Author Archives: Patrick Rhone

Doing The Dishes

Confession; I like doing dishes. I find it very meditative.

I like doing them late at night, before bed, alone. I like the warmth of the water. I like the smell of the dish soap. I turn on our under-the-counter radio and listen to the BBC on Minnesota Public Radio. It is just me, the task at hand, and the news delivered calmly, with balance, and a proper tongue.

I perform each step in a particular, rarely wavering, order.

1. Unload the bottom rack of the dishwasher.
2. Unload the top rack of the dishwasher.
3. Rinse the dishwasher safe plates, glasses, and silver and load each in their proper place.
4. Fill the sink with soap.
5. Wash each item in order from cleanest to dirtiest.
6. Empty and rinse out the sink.
7. Wipe down the counters and oven.

I find solace in the structure of these actions performed rigidly so that my thinking is focused and somehow still. When my brain is relaxed in this way I find that my body follows suit.

I’m sure we all have tasks like this. Some of us weed the garden. Some of us knit. Some of us mow the lawn or shovel snow. These tasks that we get lost in almost by design due to their repetitive nature. In these times we drift into the order and let our minds go.

We often don’t think of these as moments of meditation but it often has the same mental and physical effect. We are busy doing nothing yet doing something all the same. The more we can identify these times of productive meditation, the more we can make sure to enjoy them for what they are.

Choose Your Tasks To Fit The Time

Not too long ago, I was asked by a client of mine how long it would take to complete a certain large project. After thinking about it for a while, I gave what I thought was a fair estimate given all of the parameters, possible hurdles and building in time for contingencies. The client then asked me if I could do it faster than that. They asked if I could do it in about a third of what I had estimated…

The time a project takes does not somehow magically change because the actual time one has to complete it has. Could I have done that job in the timeframe the client wanted? Sure. Would I have had to spend just as much time as I originally quoted after the fact correcting mistakes and problems because I rushed through it? Probably. Would it be harder, and thus take more time, to make such corrections after the fact than to get them done right the first time? Definitely. Yet I can’t even tell you for how long, by how many clients and managers and in how many different ways I have been asked to do this very thing. I know I am not alone. As a matter of fact, a common joke in the computer industry is “You can have it cheap, you can have it fast or you can have it done well. Pick two.”

What you trade in time you most often exchange for quality or quantity. Sometimes you have to change the project or task that you set out to do. Sometimes you just don’t have the time you need for the project at hand. Maybe you cut a corner here and there. Maybe you drop less important aspects. In this case, the time itself does not change. The quality or quantity of the project changes accordingly with the time saved. It is now a different project, with possibly less than satisfactory results.

I try to use this approach with even the simplest items on my daily task list. For instance, I try to take an honest look at what I want to accomplish in the 15 minutes of time I may have to make a phone call. I am not going to make a call that I know has an hour worth of discussion in that time frame. If I do, I know that I will be trading a true discussion of the topics for bullet points at best. I may have to make another call to the same person later that will make up for, or even equal the time I chose not to spend in the first place. Is that the most effective use of the time? I think not.

Therefore, when you have a block of time to fill be careful to choose the right sized task to fill it. Like most things in this world, when it comes to time, nothing is free.

The App For That Is Me (Being Social – Part 2)

Yesterday, I lamented that tools like Twitter and Facebook are not designed to promote real face-to-face connections and that I wished there were an app or service that did. Then, I had some real world conversations that helped me to realize a couple of things…

The first is, be careful what you wish for. For my app to really work, it would have to know far more information about your interactions and private details than such current services likely track today. Interpersonal relationships are incredibly complex, nuanced, and ever changing. There is already some discomfort with a service that asks about my relationship status with one person. In order for my idea to really work effectively, I would have to regularly provide information about my relationship status with everybody I was connected to.

Second, and perhaps more immediately important thing is this – I have all the tools I need to be able to do this myself. Right now. No app or service required.

The fact is, I know who the people are that I have conversations with on Twitter. I know which ones are local and which ones are not. I can own enough self-direction to think about having a face-to-face with these folks. I then could put a reminder down to shoot them a message and schedule a lunch or coffee (I like Backpack for this because it will send me an email and SMS and allow me to set times like “In a couple of days”).

For the ones that are out of town, well, that is a bit trickier but not much. Many travel services offer “fare/price alerts” where they will send you a message if travel to a particular destination drops below a certain price. I could easily set up one of these for each of my out of town contacts. Then at least I’ll have the information in hand to decide if I can swing it.

The point is, far too often I am guilty of wishing for a tool instead of wishing for a solution. You have now witnessed a twenty-four hour live demo of this. In doing so, I have wasted time that could have been spent actually doing, planning, and scheduling. Certainly something I need to work on.

Let’s do lunch soon.