DrunkenBlog

The grind...

Last night, I set a goal for getting my inbox below 200 unreads in my drunken accounts -- an unread message is something I've left because I need to reply or do something about it. When I have big projects going on, I'll usually set setting daily goals for myself -- what I expect myself to get accomplished within that day. Since we're being honest, these are more guideposts for where I need to get rather than set in stone, or at least that's what I tell myself when I'm finding the pillow after failing to accomplish them...

Sometimes though, my brain latches onto one of them, and it's pointless to find a pillow until it's accomplished as it won't let me sleep until it's done anyways. If I had to guess, my brain gets sick of feeling unaccomplished and is just looking for a life preserver for my ego, no matter how small. You have to treat projects like this as though you're eating an elephant -- one small piece at a time -- but your subconscious brain starts to do the math on your pace of pieces versus the deadline and isn't having any of it.

While the inbox threshold was blown the minute I hit send and receive with the morning coffee, I submit the above screenshot as proof that I did indeed accomplish one goal for one evening. It took 11 hours, but we were dangerously close to having to set the bar at 300 unreads and people had to know why they, say, weren't going to be able to setup booths at Evening @ Adler or make announcements or why I couldn't allow people to RSVP for blocks of 40 people.

Most of the stuff would all be really cool, but this is really just a bunch of guys sitting down having a conversation that just happens to have an audience which just happens to be 200+ people.

Sometimes the big project thing can get a little depressing, as the bigger the grind the bigger the payoff, but things can just look quiet until then. Tonight's goal is to get through the final draft of the questions for the other roundtable that I'm working on which originated well before Adler, as they were supposed to be done Monday, as well as taking care of a few straggler posts generated from my Inbox binge, as well as another hit at that file of Apple-x86 questions.

Or maybe I'll just rant on why public school systems don't teach things like proper time management starting in say, Kindergarden.

 Posted by drunkenbatman
    September 30, 2005, at 12:45 PM