What's Worse: Multitasking or a Bong Hit?

Well chalk one up for the pot smokers. Apparently, multitasking lowers your IQ by 10 points while smoking pot only lowers it by 4 points. Shit.

 The other night I took the first of a two-part teleclass on Time with the spunky smart duo of Susan Hyatt and Terry Demeo. It's not about Time Management but more about our relationship to time, as in: How do you stop feeling like there's never enough Time, and Why does it always feel like you're never doing enough with your Time (flog flog -- ow).

Until now, I always prided myself on a continual circular way of working and moving and thinking. Maybe this was my romantic way of promoting a darting, undisciplined attention span.

And so I learn the cold hard -- and liberating -- truth: I'd be better off waking and baking than parceling out my mental concentration chunks the way I do.

However, the reason why this feels liberating  is because it actually sounds a lot more relaxing to give a chunk of my focus to an activity instead of being in perpectual mind motion.

And already I'm watching the behavior. For example, last night I'm in bed --  with three books to choose from, which does wonders for my reading -- and when I finally pick one to settle into, my mind tells me "There's some TheraFlu in the kitchen that would be good to have so you don't cough through the night." And off I went.

Classic behavior. Does anyone else ever do this? It's not that I can't sit still, it just takes me a while to get into the groove. And I do like being in motion, mentally or physically.

Still, it can be frustrating and defeating to be constantly darting. I can see my mental acuity passing out on the couch by midday. My working style can be a disjointed romp of: Writing a little here, Emailing a little there, a thought comes in so I get online to check god-knows-what site which reminds me of something Else and before I know it I'm totally lost. Except that I have the breadcrumbs of open windows and browsers to help me back to the beginning. So I've made a teeny bit of progress and off we go again. The writing gets started and then the email, something to check, a Facebook message to reply to and we're back at the multitasking races.

So now the practice is to dedicate myself to a project for a chunk of time and see how that goes.

The main tricks here include: closing my email, not checking Facebook (I love distractions!) and reminding myself to Stick With It. The Stick With It is made possible by the fact that some part of mywiser self knows I'll have more fulfillment, and do better work if I phase out the multitasking and go deeper with each project.

Plus the fact, I gave up pot smoking years ago, so I don't really have a choice.

And I have to admit something: I often get plagued by something I call "stoner's brain." It's when I lose my train of thought in the middle of a story, or I can't think of a word or I act generally spacey because I can't get my thought-life together and intact. I've wanted to blame it on age but I'm not 100. So maybe it's the multitasking.

It will be interesting to see if reducing multitasking will make my stoner's brain go down.

Note: here's an interesting book about Time if anyone is curious to read and learn more: The Secret Pulse of Time: Making Sense of Life's Scarcest Commodity, by Stefan Klein. Some interesting stuff in there, including why time-keeping/calendaring systems just don't work for human beings (did our caveman ancestors use them? no.)

Enjoy your gorgeous IQs and watch that multitasking!

xo

A Month Without ______ [Worry]?

Every once in a while I go on these month-long themes.

They started a few years ago when I was contracting at a job where I was underutilized and bored out of my skull. So I had to do something to fluff my mood up on a daily basis. Hence: the  monthly "things."  For a month I did daily things like:

• Wear mascara  (hardish)
• Talk to someone new at work (harder)
• Tell someone you love them (hardest; freaked a few people out that month)

Lately, as I establish and build my own biz, the monthly themes have come back in a different form: letting go of. A couple of themes in the last several months:

• Don't think or talk about biz-building (November '09)
• Don't worry (April '10)

In both cases I gifted myself a time frame to let go of overthinking and do the work that was in front of me and see what might come in. Actually, I didn't know if anything would come in, I just needed to give my brain and psyche a break, already!

I can be a real  fretter and worrier  in times of uncertainty (like starting a new biz and not having a regular HR-generated paycheck). Which is also a bit paradoxical since I ultimately thrive in the creative adventure of work, which comes with a lot of uncertainty. But really, any "certainty" in life is a bit of a mirage, no?

Anyway the point here is to get you thinking about something you can do -- or give up -- every day for a month. And good news! There's a new month incoming in just a few days here.

A note about the Month Theme

There's something wonderfully liberating about giving yourself a designated time frame -- a beginning and end-time -- in which to try something new and possibly uncomfortable. Whenever I want to sit up and calculate my bank account or imagine myself destitute under a bridge, I remind myself that April is worry-free month and that on May 1 I can resume worrying myself into the coma, if need be.

And since I've been worrying way, way less ...

• I've been more creative, more productive
• I've been happier
• I've been getting out into the world and meeting new people more
• I've had some cool new biz opportunities come up
• I'm sleeping better
• More smiles, more optimism, more calm
• I'm thinking of signing up for one more month. Curious to see what less worry gives me.

What can you give up or do more of -- one habit or way of being that doesn't serve you well -- for just one month and see how life shifts a bit for you?

The space you create for yourself by giving up a dear old-friend of a habit (focusing on regrets; filling your head with "yeah-buts") may bring answers, resolution, the birth of new cool projects and creative progeny.  Maybe even a refreshing sense of peace and a true belief in life's possibilities. Trying something new for a month may kick your sweet ass and out of a rut and show you what you're made of.

Ready, set .... let the month begin!

And have fun with it,

xo

The Beauty of a "Bad" Idea

"This is probably a really bad idea but ..." How many of us cover our asses with a prelude sentence like this, before offering up our gem of a thought?

There's also this spin on downselling ourselves and staying stalled: "I don't have any good ideas [on how to move this project forward; start this book; what to do this weekend or eat for dinner]."

But you do! We all have an idea and here's where we can start. We don't need a great idea off the cuff but just ONE to get things going.

Just one brave, adorable, shitty, crappy, ridiculous idea.

Because just one "bad" idea is a start. No more blank paper or open space of nothingness.

It's Hard to Be Bad

I used to give a writing exercise that was to write as badly as you can and as fast as you can. Guess what?

It's HARD. Try it. It's hard when you're writing fast -- writing improvisationally, writing past the nay-saying judge, writing so fast all you can do is trust your instincts.  What you'll find is it's just in one's nature to create something that has a modicum of decency. I'm not talking about trotting it out to the New York Times or the Nobel Prize committee or MOMA but there's going to be something there.

Plus, if you allow yourself a bad idea it's something to push off of. Especially if there's one more person in the room, so, since it's Friday, let's set up this scenario:

A: "What do you want to do this weekend?"

B: "Let's go to the midnight show at the Lusty Lady before it closes."

A: "Hell no. But I'd like to go see a funny movie, like Date Night, followed by Mexican food in bed, how's that?"

Give Your Ego a Kiss and Go For It

The hardest place to step out with a bad idea is at work, of course. Our fragile egos. I'd like to challenge/dare/invite work teams to say it's okay to have a shitty first draft of an idea and that no one has to waste time on any of those ass-covering preludes. Example:

A: "Who has an idea of how we can make more money on our product?"

B: "Let's stand on our heads and see if that helps."

A: "Hmm, that would hurt a few of our heads HOWEVER, maybe we can stand our plan on its head and see how we can do something so differently that we'll catch our customers' attention in a new way."

See?

Turn a Bad Idea Into Something Good

It's easy to say, "Nah, I don't like that" to the offering -- the gift -- of a first draft idea. And then you sit there with your Orphan Annie eyes blinking into the air. Next time, take the idea and use it as a place to push off from. Go in the opposite direction or take a tiny nugget or a word or a letter or a strange-seeming association to push things forward.

What if there were no bad ideas? Free your mind, let the ideas flow. As I write this post, I think of the writers and actors at Saturday Night Live -- can you imagine their idea-generating sessions?

The first "bad" idea is an important start. Consider it just the first in a procession of a string of original thought, creativity and eventual solutions.

And you might end up having a bit more fun, too.

Why Artists Aren't Workaholics

My friend Jill was recently called a workaholic by some friends.

We love pathology tags these days, don't we? But to be fair, workaholism does exist. Remember the round-the-clock work ethic of the high-tech revolution?

Here's why Jill was called a workaholic. She just became the owner of a high-end women's clothing store in Seattle, Baby & Co. She and her team have worked extremely hard to renovate the store, update it -- and this has included many after-closing hours evenings for Jill. And remarks that go like this: "You're turning into a workaholic." (The comments alone are a whole separate discussion, don't you think?)

Anyway. Jill is not just a workaholic. She is not working at a job. She's passionately involved in and committed to her work. This is life work that is highly creative (the store is a work of art, and not just the clothes); and she has a gift for connecting with women, making them feel like they're members of something special and she inspires/mentors women to walk out of her store and into the world proudly embracing their own style and OWNING IT (a Jill motto).

Hugh MacLeod has a great cartoon about the difference between being a workaholic in a job and being passionately devoted to your life's work.

When Jill stays after work to get her new store into shape -- to be her city's most beautiful store in existence -- she's not a workaholic, she's an artist.

Are you an artist or a workaholic or just punching the clock to get to the weekend?

Which one would you most like to be?

This post is brought to you fresh on the heels of reading Seth Godin's wonderful Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? He talks in great detail about being and artist in your work and out in the world.

The Fun Experiment: Who Wants More?

"I need to have more fun."

"I'm not having enough fun."

I hear these two statements a lot.

From friends, coaching clients, colleagues, all kinds of adults. I say adults because I don't think kids talk about their fun index.

And lately I've been feeling a bit of a fun deficit myself. 

Last week I had a fruitful conversation with my friend and coaching colleague Stacy, in which we started deconstructing FUN.

• What is Fun?
• Why do we all want it so much?
• Why is there such a deficit?
• What if we're actually having fun and just don't know it?
• How do people identify their type of Fun and build more of it into their lives?
• How do you make shifts when yesterday's fun is today's boredom warmed over?

And so the Fun Experiment begins.

What Is Fun?

According to the Compact Oxford English Dictionary, fun is defined, in part, as:

noun 1 light-hearted pleasure or amusement. ... 3 playfulness or good humour. adjective ... enjoyable.

For now I am personaly defining Fun as something that brings me a sense of enjoyment and gives me the feeling of wagging my tail. Usually it has a physical component. In other words, it's not a state of mind. It's more of a state of body.

I have a lot of fun by playing with others: skiing moguls and swimming my shoulders off with my masters team; trail running, writing with groups and giving workshops; running the golf course at dusk with my niece and nephew, going to a job with great people and making them laugh and write like pirates, helping people see how kick-ass creative they are, reading in bed, daydreaming out the window of a plane traveling over the Grand Canyon. I've had fun doing errands and cooking and even cleaning and purging -- definitely purging. Some of it I know is fun, some of the fun moments surprise me.

And some days, I'm just not having any fun at all. That's okay too. The plan is not to be Stepford Spouses on Xanax here.

The point is to identify what Good Fun means for each individual and each frame of life, and build on the activities that make us feel more playful, creative and tail-waggingly fun.

What If You're Having Fun and Don't Know It?

"I never lose sight of the fact that just being is fun." -- Katharine Hepburn

Part of my fun experiment is corralling what is already in existance around us. We all have full lives and most of us have created our lives with facets of things we like, we're talented at, we even love and adore; fun includes doing these activities with people we care about. Fun can be alone time. Hobbies, arts, families, work, sports.

In other words, the ingredients of  fun are  already there.

Maybe it's just learning how to use the parts of our lives in new ways. Or approach things differently. Or lose a few of the un-fun activities that we thought were fun and thread in a few new things. Purge, then add.

Like any success in life: It helps to have a goal and know where you're going and better yet -- know what that end-goal, in this case FUN looks like, feels like, tastes like, sounds like so that you're not sleep walking through the good times of life.

I'm going to start by looking at the components of Fun in my life and seeing how I can build on the successful parts and enhance my life in all kinds of positive ways.

I'm also really interested in sustainable fun. Along with the peaks and valleys of fun, what are ways to have the mountainscapes that are more undulating and consistent day in and day out?

I have to give a shout out to Gretchen Rubin's book The Happiness Project, which got me thinking about the daily life efforts and actions we take to improve our general emotional well-being. And using myself as a guinea pig which means I might actually have more fun.

So, here's to Fun, and more of it -- however you might define fun, today.

xo, t

Focus on the What, Let Go of the How

This weekend I went on one of those evening walks. "Those" = it's dusk, I'm feeling lethargic but I know it would be good to go outside and shake my bootie in the fresh air and evening light. Sometimes I'm in such a state of resistance, I change clothes a couple times before getting out the door.

But these days -- the ones I most resist -- are always the times when I bump into a beautiful suprise. A friend I haven't seen in a while, a strange cat, a cool tree -- usually it's a person I run into.

This evening it was a neighborhood woman who just became a new mom in her early 40's and has a great dispostion combo: authentically cheery, relaxed and thoughtful.

She told me how she wanted to live on the water, not by it but on it. "I don't know how it will happen," she chirped, shrugging her shoulders. Her baby was in a cloth carrier on her mom's body, facing out.

"But you know what I think," she added, "I think what's important is focusing on what you want and not knowing, or worrying about how it will happen."

I really needed to hear this. And it felt liberating.

Do you ever get so caught up in the HOW that it stuffs up your creativity, energy -- and to the point where you start to doubt the whole damn idea in the first place?

I then told her about the story of finding my first waterfront apartment. There had been incidents: looking for condos to buy, feeling indecisive about it all and visiting a friend in San Francisco. There was also a mom who sternly said "You have to make up your mind about what you want or it won't happen." I didn't like that at all. I wanted to be one of those lucky ducks who just has the happy decision drop in their laps without thinking it through. But I've never been that person. (I know one person who is and she once admitted to me it may not be the best way to live.)

So after the San Fran trip and seeing a few living spaces that made me realize how much I did not like the cold dark mahogany wood of my current space, I made a pronouncement to myself: I want to live in a 1960's building on the water with wall-to-wall pearl carpeting.

The next day, I found it.

And after that I ended up buying a condo in a building on the water. I knew what I wanted, I didn't worry about the HOWs.

Now is a pretty good time to practice that again. Know what I want and in the meantime just go about living daily life and plowing through my To Do's (which can be fun in themselves, right?).

So that's this week's mission: Know the  WHAT, keep doing what you're doing and don't ride the HOW so damn hard.

Happy Monday, happy week!

xo

Some Things I Learned in Childhood

A comfort in knee socks, the way the top of the sock touched my knee cap.

It helps to detach from self when targeted by mocking bully-ettes.

Jesus is hot! But Judas had the best songs.

Don't rock the boat.

A guitar fits perfectly under the bed and never needs to be anywhere else.

A broken wrist won't kill you. Makes good weapon.

• Running feels good -- the air against the neck and arms and body parts.
• Don't laugh in ballet class.
• Teachers don't like it when you stare out the windows during class. 
• But a good report card is a wonderful thing.
• Sports is the best escape from playmate politics.
• Closets must be closed during sleeping time or god knows what creatures will come alive and haunt the room during dream time.
• Bodies of water -- pools, oceans, lakes, ponds, baths -- are life's sweet spots.
• Winning a game of cards is a great feeling!
• Grandmothers travel with Sucrets. Yum.
• Playing piano to a metronome is no fun.
• Bed time rocks.
• The word "no" sucks.