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I recently went out for Chinese food at lunch and received what may be my favorite fortune ever — and I have received some exceptional ones in the past.
It read: A schedule defends from chaos and whim.
If you know me, you know that I schedule my life to within an inch of itself. But I do it because, frankly, it’s the only way I’ll get anything done. I have to balance a lot of different things in my life – work, projects, family time, friend time, personal time – and if I didn’t have some structure around it, everything would fall apart and nothing would get done. A good schedule keeps life — or any project therein — in balance.
So, if a schedule is a structure for living life efficiently, chaos and whim are definitely the enemies to guard against, and they can come from both within and without. Chaos is the stuff we can’t fully control and the surprises that inevitably crop up, and whims are the spontaneous impulses that, for better of for worse, can drop like anvils right onto our carefully constructed plans.
A schedule does defend from chaos and whim, but how? The secret is, it’s not the schedule itself that’s doing that hard work — that’s just slotting activities into specific times. The heart of a schedule is the intangible structure that brackets it — the real target of chaos and whim. The stronger these reinforcements are, the better your schedule will fare.
What else helps a schedule succeed? How else can we defend from chaos and whim?
I saw this chart on GraphJam, and it made me sad:
I remember my own dinosaur phase: toys, books, the whole works. For years, I toted around a small, glow-in-the-dark dinosaur I bought at a museum gift shop. (His name was Glowy.)
Of course, now, I don’t tote around dinosaur paraphernalia, and those books are long ago donated or discarded. My fascination with dinosaurs abated.
Why is this? Sure, all kids go through obsessions — I went through an astronomy phase and a cartoonist phase, myself — but dinosaurs cut across the whole spectrum. A dinosaur phase seems to be a universal touchstone of the kid experience.
But at a certain point, dinosaurs cease to be relevant. They are extinct, after all, and though they were once quite real, they now feel more like the stuff of fantasy. Astronomy or cartooning might continue to have relevance in our lives, be it as a hobby or career path. But very few people can carve either of those paths out of a love of dinosaurs.
But maybe we should.
Not that we should all become paleontologists, but maybe we should remember how and why we loved dinosaurs and carry some of that into whatever our lives end up becoming — and maybe not entirely let go of that dinosaur fixation, after all.
I think there are a few essential components to this universal childhood fascination:
To close a post like this, there’s only one appropriate question: what is your favorite dinosaur and why?
(Note that I don’t ask “what was your favorite dinosaur.” I know you remember, and I know it still holds true. Mine? Brachiosaurus.)
P.S. After you post your favorite dinosaur, you should listen to my friend Brandi’s song, “The Dinosaur,” as it represents some of what is discussed above.
I use to sheath my Blackberry in a protective silicone casing. Nowadays, that skin long shed, I am proud of its chips, its scuffs, even its scratches. I think of them as battle scars from a life lived on the go and on the web. My Blackberry has survived being dropped, punted and thrown around more times than I care to recount — but always with love.
I got my Blackberry last June, finally joining the smartphone world. I opted for the Blackberry over the iPhone because I couldn’t give up the idea of typing. I’ve typed my whole life; my fingers are used to the tactile feedback of buttons and keys. My iPad has enlightened me to a world of swiping, flipping and dragging, but I still love thumbing away on my Blackberry.
Over time, my Blackberry has transformed the way I conduct my personal business. It’s become an on-the-go office and production studio. I can catch up on Twitter, Facebook, e-mail, the news, even my blogs. I’ve drafted blog posts, responded to e-mails, planned my schedule for the week, posted to my mobile photo blog, shot and uploaded video, checked in on Foursquare, you name it. It’s hardy, versatile and, to me, essential.
Increasingly, though, it is feeling obsolete. And no matter how much abuse I heap upon it, it may be its own worst enemy, in the end.
It’s an iPhone and Android world nowadays, and much has been made of Blackberry’s relative absence from the fast-paced revolution currently taking place in the mobile phone space (though they’re apparently developing a competitor to the iPad).
The Blackberry still has its evangelists, of course, whether it’s via a post on Workshifting, which reveals the Blackberry as the authoring tool of choice for a successful author and a flashy rapper, or the paparazzi snapping a pic of Kim Kardashian BBMing away. (Don’t laugh — for many, BBM is an essential communications channel, and RIM is beginning to capitalize on this with its marketing.) Major apps like Evernote are still supporting and enhancing their Blackberry versions. Three of Consumer Reports‘ five recommended smartphones for “office-like tasks” are Blackberries.
For years, Blackberry has thrived in its niche market — the busy person on the go who needs 24/7 access to e-mail. But on so many fronts — especially app availability, usability and web browsing — Blackberry is falling behind, and I am afraid that I will have no choice but to switch camps.
Why? Two main reasons:
RIM is banking a lot on OS version 6.0, which debuted with the recent release of the Blackberry Torch (reportedly with significant enhancements to the UI and browsing experience), but it remains to be seen whether that will vault Blackberry back into relevance, or merely tide us RIM devotees over until the end of our contracts, when we might be tempted to jump ship.
I don’t want that day to come. I don’t want a fragile iPhone 4, and while Android phones are indeed drool-worthy, I’m on a family plan and might be locked into AT&T for the foreseeable future (plus, AT&T’s Android options predictably suck). But I don’t want to be left behind either.
I love my Blackberry. It’s been dependable and nigh invincible, given how brutally I treat it, and that hardiness has bred some severe loyalty. I’d like to see another smartphone survive being spiked into the sidewalk or drop-kicked across my office. Plus, I still love my keyboard.
Come on, RIM. If you’re really Research In Motion, let’s get moving in the right direction. There’s got to be a middle ground somewhere.
Stephen Biernacki, a friend and fellow music aficionado from the higher ed Twitterverse, recently posted pics of the fortune cookie fortunes that, as he put it, “honest and motivated while working from home.”
As I read his post, my eye wandered to the half-dozen such fortunes I have tacked up on my computer monitor at work:
Sure, it’s just words printed on a piece of paper slipped inside a mass-produced food product (I’ve seen it done in person!), but affirmation has come from stranger places. I like to surround myself with these little truths, when I find them, to remind me of both their inherent message as well as the fact that nuggets of inspiration are all around us.
Which fortune cookie words of wisdom stick with you, either literally (on your monitor) or in your mind?
Disclaimer: While I love a good fortune, I can’t stand the actual cookie. If we go out for Chinese food together, you’ll be in luck.
