The relativity of time at work.

January 26, 2012

Interruption is the enemy of productivity

If you’re constantly staying late and working weekends, it’s not because there’s too much work to be done. It’s because you’re not getting enough done at work. And the reason is interruptions.

Think about it: When do you get most of your work done? If you’re like most people, it’s at night or early in the morning. It’s no coincidence that these are the times when nobody else is around.

At 2 p.m., people are usually in a meeting or answering e-mail or chatting with colleagues. Those taps on the shoulder and little impromptu get-togethers may seem harmless, but they’re actually corrosive to productivity. Interruption is not collaboration, it’s just interruption. And when you’re interrupted, you’re not getting work done.

Interruptions break your workday into a series of work moments. Forty-five minutes and then you have a call. Fifteen minutes and then you have lunch. An hour later, you have an afternoon meeting. Before you know it, it’s five o’clock, and you’ve only had a couple uninterrupted hours to get your work done. You can’t get meaningful things done when you’re constantly going start, stop, start, stop.

Instead, you should get in the alone zone. Long stretches of alone time are when you’re most productive. When you don’t have to mind-shift between various tasks, you get a boatload done. (Ever notice how much work you get done on a plane since you’re offline and there are zero outside distractions?)

Getting into that zone takes time and requires avoiding interruptions. It’s like REM sleep: You don’t just go directly into REM sleep. You go to sleep first and then make your way to REM. Any interruptions force you to start over. And just as REM is when the real sleep magic happens, the alone zone is where the real productivity magic happens.

Your alone zone doesn’t have to be in the wee hours, though. You can set up a rule at work that half the day is set aside for alone time. Decree that from 10 a.m. to 2p.m., people can’t talk to each other (except during lunch). Or make the first or last half of the day your alone-time period. Or instead of casual Fridays, try no-talk Thursdays. Just make sure this period is unbroken in order to avoid productivity-zapping interruptions.

And go all the way with it. A successful alone-time period means letting go of communication addiction. During alone time, give up instant messages, phone calls, e-mail, and meetings. Just shut up and get to work. You’ll be surprised how much more you get done.

Also, when you do collaborate, try to use passive communication tools, like e-mail, that don’t require an instant reply, instead of interruptive ones, like phone calls and face-to-face meetings. That way people can respond when it’s convenient for them, instead of being forced to drop everything right away.

Your day is under siege by interruptions. It’s on you to fight back.

 

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It’s not paranoia if they’re shooting bullets of niceness at you.

January 25, 2012

The cat had a party to attend, and went to the baboon to get herself groomed.

“What kind of party?” the baboon asked, and she massaged the cat’s neck in order to relax her, the way she did with all her customers. “Hope it’s not that harvest dance down on the riverbank. My sister went last year and said she’d never seen such rowdiness. Said a fight broke out between two possums, and one gal, the wife of one or the other, got pushed onto a stump and knocked out four teeth. And they were pretty ones too, none of this yellowness you find on most things that eat trash.”

The cat shuddered. “No,” she said. “This is just a little get-together, a few friends. That type of thing.”

“Will there be food?” the baboon asked.

“Something,” the cat sighed. “I just don’t know what.”

“ ‘Course it’s hard,” the baboon said. “Everybody eating different things. You got one who likes leaves and another who can’t stand the sight of them. Folks have gotten so picky nowadays, I just lay out some peanuts and figure they either eat them or they don’t.”

“Now, I wouldn’t like a peanut,” the cat said. “Not at all.”

“Well, I guess you’d just have drinks, then. The trick is knowing when to stop.”

“That’s never been a problem for me,” the cat boasted. “I drink until I’m full, and then I push myself away from the table. Always have.”

“Well, you’ve got sense, then. Not like some of them around here.” The baboon picked a flea from the cat’s head and stuck it gingerly between her teeth. “Take this wedding I went to — last Saturday, I think it was. Couple of marsh rabbits got married — you probably heard about it.”

The cat nodded.

“Now, I like a church service, but this was one of those write-your-own-vows sorts of things. Neither of them had ever picked up a pen in their life, but all of a sudden they’re poets, right, like that’s all it takes — being in love.”

“My husband and I wrote our own vows,” the cat said defensively.

“Sure you did,” countered the baboon, “but you probably had something to say, not like these marsh rabbits, carrying on that their love was like a tender sapling or some damn thing. And all the while they had this squirrel off to the side, plucking at a harp, I think it was.”

“I had a harp player at my wedding,” the cat said, “and it was lovely.”

“I bet it was, but you probably hired a professional, someone who could really play. This squirrel, I don’t think she’d taken a lesson in her life. Just clawed at those strings, almost like she was mad at them.”

“Well, I’m sure she tried her best,” the cat said.

The baboon nodded and smiled, the way one must in the service industry. She’d planned to tell a story about a drunken marsh rabbit, the brother of the groom at last week’s wedding, but there was no point in it now, not with this client anyway. Whatever she said, the cat disagreed with, and unless she found a patch of common ground she was sure to lose her tip. “You know,” she said, cleaning a scab off the cat’s neck, “I hate dogs. Simply cannot stand them.”

“What makes you bring that up?” the cat asked.

“Just thinking,” the baboon said. “Some kind of spaniel mix walked in yesterday, asking for a shampoo, and I sent him packing, said, ‘I don’t care how much money you have, I’m not making conversation with anyone who licks his own ass.’ ” And the moment she said it, she realized her mistake.

“Now, what’s wrong with that?” the cat protested. “It’s good to have a clean anus. Why, I lick mine at least five times a day.”

“And I admire you for it,” the baboon said, “but you’re not a dog.”

“Meaning?”

“On a cat it’s . . . classy,” the baboon said. “There’s a grace to it, but a dog, you know the way they hunker over, legs going every which way.” “Well, yes,” the cat said. “I suppose you have a point.”

“Then they slobber and drool all over everything, and what they don’t get wet, they chew to pieces.”

“That they do.” The cat chuckled, and the baboon relaxed and searched her memory for a slanderous dog story. The collie, the German shepherd, the spaniel mix she claimed to have turned away: they were all good friends of hers, and faithful clients, but what would it hurt to pretend otherwise and cross that fine line between licking ass and simply kissing it?

 

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Focus Groups vs Quantum Mechanics

December 15, 2011

“I reached a point in my life where I became exclusively interested in the unseen reality of human behavior, and I did not think it was possible to study such behavior if the person knew they were being studied.” He went on to say that the traditional means for understanding human psychology was by asking subjects questions about themselves, a process he finds futile. “The act of asking someone a question completely destroys the value of the answer,” he said. He asked if I was familiar with the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle1. When I told him I was, he said, “Well, then you already understand why psychology has failed.”

—

1In quantum mechanics, the Uncertainty Principle suggests that the act of watching one magnitude of a particle, be it mass, velocity, or position, causes the other magnitudes to blur. In other words, the very process of examining something changes what that something is.

 

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Untitled

December 15, 2011

“I reached a point in my life where I became exclusively interested in th unseen reality of human behavior, and I did not think it was possible to study such behavior if the person knew they were being studied.” he went on to say that the traditional means for understanding human psychology was by asking subjects questions about themselves, a process he finds futile. “The act of asking someone a question completely destroys the value of the answer,” he said. He asked if I was familiar with the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle1. When I told him I was, he said, “Well, then you already understand why psychology has failed.”

—

1In quantum mechanics, the Uncertainty Principle suggests that the act of. Washing one magnitude of a particle, be it mass, velocity, or position, causes the other magnitudes to blur. In other words, the very process of examining something changes what that something is.

 

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Unerring prophecies.

December 11, 2011

So common is the pattern of the self-fulfilling prophecy that each of us has his favored specimen. Consider the case of the examination neurosis. Convinced that he is destined to fail, the anxious student devotes more time to worry than to stufy and then turns in a poor examination. The initial fallacious anxiety is transformed into an entirely justified fear. Or it is believed that war between two nations is inevitable. Actuated by this conviction, representatives of the two nations become progresively alienated, apprehensively countering each “offensive” move of the other with a “deffensive” move of their own. Stockpiles of armaments, raw materials, and armed men grow larger, and eventually the anticipation of war helps create the actuality.

The self-fulfilling prophecy is, in the beginning, a false definition of the situation evoking a new behavior which makes the originally false conception come true. The specious validity of the self-fulfilling prophecy perpetuates a reign of error. For the prophet will cite the actual course of events as proof that he was right from the very beginning.

(…)

The initial definition of the situation which has set the circle in motion must be abandoned. Only when the original assumption is questioned and a new definition of the situation introduced, does the consequent flow of events give the lie to the assumption. Only then does the belief not father the reality.

 

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Private. Please come in.

September 24, 2011
The flourishing of internet applications such as Facebook, Twitter and
YouTube and the pervasion of media and celebrity culture has brought a
corresponding escalation of the theatrical conditions of everyday
life. Self-branding has become mandatory, not just for corporations
but for individuals seeking visibility in the public arena.
These developments have drastically increased the contrast between
private and public. In 1959 the sociologist Erving Goffman published
his influential theory for human behavior governed by a theatrical
metaphor in which everyday social life was enacted as if on stage in
front of an audience, while another self is backstage. This view of
the split between public and private protects the vulnerable self yet
dooms it to secrecy, hiding behind a performing mask.
There has been continuing debate over the paradoxical exposure of the
private sphere, over what Roland Barthes described as ‘the creation of
a new social value, which is the publicity of the private’. Concern
about the effects of the changing social balance became a recurrent
theme for twentieth-century writers such as Hannah Arendt, Jürgen
Habermas and Richard Sennett, who believed that the shared public
realm was undermined by the increased clamour for attention by private
lives.
Exposure is often thought to be a desirable function of
self-portraits. But self-portraits also work by concealment, a
technique pursued ingeniously by Rembrandt through lighting effects
that obscured his face or elaborate costume changes that multiplied
his identity. In the twentieth century artists have gone further,
replacing the notion of hidden private depths with that of a
camouflage or a disappearing self. Most notably Andy Warhol overrode
the idea of privacy in favour of an aesthetic of fame. After the
hyperactive glamour of his images, depth became less tenable; identity
is defined in terms of shifting surface appearances, a development
corresponding with the abandonment of a singular model for human
identity, characteristic of later twentieth-century art and
philosophy.
Yet this emphasis on surface and the underlying disconnect between
self and society, public and private, enabled an expansion of selves
within societal norms. The performance of self gave cathartic
expression to otherwise repressed emotions and created new models for
human identity that have fed back into the diversity of human culture.

Vivien Gaston

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What a mouth really says.

September 8, 2011
I was studying not their figures but their faces, and what interested me there was not so much the face itself but the big red mouth in the middle of it. And even then, it wasn't the whole mouth but only the lower lip. The lower lip, I had recently decided, was the great revealer. It gave away more than the eyes. The eyes hid their secrets. The lower lip hid very little. Take, for example, the lower lip of Jacint Winkleman, who was standing nearest to me. Notice the wrinkles on that lip, how some were parallel and some radiated outward. No two people have the same pattern of lip-wrinkles, and come to think of it, you could catch a criminal that way if you had his lip-print on file and he had taken a drink at the scene of the crime. The lower lip is what you suck and nibble when you're ruffled, and Martha Sullivan was doing that right now as she watched from a distance her fatuous husband slobbering over Judy Martinson. You lick it when lecherous. I could see Ginny Lomax licking hers with the tip of her tongue as she stood beside Ted Dorling and gazed up into his face. It was a deliberate lick, the tongue coming out slowly and making a slow wet wipe along the entire length of the lower lip. I saw Ted Dorling looking at Ginny's tongue, which was what she wanted him to do.
It really does seem to be a fact, I told myself, as my eyes wandered from lower lip to lower lip across the room, that all the less attractive traits of the human animal, arrogance, rapacity, gluttony, lasciviousness, and the rest of them, are clearly signalled in that little carapace of scarlet skin. But you have to know the code. The protuberant or bulging lower lip is supposed to signify sensuality. But this is only half true in men and wholly untrue in women. In women, it is the thin line you should look for, the narrow blade with the sharply delineated bottom edge. And in the nymphomaniac there is a tiny just visible crest of skin at the top centre of the lower lip.
Samantha, my hostess, had that.
Roald Dahl

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Joe Save the Queen.

August 27, 2011

Blas continúa sin oírle y opta por sonreír. Ésa es siempre una respuesta inteligente. Llama a Carmen, que está canturreando en la cocina, y le pide que les traiga otra vez la botella de anís. Juan rechaza la invitación y Blas, que debe de ser un poco brujo, adivina que su joven huésped está pensando en venenos. Se queda un momento en silencio y luego le explica que las hormigas, aparte de tener las mandíbulas muy afiladas, están equipadas con venenos mortales.

Dice también que los hormigueros están siempre en estado de guerra, sobre todo cuando la comida escasea, que las hormigas lo dan todo por la patria y que sólo las reinas están en condiciones de quedar preñadas.

Es la primera vez en su vida que Juan oye decir que las hormigas tienen también una patria y, sobre todo, que pueden quedar preñadas, como si fuesen yeguas. Lo más importante, de todos modos, es que ha entendido lo que Blas ha querido decirle: las reinas son las únicas hembras en todo el hormiguero que pueden asegurar la continuidad de la especie.

-Son también las únicas que tienen alas -añade el viejo.

Se trata de una información muy valiosa que algún día puede serle de utilidad, pero Juan se disculpa con una sonrisa y vuelve a pasarse la mano por la frente, como limpiándose el sudor, para dar a entender al viejo que lo único que le interesa es meterse debajo de la ducha.

Cuando vuelve a su habitación, sin embargo, continúa pensando todavía en las mandíbulas de las hormigas.

Hay algo seguro -piensa, mientras el agua cae con fuerza por el pecho y por la espalda hacia las piernas-. Esas reinas no podrían reproducirse si no fuese por los proletarios que las fecundan.

 

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Untitled

August 27, 2011

Blas continúa sin oírle y opta por sonreír. Ésa es siempre una respuesta inteligente. Llama a Carmen, que está canturreando en la cocina, y le pide que les traiga otra vez la botella de anís. Juan rechaza la invitación y Blas, que debe de ser un poco brujo, adivina que su joven huésped está pensando en venenos. Se queda un momento en silencio y luego le explica que las hormigas, aparte de tener las mandíbulas muy afiladas, están equipadas con venenos mortales.

Dice también que los hormigueros están siempre en estado de guerra, sobre todo cuando la comida escasea, que las hormigas lo dan todo por la patria y que sólo las reinas están en condiciones de quedar preñadas.

Es la primera vez en su vida que Juan oye decir que las hormigas tienen también una patria y, sobre todo, que pueden quedar preñadas, como si fuesen yeguas. Lo más importante, de todos modos, es que ha entendido lo que Blas ha querido decirle: las reinas son las únicas hembras en todo el hormiguero que pueden asegurar la continuidad de la especie.

-Son también las únicas que tienen alas -añade el viejo.

Se trata de una información muy valiosa que algún día puede serle de utilidad, pero Juan se disculpa con una sonrisa y vuelve a pasarse la mano por la frente, como limpiándose el sudor, para dar a entender al viejo que lo único que le interesa es meterse debajo de la ducha.

Cuando vuelve a su habitación, sin embargo, continúa pensando todavía en las mandíbulas de las hormigas.

Hay algo seguro -piensa, mientras el agua cae con fuerza por el pecho y por la espalda hacia las piernas-. Esas reinas no podrían reproducirse si no fuese por los proletarios que las fecundan.

 

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Raise your left fist!

July 25, 2011

De aquel hombre me acuerdo y no han pasado
sino dos siglos desde que lo vi,
no anduvo ni a caballo ni en carroza:
a puro pie
deshizo
las distancias
y no llevaba espada ni armadura,
sino redes al hombro,
hacha o martillo o pala,
nunca apaleó a ninguno de su especie:
su hazaña fue contra el agua o la tierra,
contra el trigo para que hubiera pan,
contra el árbol gigante para que diera leña,
contra los muros para abrir las puertas,
contra la arena construyendo muros
y contra el mar para hacerlo parir.

Lo conocí y aún no se me borra.

Cayeron en pedazos las carrozas,
la guerra destruyó puertas y muros,
la ciudad fue un puñado de cenizas,
se hicieron polvo todos los vestidos,
y él para mí subsiste,
sobrevive en la arena,
cuando antes parecía
todo imborrable menos él.

En el ir y venir de las familias
a veces fue mi padre o mi pariente
o apenas si era él o si no era
tal vez aquel que no volvió a su casa
porque el agua o la tierra lo tragaron
o lo mató una máquina o un árbol
o fue aquel enlutado carpintero
que iba detrás del ataúd, sin lágrimas,
alguien en fin que no tenía nombre,
que se llamaba metal o madera,
y a quien miraron otros desde arriba
sin ver la hormiga
sino el hormiguero
y que cuando sus pies no se movían,
porque el pobre cansado había muerto,
no vieron nunca que no lo veían:
había ya otros pies en donde estuvo.

Los otros pies eran él mismo,
también las otras manos,
el hombre sucedía:
cuando ya parecía transcurrido
era el mismo de nuevo,
allí estaba otra vez cavando tierra,
cortando tela, pero sin camisa,
allí estaba y no estaba, como entonces,
se había ido y estaba de nuevo,
y como nunca tuvo cementerio,
ni tumba, ni su nombre fue grabado
sobre la piedra que cortó sudando,
nunca sabía nadie que llegaba
y nadie supo cuando se moría,
así es que sólo cuando el pobre pudo
resucitó otra vez sin ser notado.

Era el hombre sin duda, sin herencia,
sin vaca, sin bandera,
y no se distinguía entre los otros,
los otros que eran él,
desde arriba era gris como el subsuelo,
como el cuero era pardo,
era amarillo cosechando trigo,
era negro debajo de la mina,
era color de piedra en el castillo,
en el barco pesquero era color de atún
y color de caballo en la pradera:
cómo podía nadie distinguirlo
si era el inseparable, el elemento,
tierra, carbón o mar vestido de hombre?

Donde vivió crecía
cuanto el hombre tocaba:
la piedra hostil
quebrada
por sus manos,
se convertía en orden
y una a una formaron
la recta claridad del edificio,
hizo el pan con sus manos,
movilizó los trenes,
se poblaron de pueblos las distancias,
otros hombres crecieron,
llegaron las abejas,
y porque el hombre crea y multiplica
la primavera caminó al mercado
entre panaderías y palomas.

El padre de los panes fue olvidado,
él que cortó y anduvo, machacando
y abriendo surcos, acarreando arena,
cuando todo existió ya no existía,
él daba su existencia, eso era todo.
Salió a otra parte a trabajar, y luego
se fue a morir rodando
como piedra del río:
aguas abajo lo llevó la muerte.

Yo, que lo conocí, lo vi bajando
hasta no ser sino lo que dejaba:
calles que apenas pudo conocer,
casas que nunca y nunca habitaría.

Y vuelvo a verlo, y cada día espero.

Lo veo en su ataúd y resurrecto .

Lo distingo entre todos
los que son sus iguales
y me parece que no puede ser,
que así no vamos a ninguna parte,
que suceder así no tiene gloria.
Yo creo que en el trono debe estar
este hombre, bien calzado y coronado.

Creo que los que hicieron tantas cosas
deben ser dueños de todas las cosas.

Y los que hacen el pan deben comer!

Y deben tener luz los de la mina!

Basta ya de encadenados grises!

Basta de pálidos desaparecidos!

Ni un hombre más que pase sin que reine.

Ni una sola mujer sin su diadema.

Para todas las manos guantes de oro.

Frutas del sol a todos lo oscuros!

Yo conocí a aquel hombre y cuando pude,
cuando ya tuve ojos en la cara,
cuando ya tuve la voz en la boca
lo busqué entre las tumbas, y le dije
apretándole un brazo que aún no era polvo:

“Todos se irán, tú quedarás viviente.
Tú encendiste la vida
Tú hiciste lo que es tuyo”.

Por eso nadie se moleste cuando
parece que estoy solo y no estoy solo,
no estoy con nadie y hablo para todos:

Alguien me está escuchando y no lo saben
pero aquellos que canto y que lo saben
siguen naciendo y llenarán el mundo.

 

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