Lazy Days of Summer

I have always been a weird kind of lazy. I love that feeling of accomplishment that comes from finishing a job that’s been hanging over you for a while. Love It! And I will work like a dog to get that feeling, again. But then, damnit, I want a little time to actually relax and enjoy that moment for a while.

I have found, again and again, that there is nothing like a Big Project to get me to finish a bunch of little projects. Efficiency experts discuss this kind of thing in terms like avoidance techniques. I never feel like I’m actually avoiding anything, or even really putting anything off. I mean, just spend a few minutes thinking about it and I am sure that you can draw a straight line connecting emptying out the recycling trash in my cubicle and putting together a new presentation on Web templates, right?

I need to accomplish “X” today. I would like to accomplish “Y” and it would be great if I could get around to working on “Z”, too.

So I sit down and start thinking about “X”. How long will it take me? How many people will be seeing it and who are they? Do they understand all of the various cogs and gears that go into “X” or will I have to explain that to them, too? Hmm… I wonder how other people have explained “X” before this? Wasn’t there a version of “X” a few years ago that had no calories? Do they even deal with “X” any more in the leading… “Ooooh! I need to empty out the recycling!” Okay, I can work on “X” all day, but that recycling isn’t going to empty itself. And while I’m up and on my way down the hall, I should probably stop and see if there is any inter-office mail in my inbox.

So I dump out the newsletters from the credit union and all of the stuff about upcoming concerts and speeches and source listings from pages I have already forgotten, and on my way back, I stop and check the box for any more paper that will probably go straight into the newly-empty recycling. But the whole time I am doing this stuff, I am thinking about “X”.

I cannot just sit idle. And not just because it looks bad—that is always the moment the boss walks by. I have to be doing something, and I usually am. Quite often while I am doing one thing, I am thinking about another. This can be a huge distraction and I don’t recommend it for everyone, but I have learned to build lists and to prioritize the entries there and always have something in the bag for the next big project that is a little more thinky than the kind of thing you can just sit down and crank out.

Right now, in the back of my mind, I am mulling over options for how to discuss something in the new Template training which is just going together now. I could sit down and crank out a page showing how it’s done, and then end up deleting everything and trying again after lunch. Or I could stop and bang out this week’s blog update and keep tossing the Templates training over and over in my mind until I get it all worked out, and then commit it all to hot phosphor.

As these things go, I have in fact just figured out how best to do the Next Big Thing in the Templates training, so I must close this out, for now.

And once again, I have filled what might otherwise have been time spent staring off into space with accomplishing something else that needed to get done. If anyone had walked by and seen me, it would have looked exactly like I was updating my blog. But this evening, when my wife asks me what I did this morning, I’ll tell her I was working on my Templates training.

But I’ll tell you one thing: When I get home at 5pm, it all stops and I get to relax, until it all starts up again in the morning.