Tag Archives: priorities

Burdens of leadership…

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There are a number of reasons I’m not likely to ever be drug kicking and screaming into a position of leadership. Aside from the fact that it just plain doesn’t interest me from anything other than an academic standpoint, I loathe putting on a jacket and tie just to sit at a desk all day, small talk and glad handing make me want to poke myself in the eye with a pointy stick, and really, the only screw ups I want to be responsible for in life are the ones I make myself. With all of that being said, should the worst ever happen and I get stuck in one of these positions, I hope that I remember the little things; like knowing how to get from Point A to Point B without six other people managing the arrangements for me, or being able to have a conversation with my contemporaries without needing hundreds of slides and a stack of memos to decide what I want to say. I’d especially want to remember that normal people tend to have interests and obligations that aren’t work related so keeping them standing around early in the morning and well after close of business should be avoided.

I’m not even going to get into how bloody obnoxious it would be to basically have no control over my own schedule. Being shuffled around from place to place and meeting to meeting with just a few notes jammed in my hand at the last minute would drive me right up to the edge of wanting to beat people with my shoe. I’m glad there are people who welcome that level of pain in the ass, but frankly I’m ecstatic that I’m not cut out to be one of them. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to stick my nose in a book about the Danish invasion of England. That’s way more interesting than a three ring binder chuck full of information about the fun things to see, do, and talk about at Fort Pignuckle, Louisiana.

My incredible shrinking attention span…

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No one reading this is going to be surprised to hear me say that I’m a creature of habit. That’s one of the problems I’ve always had with writing. As long as I make a conscious effort to carve out time to do it every day, all is right with the world. Unfortunately, it’s perilously easy to quickly slide into the habit of not writing. For the record, being a not writer is far, far easier than being a writer. Because I’m fundamentally hardwired to seek the path of least resistance, not writing anything on Saturday quickly turned into letting it slide for the next two days as well. It would be a simple thing to let it slide for the rest of the week, for another month, a year maybe, all because it stopped being part of my routine for a few days. Whether it’s blogging, churning out pulp fiction, or the great American novel, writing is an act of self discipline, which is another skill I have yet to fully realize.

When the sun’s out, a few dozen odds and ends need doing, the television, a list of books you’ve been meaning to read, and rum punch on the deck rear their heads, it’s hard to overcome the sheer number of things competing for your time and attention. For me at least, it’s easy to write in the winter. It’s gray and cold and frankly there’s not nearly as much competing for attention. With a cold rain falling, it’s nothing to churn out a couple thousand words in an afternoon. Once the weather turns, I’m lucky to muddle through two or three hundred, before my incredible shrinking attention span hurls me off in another direction. At least I can admit I have a problem. That’s the first step, right?

Seriously…

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As a rule, I think people take themselves and the value of what they do too seriously. Heart surgery? Sure, that’s serious business. Making sure prisoners don’t escape from jail, yep, I’ll sign off on that one too. Airline pilot? You guessed it, another example of serious work requiring people to be serious. Sitting in a nice cushy office tweaking version twelve of a PowerPoint presentation somehow fails to rise to the level of seriousness that justifies having an inflated sense of self importance. Lord knows you couldn’t tell that from looking around at a room full average bureaucrats, though.

To me, the only really serious issues are the once that involve life and death. Almost everything else falls into the category of nice to have/do. Some of the other stuff is important enough, I guess, but is it really “serious as a heart attack?” If you have to stop and think about it, the answer is almost certainly no… And that’s ok, because when everything is a priority, nothing ends up being a priority.

What I’m saying is I’m going to need everyone to take an operational pause, suck in a deep breath, and just relax for a minute. I promise that no matter how important you think that PowerPoint slide is, 200 years from now it’s not going to be under glass at the National Archives laying alongside the Charters of Freedom in the rotunda. It’s not even going to be stored in the Library of Congress with your Twitter feed, so take a minute, collect your thoughts, and remember that history isn’t going to give a rat’s ass who we are or what we happened to be doing on a random Friday in May.

Most people seem to find that thought a little disturbing. It disturbed me for a long time until I realized what a gift it was. Once you embrace it, being an anonymous face in the crowd gives you a remarkable sense of freedom.

What are we doing here?

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Once every few months I catch a wild hare and start obsessively backing up everything on my work computer. At last count, I’m working on saving 2GB of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents for posterity. That’s somewhere in the neighborhood if 1500 individual files generated over the last eight months. By most standards it’s not a particularly obscene amount of storage or an abnormally large number of files. As I’m sitting here watching the “% complete” bar click higher, I’m struck with the fact that although I’m relentlessly backing this stuff up, keeping a copy for myself, and sending a copy into deep storage, I’m probably the only person on the planet who will ever actually see any of this stuff again. In a post-atomic or -biological apocalypse world, it seems unlikely that any of the survivors are going to be particularly interested in whatever brilliant PowerPoint slides I’ve managed to come up with.

All of that begs the question, what the hell are we really doing here? I think we all have some conception that we’re “adding value” somehow by performing whatever task has been set for us. We like to think that what we’re doing is good and important work; that someone, somewhere will be better off because we sat behind our monitors and smashed our fingers repeatedly against the keyboard. Since I don’t have a little laminated card telling me where to go and what to do when the warheads start landing, I think it’s safe to assume that whatever I’m doing isn’t all that critical to the preservation of civilization as we know it. Apparently I’m not a national treasure. That realization stings a little.

Look, I’m not saying I want to give up the pay and bennies and head off into the woods to start a commune or anything. I don’t think the situation is all that hopeless. Still, it’s a smack in the head about priorities and deciding what’s important and what doesn’t mean a damned thing. In the course of a career and a life, I’ve made some good decisions and some bad ones. If this serves as nothing more than a gentle smack in the back of the head reminding me to make better decisions in the future, well, then the day has been more productive than most.

Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of posts previously available on a now defunct website. They are appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.

Time…

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I’ve had three days off and it hasn’t exactly been one of those nice restful weekends that everyone wants. Between cleaning, vet visits, picking up groceries, more cleaning, laundry, and sundry other odds and ends, I’m not feeling rested at all. I’m sure it doesn’t help that most of those things are what I’ve been putting off for the last two weeks, but still, how about a little time to do nothing at all? Yeah. That’s not going to happen. The good news is that the house is (mostly) clean and there’s a refrigerator full of food again, but that’s not something I can really hang my hat on when I wonder where the long weekend went. It’s all stuff that needed done, of course, but I get the distinct feeling that I’m spinning my wheels, since most of it will all need to be done again next weekend.

What I need is more time. Just a few more hours in the day maybe. Or at this point I’d settle for figuring out a way to better use those six “wasted” hours in the middle of the night when I’m busy just laying there. Ranting about it hasn’t seemed to do much good, so I’d better get moving and make the most out of the couple of hours I’ve got left this afternoon. Sheesh, and I thought time only flew when you were having fun.

Looking…

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If you stopped by looking for some new foolishness, you’re going to be disappointed. I haven’t gone back to work since Christmas. And when it comes to work, out of sight is definitely out of mind. Except for the fact that I have to go back on Tuesday, I haven’t given the office so much as a thought for the last week. It’s been nice. Of course I know there is a mound of stuff piling up on my desk that will demand immediate attention when I wander in, but just now it’s nowhere near the top of my priority list. This is yet another strong indicator that I’m better suited to a career as a lottery winner than as an actual productive employee. When it comes to work, my apathy indicator is blazing green.

Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of posts previously available on a now defunct website. They are appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.

Filler…

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I am a professional; highly educated, certified, and experienced. I’ve forgotten more about this kind of work than most people know. Today, however, I am going to be a warm body filling a seat because someone at echelons higher than reality has determined that the most mission critical thing 500 of us can do is make sure the auditorium is full during a presentation.

I’m sure whatever this graybeard has to say will be very interesting and informative, but not at all relevant to any of the eight or nine assignments sitting on my desk waiting to get finished in a semi-timely manner. It’s all a matter of priorities, I suppose. In this case the priority is clearly on looking good rather than actually doing good. As long as I know that up front, I’ll happily adjust my expectations accordingly… and make sure my Kindle has a full charge.

Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of posts previously available on a now defunct website. They are appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.

Service…

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We had a discussion about cell phones this morning. The focus was largely on the atrocious service that we get in the building except on all but one of the major carriers. After several volleys of “mine’s bigger than yours,” a doddering old crow chimed in from across the way that she didn’t really care if she got service in the building because she was here to work and everything else could wait for eight hours. To which my response was, predictably, calling bullocks.

Being good and dedicated to what you do is a fine thing, no doubt. Occasionally some of what we do might actually be important for something other than the sake of appearances. I get that. But try as I might, I just can’t bring myself to think of work as the most important thing I do on a day-to-day basis. And when it comes to missing something important happening in my actual life or something important happening at work, there’s just no contest.

I spent the early part of my career doing it ass backwards because I didn’t get that yet. It was a very unhappy world and I don’t intend to revisit it.

Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of posts previously available on a now defunct website. They are appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.

How you know it’s important…

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Sitting in our weekly staff meeting it occurred to me just what a self-important and inflated bunch we really are. Each week we get together and run through the litany of X, Y, and Z projects that we’re working on. Everyone looks pensive and serious as one after another of us drones on about things that no one seems to care about; a memo, an agreement, a PowerPoint presentation, or the old man’s travel plans. I know this stuff must be important because we’re all wearing ties.

I’m not exactly sure what I’m feeling at moments like this. It’s probably some combination of disbelief tempered with an appreciation of farce. I just have so many issues with the “so what” of it all. Maybe my misanthropic tendencies have finally gotten the better of me because I’m having a hard time finding a reason to do more than just what it takes to get by.

Lately, good enough is good enough. I don’t want it to be though. I want to do work I’m proud of. I want to do work that matters more than moving papers from one desk to another. Look, I’m not going to run away from the job, the pay, or the benefits. I’m annoyed, but not crazy. Some people are passionate about this stuff. Even though I’m good at it, I just happen to not be one of them.

At least I’m wearing a tie… so I know it’s important.

Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of posts previously available on a now defunct website. They are appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.

I learned it from watching you…

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If the story I just saw run across the local news channel is to be believed, apparently one of the most insidious challenges facing young girls this year will be a new Barbie doll that has *gasp* tattoos. Apparently this 7 inch tall bit of plastic is causing an uproar among parents who have nothing better to do with their day than complain about plastic dolls. If you’re worried about her dolly turning your little princess into a pink haired, spike heel wearing skank, here’s some advice from kindly Uncle Jeff: don’t buy your kid the $50 doll with the tattoos. It really is that easy. I mean it’s not like the toy companies are part of an international conspiracy to lure your children into the clutches of the world’s tattoo artists. Or are they?

Take it from me, mom and dad, no amount of parental fretting over tattoos are going to keep your little darling from getting one once they’ve decided to do it. And I’m pretty comfortable in saying they won’t be doing it because of a doll they saw when they were five years old. If they’re like just about every other 18 year old with fresh ink, they’re doing it because they know it will make you crazy. So here’s a thought… try not making such a big deal out of the little stuff and maybe you can head off the worst of that teenaged rebellious streak you’re doing your best to create.