Ugh
“I refer to jet lag as ‘jet-psychosis’ – there’s an old saying that the spirit cannot move faster than a camel.”
-Spalding Gray
Digitally Official
Several people have pointed out that my ‘dating’ category should no longer be too useful.
But, like a middle-aged armchair quarterback regaling the genius plays he pulled off back in high school, I may yet have some dating blog entries left to share.
I don’t think Jess will mind, as she staunchly maintains none of my ploys would ever work on her. To which I say, nice ring.
Regardless, as Jess certainly will be the subject of countless future entries, as of today, she gets a category all her own. In the world of blogging, that’s about as good as long-term commitment gets.
Do It Tomorrow
Back in 2001, while I was a senior at Yale, I picked up a hardcover copy of a new book called Getting Things Done. And it changed my life. For the first time, I went from a lose-track-of-everything mess to the kind of guy who owns a label-maker.
Ever since, Getting Things Done has served me very well. In particular, I’ve loved its emphasis on getting everything out of my head, and into a trusted system. And I’ve loved the structure of the GTD workflow: collect – process – organize – review – do.
My problem, though, has always been with that last step. After helping readers craft a list of their context-appropriate next actions, GTD author David Allen basically tells them, ‘now do those actions’, and assumes everything works from there.
Which might for Allen. But, for me, actually doing actions has a relationship to the instruction ‘just do it’ much akin to the relationship between the fight scenes in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and their notation in the original script as “they fight.”
Most problematically, after years and years of Getting Things Done, while I had gotten to be very good at knowing exactly what I should be doing at any given moment, at that moment, I was usually doing something else entirely. I still procrastinated terribly. I still felt overwhelmed and behind. I was much more organized, but I’m not sure I was actually that much more productive.
Until, recently, I stumbled across a book called Do It Tomorrow, by the lesser-known UK-based Mark Forster. Forster explicitly recognizes that our well-intentioned rational brain isn’t always in control. And, more importantly, he offers strategies for coping with that fact in our jobs and lives. Strategies that, for me at least, work.
Because Do It Tomorrow also places a strong emphasis on limits and on reducing randomness, a Do It Tomorrow day feels almost the exact opposite of a Getting Things Done day. It’s more structured, less reactive. And I leave at night knowing that I’ve finished everything I set out to for the day, rather than with vague ongoing guilt from the giant list of next actions still hanging over my head.
I’m still fairly new to Do It Tomorrow, so I can’t yet say if the approach will permanently supplant Getting Things Done for me; I’ll weigh back in next month with further thoughts on that. In the meantime, though, as it’s easily the best productivity book I’ve read in the last five years, and is available on Amazon for $16, if you have even passing interest in dorky time management stuff, I’d highly, highly recommend you pick up a copy for yourself.
Back
Whenever I head to California, to my parents’ home, I revert to a sixteen-year-old version of myself. We laugh and talk and do. It’s fun. It’s relaxing. It’s wonderful.
And, by now, it’s at least as much so to return to my real, New York life.
Home for Thanksgiving II
Eighteen people for dinner, with a handful more joining for dessert. This is, for us, ‘very small’.
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Mainly, no change to the classics: my mother’s roast turkey, my father’s stuffing (the crowd favorite), pecan-crusted sweet potatoes.
This year, though, grilled vegetables are out in favor of garlic oven-roasted (my innovation), and the cranberry bread is now cranberry / corn / whole wheat (my mother’s, to her own regret).
Also new: along with last year’s tomato-basil bruschetta addition (a hit), some with olive and caper tapenade, others with manchego cheese and apricot jam or Point Reyes blue and fig preserve. (These the result of my and my father’s joint gastonomizing.)
And, finally: prosecco. Lots and lots of prosecco. I bought three bottles last year, and the normally non-drinking crowd sucked them dry in minutes. This could be dangerous.
Thankful
For Jess, my family, my friends, my colleagues at Cyan, my fellow trainers and members at CrossFit NYC. With each passing year, I realize more and more that the people in my life are for what I’m most grateful.
Home for Thanksgiving I
JFK to SFO, just more than six hours.
Almost killed my brother en route, as he kept sliding his elbow across the divider between out seats. Seems we’ve matured little since the back of our parent’s mini-van.
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In n’ Out: seriously, what’s the big deal? I don’t quite get people’s obsession with these burgers.
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[Ed. note: I’ll be adding to each of these postings throughout the day, for thre balance of the week.]
Bigger and Blacker
About three years ago, I started doing CrossFit workouts, following the free routines posted daily on the crossfit.com website. They were brief, they were intense, and they worked. I made faster progress in far less time than with anything else I had tried. I was hooked.
About two and a half years back, I started getting together with a couple of other idiots who had tried this CrossFit thing, for monthly workouts in Central Park. Misery loves company, and I quickly found I had more fun, pushed myself far harder, when working out with a group.
When the weather turned cold, we found a small gym on the Upper East Side that would let us, for ten bucks a head, use their space for our group workouts. A few more people heard about it and joined in, and they, too, made fast, significant progress. People would walk in the door unable to do a pullup, and six months later they’d be doing sets of twenty. Other clients at the gym, who over the same stretch of time might have moved up one notch on the lat pulldown machine, would leave their private trainers to work out with us instead. Then, fairly predictably, the trainers would get the owner to ask us to leave.
Lather, rinse, repeat. We lived through that find a place, grow the group, inadvertently steal clients, get kicked out cycle five times. After which, we were just bright enough to start seeing a pattern.
So, back in January of this year, we opened up a space of our own, the Black Box, just below Times Square. It was only 1500 square feet, up on the fourth floor of an old building. I cash-flowed the place myself, unsure whether it was a really dumb idea to have just opened a gym, unsure of whether anyone might actually show up.
But show up they did. And so did their friends. People would get results and brag about it, and now, ten months later and with zero advertising, we have more than a hundred members and nowhere near enough space.
My brother David very kindly took some time out of running his real estate development company to play unpaid broker, and helped find us a new space. We’re still trading lease documents back and forth, but by December 15th we’re hoping to be in our new home.
This second Black Box is nearly six times the size, and on the ground floor (which is good, as we inadvertently knocked down part of our downstairs neighbors’ ceiling in our current space with all of our jumping around). This time through, the stakes are higher. And so is the rent. I’m equally unsure whether opening this considerably larger space will turn out to be a really dumb idea.
But, as they say in CrossFit: get some, go again.
Big News
She said yes.
Big Ten
It’s official: the details are all locked for the Palo Alto High School Class of 1997 Ten Year Reunion.
Therefore, it’s also official: I’m old.
In truth, I probably wouldn’t be attending the reunion, except that, as student body president my senior year, it’s apparently my job to plan it. I didn’t realize this when I ran for the office, didn’t get the memo until just this year, which is probably why our class never had a five year reunion.
But, this time, for the ten-year mark, we are. Not some big event in the gym with balloons and streamers and nametags and speeches, but an evening at a Palo Alto bar the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Lower key, it seemed, might be more likely to get people to actually show up.
And, by now, more than a hundred of my classmates have RSVP’ed. I’m curious to see how we look as a bunch by now – how much hair lost, how much weight gained. At least two people will be bringing small kids, and many more their husbands, wives and significant others.
Jess, wisely, will instead be visiting her younger sister, abroad for the semester in Copenhagen, so she’ll be spared. So I’ll be facing things solo – and, more to the point, very drunk.