Listen To Your Hartford
Listen To Your Hartford
Week 12 of 2024 saw me crack under pressure – and crack other things too. But it may have also brought some timely advice…
To see how Sam Pepys spent this week 364 years ago, follow this link.
Apparently, this Wednesday was the UN’s ‘International Day of Happiness’. I didn’t spot anything in the UK media about this, though. Maybe the UK isn’t interested in United Nations anymore. It certainly seems like fewer folks want to be a united nation these days…
I only learned about ‘Happiness Day’ thanks to Pushkin Media’s Cautionary Tales. Although it’s produced in the US, this podcast is presented by British journalist, economist, pun-lover, and all-round good guy Tim Hartford – one of the friendliest voices on radio.
In Cautionary Tales, Tim relates real-life examples of people living lessons we can learn from. In a ‘Happiness Day Special’, he spoke of multi-record-setting pilot Chuck Yeager, who was attempting to break yet another airspeed record when his plane lost control and plummeted into a nosedive.
Rather than wrestling with the controls, Chuck opted to sit back and do nothing. Purely because he did so, aerodynamics naturally righted the aircraft – just in time for Chuck to take over and land her safely.
The moral Tim draws from this? “Do nothing, then do less.” We sometimes think our lives will be happier if only we could achieve more, but the very effort of doing so can in fact put us at risk of everything falling apart – perhaps even exploding apart.
I began to ponder this advice at the very start of this week, when I noticed my productivity percentage hitting the sixties for the first time in over a month. This percentage is my number of completed tasks divided by the total on my To Do list. Only reaching 65% last week meant that, for most of this year to date, I’d struggled to achieve two-thirds of what I set out to.
Usually I begin the week with a list of five ‘Priority Foci’ (jobs I want to focus on, if not complete), and five ‘Priority Comms’ (people I need to contact). I then break these down into lists of five or six ‘daily foci’, along with ‘routine tasks’ which cover everything from writing this newsletter to putting out the bin.
This method gives a heavier weight to my priorities. Thing is, as days progress, other urgent tasks might arise – such as Friday, when I was called upon to keep the peace between some of Immersive’s stakeholders, or Wednesday, when the Mayor of Cambridge invited me to meet with her.
All these extra tasks count as completions, of course – but they also up the week’s total. So while I may complete several tasks in a day, if none are my planned priorities, my percentage plummets…
True, that may not be as objectively stressful as a spiralling aircraft. But the stress can still get physical, as it did Tuesday…
See, I recently volunteered to support a friend of mine through a legal battle, since they’ve been diagnosed with anxiety. This began with the seemingly simple task of calling Citizens Advice for… uh, advice.
While on hold for 45min, I tried to at least tick off the simplest tasks from my To Do list – but that wasn’t many. When I eventually got through, though, the lady who answered said she needed to put me through to someone else. She put me back on hold…
…and the phone battery died.
In my rage, I threw the handset across my office.
It landed safely on a pile of fabric I’d yet to put away from last Saturday’s storytelling gig.
My rage unsatiated, I picked the handset up, brought it back to my desk, and had another go.
This time, it hit the step near the door, pieces flying off as it flipped into the air.
Much better.
Though, my rational brain then pointed out, not so good for the phone.
Luckily, the device worked as soon as I put it back together, and the screen had just the tiniest crack. Go BT engineering! But it wasn’t like me to throw something across the room with intent to cause damage – especially the kind of intent that made me throw the same innocent object twice.
Even so, it was Ermma who saved the day – and the week. That afternoon, a director friend got in touch, desperately seeking to replace an actor who’d unexpectedly dropped out. “I think I could manage it,” I told Ermma that evening.
“I don’t know…” she replied. “Don’t forget you’re doing that thing for your friend. And you’ve got that novel you want to finish. And that thing for–”
Her words brought Tim’s podcast back to mind. Ermma and Tim were both right. Adopting more responsibility would likely result in my productivity percentage dropping further – and my angst rising higher…
So I made a commitment that evening. I couldn’t exactly do nothing – but I would definitely start planning to do less.
As you can see below, my productivity still dropped compared to last week – but it was at least still in the sixties. Biggest win, though? A ‘priority foci’ achieved this week had been overdue for, oo, nine months…
Let’s see if this commitment results in greater happiness by the end of the year.
For this week, though, I can honestly say it went from almost going tits up to… well, tits going up! I had the joy of greeting this fine fellow tapping at my office window. $;-)
Quick sidebar: this week, Ermma and I began listening to a BBC podcast called Who Killed Emma? The journalist reported how she’d be using the word ‘prostitute’, because when interviewing women who identified as such, they told her they find the phrase ‘sex worker’ offensive.
Got me thinking: is the PC term ‘sex worker’ another example of some feeling unnecessarily offended on behalf of others? Or is ‘sex worker’ a more comfortable term for those who use such services…?
Weekly Productivity Score: 61%
Quarterly Best: 67%
Annual Best: 67%
In return for the smiles these words gave you, please forward them to a friend!
You’ll then get two bonus smiles: one for bringing joy to your friend, and one for my mahoosive gratitude. $:-D