2014-01-02

2014: Produce or Perish

I'm not going to say much here as I really ought to be in bed.


Now marks the transformation of my project into strictly an educational venture; to teach and learn Quantum Mechanics. I've changed the artwork and the title of the page already, but that's just piddly stuff.  However, despite my motto ("Produce or Perish" based on David Wong's writings from here - http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-harsh-truths-that-will-make-you-better-person/), I didn't want to jump into anything heavy yet.

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A corollary of "Produce or Perish" is the need to figure out how to be the people (person) who are capable of achieving each of my goals and fulfilling each of the roles I need to fill. I can build a list of the tasks I need to perform, rather like building a list of needed skills in a new hire for a job. Furthermore, I can maximize my effectiveness by finding overlaps in the qualities of each "person" I need to "hire", and trying to shed qualities I have (or things that I do, people I interact with) that do not help me.


So, who do I need to hire?  What goals do I want to achieve and what roles do I want to fill?  I think it serves me best to separate and explicitly list these.
  • Goal: Produce a "time / gravity" document to submit for peer-review
  • Goal: Produce educational videos for YouTube re: Quantum Mechanics
  • Goal: Maintain current weight or lose some weight (of a specific amount to be determined shortly)
  • Goal: Clean out the gamesroom closet
  • Goal: Reorganize the apartment for better space usage (assign specific, achievable goals later)
  • Goal: Expand my fucking wardrobe before I go naked
  • Goal: Eventual old man; I really need to start setting up long-term financial retirement plans
  • Role: Functioning human (hygiene, dishes/laundry, apartment upkeep)
  • Role: Healthy human (entertainment, energy, introversion time off, therapy)
  • Role: Society member (finances, bills)
  • Role: Practicing guitar player (no specific goals; I just want to assign time to practice so it is a role)
  • Role: Employee of Absolute Software
  • Role: Son / Brother (family)
  • Role: Friend (Simon, Bryan, Colin, etc.)
  • Role: Efficient, effective Content Producer

The last one implies the rest (for me at least; it would imply different goals and roles for different people). The opposite of all goals and all roles is to be a consumer, purely consuming content and giving nothing back to anyone, not even myself in the long run.  I'm already beginning to fulfill my duties as a good Producer by writing this blog but that's just the very beginning.


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Interestingly, I haven't explicitly listed time management or budgeting as goals or roles, the closest thing being my role as a society member. It occurs to me that this is a very good point. In the past I've always thought of these as other roles, namely the proper management of my time and my money, to be scheduled into the calendar with everything else.


Yet, time management and budgeting are never goals or roles. Instead they are tools, means to specific ends. It makes as little sense to explicitly list time- and money-management as it does to list "blogging" as a goal. Blogging about what? To what end? You can't do it without a purpose. Granted, time and money affect everything across the board, unlike blogging, but the principle is the same.


Looking at time- and money-management in this light, not everything necessarily requires scheduling or budgeting all the time, always. It only makes sense if the tool supports the goal. This is the point of "mad money", for example. Money that is expressly not allocated towards a specific purpose. That said, just about everything useful or fun requires time and money, so few things should escape being scheduled and budgeted.

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This is a bit of a tangent, but I had originally slated this blog for my project and I was going to leave my personal life out of it.  I can't avoid that now, not with this approach.  So be it.


Note that the above list is superficially similar to the approach I fiddled with in early 2013, with my different personas and masks. That approach dropped away because it wasn't particularly useful, and I was left with only 2-3 personas which I'm now calling Yin and Yang (or more familiarly, Capn and RPG). I have an Alpha personality built to drive us towards my Prime Directive, the production of a theory of time / gravity, but he's more of a mask of Yang.


The difference here is that the list I produced above is not a list of personalities or masks. Instead, they are roles that my existing personalities must cooperate to fulfill.  I need to train Yin and Yang to work together to perform these jobs, like they're stranded on a lonely island together and need to perform these duties to survive.

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Next task; to figure out what skills are required for each of my goals and roles.  I should also start thinking about the constraints I'm working under. Constraints aren't goals I'm trying to achieve, nor are they roles I'm trying to fulfill. Instead they are obstacles that make it more challenging to meet my goals or fulfill my roles in certain ways.


Goals and Roles. Maybe I'll start calling them GNR?   Nah, that just gives me an Appetite for Destruction. Don't Cry, Sweet Child O' Mine. Welcome to the Jungle.   R&G - Roles and Goals. I like that better. I suppose this blog is going to become bigger. The steps I'm taking to fulfill my R&G list.


Til next time, folks.


OH! Yang had a thought. Instead of just signing off and leaving it, I should schedule a time to next look at this and continue. If I'm going to fulfill my role of Content Producer, I can't just let it sit and forget about it. I need to start actually DOING these things. Fine. I'll schedule it for the weekend. (I don't want to schedule during the work week because everything is so bloody overwhelmed with the holidays.)

Saturday, 11am.   Cheers @ Yang/Yin.

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