today has been a convergence day.
by this i mean:
i got up at 8:15
i had a restful yet productive morning, accomplishing a smattering of goals of different stripes:
– ate some breakfast
– had a good shower
– did stretches for my back, which has been hurting more than usual
– read some ambient findability
– succeeded in posting nuggets of ideas without finishing them

then i spent 5 solid hours at work, making a noticeable dent in some piles of crap by enforcing the following rule: work for an hour without allowing yourself to look at gmail or open non-work tabs of the web browser, relax those restrictions for 30 minutes, repeat.

this plan has the potential to be truly revolutionary.

at the end of that stretch of work, i was listening to pablo honey and putting some folders in chronological order, and i had one of those transcendentally awesome moments of feeling like things are falling into line. yesterday i was pretty pissed at myself for slacking so hard on my capstone, and for coming up with all these endless plan-utations about how i might manage my time better and motivate myself more. i get in those moods and i think to myself “fuck it. just shut up and do things. stop using the search for the ideal plan as an excuse for not trying Any plan for longer than a day.”
i get to that point too often without it sinking in, so i’m just about ready for the meta “fuck it,” because spending too much time thinking about thinking less is just ridiculous.
yesterday night, though, for whatever reason, i hit on a slightly different angle. instead of asking “what do i need to do differently?” i asked “what do i need in order to give something my best?”
and the answer i got was: i need to feel like i’m a part of a culture of excellence.
this surprised me a little, but it really hit home.
if i think about all of the times in my life when i have really hit a groove and done my best, it is not when i get the most sleep or eat the most broccoli, it’s when i feel like i’m working with people who care about kicking ass for the beauty of it.

[going home, java program to fiddle with for infovis, sticking to plans that have yet to be described in this post, but which relate to it in spirit…]

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 23rd, 2006 at 8:01 pm and is filed under drafts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.