Category Archives: Pondside Planner

Purpose, priorities, and progress.
Goals, grit, and growth.
Fundamentals, focus, and frameworks.

Today I choose to work the plan (TIC00065f)

The PolyBlog
September 30 2020

There’s a classic cliché or slogan in the time-management and personal planning industries about “planning the work and working the plan”. It basically is a form of “plan and execute” or “plan and do”, but it is more than that…it takes into account that you did the work to do a proper plan, taking into account the variables you had, and you came up with something viable.

Implementation though prompts a number of reactions. First and foremost, there are the rigid thinkers who will follow the plan all the way to Hades. Doesn’t matter, they have their orders, even if they gave them to themself, and they will not deviate it from it no matter what the evidence or results are telling them. Second is the other end of the spectrum…it is the type who knows that a battle plan never survives engagement with the enemy, and because they misinterpret what that means, they jettison the plan at the first sign of ANYTHING that deviates from the plan and wing it for the rest of the implementation. Their attitude is you can’t plan for everything so why worry too much about planning for anything. Get a basic idea and GO.

But in the middle is the workman who knows that a good plan is mostly about the process of building the plan. Understanding what the variables are. Understanding the interdependencies. Understanding the resources available, the starting point, the ending point, and the flexibilities to get from one to the other. You don’t “implement a plan”, you work with it, tweaking as you go, keeping what works, adjusting what doesn’t. A good framework helps you know where you’re going; building the framework helps you know what your capacity is for getting there.

I had a pretty good day today. We have set ourselves a basic 9-5 workday, with Andrea taking a break at 11:00 to spend time with Jacob when his class breaks for first rest/recess and me taking a break at 1:00 p.m. to have lunch with him. This morning, Andrea had a dentist appointment at 8:00 so we were up and out the door by 7:30. She had her appointment, everything is on track for her dental work, I picked her back up, and off we were home. With a pit stop at the grocery store to get milk, fresh bananas, and some ground beef for tonight’s dinner (tacos).

We were back to the house by 9:00 a.m., before Jacob even started his class. Nice.

My morning schedule wasn’t too pressed, first meeting at 10:30 so I had time to get ready, with a pre-conference call just before it to agree on what a co-lead was going to cover and what I would cover. Then the meeting, went reasonably well, some good follow-up, and on to the next thing.

I had a couple of impromptu meetings in MS Teams, set up a bunch of groups so we can stay organized going forward, got some buy-in and support to lead a couple of initiatives we want to do across the branch, and it wasn’t even lunch yet. I grabbed a snack, and started writing a speech. More like speech modules, but I did it up like a big inspirational speech that I’ll have to tone down tomorrow into more digestible chunks, but I gave my creative side free rein, and it felt good to flex those muscles.

I had lunch with Jacob, then back into the digital world of working from home. I finished the speech, handled a few other things that had cropped up, tasked out a few other things, and generally kicked butt and took names most of the afternoon.

I’m not sure exactly where in my career I would say I was my “best self” as an employee, firing on all cylinders and being uber productive, but I know it isn’t “today”. Still, I’m probably firing at about 80% of my previous capacity, and feeling good about the way forward.

I even found time today to reach out to offer some online support to two communities, where newbies are struggling with stuff that is a level beyond their capacity. I reframed it and explained what they needed to do (and how to understand it, which is part of my jam), and they were off and running again with renewed optimism after hitting the frustration wall.

Dinner was simple tacos, Jacob is doing piano theory and hanging out with Andrea, and I’m figuring out a couple of small web puzzles. And then I treated myself to a small binge of episodes of Monk from Season 3.

Today I choose to work the plan and today it worked well. It won’t always be that successful, but I’ll take the victory lap for today.

What choices are you making today?

Today I choose to look for some COVID humour (TIC00064f)

The PolyBlog
September 28 2020

I have no interest in people who want to argue that some people find everything funny, however inappropriate, or the huge social conventions that go with it. I’m a little bit closer to certain British comedians and satirists who believe you can and should find whatever humour lies within anything. Not to make fun of anything you can, but to find the natural tenets of humour that run through our lives, however dark or at least non-illuminated some of them are. However dark the current times, however bleak, there are still moments of amusement to be found, even if just in cynicism that it will only get worse.

Today I went looking for some of that, and not surprisingly, it was easy to find in various memes or mask layouts. Some started with some pop culture themes:

  • Social Distancing Social Club;
  • Buena distancia social club (i.e., a take-off on Buena Vista Social Club);
  • I find your lack of social distancing disturbing (i.e., with a Darth Vader image)
  • I will wear my mask here or there, I will social distance everywhere (i.e., like Dr. Seuss)
  • In Fauci, we trust. Trust science, not morons (i.e., for US politics)

Others made references to introverts (ignoring the huge number of Bigfoot images with the slogan Social Distancing Champion):

  • Stop! I’m not social distancing, I just don’t like you!
  • I’m a social vegan. I avoid meet.
  • I saw people through the window today. That’s enough social interaction.
  • Social distancing: It’s like a vacation for introverts.
  • Ewww, people.
  • I can’t people today.
  • When social distancing is over, let’s not tell some people.
  • It’s too “peopley” out there.
  • I was social distancing when it was rude (i.e., a bit different from the numerous ones about doing it “before it was cool / trendy / hip / required”).

Others still went for slightly quirky:

  • Camp Quarantine
  • Social Distancing Mode ON
  • Zero hugs given #SocialDistancing
  • Wanna hangout with me online?

And then there were the ones whose patience has run out:

  • If I Can Punch You in The Face, You’re Too Close
  • Back off Boogaloo
  • Back up buttercup
  • Stay out of my hula hoop
  • Just shut up and wear your mask, Karen
  • If you can read this, then you’d better be wearing a mask

But out of all of them, there were four that I liked more than the rest. Three of them in particular as I think they actually work as something you could wear on a face mask or a t-shirt.

The first was simple…it was an image of a Zoom call, and it simply said “Zoom University”. All students are dealing with some form of that, from kindergarten all the way up to graduate courses at university, and it would work really well as a traditional sweatshirt, in my view. It captures a lot of the zeitgeist of freshmen who are starting university this year wondering where their degree is even coming from or what exactly they’re paying all that tuition for, if they even registered this year and didn’t opt for a gap year.

The second was a simple mantra summary of current life: “Eat, sleep, repeat. Living the #SocialDistancing life.” An alternate version said, “Eat, sleep, social distancing, repeat. Living the dream.” There is a lot packed in there, particularly for single people living alone.

The third was a small play on words for the innuendo of “doggie-style”. The picture showed two men separated by a dog on a six-foot leash. The phrase that went with it was: “Social distancing, doggie-style“. I don’t know that I would wear this, but there are some people who walk their dog who quite like the meme.

The last one is also a play on words, and it is my favorite. The picture is of a person doing yoga, in Lotus position, with the words “Namaste six feet away”. One of my favorite comics in the last year that I’ve seen had a similar pun, where one character says, “Namaste” and the other says, “Nah, I’m gonna go”. The reason this one is my favorite is that it works relatively linearly, i.e. “peace” from six feet away, or literally, “Stay six feet away”.

Are any of them uproariously funny? Nope, but the topic isn’t funny. Millions are dying around the globe. The death experience for those infected are horrible, often isolated and alone, and struggling to breathe. And yet people have found the humour that lurks in the shared experience of social distancing, however cynical.

I needed that today, and so I choose to look for some COVID humour.

What choices are you making today?

Today I choose to time travel (TIC00063f)

The PolyBlog
September 28 2020

Okay, so time travel might be a little extreme of a description. But back in 2017, I was playing with social media managers to manage my sharing of posts, etc. I tried Buffer, Friends+.me, Hootsuite, a few others. I was basically looking for a free social media manager, and for a while, it worked.

I could write posts on my blog, go to my account on one of the generic apps, call it “social media manager X” (aka SMM X), paste the link, add some text, and post. The goal at the time was to start scheduling posts in line with the “best advice” of the day. Which, essentially, was to schedule posts so they would go out multiple times during the day, allow you to post at peak periods that would solicit feedback and reaction, and let you “build your brand”.

The overall selling point for the companies was that you could basically plan out and schedule a week or a month’s worth of engagement, do it all at once, and forget about it for the week. The autoposter would take all your pre-scheduled tweets and IG posts, and share them at the appropriate times. You could even monitor analytics to see that perhaps Tuesdays were quieter than Wednesdays, or afternoons prompted more reactions than mornings, or 3:00 p.m. was better than 4:00 p.m. when people were starting to think about heading home.

And for awhile, I let it sucker me in. I was thinking that I should be doing these things from my two websites, polywogg.ca and thepolyblog.ca. Drive engagement. Build a brand.

But it’s not really me. Sure, I produce a lot of content. But I’m not trying to build my brand. I’m not planning on monetizing any of it, at least I don’t think so. Maybe I will once I retire for some of my publications, but even then, I’m not convinced that is the way I’ll go.

It all seemed just a little too “commercial” for what is and shall always remain a personal site. But the real reason I switched to a plugin within WP for my site was because FaceBook changed the way they let outside plugins or sites paste to FaceBook. They require that you register as an “app” in essence, to make sure you are authorized to post to specific accounts, and for the site to be able to track everything you do. While they claim it is about security, most of it is about future monetization as you get bigger and bigger. At some point, they force you to pay for a business account. And part of the “choke” point setup is blocking certain types of links.

I found a new solution, or so I thought when I bought it, but I’ve had some annoying little quirks of late with my website and autoposting. I was finding that the plugin, which is designed to help me post, was just a bit of a pain in the patootie. As I said, I paid for a one-year subscription, and I suspect I’m going to kill it shortly from the site. And then leave negative reviews everywhere I can think to do it because they basically advertise mostly-false claims to get you to buy it.

As a quick recap then, I started off posting just normal i.e., manually — cut and paste to FB, Twitter, Google+. Then I went with a social media manager site, pasting one link there and letting it share to all three sites for me. But that was starting to be a bit challenging to manage as I was also doing all my TV episode reviews through there plus meme creation, and it all started to feel a bit too commercial for my personal musings. So I killed off Google+, dropped a lot of my auto-sharing, found a new tool, and again, I’m at that point where I’m asking, “Is this really the best approach?”.

Lots of the original sites I was dealing with have gone the way of the dodo almost. Well, maybe not quite extinct, but also not at the top of the heap either. Other services have come along, most have shaken the bugs out of the industry, and they have all for the most part found ways to monetize the management.

My needs are simple. Soooo, I am trying Buffer.com again. My old account is easily revived, I’m grandfathered into a free albeit limited account, and I’m playing with it. It feels like 2016, 2017 all over again.

One part of that experience though is different. If I want to share with FaceBook, I have to share to a page, not my personal profile. Which all things considered, isn’t a bad idea. Some people have found my volume on my personal account kind of high and muted me accordingly. I’ve also picked up a few people who friended me on FB but they really only want my website feeds. I feel like a couple of them should be in the page category only.

So I’m going to let all my friends know I have a new page, and if they want my blog posts, they can look for them over there. I’ll give it a week, and then my personal stuff will truly only be my personal stuff, albeit including comics of the day. Hopefully, I’ll also be able to set all the privacy settings a bit more normally this way too.

Today I choose to time-travel back to an old technique I used about 3-4 years ago.

What choices are you making today?

Today I choose choices over outcomes (TIC00061f)

The PolyBlog
September 25 2020

Some days it is really hard not to measure my commitment to making conscious choices simply by the outcomes that result. But the process of “making choices”, of doing so consciously, of recognizing what choices I am making rather than drifting, is the intent. It doesn’t mean I’ll end up with a perfect outcome or even a better outcome.

It is about being aware of my life and the choices I make throughout the day.

As a small sideways digression, people are sharing a popular twitter feed this week about advice from Nora Roberts about balancing work and life, with the idea that instead of saying you’ll keep all the “life balls” in the air and prioritize those over work ones, her advice was that there are glass balls that are fragile and plastic ones that aren’t as important. So you prioritize glass ones over plastic ones. Some days that means you might prioritize a big work project over a walk with your kid. Not that you prioritize all work over your kid, but that big work things are important too and sometimes small life things are in the plastic category. It’s a popular meme / series that gets shared, along with Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff / Know Your Priorities, blah blah blah, but honestly it is mostly worthless since the real challenge is when you have two glass balls in the air and you can only reach one. THAT’s the challenge, not plastic vs. glass, those are easy.

Anyway, the digression is that while the metaphor and methodology breaks down, the real value to me is that it reinforces the recognition that you are indeed making choices. And sometimes those choices are made with the best information you have available and it just doesn’t work out.

This morning, Andrea had a big dental surgery appointment. It wasn’t in our shared calendar last week when I booked a weekly chiro appointment, so I booked it for 8:30. It gives me enough time to get back home to start work. Then Andrea’s appointment overlapped, but we discussed it and decided that I could fit both in — take her to the dentist, rush back across town to the chiro, rush back down to the dentist. It was a good decision to allow me to keep the appointment, which my back needed, albeit rushed. So we did.

Except getting back to the chiro was more hectic than I initially expected. The highway was clogged so I rerouted, and some annoying traffic, but made it, and I thought I was late as I normally go for 8:15. I forgot I had bumped it to 8:30 this week, so I actually hurried only to sit and wait. No biggie. And my back decided not to cooperate. Whereas normally I can get three good adjustments down my back, we tried 7 adjustments and only 2 went a little. For my neck, normally I get good releases on both sides, and this time my left side refused to release at all. Whine. We do a bit of electro-stimulation, which I normally do on my back, but since my back didn’t release, I had to do it sitting up. I don’t know if I slept wrong or was just tense from rushing, but again, I made the right decision, just didn’t lead to a great outcome.

Back downtown to get Andrea, didn’t want her waiting too long, made it in time for the end of her appointment. But no Andrea. Sent her text, no response. Which meant she was still with the dentist. Wait a bit. Wait a bit more. Move the car to an open parking spot. Wait some more. About 25 minutes past when she was supposed to be done. Hmmm. I phone the clinic who informs me that the appointment was not 1 hour, as Andrea had thought, but THREE hours. Wait, that’s not what we were supposed to do. They changed the approach to the appointment from what they’d originally discussed, she didn’t even know. Again, right decision, but now I’m looking down another 90 minutes. The nurse checked, actually they’ll be done in 30 minutes. Do I want to park in the free underground parking (normally cramped lot) and wait in the waiting room? Umm, during COVID? How about never?

So I drive over to a Tim Horton’s. Again, perfectly reasonable decision based on what I knew. Except I didn’t know half the roads were ripped up nearby nor that the Timmy’s I was going to actually doesn’t have a drive-through. And considering the sketchy location, not the best place for health protocols either. Okay, I’ll drive a bit farther. Again, construction was TERRIBLE. Slow going, finally get to where I want to be and huge lineups. Much longer than I have time for. So again, I make the right decision and head back. About half-way back, Andrea phones to say she is done, and while I would be about 5 minutes away normally, it was almost 10-15 by the time I made it.

Okay, let’s go home. No, wait, we have to stop for prescriptions. We have a good pharmacy we use, normally it is super-reliable. Today the woman wants to push me to pick up the pain meds tomorrow. Yeah, no. I need them now. She’s in the car waiting. Oh, okay, how about after 12:00. It was only 10:30…I negotiate 11:30 and head out to take Andrea home. She’ll have to settle for Tylenol in the meantime.

All right decisions, just not breaking my way.

I do a dance at catching up on work for an hour, but I’m really just shuffling meetings and poking people for info. Nothing really productive. I have to miss my weekly divisional meeting because that’s when the pain prescriptions will be ready, and so I decide to just take half the day as leave. I could have taken the whole day, and I don’t know if either of them is the “right” answer, but it’s functional anyway. I go back to the pharmacy, hoping to be quickly in and out, but no, they have to talk to me about the new prescriptions.

Meanwhile, while I’m standing there waiting to talk to the pharmacist, I realize I’m standing about 10 feet or so from someone in a mask who is actually there for a COVID test. I don’t need to be anywhere near them, so I kind of wander into some other aisles to wait to be called. Did she have COVID cooties that I needed to run away from? Probably not, but I just don’t need to be there. Grab some other items, get the info on the prescriptions, back home, hand everything over and try to work.

I was really struggling to concentrate. So I’m ticking off little items. Nothing important, just small to-do list items. Again, the right decision since I couldn’t focus on big things, but mediocre results for the day.

Lunch with Jacob was McDonald’s for a treat, and Pizza Hut for dinner to celebrate the end of the first week of school. Good decisions, blah for outcomes. Not very healthy.

Then Andrea — yes, ANDREA — suggested we go out for ice cream since it is one of the few things she can eat. Sure, work our way over to DQ to go through a drive-through, and it is in SLOW MOTION delivery. I took the long way to get there which was fine but then we sat in the line for close to 20 minutes before we got a small cone, a small sundae, and two Misty Freezes instead of the two Misty Slushes we ordered (Freezes add ice cream). It was clear the guy was new, was having a bad day, maybe even a bad first day, and I was too tired to ask him to correct the order. I figured we’d make it through, but of course, as it turns out, Jacob doesn’t like Misty Freezes with the ice cream added. Sigh.

I felt like the whole day I was making good decisions, even the “right” decisions, in conscious ways, prioritizing the right glass balls, while plastic balls rained all around us. It felt like a crapfest of a day for outcomes. Each one seemed to go slightly wrong.

But that’s the rub. I can’t control many of those outcomes. I can just control that I’m making conscious choices as I go. I could have cancelled my chiro and had NO adjustment; I could have showed up at 9:00 and just waited across the road for an hour; I could have waited for the prescriptions for an hour; I could have heated up leftovers at home for lunch and dinner; I could have gone to a different place for dessert; I could have taken the whole day off. And the outcomes wouldn’t have looked much different.

The “goal”, if there is one, is to be aware of the choices I’m making as I make them, which I did.

Today I choose choices over outcomes.

What choices are you making today?

Today I choose to buck the new normal (TIC00060f)

The PolyBlog
September 24 2020

I went old-school today to combat some of the impacts of COVID isolation. Early this morning, I had coffee with a friend and coworker at a local Starbucks. She and I have future plans to do ice cream, etc., but today we started with a coffee at Starbucks. We wore our masks in the store, sat outside on the patio a decent distance apart while we noshed and sipped. It was so much fun, I made her late for her 10:00 a.m. meeting, just sitting and chatting. Like normal people used to do.

I posted to our work chat area that I had done that, and that it was almost worth having showered, shaved, and put on real pants to leave the house instead of living in track pants and shorts. I had whip cream on my hot chocolate, but if I had remembered chocolate or cinnamon powder to sprinkle on top, that would have put it over the top. 🙂

And yet, it’s not going to last as an option once the cold weather hits. We sat on the patio, which was fine, nobody else around. Meanwhile, inside, there were people set up like old times with their laptops, just hanging out. None of them wearing a mask. Because of course they’re sipping, in theory. Although most of them were sitting with empty plates and empty cups, just typing on their laptop or playing on their phone, no mask on. It wasn’t crowded, people were still distanced, but I did NOT feel comfortable. I had thought that maybe we could go to Tim Horton’s some time, perhaps Jacob, Andrea and I, for lunch, but apparently it’s relatively the same. People with no masks on lingering long after they finished their food. Sigh. Is it any wonder we’re in a second wave?

Later today, I had to run out to get groceries as I keep forgetting to do the grocery list online at night to order stuff. But today, I managed to plan ahead sufficiently earlier in the week and charge my bluetooth headphones. Which means I could listen to music while I shopped. Oh. My. Goodness. I’ve forgotten what it is like to just tune out the world and tune into the music. It used to be one of my favorite things with grocery shopping. 30-40 minutes of just me listening to music, no need to think, or talk to anyone. Just drift off and zone out. I can’t quite zone out in a COVID world for shopping, but it was still pretty great. The GoGos still had the beat. Jim Stafford had Spiders and Snakes and no clue what he was doing with his girlfriend. Bob Seger reassured me through Shakedown that no matter what, he’s going to take me down once I step across that line. I didn’t care, I let Apple choose the music, didn’t even bother with a playlist. It was a small piece of heaven. Even if it took a little work to figure out what order I had to follow to put on my mask, glasses, and headphones (MGH, for those curious).

Today I choose to buck the new normal and kick it old school, albeit safely.

What choices are you making today?