some work or write before I head to bed.

Note that I didn’t say “don’t watch any television”. I still like my television, but I limit my dosage and venue where I can watch it. There is no television in our office or our bedroom. The office is for working and the bedroom is for sleeping and, well…not watching television.

Stop Trying To Find A System And Start Making Changes

If you want to write more, what is stopping you? Is it because you aren’t using GTD? Probably not. Is it because you watch too much television, spend too much time on Facebook or reading about productivity systems? Maybe. So change that. If you can’t get a handle on your office paperwork because everything is in a pile, focus on organizing. If you aren’t working out because you constantly rush out the door in the morning and forget your workout clothes, pack the night before.  

You don’t need to subscribe to a system to make a change, just like you don’t need to subscribe to a particular religion to know that you should treat other people the way you would want to be treated. You just need to look at your own life, see what is preventing you from doing whatever it is you want to be doing, and focus on changing that.