Notoriously depressed to the point of being known as 'the weeping philosopher" Heraclitus 2500 years ago observed that all existence was in constant flux, the foundational element was fire - destroyer and transformer, and gave us the concept that we never step twice in the same river -- the water you stepped in yesterday is gone. Nothing stays.
Neither are we the same as we were yesterday. And, as Anne Lamott observed, “A hundred years from now? All new people.” Fortunately, we have a few people every century with a sense of humor. The Greeks gave us comedia to leaven the tragedia.
Mark Twain, Lamott's predecessor with a sense of humor in the previous century, wittily observed, "History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes."
We may not be stepping twice in the same river, but our feet still get wet.
Anticipation is our imagination of tomorrow. Activation is our stepping into today. Reflection is our memory of yesterday.
These three states allow us to engage the rhythm, meter, and rhyme -- dare I say poetry -- of our existence.
Wednesday.
Last week's post focused on looking at anticipation, activation and reflection for a single task, at a determined time, on a specific day. The goal is to bring to heightened awareness all the dynamic uncertainty involved in making a single appointment with one's self. There was a productivity hypothesis that one should make an appointment with ourself the way we would with another.
The immediate challenge is there is so much more friction involved in changing an appointment with a client or a boss, for example, than there is with changing an appointment with ourselves. There is almost no friction involved in going late to, or blowing off, an appointment with ourselves. Regret can show up in reflection, but what's not done is still not done.
Now pick a whole day to anticipate, let's say, Wednesday. It starts with bedtime on Tuesday, because the amount you sleep the night before sets up your attention and energy for Wednesday. When will you settle down to sleep Tuesday night, and when will you wake up? For many of us, it's not the same every night, but there's a pattern and there's a best practice.
My calendar, like many of yours, has appointments, commitments, and due dates, but it doesn't have the transitional activities from waking to being outfitted for the day's work, mealtimes, work breaks, and, most people in my experience don't log work as it appears. All those ad hoc conversations, responses to the unplanned but now urgent or necessary, responses to texts or phone calls, helicopters landing to whisk you to important meetings, and the biggest gap: all those diversions generated from our devices.
All those digital diversions are new, but they rhyme. In my young adult years, cigarette breaks were the most common. I never smoked, but my diversion was hanging out with the smokers at whatever back entrance they convened. There were people I could find at the local pub if I was discreet and needed them. For others, "sales call" was an afternoon at the dog-racing track. Sociologists Robert Schrank and Daniel Hamermesh insightfully identified these diversions as increasing worker productivity rather than decreasing it. Wrote Hamermesh, "Time spent on the job relaxing (loafing?) can increase workers' productivity by enabling them to rest when they are physically or mentally fatigued."
Diversons: good. Diversions taken to excess: bad. Still true. The diversions aren't the same, but they rhyme. For the record, my Aunt Millie was the only person I've encountered on Earth, who could take a break -- say at a wedding reception while her five children were being cared for by someone else elsewhere -- relax, have a cigarette and an alcoholic beverage, and not touch another of either again for months. Whatever she had, she could take pleasure, then go back to the hard work of doing hard work.
Metacognition: paying attention to what has your attention.
The challenge is to pick a day, maybe Wednesday. On Tuesday, look at whatever tool you use to track your schedule. Anticipate what will happen down to the 5 minutes. When you wake up Wednesday, start recording what happens. Maybe open up a speech-to-text file on your phone, and tell it what's going on at every change of what has your attention. You won't get it all. You'll get enough to know yourself better. On Thursday, compare your anticipated schedule with what showed up on Wednesday.
What do you learn from this exercise?
More next week.
References:
Heraclitus: https://iep.utm.edu/heraclit/
Anne Lamott: https://biographs.org/anne-lamott
Mark Twain: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/01/12/history-rhymes/
Robert Schrank: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262690645/ten-thousand-working-days/
Hamermesh: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2523575