Author: Tim

What my Fortune Cookie said

Yesterday was my 52nd birthday and to make things easy we decided to order take-away Chinese food. For a bit of fun I threw some Fortune Cookies into the online basket when I ordered – at 20p each and with four of us eating it was hardly the most extravagant act of my life.

Once we had devoured the main food, and boy did I devour far too much of it, we broke open the Fortune Cookies. I picked the one that had a green wrapper. I always pick green things when there is a choice out of allegiance to my football team, Plymouth Argyle. Anyway, the message in my Fortune Cookie was “Many successes will accompany you this year” which certainly seemed appropriate wording on my birthday. It should be noted here that the other three Fortune Cookie messages, delivered to my wife, daughter and her boyfriend were definitely NOT as appropriate. So I am now looking forward to the promised ‘many successes’. Notably, the slip of paper in the cookie also listed a set of six ‘Lucky Numbers’. I am not going to write these numbers down here but I AM going to buy a ticket for the National Lottery draw this evening. Wouldn’t it just be incredibly spooky if I end up winning the jackpot!

Simplify

I was musing this morning…

[aside: Is ‘musing’ a verb? Is it actually possible ‘to muse’? I probably mean that I was thinking this morning but ‘thinking’ doesn’t really capture the somewhat day-dreamy type of thinking where I let my thoughts ramble playfully wherever they choose, settling occasionally for a few moments before setting off again like a butterfly flittering between flowers. So, regardless of whether ‘to muse’ is a valid verb in this context, that is what I was doing.]
… Anyway, I was musing this morning and settled on the word ‘Simplify’. I think it absolutely captures the essence of what I need to do as much as I possibly can. I suspect that pretty much every thing that I am involved with, every system or process I use, every group of possessions I own, every place I utilise could benefit from being simplified. I do try to keep things simple. I like to think of myself as a tidy and uncluttered person (or at least a person who would like to be tidy and uncluttered). But I am very conscious that there is so much stuff – stuff I own, stuff I interact with, stuff I have to do, stuff I want to do, stuff I think I should do, stuff I might do if I ever get round to it. Stuff, stuff, stuff. It all needs a good prune. Hack it down, thin it out, clear the decks, get rid. Simplify.

Gratitude

Over the last two or three years I have read/heard many times that keeping some kind of ‘gratitude journal’ is supposed to deliver a boost to your happiness/contentedness. The basic idea is to spend a few minutes at the end of each day reflecting on the hours just gone and identifying a small number of things (e.g. three) that you are grateful for. It makes sense that by reminding yourself of such things on a regular basis you will end up with a generally more positive attitude – highlighting and acknowledging the good stuff that has happened or reasons to be cheerful.

I already keep a small journal of sorts. Each night before I go to sleep I make a note of the key events of the day by just writing one or two words to describe the event and drawing a little symbol or icon to represent it. For example, I have different icons for work (two gears meshed together), reading (an open book), watching a film (movie camera), watching TV (TV set), drinking coffee (cup), walking (stick man), listening to a podcast or music (head with earphones). I should add photos of a page or two to this post sometime to illiustrate what I mean (more likely I will write a separate entry about my notebook habits).

For the last week, I have been adding an extra section at the bottom of each day of this journal headed “Grateful for” with a three item list below populated by things I am grateful for from that day. I thought this would be easy. It hasn’t been. When I reflect back on my day each evening I find it surprisingly difficult to come up with items for my ‘grateful for’ list. It is NOT because everything is bad or because I am ungrateful wretch, at least I hope it is not. Rather, I am just finding it hard to identify anything significant or different each day. For example, if I look back on today’s activity so far (I am writing this at work before I leave for home) I can only come up with things like the fact that my schedule hasn’t been too hectic today or that I had egg sandwiches at lunchtime. Things like this just seem too trivial to acknowledge, but try as I might, I can’t pull out anything more significant. I am not sure what to make of this. Perhaps the whole point of keeping a gratitude journal is to focus the mind on small things that would otherwise go unnoticed; to remind yourself that even on a mundane, ordinary day, small and unspectacular things happen that provide a boost to life. I hope so.

1+1=0 leading to chicken curry (or something)

No, I don’t have a clue what the title of this post means either. It’s based on the scribbles on a flipchart left in the classroom I was teaching in this morning. Here is a photo of the actual flipchart page, just in case you think I am simply going insane…

Presumably this means something to somebody but I’m darned if I can work out what, or who. Bear in mind this is from a university classroom. Any thoughts? Have I missed something obvious?

Today I saw a weasel

Today was an odd day. It ought to have been an ordinary day at work, but instead, I had to drive my younger daughter back to her University house in Southampton after she had a spell at home recovering from a nasty bout of illness. This meant a drive of 3.5-4 hours each way including rest/coffee breaks with a short spell tag the house helping her settle back in (and buying some food in the supermarket). Now I am home, replenished by a microwave chicken jal frezi curry, but feeling a bit zonked out and looking forward to an evening of mindless television watching (‘Eat Well For Less’, ‘The Apprentice’). However, the day had one really great element – on the way to Southampton, somewhere in the middle of the journey, in Dorset, one of these little fellows (or fellowesses) sprinted across the road in front of us, fortunately making it all the way to the other side intact:

I am wracking my brain, and can only recall one clear memory of having seen a weasel before, years and years ago whilst cycle touring. On that occasion I got a better view as I was closer and moving more slowly but I still got a real thrill from seeing today’s sprinting weasel flash across the road in front of me. Sadly, I have no way of knowing whether he/she went ‘pop’!

‘Less but Better’ – Essentialism (Greg McKeown)

After listening to an Art of Manliness podcast interview with Greg McKeown last week I went straight ahead and listened to the audiobook version of his work ‘Essentialism’. The basic idea of Essentialism is that it is a mindset in which you seek extreme clarity on where/how you can make your best contribution in life and then focus ruthlessly on paring back activity that does not align with this goal. The underlying principle is one of ‘less but better’. McKeown argues that there is an increasing tendency for people to adopt a non-essentialist mindset by default and that it is necessary to actively combat this by shifting toward Essentialism as a way of life.

There were two particular elements of Essentialism that struck a chord with me. First, there was the ‘less is better’ principle. I think it is hard to argue against this but very easy to slip into a mode of working which runs counter to it. ‘Less is better’ works for me because it is expressed so simply but captures a lot (so it is, itself, a great example of less is better!). Secondly, I liked the idea that you should look for your ‘essential intention’ and see this as one decision made now that saves you from one thousand future decisions. However, I do struggle to come up with one essential intention that covers every aspect of my work/life and think it would probably work better or be more useful to find several complementary essential intentions for the various roles that I have (bear in mind that my work is very much multi-faceted – a kind of portfolio job within a job). Overall, I found that Essentialism matched a lot of principles that I have been trying to adopt – doing things deliberately rather than accidentally, simplifying things as much as possible, trying to mono-task and remain in the moment as much as possible etc.

Whilst I enjoyed the book, I did feel that it became a bit confused as it went along. There were quite a few chapters that were not so much about Essentialism but, rather, seemed more like general productivity, self-management advice and I got the impression that McKeown was really just writing a general book about improving personal productivity but used the neat idea of Essentialism to hang things off even when the fit was not so good. I suppose the difficulty was that a book that explains ‘less is better’ really only needs to be very short and, so, would be unlikely to be very sellable.

“I am a Crazy, Stupid Person”

On my walk into work this morning, as I passed a mum and her young son (presumably) coming the other way, I heard the lad, who must have been about 5 years old, proudly and loudly say: “I am a crazy, stupid person”. To my ears, he didn’t say this in a negative way implying that being crazy was bad or that he was stupid in the sense of being ‘thick’ but, rather, he seemed to say it in an excited and celebratory way. The message I heard was more like “I’m a bit bonkers and isn’t that fun?!”.

Now isn’t “I’m a bit bonkers and isn’t that fun?!” a great philosophy of life for a 5 year old? In fact, isn’t it a great philosophy of life for all of us? Go forth and be crazy, stupid, bonkers or a little mad at times. I think the world will be a better place for it…

‘Early’ morning run

This morning, for the first time in ages, I managed to get myself straight up and out for a run. Earlier in the year, when I was training more rigorously for the Somerset Flat 50 Miler, I was fairly regularly out running before breakfast, but since then I have become rather useless at getting out early.

Today I was out at about 7:25am and ran for just over 4 miles – a loop around the estate, across to Central Park, along the upper path towards the city centre, down and around into the trees and back to the football ground and then home again. It was a crisp, clear day with the low sun providing some warmth and sparkle. I was surprised that there were so few people around. Actually, that is not entirely true, there were a lot of people sitting in cars in queues of traffic along the main road, but there were relatively few people out in the park, walking dogs and heading to work. There is something quite invigorating in being out and about exercising before most people are moving. I hasten to say it, because it’s perhaps not really the best feeling to have, but it always makes me feel a little smug…

I got home, did some stretching (boy is my left glute stiff/sore at the moment) showered and, in a nod towards the imminent arrival of winter, opted to make porridge for my breakfast, topped with chopped banana and a slice of honeycomb from a local bee-keeper. All of this meant that I am a little late into work (deliberately) but it has to be said I’m feeling pretty good right now!

Out with the old and in with the new (office plants)

I have had a set of three plants in my office that I bought from IKEA at least 5 years ago (perhaps as many as 7). Although they were chosen for their resilient nature (being varieties of cacti/succulent type plants – yes, I know, I’m no expert), for the past few years these plants have been dead, as a result of my complete lack of care for them. To begin with I watered them regularly (weekly) and they did okay but at some point I stuck them behind a sliding internal glazing panel and from then on neglect set is as I was seemingly incapable of sliding the panel open and walking a few metres to the office kitchen to get some water for them. This was the result:

Finally, on Saturday, after having it on my list of things to do for many months I bought some replacements (also from IKEA) and then this morning I removed the old plants and put the new ones in their place. I had measured the size of the previous plant pots as being 10cm and the new ones were a little smaller than this with the result that the news ones look a little hidden in the pots. However, I think they will be fine and if I can be organised enough I might get some gravel to form a base for them to stand on and to raise them up within the outer pots. So, my latest attempt at introducing a little greenery into my office isn’t perfect, but it’s defintelty an improvement on the dead ones:

and they look quite smart on the window-sill:

It remains to be seen how long these ones will survive, but I can confirm that they have been watered so they should make it through a week or two at least!

Everything takes longer to do than it should do

Today, after a two hour lecture first thing in the morning, I have been trying to drive my way through a fairly long list of tasks, many of which are somewhat overdue. I set aside separate, discrete periods of time (~2 hours each) for tasks related to my management role as Deputy Head of School and for those related to my teaching. Now, as I reach the end of the afternoon and look back on how things have gone, two main thoughts/feelings come to mind. First, I feel fairly pleased with myself for not giving in to distraction and sticking to my plan. Secondly, I can see that whilst I got a lot done, I got nowhere near as much done as I would like…

The problem, on reflection, is that every single task that I set out to do took longer than I hoped it would. This was for a variety of reasons including things like clunky documents that I had to work with and delays in being able to access a printer, but mostly it was simply a case of tasks being more complicated than I hoped they would be. Actually, I am not sure that they were REALLY more complicated – it might just have been that they took me longer than I wanted them to because I was over-ambitious about what I hoped to achieve in the limited time I had available. I am not going to beat myself up about this – I can only do what I have time to do – but it is frustrating that I haven’t been able to clear the backlog as much as I had hoped. I will just have to get my head down some more tomorrow and make whatever inroads into things that I can.

One thing certainly did seem to work, namely splitting my available time into sections for tasks associated with different roles or aspects of my work. I think I will experiment with this idea some more. It seems like a good idea to decide, before I settle down to work at a particular time, which of my multiple hats I am going to wear – educator, manager, scientist etc. and then to not allow tasks from one domain to bleed across into time set aside for another domain. This ought to reduce distractions and help me to maintain a singular focus on what I am trying to achieve.