This restlessness combined with a 'new-to-me' concept of Best Practices has inspired me to look at my days and how I fill them. Most days are spent at the computer working on The Day Job, but when I inspect that closely, I realize that those hours do not make up an entire day. The other parts are whittled away on nothingness (with the exception of my exercise, which I'm very happy to realize I've made that a Best Practice in my life). Nothingness is not a Best Practice!
From Wikipedia:
A best practice is a method or technique that has consistently shown results superior to those achieved with other means, and that is used as a benchmark. In addition, a "best" practice can evolve to become better as improvements are discovered. Best practice is considered by some as a business buzzword, used to describe the process of developing and following a standard way of doing things that multiple organizations can use.I love that this 'buzzword' is about process, not 'must-do'! And that it's fluid, just as I discovered last year with my Word of the Year - Change.
Then I read this: Zen Habits (thanks, Janice, for steering me in that direction). Sometimes The Universe is just itching to help you out!
So, my pen and paper came out this weekend and I wrote down some Best Practices - ideas that will fill my days with health, creativity and productivity. With my eye on FOCUS, I should be able to kick that nothingness to the curb. I won't bore you with all my thoughts scratched out on my yellow legal pad, but I will share with you the last item: NOW. It's just one word, but if I'm not focused on the now, nothing will get done!
How do you deal with restlessness, People of Blogland? Have you heard of Best Practices? Do you find your day filled with nothingness, yet complain there are not enough hours in the day? Is this topic too heavy for a Monday Morning?
Yes! Love this. One of the things I've been thinking a lot about lately is how important it is (for me, at least) to uni-task in order to accomplish anything. And, in order to that, I need to focus on the one thing I've chosen to do at any given moment.
ReplyDeleteGood luck. I'll look forward to hearing how it goes.
PS Glad you enjoyed the Zen Habit piece as well.
Excellent musing, Janet. I'm always looking for ways to optimize processes. I know where my hours in the day go and there are times that even for me, squeezing in writing becomes a line item shuffled to the bottom of the page. Sadly. I need to stop letting this happen. I should know better than take time off from writing. It's always so hard to get back to it. Tomorrow. I can't today. There's still too much on plate to be done--stuff that HAS to be done now for deadlines having nothing to do with writing. But tomorrow? Tomorrow I shall squeeze out some time somewhere.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Janet! And yeah, watch out for the Universe. It sneaks up on you when you least expect it. ;-)
And here I thought nothingness was a zen thing.
ReplyDeleteYou make a good point, Janice - we're so brain-washed to 'multi-task' that we have no attention span left. I can't remember the last time I 'uni-tasked' - and that's not a Best Practice!
ReplyDeleteOoh, I read a wonderful article recently on our lives 'plugged-in' - I'll need to find it again and pass it along here on the blog!
...there are times that even for me, squeezing in writing becomes a line item shuffled to the bottom of the page.
ReplyDeleteAnd, as you mentioned priorities, our passion, what fuels us for living (and loving) our lives needs to be the top line on that To Do List!
No more shuffling - imagine how great we'd all feel if we tackled our Passion Item on the list first thing every day - instead of squeezing it when we can? Ooh, now that's a Best Practice :)
Get back in there, Silver - you're too talented to not be writing (and I really understand the difficulty there is in getting back to it after a prolonged period of time)!!
Very good, Alice - unfortunately, my 'nothingness' is not the stuff of Zen (emptiness, being, enlightenment). Instead it is surfing the web, playing mindless Spider Solitaire, checking/reading e-mails - it ends up being all-consuming and exhausting! Perhaps I should have named in 'distractions' - distracting me away from priorities I hold dear.
ReplyDeleteThanks for stopping by - you've really given me more to contemplate - a more focused direction for my Best Practices :)
Sorry I'm late, but I played chauffeur and took the kid back to college today.
ReplyDeleteSounds like focusing on the now is a best practice for you. Oh yeah, I have those days where I do nothing at all and then whine about not having enough time. Then I kick myself for whining. Must not be hard enough to make myself stop having those whiny, lazy moments, though. I just have to get past them - and my 'no excuses' year is helping with that. =o)
I love how you continued this discussion on your blog this morning, B.E.!
ReplyDeleteIt really is a nasty loop - the 'nohtingness', the complaining, the kick in the pants, and then we begin again a couple of days/weeks/months later. As I said on your blog today - it's learning the lesson and internalizing it!!
Glad you stopped by for the discussion :)