Freaking Merlin Mann. He’s one of those guys who often I can’t stand* – talking about productivity and GTD and such with no apparent skills other than a quick wit (pot, kettle), but just as often love.
Today’s a love day.
Go read this. I’ll still be here.
Done?
So, what’d you think? Isn’t that why we’re here? I mean, on the internet, keeping blogs?
Sure, it’s convenient to have all one’s running info in one spot, but we can do that with Google Docs, or breakingthetape.com, or any number of solutions.
But we, we RBF’ers, we’re here because we’re storytellers, because we like reading about this stuff, because it feels just plain GOOD to write.
Your keyboard will have different things in it than mine does, of course. But, it’s impossible to know what’s in there until you’ve made the clackity noise for a few minutes.
My keyboard? I hope it’s got a thesis in there sometime in the next five years. Until then, I’ll have to regale y’all with stories about my kids.
Like today – we went down to Esker’s Point beach. It’s a crappy little beach on the way to Groton-Long Point; I don’t think I’d recommend it to anyone who didn’t live in the area, but it’s my favorite local beach. We went after church today, set up the umbrella and the chairs, and did the beach thing. I swam out to the point – my first open-water swim in forever, and my first swim in a month. It was great – five strokes per side, warm water in the top foot, cold water below.
After I got back in, the boys and I went stalking sea life with some $1 nets we’d picked up at the closeout store. We’d terrorize the minnows – their silvery sides flipping in the sun, gills flapping. Collected a bucket full in no time. The beach smelled of August – low tide at the end of the summer; mounds of rotting kelp and weed piled high in the sun. The onshore afternoon breeze blew, carrying with it the smells of the yards in Long Point – flowers and mown grass.
Nate came up to me, asking to put on his floaties. He’s terrified of getting salt water in his mouth, but loves to swim. We headed out on a swim to the buoys marking the swim area, and Jake swam out to us when we’d gotten about half way to the buoy. Rounded the buoy, and then we all just floated on our backs for a while – staring at white fluffy clouds, Nate brushing my right hand from time to time just to make sure I was still there.
There – Clackity.
Now you, write your own story.
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* I’ve been on a big anti-“management”, anti-“planning” jag lately (despite having my very own MBA). Mostly because I work for the government, and there’s a lot of people who’ve realized that managers get paid more than workers, even if those workers are scientists, engineers, or soldiers and sailors. Plus, managers aren’t really accountable for jack squat – if a task doesn’t get done, it’s either due to a bad worker, or personnel not being able to supply talented workers.
Plus, management and planning tend to be snakes that eat their own tails. The more levels of management you have, the easier it is to get an underling and climb up the ranks. Then, instead of being concerned with useful stuff like interface documents, impedance matching, or variable typing, a manager gets to do powerpoint and gantt charts. (Which both can be useful, but need ultimately to be tied to some actual work. And neither of them require 18 levels of review and their own project plans)
Merlin’s got (and GTD has) the right message – just frackin’ do it. Now.
My gripe is that the people who get off on that sort of thing don’t “do” useful stuff – they manage. Actual workers are too busy doing actual work.