Tag: time management

A New Life Formular

I’ve changed the way I speak about time and the lack of it. For the longest time, I used to say: “God does not give me more than 24 hours a day, even though I absolutely deserve at least 30!!!” On Friday, when I was talking to one of my fellow escorts, I came up with the follow-up: “However, God does give me 24 hours, and I am determined to use every minute of it!”

The early morning Friday shift was unusually intense; five antis were out, and there were just three of us, so we didn’t have enough bodies to escort patients and shield them. And that was the first time I was the shift lead (why am I taking on more responsibilities – don’t ask!). But while there is a need in the morning shifts, and while it’s warm enough for me to survive these morning shifts, I will be there. That’s one of the meaningful ways to use these minutes :).

And summer in Chicago continues! It was the upper 80s today! I was finally able to meet with my friend Y; we had been trying to meet since June, and had to cancel for either her or my reasons. I was sad that she didn’t have a chance to visit me in the summer, but we got a summer day in October! We went to the beach, and sat there in the lounge chairs, and I swam in the lake (she didn’t). This time, it almost didn’t happen again because she was afraid to be out while the ICE agents were terrorising the city, but then she decided she would make it, and I am glad she did.

I do not know a single person who would be happy with what’s going on in the city these days. My hairstylist came to do my hair on Friday, and with all her being “neutral” and “not wanting to talk about politics,” she couldn’t keep it to herself.

And on the ICE/Trump topic, there was another shooting, although this time not lethal, and also, Trump quietly deployed 300 National Guards, and now the whole city is mad that police is not protecting the citizen from ICE, and they also mad at the Governor, although it’s hard to tell what he could do in the current situation (except for there are multiple lawsuits filed). Also, he froze the Red Line extension money, but to be honest, I had no doubts it would happen.

Keeping fighting, and keeping doing good whenever I can.

Last Tuesday

In the past two days, I have slowly regained the sense of normalcy, which sometimes resulted in the desire to fall asleep while walking, but mostly in a burst or energy and a fountain of new ideas.

Now, I feel I need to explain more about what exactly was happening during the past three months, but at the same time, I want to forget and move forward.

Let’s focus on the past week. Except for a very modest Easter celebration, I was busy working on my opening and closing remarks for the conference, finally looking into my own presentation which was in a miserable state, and a million small conference-related questions, like finalizing logistics for both training and the conference days, finding additional free tickets for students, emailing, confirming, advertizing, etc. My co-workers from the Austin and London offices arrived on Monday, so we tried to work together on things. On Monday night, I finished all my presentations and went to bed thinking that I should have probably saved them on OneDrive, but oh well, I will do it the next day. On Tuesday morning, the first thing I saw on my phone was a message from one of my European friends: Hettie, is the PG Day Chicago site down? I jumped up to check on my computer (not trusting the phone). The site was up. Then I thought that this would be my only opportunity that week to bike in the morning, and went biking, returned later than I planned, and took “the next” train. This train was crowded, and there was no place for me to sit and do any work or what’s not. I was the first one to jump off the train and ran to my office building.

The elevator doors were closing, but the people inside read the sense of urgency on my face and held the door. I thanked them and got in< and then… this elevator got stuck! We were not stuck for very long, but by the time I entered our floor at 8 AM, I already had a day worth of stressful events!

Busyness

I didn’t comment on one of my recent listens: Oliver Burkeman’s “Epidemics of Modern Life”

I listened to this radio collection, but he has separate books about at least two of the epidemic: Business and Angryness. The radio collection consists of four parts: Addicted to Busy, The Power of Negative Thinking, Why Are We So Angry? and The Death of Nuance. All of them touch on important topics, but I was especially interested in the first part. According to sociologists, it’s not like we are busier these days than in the past, but society’s expectations and standards have changed. For example, it’s a well-known fact that despite many devices that make cleaning the house and other household chores easier, people don’t spend less time on house cleaning than previously. And there is an explanation for that: the standards of cleanliness have changed. As Burkeman states, “Now the floor shouldn’t be just clean, but clean enough to perform an open-heart surgery on it.”

Another interesting observation is that people started viewing things that they do for themselves (like attending a meditation session) as “projects,” which also increases business.

As a side topic, there was an interesting discussion about “paid” and “unpaid” work. I never thought about it the way Burkeman approaches it, but it does make sense: if you can pay somebody to do this, and you will still get the same result, it’s work, paid or unpaid; otherwise, it’s not. For example, you can pay somebody to bake a cake for you, and you will still get a cake without baking it, so baking a cake is work. On the other hand, you can’t pay somebody to go to the theater to see the play instead of you, it will defeat the whole purpose of going to the theater. Incidentally, that perfectly illustrates what I always say about my baking: I love the process. I am fine eating out and I am glad that they feed us at work, but I will never delegate my baking to somebody (yes, I love Vanille desserts, but I am not trying to reproduce them!).

And at the end of this episode, Burkeman talks about the necessity of idleness. That is something many researchers are talking about: to innovate, our brain needs some idleness (I always generate great ideas when I am on vacation!) It is also related to the state, which I am trying to achieve with not much luck – not to have a super-packed schedule with no wiggling room. With all seriousness, I know it’s not good, and I know that there is a physical limit to what I can do. My only success in this area is that I learned not to be upset when my plans collapse.

I guess these are very appropriate thoughts on a day when Boris’ flight was delayed for 24 hours. To be precise, there was an emergency landing because they could not start a backup generator and had to wait for repair. So much for trying to have a day off together!

A Busy Day Of a Busy Week

On top of everything else this week, I had an ear infection, and I had to apply for RealID and for a new passport. An ear infection just happened at the most inconvenient moment; with the RealID was a real thing. I thought about it “eventually, and i have a passport, so what’s the big deal,” but then I realized that I need to renew my passport because I am running out of pages, and now is the longest interval between my travels. And while my passport will be on renewal, I can’t use it for domest travel either.

My Thursday looked like this: a usual early start, two meetings, telemedicine appointment to get antibiotics (yes, I know it’s a horrible practice, and I always try to avoid it, but I didn’t have time even for Minute Clinic, yet alone a proper doctor appointment, and I although I didn’t have fever, I felt sick, and that affected my productivity in all areas of life.

The teledoctor (who saw me for the first time) tols me that it can’t be ear infection because I didn’t have fever, and we should try to unclogg the ear, but still gave me an antibiotic prescription “if nothing else would work.” I asked to sent the prescription to the CVS Target, because this location would work well with all other errands I had. After lunch, I found a USPS envelope in our supply room, taped on the label I printed at home and put inside all my passport documentation. Then, I went to pick up prescription and then crossed the State Street to take a passport picture at Walgreens. There, I had a bad luck – their passport pictures machine was broken, so I Googled the next closest place, which happened to be some scatchy-looking facility in front of the Post Office, which was my next stop anyway. There, I took a passport picture, asked them for a stapler, stapled the photo to my passport form and sealed the envelope. Crossed the street one more time, and dropped the envelope at the post office, and now the package is on the way to it’s destination. I requested a large passport book and expedited service, so I hope the it will be processed on time, and I won’t need to get a new passport three years before the expiration date (that’s what I had to do now).

I have to say, that antibiotics was the right choice – I felt that I am moving into right direction by yesterday’s evening, and this morning I didn’t feel sick (although not completely fine either, but on track to recovery). I was able to close a couple of service tickets during the last hour and a half of my workday, and then stopped by my mom, and then attended an online yoga class in the evening, and managed to go to bed at normal time. The latter one is a huge achievement of mine – so far, I have six hours of sleep almost every night since I returned from Helsinki.

One More Elpha Post

Since I almost lost one of my Elpha posts, I want to make sure another one is also stored permanently. Actually, I might have published it already, but just in case!

Continue reading “One More Elpha Post” →

Surprise Visit, Planning, And Spontaneity

On Monday, I had a surprise visit with Anna and the girls. They stopped at my place on their way to John’s family summer house in MI, and I was overjoyed to hear that they were coming. I didn’t have any specific plans for that evening except for finishing several things I hadn’t finished over the weekend, but even if I did, I would rearrange them.

We had an amazing time, partially, I think, because of it being completely unplanned. When I told Boris about this surprise visit, he said that he was glad that Anna trains me in spontaneity. And that is something I want to keep enjoying.

At some point, I became too dependent on my plans and feeling unhappy when things are not going as planned. And while planning is a key to success, I always remember the day when I had my first ultrasound which revealed that I was having twins. To my gloomy: That’s a little bit unplanned, the technician replied: Sometimes unplanned economy can be very successful! She was alluding to the “socialist planned economy” v.s. “capitalist unplanned economy,” which made it especially funny. Yep, the most unplanned thing in my life was the best thing ever happened to me!

Nadia made a picture of an ice cream for me 🙂

The Weather In Chicago And How It Can Go Wrong

I figured out that until the season is over, I should try to incorporate the early morning swimming into my schedule at least twice a week, and Monday was a very convenient day to try. I was out of the house as planned. It was cloudy, but there shouldn’t have been any problem with that. However, Just a couple of minutes after I started walking, I heard the thunder. There was not a drop of rain, but I thought it still didn’t sound like a good idea and returned home.

I took a shower, got dressed, and thought if wearing shorts to the office was a good idea (and decided against it). At the very last moment, I decided to take an umbrella with me, just in case.

When I was in the courtyard, some drops of rain fell, and five minutes later, it started raining for real. In two more minutes, it was a legit Chicago rain, and it made absolutely no difference whether I had an umbrella or not! I didn’t take my sandals off right away, and in a minute, it made no difference either – I walked in the water to my ankle level. By the time I reached the train station, the only dry piece of clothing I had was my underwater. When I got on a train, I didn’t even think I should sit down. A passenger in front of me was making space, and I told him: I am all wet! He said it was not a problem, so I sat down, trying to maintain the distance.

I pulled my reading glasses out of a wet backpack pocket, only to realize there was not a single piece of dry clothes on me or in my backpack to clean them. And then, I heard the sounds of raindrops on the car window, and it sounded like they were made of iron (and no, it was not hail!).

When I came to the office, I realized I had made a mistake not trying to dry myself up at the train station bathroom: we do not have dryers! Fortunately, I had a change of gym clothes in my drawer, so throughout the day, I changed different pieces of my clothes to activewear pieces and hung the wet pieces on my chair to dry them up. I also put some paper inside my sandals and changed them often before finally letting them air dry.

I thought that I still had time at least to dip myself into the lake after work (although I had a number of other things to do!) But when I came to the beach, there were high waves, and the red flag was up, and the lifeguards were on duty!

I still sat there on the beach, and I even walked into the water to meet the waves by the shore, and got myself as wet as it was possible! I am proud of myself that I didn’t get upset about things not turning us as planned:)

Elpha Spotlight: 24 hours a day

I wrote one more blog post for Elpha community, and I believe that’s the first time ever I blogged about my timesaving strategies in English :). Honestly, I was shocked to see how long it ended up being!

We’ll see whether there will be any reactions!

Link to post

TIME Magazine: The Least Amount Of Exercise

Very long but useful article. I never know how to reply to the “no time to exercise” statements, so what they say, makes sense. I can second the paragraph about “exercise which does not feel like exercise.” It’s actually the best when you can do some real thing instead of working out in a gym. But again, as the article mentions, you still need to incorporate some strength training.

What’s the Least Amount of Exercise I Can Get Away With?

Continue reading “TIME Magazine: The Least Amount Of Exercise” →

After The Conference

It has been four days since the conference. After a complete relaxation on Saturday, I started to return back to reality, which included going through three hundred non-work emails and dozens of work requests.

A huge portion of my non-work emails was Postgres-related, conferences-related, or otherwise not-really-personal. I am still not through all of them, although I hope that I didn’t miss anything really urgent. Here is what I’ve done so far:

  • Posted the questions for PG Day Chicago feedback
  • Discussed “lessons learned” from the conference day with other organizers
  • Collected feedback from room hosts
  • Emailed several people with whom I talked at the conference and promised to email
  • Scheduled May meetup
  • Published a blog about PG Day Chicago
  • Checked all bills that have accumulated during the past two weeks
  • Paid everything that was due 🙂
  • Emailed the dates when I can volunteer at the Night Ministry
  • Decided on the dates when I can do several shows I want to attend in May and June
  • Figured out most of my May-June schedule
  • Ordered a new dishwasher

The things I still didn’t do and need to do in the next couple of days:

  • Schedule the rest of the conversations I’ve promised to schedule
  • Record a sample video for an online conference where I will present in June
  • Prepare the actual presentation for this conference
  • Submit proposals to three conferences which will be happening this fall and which I want to attend
  • Write two professional blog posts
  • Write a LinkedIn recommendation I’ve promised
  • Find time to meet with three more people with whom I want to meet

Plus, lots of biking (the sunrise is finally early enough!), lots of shows to see, and the full Chicago summer ahead!