Aging Capriciously

Anti-crastination! What does that mean? It is not in the dictionary! Well, it should be. We are all familiar with the word procrastination. In fact, most of us are probably too familiar with it. It means to put off doing something. Generally we say, “Well I will do it tomorrow or I will start tomorrow.” The suffix “pro” means to put forward and “crastination” is for tomorrow. Thus, “anti-crastination” would mean to be “against putting something off.” Most of us are guilty of procrastination but few of us could be said to be guilty of anti-crastination.

The word or concept of anti-crastination could possibly imply compulsive behavior of another sort. Someone who always has to do things “right away” would be an “anti-crastinator.” Someone who can’t rest for a second but is always going from one thing to another or who is always on the doing, doing and doing. A compulsive personality in regards to doing things might be an anti-crastinator. Have you ever wondered where all the anti-crastinators are? It seems like we have many more procrastinators than we do anti-crastinators.

Now some of us might occasionally like to have that compulsion. With less procrastination, we might get more things done and have things weigh on us less heavily. Many of us have had to deal with procrastination in our lives. At times it is simply funny and at other times it is debilitating. We can start disliking ourselves and become severely depressed with too much procrastination. Of course, as with all things, moderation is the best medicine. Sometimes is okay to procrastinate. We don’t always have to be anti-crastinators. We don’t always have to be accomplishing things or getting things done. Nikes famous slogan “Just do it” might be good for a running company but for many of us it becomes a demon urging us to get things done at all costs and with little thought.

So today, look at where it might be better to be a procrastinator. What can or should you put off doing today because: 1. you just don’t feel like it or 2: Maybe it will get done better if you have more time to think about it. Can you give yourself permission to be a procrastinator and still feel good about yourself? What will you put off doing today? How will it feel?

Time and humor seem to be related. Have you ever noticed that a good comedian has an extraordinary sense of timing? For a comedian to be funny, their timing has to be spot on. A comedian has to sense the pulse of the audience as well as gauge the temper of the day. For instance, jokes about 911 would probably not sound funny even today due to the seriousness of the tragedy. However, comedians often joke about minor disasters and other failings when the time seems right. Some comedians get away with telling racist and sexist jokes. They are able to sense the mood and nature of the audience. They also have an excellent sense of the Zeitgeist. The Zeitgeist is a German word that roughly translates to “tempo of the times or the sign of the times.” During the sixties, many of us took ourselves very seriously but today we can look back and joke about hippies, Woodstock, flower children and many of the quaint ideas we had back then. Just look at how silly the dress and clothes look from back in the sixties. We thought we were so cool then and now we laugh at how clownish we all looked.

If you watch the evening talk show hosts, they are masters at getting the timing just right with their audience. Even when they flub a joke, they are able to make an instant comeback. Not only do they have to have excellent timing for their jokes but the selection of guests is very critical as well. All of us want to see guests who are current in the public mind for one reason or another. Perhaps they have an upcoming movie, divorce or some other noteworthy event. If they are not connected to any significant happenings, we are not likely to be as interested in them. Being a celebrity has a great deal to do with timing as well as talent. Great celebrities are great marketers.

How do you deal with humor in your life? What in your life today can you laugh at that you might not have been able to years ago? What do you regard as so serious today that you do not ever thing you could laugh at? What if you are wrong? Is your life so serious that you cannot find anything humorous about it? How could you add more humor to your life? How could you find a sense of better timing in your life to deal with humor? When was the last joke you told?

The 10 Second Rule at Wahoo. The rule at Wahoo, a sort of trendy restaurant among young kids in California is that no one will wait more than ten seconds. Now ten seconds does not seem like a long time “unless” you are waiting. It is well know that our perception of time is psychologically based. The sense of time for us is never fixed nor does time ever seem to flow at the same rate for us. It often depends on what we are doing, when we are doing it or even whom we are doing it with. Waiting for a computer to reboot or waiting for a doctors report can seem to take forever. Waiting in lines at the airport or waiting in line to register our cars or waiting in line at any government office also seems to take forever. The time you spend on vacation or with a new romantic partner will fly by before you even realize it.

But with the fast pace of life today, waiting ten seconds is a long time. Years ago, we might not have thought much of having to wait ten seconds but today the emphasis is on speed and waiting is –for most- the ultimate waste of time. We must be quick today. Productivity and lifestyle all depend on quick. If someone cannot do it quick, we find someone who can. Fast everything is the modern answer to our lives. We have fast restaurants, fast food, instant meals, microwaves, faster and faster computers, sound bites for news and compressed college degrees that you can get in one year and online. Even funerals rarely last more than one hour. Our churches, schools, workplaces and sometimes our families all run on time and by a schedule. If they do not run on time we get impatient and find ways to leave.

Have you ever wondered about a world where ten seconds is a long time? Are we moving so fast that we cannot spare ten seconds for anyone or anything? How do you feel about spending ten seconds doing nothing? Can you spare ten seconds? How often do we drive by someone who needs help because we are in a hurry or because we are late or need to get somewhere for an appointment? When was the last time you spared ten seconds to help someone you did not know? Are you always in a hurry? When could you spare ten seconds? Did you ever want anyone to spare ten seconds for you? What if no one had the time to spare ten seconds for anyone else? Would you want to live in that kind of a world?

“Savor Time” like you would savor a good meal! It is interesting that we can talk about savoring a good meal but when is the last time you heard anyone talk about savoring time? We seem to move so fast that time to savor time is practically non-existent. So how would it feel to “savor” time? When we savor a good meal, we linger over it, tasting every morsel very slowly and with great attention and concentration. We let the flavors drift into our body and we enjoy the smells and texture of the food. A steak has one aroma, roast chicken another and a good salad quite a different set of aromas and tastes. Can you imagine trying to enjoy a good meal if there were no aromas and textures to the meal?

If we were to do the same thing over every morsel of time and over every portion of time, would that make our appreciation of our lives any different or any better? It just might. I think we could all gain a greater appreciation for moments of happiness, sadness and loneliness. Funerals give us a time to savor the flavor of sadness. Funerals become healing time for the survivors. The time to linger over the flavor of death is essential to the healing process. Weddings are a time to taste and smell the flavor of great happiness and romance. Family holidays give us equal portions of nostalgia and joy as we reunite we those whom we have not seen for months or years. It seems like we need special events in our lives before we can take time to “smell the roses.”

What if we could learn to savor time on a regular basis? The time you are alive and well today may someday be a great banquet that you will never be able to feast on again. Every day I wake up healthy and well fed is a day of abundance. If I do not take the time to savor these days, I am missing out on the joy of living. When I finally learn to appreciate the days that I have to savor, it might be too late.

See if you can savor just a few morsels of time today. Which ones did you find worth lingering over? What was the experience like? How much more enjoyable would life be if you could savor time more? If you did not find any good morsels, then ask yourself why not? What would it take for you to find some times that were worth savoring? Do you have enough good tastes in your life? Where can you go to improve the quality of your “banquet?”

“Churn Rate” refers to the number of participants who discontinue their use of a service divided by the average number of total participants. In short, how many customers do you lose versus how many do you gain. A cell phone company would measure the number of customers who quit each month divided by their total number of customers for that month. This ratio or rate would be an indicator of how many customers they are losing each month. Another way of looking at this idea of Churn Rate is to ask: “Are more fish jumping into your boat or out of your boat? Churn Rates can vary by day, month or year. However, the rate measures a very important indicator of business success. I once worked for a company where we hooked a great many new potential clients, but we could not keep them in the boat. The hard work to hook the potential client was lost by poor service and delivery techniques further along in our pipeline.

This same concept of “Churn Rate” can also apply to how we treat our friends, families and loved ones. Do we gain more friends as time goes by or do we lose more? Most of us will lose friends and relatives over a lifetime and somewhat like customers, old friends must be replaced by new friends. My 95 year old aunt told me that while most of her “old” friends had now passed away, she had many new friends. Of course, most of her new friends were now younger than she was. She was a healthy and vital 95 year old widow who kept herself surrounded by a strong support group of diminishing “old” friends but was constantly adding “new” friends. It is possible to do this if you really value the role of friendships in your life and if you have an attitude like Will Rogers who once remarked that” He never met a person he did not like.”

How is your Churn Rate for friends and relatives? Do you wish you had more friends but can seldom find the time for the ones you have? What stops you from spending more time with friends and relatives? How long since you have added some new friends to your support network? How long has it been since you have had contact with your best friends? Do you have a best friend? Are you friends and relatives really important to you? If not, perhaps it is time to find some new friends.

Good timin, a tick a tick a tick a tick a
timin is the thing it’s true, good timin’ brought me to you.

These lyrics were written by Jimmy Jones in the sixties. He was one of the early rock and rollers. The song suggests the importance of timing and falling in love. I have always wondered about the idea of “good timing.” It seems to be something that can account for so much good or bad in the world. A friend of mine’s son was killed in a car accident on the way to pick his parents up at the airport as they returned from vacation. He was only 29 years old. A young woman was killed while running on the street when a car veered into her path and struck her. She was 18 years old. A two year old toddler wanders outside on a cold night and dies of exposure. A different time of day, a different day and a different season and all these people would still be alive.

Another person starts a business to sell disk operating systems and becomes the richest person in the world. Sam Walton starts a retail discount business fifty years after Sears, Penney’s, Wards, Grants, Woolworths, Target and K-Mart and becomes the largest discount store in the world. Mary Poppins and the Wizard of Oz both were released during some very troubled times in America and went on to become blockbusters. Their message of hope and optimism came at the right time for millions of people who needed some inspiration.

What does it take to get good timing? Can we develop good timing or is one born with good timing, or is it simply luck. I have never been a believer in the idea of luck making anyone successful. Some pundit once said “luck is where preparation meets opportunity. This suggests that we are the master of our fates and not the victim of random chance. I see a great deal of evidence of this definition of luck when I look at successful writers, businesspeople, athletes and artists.

So how do we account for the factor of good timing? Is timing the one element of success that is random or is timing a factor that is also in our control? Is timing something we can get better at? How good do you think your timing is? Where would you improve your timing if you could? Perhaps by understanding the role that timing plays in our lives we have a better chance of adapting it to our needs.

Well, I am back from Belize and back to work. After just having a ten day break in “Paradise” I am already thinking about more break-time! Break-time may just be the best time of the day for many of us. Why exactly do we look forward to break-time so much? Seems like such a nonsensical question. On a “break”, we get a time-out from work. We break our routine. We stop doing something that we may feel is tedious or difficult. We may take a smoke, a walk or play cards with other workers, but it is not work so it passes very fast. Break-time takes us away from work and allows us to rejuvenate some of our vital physical and mental processes.

However, what if your whole day was one long break? What if you had to come in from 9 to 5 and take one long eight hour break? I was once told that in China there was so much employment that they could not find enough jobs for all the workers. So one factory had a large break room and the employees would take turns doing the work. Fifty percent of them might be working and fifty percent of them would just be passing time in the break room. I was told that putting people into meaningful work was much more important in China than efficiency or productivity.

What if you were paid to take a break the whole day? Can you imagine what it would be like? Could you play cards, chat or be idle the entire day? I suppose some people might call this “retirement.” Retirement is different though in that you know you are not going back to work. Despite the fact than many so-called retirees must find part-time jobs to support themselves, they do not think of themselves as being on a break from work. To be on a break from work, means that after the break you must go back to work. But what if there were no work to go back to? What if you were among the permanently unemployed? What would it be like? Would you find it stressful? Would you get bored? Well, the stress would eventually come when you ran out of money. Thus for most of us, breaks need to be long enough for rejuvenation and short enough to prevent boredom.

Do you get enough breaks in your life or do you keep on until your body forces you to take a break? How balanced are the breaks in your life from both stress and tedium? What do you need to better manage in your life to prevent burnout or boredom? I know that taking this break to Belize and not using my cellphone or laptop for ten days taught me a great deal about life. I learned I was really not as important as I sometimes think I am and I learned that I am often like a rabbit, hopping from one task to another without so much as a few minutes in between. I need to take more long breaks and more short breaks in my life.

We often hear the word “run-time” but what does this word really mean? Technically, it refers to the time that a computer is running a program. Personally, I think of it as the time I spend running my computer and the time I must spend to deal with it. I have too much “run time” in my life. My computer often feels like it is running my life: emails, spam messages, viruses, run-time errors and other problems caused by this high-tech piece of equipment. I often joke that when I retire I am going to drop my computer into the biggest lake I can find or use it as a boat anchor while fishing.

We invent labor saving devices to save labor and they end up taking over our lives and costing us our sanity. Computers, cell phones, PDA’s and Blackberries have become Frankenstein like monsters. We can’t live without them. Some people take them to bed or even in their showers. They become an extra appendage. We have portable batteries and portable rechargers so that we never run out of energy for these devices. While the devices may never run out of energy, we sure do. Human beings were not designed to be run 24-7. We need downtime as well as runtime and even more rest time or perhaps some relaxation time. Our ubiquitous productive tools beep, ring, chirp, hiss and vibrate at us in a never ending chorus to get us to be more productive. Several popular science fiction stories have foretold the day when robots that take over and enslave civilization. Perhaps that day has already arrived.

Are you controlled by your computer or other labor saving productivity tool? Can you turn it off for a day or leave it home? What would happen if you did? Who will get mad at you if you do not answer their email today? How far behind the curve would you be if you did not answer your cell phone today? What might it do for your stress level if you had less “run-time” in your life? What if you had a “down time” day once a week? Do you have a cell-phone ringtone for compassion and kindness?

Well, folks, I am going to Belize today and will not be back until the 5th of April. I am going to get ten days of “downtime.” I will be back on the 5th and resume my blog then. Hopefully, I will use this time to think of some creative blog ideas and to rejuvenate my life. John

Process time is a common term in business. When I first started doing TQM (Total Quality Management) consulting, it became very important to start thinking of everything in business as a process. The key to process consulting was to believe that all processes could be improved if they were first understood. Using TQM methods, we could better understand all organizational processes and continuously improve them thereby lowering costs, improving productivity and increasing customer satisfaction. The atom of business was the process and to understand the business, you had to understand the core processes.

I soon came to realize that these same concepts could be used to improve my personal and family life. I began to realize that everything we do in life is a process and that by better understanding those key processes that affect my life, I could also continuously improve my family and personal life. There are communication processes, argument resolution processes, financial processes, vacation time processes, family together time processes, personal growth processes, child rearing processes, retirement processes and many others. The more I understand them and how they can be continually improved, the better my life is. Indeed, by applying the same principles to may life that make a business successful, I have learned to improve my life and vice versa. Whatever affects my personal life affects my business life.

The task of “process understanding” is not an easy one. In fact, it is never ending. There is always more to be understood when studying a process. The major consideration is that you never have to be perfect. The more you understand the better things will get. We spend all of our lives engaged in process time activities. It only makes sense to look at what we are doing and try to find a better way to do it. What key processes affect your life? Which of these are you improving and which of these are you ignoring? Why are you ignoring them? What processes could you do more work on to improve? How could you start? Would it make a difference in your life? Then why not start now? Who could help you get started?

What does it mean when we say it is: “Dead Time?” One definition is: “Dead time is the time on a job lost by a worker without his fault.” A second definition deals with time that cannot be recorded between two events as measured by some type of electronic measuring device. Dead time for us personally seems to be the time in our lives when we cannot accomplish anything due to some problem or failure that literally stops time for us. In my life, dead time is the time just before I fall asleep or the time when I am waiting in traffic and cannot do any work. It is the time that it takes in the morning for my mind and body to start functioning.

Each of us has many examples of dead time in our lives. Some of us have more of it then others. Often, we try to find ways to make such dead time productive but it is not always possible to do so. Cell phones have enabled a great many people to use the “dead time” while driving to and from work to make important business calls or transactions. Some people make this “dead time” productive by playing book CD’s in their tape drives and using the time to learn something or to be entertained. We have a great many instances of dead time in each of our lives. Some of these times are foreseeable and inevitable. Some happen randomly and unexpectedly. Like, when you are taking a short ride and get stuck in a major traffic jam. You can easily lose an hour or so when this happens.

How much dead time do you have in your life each day? What do you do with your dead time? Are you able to turn it into some productive use? Could you use it to relax or even to meditate? Few of us do enough relaxing or meditating. Either of these could be a very productive use of time. Does dead time really have to be dead? It all depends on your creativity.