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Seven Billion Cups of Coffee
the experience combines listening pleasure with enhanced health, learning, and productivity
11-7
- I've never really been what you would call the "7 habits" type. To be honest, I don't really even know what any of the 7 habits are. I'd like to think of my organizational style as an "organic" one; sort of a "read and react" defensive style to dealing with the things that happen in my life.
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- I recognize that there is a value to planning, a benefit to longview
thinking, and I even sometimes wish I was more disciplined when it
comes to things like deadlines and due dates. But it's an
uncomfortable fit for me to try to work within the confines of the
organizational modes that most other people work in.
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- I'm a to-do list guy. If I get a lot on my plate at one time, my
instinct tells me to whip out some scrap of paper, write down what I
need to do, and try to get to things on the list before time runs
out. For better or for worse, it's been my experience that when you have a ton of shit to get done in a short period of time -- the best way to approach it is to mix a healthy dose of fear for your job security with seven billion cups of coffee. It's an approach that is rough on your gut, but it gets things done.
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- If that doesn't make me sound like enough of a Larry, I also have
this
troubling habit of rarely making the list in the first place...
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- It's a flawed system. I've known for a while it's not the best way to do things, because even if
I do manage to get everything on my list done, there's always
something I forget to put on there. If it's not on the list it
usually
doesn't get done. Those are the things that sting me.
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- That's not to say that I don't get things done, though.
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- I take a lot of pride in working to be the best at what I do. I take
a
lot of pride in the fact that once I learn how to do something, I don't usually have to be shown a second time. I know where I'm supposed to be, and I do my best to get there. I'm not one for regimen, I really don't take any pleasure in repetition. I like getting my hands into new problems, figuring out the solutions. I'm not the first one in line to re-fix the recurring problems. It's not that I won't do it, it's just that it isn't that interesting to me.
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- I work at a company that is big on deadlines, huge on progress
percentages, and absolutely orgasmic about having meetings. It's a
big
company, so a lot of it is understandable -- but sometimes it gets to
the point where you're having a meeting to discuss the events of the
post-mortem meeting for the previous months meetings.
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- It gets to the point where everytime you get out of one meeting,
you're supposed to be at another, and heaven help you if you forget
about it.
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- I do a pretty good job of keeping all the balls in play, but recently
a lot of things in and out of work started to mingle into my daily
consciousness and those balls started occasionally hitting the
ground.
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- So it didn't surprise me a whole lot when my manager asked me to sign
up for a training class that would introduce me to the Franklin Covey
organizational system. The training class is pretty infamous around
here for being over the top and sometimes inducing incredible
emotional outpourings from it's participants. "They'll teach you how
to organize your time, but then they examine your priorities and make
you take a hard look at who you are and what your purpose in life
is!"
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- ...yay.
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Somehow even before I signed up for the thing, I knew my midichlorian count wasn't going to be high enough...
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- Right after I started working here I began to notice that
everyone seemed to have some sort of dayplanner on them wherever they
went. Everyone had a little brown book with the little multicolored
tabs and convenient pen holder on the side. Everyone brought them to the meetings
and would write everything down in them.
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I didn't have one.
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- But at the same time, I really didn't want one. Dayplanners are just
the sort of nit-pick thing that tends to irk me inside. I know they
work really well for other people and I don't have a problem with
that.. but I really don't have a lot of interest in planning my life
down to the last second. I enjoy challenges. I work well when the
heat's on.
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- I want to be the one to steer the car. That way, if the backroad
looks
better than the interstate, I don't have to ask anyone before taking
it...
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- Maybe it's just some sort of inborn stubbornness or something, but
it's hard for me to get into a regimen of writing everything I'm
going
to do down when I know that most of the good stuff that happens to me
is the stuff that comes along when I'm least expecting it. I don't
want to be locked into everything, especially when everything I do
isn't that important.
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- That being said, I was getting a little tired of arriving late to
meetings where all the people in the meeting would look up at me from
the pages of their little brown books and act like I was the weird
one. There were times when it was hard not to sense a hammer covered
in velvet hovering above my head.
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- So I signed up for the training, which was three weeks down the road.
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As a final show of solidarity for my slack-ass ways, I refused to
write down the time or date of the training anywhere.
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Most of the people I have worked with have already taken the
training,
and they all have all the stuff that comes with it: the books, the satellite planners, the custom hole
punches, the weekly compass cards... Any discussions about the class would
bring mention of books like "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective
People,"
"What Matters Most," and "Who Moved My Cheese."
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- People would turn to me and say.. "Are you a Hem or a Haw?"
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- To which I would reply, "Dude, it's me - Dan... remember?"
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- It got to the point where I was feeling like people were making an
effort to seek me out just so they could make sure that I was going
to
take this class seriously. "Hey, I know we kid around -
but there's some important stuff in this class that could
really help you out."
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- Which sort of leads into the cause of my whole cynicism about the
class in the first place. In the end, it wasn't really my
organizational skills that people wanted to change, it was my
attitude. I wasn't working the way they wanted me to be working. This has always been the point that starts to create lines in the sand for me. I have my own way of doing things.. It may not be the best system, but I need to believe in it. Trusting in my own abilities is important to me. I don't think people don't see that about me. I need to prove to myself and to other people around me that I can create a way to get my work done and still be Dan.
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- So in a small way, the implication of it all was kind of insulting. Sure, I'm sometimes bad about meeting times and exact deadlines, but what about all those projects I have worked on, you know -- the ones "no one else wants?" What about the quality of my work?
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- Still... there's this old saying that says if someone offers you a breath
mint, you should take it...
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- So the day of the class came along, and I get myself into the room
with all my other co-workers who had yet to take the plunge. We were
treated to videos, word association exercises, and a buttload of
quotes from people like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Carlyle, and of
course.. Anonymous.
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- I was sure that any minute that they were going to pull out that
horrid speech about Abraham Lincoln losing every election he
participated in except one, or that story about Winston Churchill
pulling some guy out of a mud puddle. The whole thing felt a little
packaged and plastic, a little too much like it was beign read off of
3x5 note cards. I tried to keep an open mind, and I did pick up a few
organizational hints, but overall the experience didn't really do a
whole lot to turn me into a red lectroid.
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- But -- I decided that with a new home to look after and a ton of
responsibilities falling on my head now more than ever, maybe it
wasn't the worst idea in the world to have a place to keep track of
the meetings I was always forgetting to go to.
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- I wrote my name on the front of the book, and took the plunge.
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- That was about 2 weeks ago.
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- I've missed a couple of meetings that I forgot to write down, and I
still have a ways to go before I can say that I'm giddy and excited
whenever I check something off my prioritized time forward activated
priority list, but I will say that I've gotten a little better at
knowing who I've talked to and when I'm supposed to talk to them
again.
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- It's been helpful to have - I will admit that.
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- But it's not changed my life.
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- Maybe it's just me -- maybe the things that I am hoping for in life
aren't the type of things that can be put into a weekly life-plan
minder and prioritized with little pictograms off to the side. Maybe
I
don't want to see if I can break my dreams down that way, don't want
to put them on a page with lines inside a book with a clasp.
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- Maybe I prefer to let them run loose.
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- At one point we were instructed to take a sheet of paper out and
write down a quality that we valued most in our life. After a
moment's speculation I wrote down "Spontaneity"
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The instructor looked at my paper and smiled at me. "That's great!
Write it down in your planner!"
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Reluctantly I jotted down a time next month to be spontaneous.
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Hopefully I can keep the appointment.
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