Tag: late

Categories
Blog Post

Priorities and Boundaries Concerning Meetings – The Small Decisions That Affect Them

Don’t forget the small decisions

I am a big fan of calendaring these days. 15 to 30 minutes on Sunday allow me to keep track of the incoming and outgoing quite efficiently.

With that said, I noticed something when I started keeping track of the meetings and my lateness (by paying for everyone’s food/drink. If you want to remember something add a pain point). I realized that small decisions made after the meeting created more tardiness than any other decision.

  • More than the train
  • More than getting up late
  • More than making sure I complete my habits

What is a small decision post-meeting?

It’s the little discussions that happen after the meeting finishes, after “closing remarks” that keep it going.

Some examples:

  • Follow up details for the next meeting
  • Clearing up misunderstandings
  • Goodbyes

All of these things are critical to maintaining a relationship, and all of them quietly add a few minutes. It takes a meeting from 4 – 4:30 and makes it 4 – 4:45.

So, when scheduling a meeting, make sure you either:

  • Establish boundaries before the meeting and state that there is a hard out earlier than necessary to get out
  • Add padding to your schedule to account for it (if you didn’t set the meeting)
Categories
Blog Post

Late but…

Doing something is better than nothing

The alarm clock is going off.

This sounds regular, but this time, you have a sinking feeling. This feeling doesn’t feel right. You look at the clock.

Suspicion confirmed, late again.

You kick off your blanket and swear like it could slow down the clock.

After you tumble into the shower, you grab your toothbrush and start to multitask as if your life depends on it.

From here, you have two options:

  • Run out the door as soon as possible
  • Do the rest of your morning routine, but in a rushed and shortened way. 

Your best bet for having a smooth day lies in the second, counter-intuitive option.

You are late. 5 – 10 more minutes late won’t end the world.

Use that time to find a center with your routine.

It’s not perfect, and you won’t cross all the T’s or dot all the I’s, but your rhythm will fit.

The reason for this is that our brain works on rhythm (or system one thinking) to get through the day. It doesn’t take much for the brain to feel comfortable, merely starting the habit gets the brain where it needs to go.

When you don’t get to the habit, then you spend energy. That’s why the rest of the late day feels terrible; your body is trying to compensate. 

Something is better than nothing at all.

Categories
Blog Post

Getting Bad At Being Good – My Late Problem

[bctt tweet=”So, instead of getting better at bad, I am getting bad at good.”]

Being late is rude, but I do it often.

For something that I do not do consciously, it has consequences, and it hurts people.

One thing I have recognized about being late is that it’s a chain of events unless deliberate.

Lets take a look at a morning where I start late.

After settling in for sleep (something I cherish), I wake up. I slept through the alarm on my phone . After looking at my phone with some disappointment, I browse through the “critical apps” (Facebook, Twitter,UGH!). I just recognize that I didn’t start my say on the right foot, and as soon as I get out of bed, I start to do some late math.

Late math, a term I am creating just for this blog, is the math you do when you need to start adding and subtracting habits to make up the time you missed. In project management, they call the things you can’t remove tasks on the critical path. Late Math is getting to the critical path on the fly.

[bctt tweet=”Late math is the math you do when you need to start adding and subtracting habits “]

For example,in the morning, I always make my bed. After that, my journaling and breakfast can get thrown out, they are nice to have but not critical. Showering and getting dressed are pretty critical – if I am going anywhere, I better be dressed, smelling good, and ready.

[bctt tweet=” My life has improved leaps and bounds since I started doing coaching”]

Which leads to another late ethic – if I am late, I better be ready. No need being unkempt while being late. Would you rather be 5 minutes late and be disheveled or 15 minutes and look professional? Ten minutes on your appearance is worth every second.

These two ethics around being late highlight my experience, and I although I can manage, It is something that I want to get a hold of. So, instead of getting better at bad, I am getting bad at good.

 

Solutions

  • Setting my clocks early/ differently – I always hit the snooze button on audio alarms – if I even hear them. I found out about alarms that use light, and even those aren’t effective because I use a sleep mask to enhance  my sleep. So, I am getting a vibrating alarm clock (Just ordered a fitbit) and track how it helps.
  • Making events in my calendar – I let my calendar lapse, I hardly ever update it. When I do, it helps, especially with alarms, and if I can find a way to get that connected to a fitbit – lookout :p)
  • Hiring an expert – Coaching always helps. My life has improved leaps and bounds since I started doing coaching for my emotional well-being(therapy) and artist being (Thanks Mark!).
Categories
Blog Post

Late Starts and Progress

It isn’t ever to late to start. Things happen, and mistakes made. As human beings nothing is perfect and bad things that ruin your schedule are unavoidable. Just like when things were good everything fell into place, bad things can pop up and ruin your day. It is easy then, to throw in the towel, and assume that the work will happen tomorrow.

When I make this promise to myself, I rarely calculate the next days work, and soon I fall behind.Time is a finite resource, and it is something we can’t get back. My default behavior is to ignore this and push things off to later. What I have noticed though, when I do something else, positive things happen.

When I change that behavior from pushing it off to showing up anyway, good things happen. Some get stuck in the past, but by showing up, you are still moving forward.

That is all you can do,show up. Even after everything started without you – show up.

You don’t show up for anyone else benefit – you show up for your own. The work has to get done, regardless of what happened before hand.  It’s about progress – nothing else.

 

Categories
Blog Post

Under the Wire

Even if its late, it still counts…right?

Categories
Blog Post

Lateness

I have a serious problem with being late.

It isn’t ever the lateness though – meaning, it isn’t just how late I am to meetings – its a complex thing.

That one piece happens to be the piece in the middle of my lateness, something that happens as result of my actions and thoughts earlier – and it is also the thing that creates the situations that happen after.

Identifying this cycle – working from the start to end is a journey – but self awareness is always the first step.

A brief look:

1) I pick a time for an event
2) I try to guess exactly how long it takes to get there
3) I fill in the time, using the Parkinson’s Law
4) I don’t factor in buffer time
5) I am late
6) I start to rush and make mistakes
7) I become guilty
8) I hide from my guilt
9) I break trust from hiding
10) Repeat 1 – 9

Now that this is identified, I think I will proceed to try to fight these things, one by one – wish me luck.

Categories
Blog Post

Morning People

Mornings can be fun.

Or mornings can be messy.

I usually find myself in the second category. I am an evening person, and of course – my stand up exacerbates that. Stuck in the matrix of the lights of the city streets.

That is a shame though – because mornings are the part of the day that can be most regulated with a little will power.

Think about it – You have a schedule, whether it is written down or remembered, with things stuck in places where they cannot be moved.

In the morning, no one schedules anything. You are usually left alone. You have a chance to work.

So it is something I want to work on – lets see where my progress goes.

Categories
Blog Post

Figuring Things Out

I didn’t arrive to work late this morning, however, I did get up late. I did better than Wednesday and Thursday. That is to say there is improvement. I feel pretty content in that part of it at least. The only bad part is I didn’t get a chance to knock out my post before I left work.

Its funny, before I took the time off, I would have thought that the office was the best place to write. It was where I am used to working, and I got a nice set up with two monitors and a pretty decent PC. With that said, after working at home, I got to enjoy the peace it offers.

There was some serious silence and I could do some serious thought with the posts. As I am in the office now, I have a coworker talking to me, a desk full of trinkets in front of me, and I know at any time I could be pulled away to do something that would take me away from getting this done.

So – while I am happy I have this all set up for me to work, I would prefer to get all my writing done before I get into the office. This makes my 2 hours before leaving work a little more important now, and I also know I should appreciate it a bit more.

With today’s improvement I am still sleepy. I have to crack open a red bull, and I am starting to consider that a failure. I really want my sleep to be effective. With great sleep comes great work.

I fell asleep at around 1 again last night, although I did it right, I got water and a CPAP, I would like to get that down to 11:30, so waking up at 7 gives me close to 8 hours of full rest. The CPAP helps me maximize my sleep while I am in bed, but I would love it if I can add the sleep plus the CPAP.

If I leave the house at 9:02 I catch the same 3 train. Although the ride is nicer than the 2 train, I end up at the PATH station 2 minutes too late to catch the train to get me to work right before 10 AM. I arrive at work around 10 05 – 10 10, but I would prefer to in before 10 to please anyone that is watching.

I feel like I will get better at this, because with each habit, I am getting better. I am noticing the flaws, and making small subtle improvements with them. So, with that said, I feel like next month I will be making better use of my time.

Well, at least when I get here at work it is causal Friday.

Simplifying my day is important to me. I am starting to become a real believer that if I get my pile of work down, and i can choose 2 or 3 things to work on per day, Ill be able to turn in and finish a lot of things that I have sitting here.

I want to do this, not because I love the company, but I see everything currently as temporary. I do think that all of my habits are currently going to carry on with me as I move on in life, so getting them perfected, especially my work habits, will ensure that I am never in too rough a place.

I want to be somewhere where I can relax mentally, without looking over my shoulder and worrying when the next bad thing is going to happen to me. These habits have helped me find some sort of peace.

I have left work everyday this week without fearing that it will all go wrong. That in turn makes me not hate this job so much. Even though I plan on leaving this place in a few years, I do want this to be as smooth sailing as I can possibly get.

I cleaned my desk last night 30 minutes before I left. I think I will try to end my day doing that, simplifying my work space as much as possible. My goal is to have the most simple, pure workplace, filled with fun, but as organized as I can get it.

This goes directly against everything I have ever done in life. I used to revel in disorganization. It gave me a sense of pride – look, I can just throw everything around and still get things done. Every time I would try to organize, it felt forced, like someone was making me do it, and in turn, i started to hate authority.

That hate for authority really slowed me down as a person, because I threw away many opportunity’s just to give a big fuck you to anyone who would “stand in my way”.

As I get older, I realize the mistakes in my ways. I realize that for the most part, the world doesn’t owe me anything or is out to get me. In fact, the world mostly doesn’t care.

Anything I do to hurt me just hurts me in the long run. What I am saying is, whenever I put that obstacle in my way, I only made myself worse. I hurt myself twice, one in disappointing the person who was – for the most part – just trying to look out for me, and two myself for fearing my own success and failure. Which, I am learning, is really the same thing.

There is no getting over the hump if the hump is just you. So around my 26th birthday I figured a lot of this out. Now my goal is to improve what I have and make sure I go into my 30th birthday with something I can build on.

There is no getting over the hump if the hump is just you.

Do: CPAP, Push ups,Night Wrap up,To-do, Water, 3 Things
Don’t: 16/8 , Vegetable Juice, Meditation, Thank you

Categories
Blog Post

Trying to be Smooth

I was late again this morning. I got out of bed at 8 15, which is something that I wanted to avoid. It is a full hour over when I should be getting up, which resulted in a late start at work, something that I still need to figure out how to get out of.

I feel like I am slipping when this happens. I was able Tuesday to get out the gate here at work, and start working as soon as I got it. It was a good feeling, even if I had nothing to really do. I see the difference with how I work when I have a clean palate in the morning, and I tend to be distracted when I don’t.

No rest for the weary. I have to keep up with this, and do it everyday. If I can make it for a month, Ill be able to latch onto it. I am quite happy with a clear slate for a month. If I can do that, who knows what I will be able to think up and get accomplished. Just have to execute.

With that said, I was a little tired when I woke up. My sleep times have been creeping towards 1, with no practical reason to be up that late. I would like to train myself to sleep at 1 and wake up at 7 due to me maybe being on late night, but for now, there is no reason to be up that late. I may not even get it. So, I will be monitoring my sleep times, and pushing them back to a healthier 12 and maybe 11 some nights to make sure I am well rested for the upcoming day.

I am currently redrawing my lines for the workplace. I find that while I am good with a clean room, and I see it spreading to a clean house, my office space is still a mess. I want to be able to come to work in a clean area, and I am not doing it.

Clean area, clean mind. It is where I want to be in all aspects of my life, so I have to start getting it in all areas of my life.

Why be good in one area and not good in another. I have to establish some office habits to improve my work habits. The rest of this week will be devoted to researching what I actually do. I want this to be smooth sailing just like my mornings and evenings are becoming.

I will be breaking this down into morning office and night office routines. I will be bringing my coffee and pills over and try to make it a habit of getting things together here in the office. Making a smooth transition from beginning and ending an office day.

I want to make this work…

Therapy last night was very good. I got to discuss some of the things that have been bothering me at work. Not being able to work from home has been a bit of a hamper on my work schedule. I would also like to know when or if I am getting the raise I was due.

I have to make waves in getting some of this stuff done. I realized some of this is my fault, but I need to get that part under control. From there I can get a smoother office experience.

The other half, and maybe the whole session really, was based in my fear of speaking to people. I can do it fine when I am drunk, or oddly enough, I can do it great when I am in person next to people. What I am not good at is calling and re-connection. It is keeping the stove warm in relationships that eludes me. I have this internal fear that people don’t want to speak to me, and I rationalize it when I don’t call.

Adding automation to this I think, is imperative for me to be better at it. If I am forced in the conversations, I will be better at talking, even if it is something simple as a text. I have to talk to people. I have to make connections.

If I can sync this up, ill be stronger in everything else I try to accomplish. Discipline.

Its hot today, and I guess summer is here. I also guess that my electricity bill will be quite high in the coming months. I want to compensate as much as possible with the roommate situation. A little more money will help me a bit in getting this other stuff under control.

I probably will be running my air conditioner all summer long with no breaks in between. I know that it will be a tad more expensive, but peace of mind is worth the price. I remember the summer I moved to the city, and it was quite hot. I just had a box fan, and for the most part, my apartment was miserable. I hated being home, and I hated my apartment until late September.

I have a lot more people living in my apartment now, so I better keep it cool.

Comedy at Bar None today, and I want to work and get back into the rotation there. I need to get the habit of being in places every Thursday, and Zito’s show and the Pear once a month isn’t cutting it. I need to add maybe two more shows every Thursday.

I want to build another skill, and I think I am adding Vine to my list of things. Even if I stink, I would like to have a body of work for people to look at. I might as well get on the ground floor because I have an iPhone.

If no one cares now I can scrap it in the future. What is the worst that can happen.

Do: 16/8 | CPAP | Wrap Up | 3 Things | Push Ups | Water
Don’t: To Do | Vegetable Juice | Thank You | Meditation

Categories
Blog Post

Wake up Comedy

I woke up a little late this morning. It was odd, because I woke up without an alarm clock at 6:30 AM.I felt somewhat refreshed, but, as my lizard brain will sometimes do, see it wasn’t time to get up yet and went back to sleep.

I ended up getting up at 7:45. Pretty much 45 minutes after my alarm went off. I was not that much more refreshed, but another hour was subtracted from my day, and I was no better for it.

Even so this late was acceptable. Earlier this could have been 8:45 and I would be where I am now an hour later, explaining to my boss what happened, instead of getting here at 10 on the dot, with some morning stuff accomplished. I got a chance to get my video to start to upload on youtube, connected my zune to my PC, and got a driver app downloading so maybe i can fix my laptop.

Even with the lateness, I am starting to see how valuable my mornings can be, if I just build off of them. In the future, I hope to build off this. I would like to train my ind to think of the morning as something that is a bit more conductive to creative work, as opposed to time to just get ready for work and wallow in it.

I appreciate the forward motion this morning gave me. Even when I faced some setbacks, like my eye rejecting my contact. I am starting to get the feeling that there is another contact. Simply, I am becoming less afraid to throw something away when there is an alternative.

I like this mindset. It is me being a bit more mindful of what I am doing, and realizing that some of this stuff should be thrown away. I don’t see it as waste when abandoning something will give me time to do something more productive.

I like forward motion. I feel like I am establishing some serious habits that will translate themselves into something late rin life. I plan on working alone, and having the creative time to make things happen is a big part of that making me not have to go back to the 9-5 world, when it is that time to go.

Establishing connection is interesting and scary. Yesterday I talked to two people I haven’t spoken to before over facebook, for no other reason than to establish connection. I really hate the pit of the stomach feeling I get when I do this though.

It is there becuase I think no one wants to speak to me. I don’t know when this developed, but I do know that it has hampered my life. I automatically assume the worst in every conversation, and when I do talk, I always assume that i am going to say something that puts the other person ill at ease, and ruin friendships with my words.

It sounds completely rediculous, because it is. It always strikes me when people do want to speak to me. Phil says I am a good conversationalist and I can network really well, and I see it completely the opposite. I feel like I am not built to sit there and do small talk. When I look at him do it, he seems to really be able to just discuss things with candor to the next person.

He may do it to just random people on the street, but he is good at it. Me, I am scared to even talk to people at meetups and cocktail parties unless I had a few to “loosen me up”.

It s why I reached out to someone on FB, a comic I met around here from Boston, just to open a bridge of communication. I want to talk to someone I haven’t talked to in forever, at least on e person a day, to build some relationships with the people I have on Facebook. I am hoping from there I can do it in the real world too.

I need to be able to pitch, talk, and discuss a lot more efficiently if I want to make myself a brand.

I got my comedy tape from Caroline’s back last night. It was from the second set of my Friday night there in January. It felt pretty bad when I did it, and I expected to see the results of it when I got a look at it. What I saw really wasn’t half bad.

I stood and took the punches. One of the things that Phil used to tell me, along with Zo, was that I bail on things. When I looked at the tape there, I stuck on to everything I had. Regardless if anything landed or not, I went right to the next joke.

I looked more like a professional, and even if the jokes weren’t hitting as hard as they should,I looked like I belonged up there. I didn’t appear to be an impostor, but an actual comedian. Body language means a lot, and I had the body language of a confident man, even if I felt like I wasn’t doing so great.

A few things I got from that video though.Jokes need tightening up. I lingered a lot in my jokes. There is some air there that needs to be cleaned up. MY stuff lately has been good at removing that air, and dropping laughs in rather quickly. Ill see when I do a set this weekend and tape.

I think I am one good set away from having something that is worth submitting to any festival. I just need it to be at a comedy club and I will be golden. There is growth there.

Frankie is coming back in a week or so. It will be good to see him. Haven’t been around him in a few years. It is good to see he has graduated and it is good to see him employed. Good to have an old friend back.

do: wrap up, push ups, 3 things, CPAP
don’t: Thank You, 16/8, water, vegetable juice, meditation, to-do

Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started