Book Review: The Family (B.M. Palmer / J.W. Alexander) December 23, 2009
Posted by Matt in Books, Christian, Christianity, reviews.Tags: Books, Christianity, family, Theology
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This is probably going to go down as the book that’s had the biggest influence on me in 2009. Though it should be said that it’s actually two books in one volume, published by Sprinkle Publications, a publishing house in Virginia which specialises in old Christian books from the 1800s, which they reprint in beautiful hardbound facsimile editions.
The first book in this volume is The Family In Its Civil And Churchly Aspects by Benjamin Palmer, pastor of First Presbyterian in New Orleans in 1876. It’s split into two parts. The first part explains how the Biblical model of family (monogamous husband and wife, with children) is at the very core of society.
Because God has created the institution of families, children grow up learning how to obey authority, how to treat each other kindly, in an environment with just the right mix of affection and discipline – thus preparing them to be model citizens of society.
He then goes on to expound this point with a chapter devoted to each role in the family (husband, wife, parents, children, and – most controversially – servants).
I must admit, I was expecting a book from 1876 to be full of cringeworthy advice along the lines of, “The husband calls the shots. The wife does blindly whatever she’s told. The children obey or get smacked.” I’m not sure why I thought this was the standard view of the 19th century – but that’s what I was expecting.
However, I was amazed at one of the most balanced descriptions of marriage and parenting that I’ve ever read. The chapter on the authority of parents is worth the price of admission in and of itself.
The second part of Palmer’s book on the church was a little bit less convincing for me, because I had more trouble tracing his line of thought, compared with the first part. I understand that he sees family as showing us something of the relationship of Christ and the church, but it wasn’t made as clear as the first part. Still worth a read, though.
After a very strong first book, I thought the second book in this volume would have to be a strong contender to match it. It was.
Thoughts on Family-Worship by James Alexander (pastor of a Presbyterian Church in New York) and originally written in 1847, is the most sustained and passionate argument for families to worship together in their homes that I’ve ever read.
Chapter by chapter, Alexander hammers home at families (especially fathers) that they should be gathering their family every day to read the Bible, sing praises to God and pray together. He spells out the benefits for fathers, for children, for families, for what it does in hard times, for how it benefits society, how it benefits the church, etc. etc.
While there are bits here and there that may be legalistic (for instance, I’m not sure where Alexander gets the idea that kneeling is the only legitimate position for praying), but the overall vision that he paints of what could be achieved in the church and amongst Christians if we took the time to focus on God every day (and he’s arguing for morning and night, by the way) is challenging and inspiring. It made me realise that if many of these old stalwarts of the faith were to show up in 2009, they might think those of us calling ourselves Christians are a bit soft . . .
Anyway, I didn’t need to read very far in the book, before I got back in the habit of gathering my family together and reading the Bible and praying straight after dinner. I’m not sure how many of my Christian friends (especially those who are fathers), would make the time to read two books written in somewhat flowery language from the 1800s, but the ideas in this book have given me the most refreshing re-think about my family that I’ve had in years.
5 out of 5.
Book Review: The Impotent Argument Against Biblical Baptism (W.A. Mackay) December 23, 2009
Posted by Matt in Books, Christianity, Theology.Tags: baptism, Books, Christianity, Theology
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I’ve done some reading off and on about this subject over the years, but the old question of baptism by immersion vs sprinkling popped up on my radar again, so I decided to read this very short little book that had somehow ended up on my shelf.
It’s very short, but immensely helpful.
It was written in 1884, by presumably a Presbyterian Minister – though all we’ve got is his initials and last name to go by – W.A. Mackay. While I’m not sure of the exact circumstances surrounding this book’s publication – the situation is remarkably similar to our own time.
Basically, as the author states in his opening section, you could go 20 or 30 years in a Presbyterian / Reformed church and never once hear a sermon on why we baptise by sprinkling or pouring vs immersion. Meanwhile, the Baptists of the day (the same as now) were making it quite clear to the Christian world that they didn’t consider anything other than an adult immersion baptism as a valid baptism. And considering that is the sign of being a Christian (according to Baptist theology), it’s a serious charge to level.
So Mackay sets out to finish the issue. The book is divided into two parts – the first half is dealing with the sprinkling vs immersion issue. The immersion section was excellent, because it looked at the the original Hebrew/Greek words (which is ultimately where you need to go) and also highlighted some of the reasons why Baptists were misunderstanding the Reformers’ position (which is also important). The section on infant baptism was good as well, but I still prefer the book Children of the Promise by Randy Booth for the best discussion on that particular topic. (However, the Booth book doesn’t touch immersion vs sprinkling, so the Mackay is still a great one-volume treatment.)
After reading this, I went and had a flick through the Baptist book I’d read back when my eldest daughter was little. At the time, I hadn’t been convinced by the Baptist argument, and I’m still not.
I understand how they arrive at their position, and I understand why it makes sense to them. I also believe that it’s not the make-or-break point of Christianity. But I’d encourage everyone – Baptist or Reformed alike – to make sure they understand the theology behind this sacrament, because if there’s one thing you can’t ignore – it’s that baptism is an important sign.
To try to ignore it and pretend that it doesn’t really matter is missing out on a really spectacular ritual that God has given to us.
5 out of 5.
DVD Review: Broken Blossoms December 12, 2009
Posted by Matt in DVD, Film.Tags: broken blossoms, DVD, dw griffith, Film, lillian gish, silent film
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No 7 on the 1001 Films list . . . I don’t like my chances of seeing the whole lot, but I’m enjoying the ones I do see.
As we’re in the tale end of the 19-teens (1919, to be precise), it’s mainly DW Griffith that’s getting a look in. I’ve already reviewed his Birth of a Nation and the brilliant Intolerance, but this film, Broken Blossoms, goes to show that he could make films that ran for less than three hours that were just as compelling. Much as I love long films, there’s something to be said for something brief and effective.
The plot on this one is really simple. A Chinese man (Richard Barthelmess) decides to come to the West with the ideal hopes of teaching white men about the truths of Buddhism. When we cut to three years later, he’s living in London, running a knick-knack shop by today and spending his nights in a depressed cloud of smoke at the local opium den. Meanwhile, our other main character is Lucy (Lillian Gish), the abused daughter of a boxer by the name of Battling Burrows.
The story is really about these two lost souls connecting with each other, and the consequences that come about from it.
There are some slightly disturbing elements to this film. For starters, none of the main Asian characters are played by Asians. Also, typical of Griffith’s films, the characters have more symbolic names, rather than real characters. The story is not about real people, but about larger than life emotions. So thus Richard Barthelmess’ character is referred to simply as the Yellow Man (but there is a name above his shop, for those who look closely). There’s also the element that the Lucy character is only 15-years-old, so while he treats her a lot more nicely than her violent father does, isn’t there something seedy about his intentions as well? The film attempts to deflect this by making quite clear that nothing physical happened between them, but the question is still there.
However, if you can put all that aside, you will get sucked right into this film because, as usual, Griffith is the master of emotional manipulation. He knows instinctively which scenes make our blood boil, and which make them melt, and they’re all thrown into this film. Scenes of troubling viciousness (even by today’s standards) are placed alongside scenes of tenderness, and if you give into it, it will move you.
Probably of all his films I’ve seen so far, this one gets to the core emotions the fastest and plays them the loudest, thus setting a trend for Hollywood of what it is that engages an audience’s emotions as they watch a film. Emotional manipulation of the highest order.
4 out of 5.
Film composers lose luster December 9, 2009
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Film Review: Collision December 1, 2009
Posted by Matt in Apologetics, Atheism, Christianity, Film.Tags: Atheism, Christianity, films
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I was rather excited that this film got a theatrical release, because I’d heard about it a few weeks ago and it was pretty much going straight to DVD. But Dendy Newtown brought it out for one night (albeit courtesy of a church in the area who sprung a Q&A on us after the film was over).
The story behind this documentary is that Christopher Hitchens, the prominent atheist – an Englishman residing in Washington DC – wrote a book a few years back called God Is Not Great – Why Religion Poisons Everything. From what I understand, in 2007, he invited any religious people who wanted to debate him to come and have a go. Many people have, and for most people who are unprepared, I think he’s pretty much eaten them alive.
Somewhere in the middle of all this, in 2007, a Reformed pastor from a place called Moscow in Idaho (how bizarre is that?) called Douglas Wilson, decided to take Hitchens on and so the two men had an online debate on www.christianitytoday.com. It’s also not mentioned anywhere, but Doug wrote a reply to Christopher’s book called God Is. How Christianity Explains Everything. Anyway, they collected the back and forth debate into a small book called Is Christianity Good For The World? and then someone got the smart idea of sending the two of them on a debate / book launch tour.
This film is a documentary that covers those three days on the road. For 90 minutes, we watch them debate, sign books, drink beer, ride in taxis, ride in limos, debate, followed by more conversations in cars. And somewhere in there they got a helicopter ride as well.
Considering that there were about three two-hour debates in there (from what I could work out watching the film), there is no way in 90 minutes, you’re really getting the full weight of either of their arguments. And the filmmakers don’t try. Director Darren Doane deliberately steered the film away from being about getting one message across or another and instead tried to make it, as much as possible, about the conflict between the two men. (This does lead to some slightly corny slo-mo scenes where Hitchens and Wilson are filmed in split screen, with gangster rap over the top, to make it look like Theists In Da Hood. But as one friend told me, at least if gave your mind a brief rest before the next round of debating took off.)
What of the arguments themselves? I’ll let you track the film down for yourself – you can get it from Amazon.com – to see the full thing, but as far as I could tell, Christopher Hitchens was arguing the case – most of the time – that Christianity (or religion in general) was just an extra crutch people were trying to use to prop up morality (which could exist quite fine on its own) and that, in fact, it had produced quite the opposite. (You’ll hear the killing of the Amalekites mentioned on quite a few occasions.) I’m sure if we’d seen more of the debate, we’d have come across other objections such as Christanity being unscientific, relies on the supernatural, etc.
Douglas Wilson, on the other hand, was using what’s known as a “presuppositional” argument. He’s right up front in assuming that there is no such thing as neutrality, there’s no “neutral” platform to stand on and engage with facts – instead you have a set of preconceptions. So he’s quite comfortable with believing the Bible is true, and then building his entire worldview around that. The rest of his argument was then pointing out that, if you adopt a certain set of assumptions, you have to live by them. For instance, if you believe, as an atheist, that everything evolved by chance and that there is no rhyme and reason to why we’re here, then you can’t really have any set reason for assuming objective moral standards. You can make some up, to make your life easier, but there’s no reason that they should be true for everyone in the whole world – if we’re all random bits of protoplasm.
Which turned out to be the chink in Hitchen’s armour. It started to clog up the last 30 minutes of the film, but Wilson seized onto the fact that Hitchens kept wanting to use moral terms against Christianity (“It’s a wicked cult”, etc) without giving any justification for his morals (apart from that we “intuitively feel” that certain things are right and wrong). That’s still not likely to convince somebody to become a Christian (human nature is that we like to have justice, but we don’t really like the idea of a God breathing down our neck that we have to answer for), but for me, it’s enough that I could never be an atheist. I couldn’t live with the level of uncertainty that they have to have.
I don’t know that you’d claim that anyone “won” the film, but I would say that Hitchens probably carried the argument for the first hour of the film, because he’s a very good public speaker. Wilson, on the other hand, seemed to be thinking of so many things at once, that his thoughts would come out a bit fast and furious. Also, because Wilson makes no bones about assuming that the Bible is true, when he starts talking about something like Jesus prophesying the fall of Jerusalem in 70AD, I’m sure it would have sounded quite foreign to non-Christian ears. (Hitchens’ body language at that point certainly conveyed that he felt like he was stuck next to the village idiot.) However, over time, this becomes a bit of a strength, and we watch (especially in the non-debating moments) as Wilson is actually teaching Hitchens things about the Bible that he never really knew before.
The last scene of the film is also quite an interesting one, albeit it for no other reason, than it proves yet again that alcohol brings thing out that we cover up in our everyday conversation. I won’t spoil it for you, but it shows that there may be other things going on that are underneath the level of the positions being argued.
To finish, the best thing about this film was simply that I got to get together with a bunch of friends on the Christian side of things and on the atheist/agnostic side of things and have great conversations afterwards. That doesn’t happen very often in our polite, Aussie society where religion and politics are off the table, so I was very grateful to Hitchens, Wilson and co. for the opportunity to have the discussion.
4 1/2 out of 5.
Book Review: Collected Short Stories of Roald Dahl November 14, 2009
Posted by Matt in Books, Novels, reviews.Tags: Books, Novels, reviews, roald dahl, short stories
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I must admit, it’s been a while since I’ve read any of Roald Dahl’s kids books, but I’ve thoroughly enjoyed ploughing through this large collection of short stories. (There’s about 5 books crammed into one here.)
After a while, you start to get the hang of Dahl’s formula, but it’s a fun formula with endless variety (like classical music, really), so it doesn’t get boring.
What he tends to do in all of his tales is start with a very close attention to detail, all of it quite believable. This is because within a couple of pages, he’s going to introduce something totally off-the-wall into the story – and you’re going to buy it completely, because he tells the tale in such a matter-of-fact way.
So when a doctor starts explaining that if your brain and a connecting eyeball were removed from a body after death, you could effectively live forever – it sounds like quite a reasonable idea. When the scientist experiments with his sound machine that can hear ultra-high-pitched sounds, it seems quite plausible that he’d hear tiny screaming coming from the roses being cut in the garden next door.
You can also usually guarantee that there will be some sort of satisfying twist at the end as well.
And so it goes through a huge mixed bag of stories. The only time the collection drags a bit is in the book Over To You, which consists of short war stories. Because these don’t have the element of the fantastic which characterises the others – in fact, most of Dahl’s writing – they’re not as memorable.
But, on the whole, this is a highly amusing collection of short stories for grown ups, and anybody who loved Dahl as a young person isn’t going to be disappointed.
4 out of 5.
DVD Review: Om Shanti Om November 3, 2009
Posted by Matt in DVD, Film, reviews.Tags: bollywood, DVD, Film, om shanti om, review
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I have been planning to review this film for about two years, but have only finally gotten around to it. This was the very first Bollywood film I ever saw. I’m not sure why – but one Monday night I got out of work early and found out that a local cinema was showing a Bollywood film called Om Shanti Om. I didn’t know too much about it, but at 2 hrs 50 mins (plus interval), it seemed like I’d get my money’s worth.
Never having seen a Bollywood, I knew roughly that I could expect it to be long and have lots of musical numbers in the middle of it. I’d also heard they were somewhat over the top.
Actually, the correct phrase is: It’s utter cheese from beginning to end.
However, I’m not adverse to cheese on occasions, and let me tell you – this is some of the most sincere, enthusiastic cheese I’ve seen in ages.
When the Americans make a big-budget film with lots of craziness and a paper-thin plot, everyone’s a bit embarrassed and self-conscious that they’re making a dumb movie. (Just watch all the big-name actors when they had to do a special effects blockbuster.)
But not so the Indians. The main lead, Shah Ruhk Khan (the Brad Pitt of Bollywood) chews up the screen in a performance that is so badly over-acted that you can’t help but getting sucked into it.
Meanwhile, his female lead, Deepika Padukone, was actually making her first film, but you wouldn’t really have been able to tell.
The story – such as I can tell you without spoiling the wondrous cheesiness of it all – starts in the 70s, when Om (Shah Rukh Khan), a poverty-stricken “junior artiste” – we’d call him an extra – is working on crowd scenes for big Bollywood films and dreams of becoming a big star, so that he can romance the girl of his dreams – Shantipriya, the actress (played by Padukone).
For the first hour of this film, assuming you hadn’t read the back of the box, any description online or almost any other print media that is put out around this film that shamefacedly gives away everything, you might just be surprised by a twist that occurs that takes the film in very different directions.
By the end of three hours, you’ve had absolutely everything – romance, songs, dancing, action scenes, death, comedy, and fighting with huge stuffed animals and cameos by nearly all the major actors/actresses working in Bollywood today.
And let me tell you – it works – almost. Like a huge over-the-top Broadway musical, it just keeps delivering crowd-pleasing melodrama and comedy all the way through. The cinematography especially is stunning and the colour scheme is beautiful. The only fatal flaw in all of this is that the romance, which was so beautifully built up in the first hour never really pays off in the end. In fact, it’s almost forgotten. This might not be a problem for an Indian audience, but considering that it’s the engine that drives the rest of the film, it’s almost unforgivable for Western audiences. Especially since, with a couple of extra scenes, you could have delivered the payoff that we want.
Oh well – if I were a Broadway producer with a few million under my belt, I think this could be turned into a really good stage production.
If you were going to try Bollywood, this would be the film to try. Leave all your expectations at the door, and expect it to be over-the-top, and you just might find it an enjoyable evening out.
As a little sneak peak, let me show you the scene that (I think) sells the whole thing. Early on in the film, young Om is madly in love with Shantipriya the actress – who of course doesn’t know he exists. His good friend manages to get him tickets to the premiere of her latest film and the two of them show up in outrageously bad clothes to stand beside the red carpet.
For luck, Om’s long-suffering mother gave him a piece of string or a bracelet (it’s been a while so I’ve forgotten) which she wrapped around his string for good luck. At the red carpet, in a scene which is done entirely without dialogue (except for a particularly evocative song called “Ajab Si”), that little red piece of string turns out to be the thing that gives him his first encouter with Shanti…
It’s so unutterably mushy – even a Hollywood romantic comedy wouldn’t include a scene like this – that it works. Either that or you’ll think my movie standards have dropped to an all-time low – in which case, don’t watch this film.
4 1/2 out of 5.
Further on Productivity: How I Let Pomodoros Into My Life and Almost Ruined My Productivity (But Then Got It Back Again) November 1, 2009
Posted by Matt in Productivity.Tags: iphone, pomodoro, Productivity, time management
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Continuing on from the last post about productivity and timesheets, as promised, I wanted to talk a bit about the famous Pomodoro Technique.
I got put onto this while hunting around for timers to do my 15-minute timesheet program.
I’d never heard about the Pomodoro Technique – but it’s certainly novel enough, that I think it deserves to become as famous as GTD. You can find all about it for free, just by going to www.pomodorotechnique.com and downloading the free ebook, but I’ll give you the brief version here.
This system was designed by an Italian guy who had trouble focusing when he was in university. So he got himself a kitchen timer in the shape of a tomato (“pomodoro” is Italian for tomato, thus the name) and used to see if he could concentrate till the timer went off.
Over the years, he eventually perfected it to a system that (in its simplest form) works like this:
1. You write a to-do list.
2. You start a timer for 25 minutes. During that time, you work on the top item on your list to the exclusion of anything else till the timer stops.
3. If you get distracted (either by you thinking of something or someone disturbing you), quickly write down whatever other task you have to do coming out of that down on your to-do list and keep working on your item.
4. When the timer goes, you must take a 3-5 minute break from what you’re doing. This is to clear your head and give you more energy. You’ve then completed one Pomodoro (or unit of time).
5. Every four Pomodoros, you can take a longer break (like 15 minutes).
This is pretty similar to my own system, except it has two advantages:
a) The built-in breaks are actually really good. You might not think so, but once you try it, by 25 minutes (as opposed to 15), you’re well and truly on a roll, and being told to wait 5 minutes actually makes you really keen to jump back into the next block of time. As long as you’re strict about keeping the break to five minutes, you’re not really going to lose much momentum, because that’s really only enough time to check a couple of emails, get a drink of water, go to the bathroom or something like that. If you actually knock over four of these things, you will have worked so solidly, that a 15 minute break will do you good.
b) The other advantage was that I wish I’d thought of the distractions notation. His simple system (which you can read about in the e-book) of noting down your distractions so that you can think about them later is brilliant. By far, the biggest distraction for me is that I’m mid-way through a job and I think of another one. By noting the job down (either urgent to be done that day or on a master job list to be done at some other time), you assure yourself that you are thinking about it, but you’re not going to work on it right now. After a little while of doing this, I discovered that most times I thought of jobs, it was mainly because I was procrastinating on the job I was doing, so now I find I don’t think of so many jobs to do in the middle of the one I’m working on now.
So those two aspects of the Pomodoro technique are great.
However, I decided to give the system a workout for a week instead of my usual timesheet system. I pretty much halved my productivity.
You know why?
I didn’t want to start the timer. I knew, after I’d written out the to-do list, that it’d be a bit of a nasty job, that first one, so I thought I’d just check one more email, or maybe get a cup of tea, or stop to talk to someone, etc. etc.
Once the Pomodoros were started, they were fine. But I could sometimes delay on starting the timer for a good couple of hours.
After trying to work out what went wrong, I have now adapted the system as follows:
1. Instead of my 15 minute intervals that I talked about in my last post, I now like to use Pomodoros (if I can) as a measure of time. If you count a Pomodoro as 25 mins work and 5 mins break, that gives you 30 minute blocks.
2. I now divide the day up into 30 minute breaks, plus a couple of 15 minute “tea breaks”. So a typical day might look something like this:
9am – 11am [Pomodoros 1-4]
11am – 11.15am [15 minute break]
11.15am – 12.45pm [Pomodoros 5-7]
12.45pm – 1.45pm [Lunch]
1.45pm – 3.45pm [Pomodoros 8-11]
3.45pm – 4.00pm [15 minute break]
4.00pm – 5.30pm [Pomodoros 12-14]
Now I’m not saying the day runs as smoothly as this – it rarely does. And obviously if you’re in a meeting, you just have to count how many Pomodoros roughly you’re spending during that time.
But the important thing with the above plan is it gives me a time when I need to start the timer. So at 9am, I start the first timer – while it’s ticking, I find the guilt of knowing that it’s running and I’m not doing anything inevitably makes me starting using that first one to work out my to-do list for the day and what’s most important. By the time I hit the end of the first one, take 5 minutes, it’s 9.30 and I straight away start the next one and jump in.
As long as I’m reasonably awake when I come into the office – and even often when I’m feeling tired – it really does work to get the day off to a good start.
So, yeah, I love the Pomodoros – I like the rhythm it gets you into – but I’d highly recommend starting your first Pomodoro at a set time on the clock, so you avoid pre-Pomodoro procrastination.
This is not quite the official system, because the guy who created the system believes that you start the timer when you start working. I believe start the timer, and you’ll more than likely start working.
After all, if the timer is running and you know that you can mark off that you did a solid half hour of work – and I think 25 mins of solid work plus 5 mins downtime is easily worth 30 mins of distractable work time where you’re checking emails, replying to everyone who talks to you, etc. – then you tend to not want to put down that you spent the entire time shuffling papers and doing nothing much. So you start working.
I also agree with what the Pomodoro guy (sorry, he does have a name – Francesco Cirillo) says at the end of his book – that if you stop using the timers, you lose your productivity. It’s a funny little quirk of nature, but unless you’re particularly driven to start with – in which case stopping every 25 minutes will probably irritate you no end – if you take away the timers, your productivity drops. The timers aren’t a tool to train you how to work productively – they’re what makes you work productively.
Maybe it looks a bit goofy to have numbers ticking down in the top right-hand corner of your screen when you’re working. Could be. But it’s a lot better going home knowing you did a solid day’s work. And could any worker ask for more satisfaction? I don’t think so.
Final link for the day is this timer which I found as a nice alternative to the AleJanJes Timer, albeit that it only works for the Pomodoro Technique. Called Focus Booster, this is another timer, that can be downsized to a small block that sits in your top right-hand corner (where I like to put my timers) and it’s set to count down 25 minutes, followed by 5 minutes. The only catch is that you have to remember to start it again as soon as the 5 minutes are up, but that’s not the worst thing in the world, and helpful for the longer breaks.
I have tried a couple of the Pomodoro apps on the iPhone, my favourite being Pomodoro Time Management (by rapidrabbit), which for some reason is no longer available in the Australian iTunes store. However, they don’t let you play music while you listen to them, and the problem with an iPhone app of course is that it doesn’t run if you use another application on the phone, making it annoying if you need to use something else on the phone while you’re using it (and it won’t even let you listen to music on the iPod while it’s running, which is particularly cruel . . .)
Anyway, whatever you use (and I’m aware not everybody is going to be as Draconian to themselves as I am), I hope you all manage to get to the stage where you can feel proud of how much work you do, and know that you’re being productive.
How I Became Ruthlessly Productive At Work (After Years Of Struggling With Procrastination & Distraction) October 24, 2009
Posted by Matt in Productivity.Tags: Productivity, time management
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Every good blog has to have a time management article at some stage – this can be mine. Whether that makes it a good blog is up to you, gentle reader.
All right – time management.
I’ve always struggled with procrastination. It’s not quite as bad “My name is Matt and I’m an alcoholic” but I’m pretty sure “My name is Matt and I procrastinate on work” is not too far behind. I’ve done it as long as I can’t remember.
You know those people who like to burn through their homework so they can play outside? I’m the guy stuck inside doing it up to dinner time and beyond because I just can’t get myself to concentrate on my work . . .
I struggled with it through five years at my first full-time job, and I’ve struggled at my current one. I’ve tried different things.
I loved the Getting Things Done system. In fact, I read it in the week before I moved to Sydney to start my first full-time job. And it has certainly been a system I’ve come to rely on for how to get organised and keep your mind clear. However, for me, the GTD system didn’t help with the crucial problem I faced – procrastination.
See, by the time I’ve emptied my head, made all my lists, and done all that great GTD stuff, there’s the issue that that work has to be done. I read a variety of books that talked about different things like how to prioritise tasks, how to work out psychologically why you’re procrastinating (e.g. fear of failure). And I’d get some short-term changes out of these systems.
But for the most part, I’d keep falling off the wagon. And sometimes the advice you’d get from time management books would cancel each other out. Some books tell you that just actually doing the jobs that are there (rather than thinking about them) is a good way to go. Well, this is true, and there is something to be gained by just doing something now rather than endlessly scheduling it around. However, if you do everything that’s in front of you now, you’ll find that you answer a lot of emails, run a lot of errands for people who drop things on your desk – but the big picture jobs (most likely the ones you’re actually being paid to do) aren’t getting done.
I never knew how to get myself out of this dilemma. The other problem is, I’ve worked out that I’m a dreadful people-pleaser. It can be almost anyone in the company, but if they ask me to do something for them – whether it be shifting boxes or proofreading things or whatever – I’ll drop anything to help out.
And if I go to team meetings – aarggh!! – it gets even worse, because I’ll say “yes” to everything I’m asked to do, even if I’m not sure how on earth I can manage it all. Even though I inevitably get myself in trouble later on for not delivering everything I said I’d do, I still can’t help myself.
Oddly enough, it was this tendency of myself that led to an interesting breakthrough that I made.
The background was that at the beginning of this year, I had three roles at work. I was supposed to spend 2 1/2 days a week on one, and 1 1/2 days on the second and 1 day on the third.
On paper.
In reality, I’d just work on whichever one screamed the loudest. And I was having trouble doing any of them well.
And I was starting to get asked these questions, “How much time are you spending on each job area?” And you know what? I had no idea.
So I decided to start tracking my time. I know there are time management books out there that talk about doing a time log for a few days – some of you may even have tried that. However, that kind of thing is more about working out how many times you get phone calls during the day, how many times you distract yourself, etc.
But this time – what I wanted to do was actually track my time as if I was a consultant. So I signed up for a free internet-based timesheet called actiTIME. The main attraction with actiTIME was that it’s completely free if you just want a timesheet to log times into. (You can buy versions if you want to have more than 10 people using it and you want to access more complex management and accounting processes – but the free version suited me fine because I just wanted a sheet that I could log times in.)
The major tweak I made to it was that actiTIME comes with three main categories – Customers (it’s assuming you’re a contractor), then Projects which filter under Customers and then particular Tasks under that.
I changed Customers to Job Roles (one for each of my three roles) and kept the Projects and Tasks. (Actually, it was a nice feature that I could rename these levels to be in keeping with what I wanted.)
The other key that I decided to do was record my time in 15 minute increments, which seemed like a standard way of tracking these things. I’m not sure how contractors keep track of these things, or whether they guess at the end of the day, but I decided that I’d use a little countdown timer program that I had downloaded a long time ago (the sadly no-longer-available AleJanJes Timer, which I can’t link to because the page is no longer there). I’d set the timer for 15 minutes, and I’d run it pretty much every 1/4 of an hour (unless I wasn’t at my desk). I’d try to keep it as close I could to the hour, quarter past, half past and quarter to (e.g. 9.00, 9.15, 9.30, 9.45) so that it had a certain regularity to it.
Every time the Timer stopped, I’d flick over to my actiTIME sheet, which was sitting open in a browser on my computer all day. I’d then add 15 minutes to the total of whatever task I was working on.
At this stage, I wasn’t attempting to prioritise my work or anything like that – and I still tended to work on whatever was screaming the loudest – but the idea was just to track it to give me an idea of what was taking up my time.
But what I didn’t expect was the amazing secondary benefit of this tracking – I finally discovered the anti-procrastination holy grail I’d been looking for!
Quite simply, knowing that every15 minutes I had to account for what I’d been doing made me work more solidly. Originally, this might have been because I had some thought that I was going to show the timesheet to my managers. That never eventuated – and I don’t think I’ll ever show anyone those reports – but after three weeks of tracking every 15 minutes, the habit was well and truly entrenched.
I’m not saying I didn’t waste time sometimes. There were times when I was tired, when I didn’t want to start a particular job. When I’d go make a cup of tea or coffee just to avoid starting the next time. (For the record, I’d count cups of tea as part of whatever job I was working on for 15 minutes, but if I had a real waste-of-time 15 minutes doing something like surfing the net or a long conversation with someone, I wouldn’t claim the time.) The idea was that I was trying to make sure I could account for all the 7 1/2 hours during the day that I’m paid for. And for the most part, I’ve been able to. There have been some days where I hit the end of the day and realise that I’ve only done about 7 hours work (despite the fact that I was in the office for a full day), but those days are becoming rarer.
I never would have picked it as being a winning system – running a timer and logging my work in a timesheet – but it has me able to do a full day’s worth of work, knowing that I didn’t spend a third or more of it mucking around and doing stuff I shouldn’t have been doing.
This system worked rather well for quite a while. Until I discovered the Pomodoro Technique, and decided to try that instead of my existing system.
That led to interesting results. . . and a new generation of time management for me. But I’ll save that for another blog.
In the meantime, I would challenge any of you die-hard procrastinators out there to give actiTIME a whirl, with a timer. (Hmm . . . maybe actiTIME could add a timer to the page?) Seeing as it’s no longer available, I thought I’d set the AleJanJes Time up on Media Fire for you to download. It was always intended to be freeware, so I don’t think I’m doing any wrong here. The guy who originally made it put it there so his kids wouldn’t fight over the computer.
I like this particular timer because it’s small and you can put it in the top right-hand corner of your screen where it will remind you quite obviously that your time is soon up. You right click on it to change the settings.
Have fun! I’ll talk more about Pomodoros another time.
Film Review: The Box October 22, 2009
Posted by Matt in Film, reviews.Tags: Film, reviews
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I always enjoy Q&A screenings of films – you tend to pay a bit more attention to the film knowing that you can grill the director at the end of the film. (Especially when said director is going to be woken up at 3am and grilled over the phone.)
I wasn’t among the diehard fans who’d seen Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales last year, but I had seen both versions of Donnie Darko at the theatres. I wasn’t as big a fan of DD as other people – mainly because I think it’s just an excuse to encourage depressive people to kill themselves because the world would be a better place without them in it.
But I digress from The Box.
This movie was apparently based on a short story by Richard Matheson, which got made into a Twilight Zone episode, and that’s what makes this movie so enjoyable. It’s a complete throwback to the days of The Twilight Zone. It’s set in 1976 in Richmond, Virginia, and it’s awesome in so many ways. First of all, it looks 70s all the way – cars, costumes, everything. Secondly, which probably only matters to me because I’ve been there at that time of year – it looks like Virginia in the winter time. I love the trees, the houses. It adds a whole hauntingly beautiful aspect to the whole thing. And then there’s the music – it took a bit of getting used to, but the score was deliberately written in the style of Bernard Herrman, who used to write the scores for some of the early TZ episodes.
So the reason I’m telling you all this is that I want to make clear – the atmosphere of the whole thing was terrific. There wasn’t a dull frame anywhere in the film.
The problem really came from the story itself. As I understand it, Matheson’s original concept was the one that opens the film – a box gets delivered to a couple with a big red button in it. The couple are offered a choice: If they push the button, someone “who they do not know” will die but they will get $1,000,000. Or they can pass on the button and the money.
This concept is really good – and obviously enough to get me in the cinema. The problem was that it was only the beginning. The film then branched off into a second story which was related but felt completely different from the first one. I loved the second one even more, but then there was the third act of the film which tried to tie the whole thing together, but really seemed to just completely undo the reason for the middle part of the film. In fact, without too much trouble, you could have jumped from the first third of the film to the last third without too much trouble.
So my thinking is that it feels like two different stories trying to be written together because on their own, neither of them would pad out a feature-length film. So ultimately, while I loved the ideas he was playing with, I felt a bit let down at the end. Still, it looks and sounds so different from other films operating at the time, that I’d recommend having a watch of it anyway. Also, it’s deliberately been kept reasonably clean, both in terms of language, violence, etc. That’s not to say it’s not suspenseful (if not downright unsettling) in some parts, but it’s not a horror film, either.
4 out of 5.
