Complementary technology, my arse

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In a bid to become more productive, I have been wrestling with an online to-do list. In concept it isn't hard - simply select your tasks, tap them onto your list, achieve your tasks and tick complete.

Nothing is that simple for me. The concept of being organised just doesn't sit naturally. I am so reliant on natural chaos that the thought of being organised scares me. In order to be this super efficient person, I will have to change my mindset completely and in doing so,  lose part of my identity.

Being organised would be as uncomfortable as not caring about shoes. To dispense with superficiality would mean completely re figuring the traits my personality is dependent upon. In the blink of an eye, I would be an efficient beast that looked at people in a stern manner. Of course, this would require looking up since I will have lost 4 inches in height as a result of the comfy footwear.

I struggled with the idea until I asked my colleague whether I had skills that compensated for my utter incompetency with anything requiring mastery of modern concept. Apparently I do, so I went back to sticking post it notes on my computer screen and she returned to rolling her eyes in despair.

By the end of the day I had inputed a couple of tasks, such as 'master rememberthemilk'. I noted that in my personal list was 'read electricity meter' - this had been written 8 months ago, it's still there. The electricity meter has never been read and I just allow them to take money out. In my mind, my denial saves time and thus makes me more productive. I think

Added to the list today - send compliment. A work colleague had received an email offering praising for work delivered that had exceeded expectation. It's no surprise to anyone else since she is so efficient she has potential to be formidable but as she said - receiving a compliment can truly make the difference to ones day.

And she's right. Think back to the times when someone has opened a door for you, picked something up you may have dropped, admired an outfit or praised you for a gesture. A few words acknowledging something about you, no matter how small - can truly brighten a day and raise a smile.

I thought about it and sent her an email.

Dear Veronica,

Nice tits

Kind regards,

Sophie

Now clearly this is not language that you would hear me utter, but the art of writing is to do so in a manner that captures the attention of the reader and makes a lasting impression.  I considered my choice of words to be a winning combination on both counts.

She was grinning for some time, a remarkable result I thought. As  a result of this positive reaction, the task 'send compliment' shall now become a permanent feature of my to-do list. Paying compliment should become a viral task, the whole universe will feel much jollier as a result

On returning home an email alert appeared on my mobile

Great arse

Best wishes,

Veronica

It would appear that you do indeed reap what you sow.

Think productive, you litte Ninja

My blog would seem an odd place to review a book but since this was always about revelations on myself and others - it is an entirely appropriate place. I have an inordinate respect for Graham Allcott. He has an interesting history, keen social entrepreneur and founder of both social and charitable enterprise. I could witter on about his many successes but really, they are  precisely what you would expect from someone who clearly has natural insightful and who happens to have mastered that art of productivity.


Yep, he's done great but the real source of respect comes for Graham Allcott being the mind behind Think Productive - a company that made me cry.


Now it is well documented that those that make me cry, have generally had a deep impact on my life and no matter the pain of the moment, will always afford a positive gain.


I'm pretty certain that there was nothing in the Think Productive manual about making people cry but they didn't flinch. It seems that in order to be productive you have to stop trying so hard to be productive. Self placed expectation was leading to the constant guilt about not achieving enough. It was this that was  making me deeply unproductive. This revelation - apparently obvious to everyone else, was a bolt from the blue to me. So I cried, quite a lot.


So when Graham Allcotts new book 'How to be a productivity Ninja' was released this week, I was quite excited. The world is full of books that tell us how to make our lives easier but most are no more than another quick fix, often requiring us to master some overly complicated system that we don't have time for. Invariable a list of self help productivity manuals will accrue on the bookshelf, simply charting our own sense of failure.


Grahams book is simple. It's not about managing your world, it's about managing yourself. It doesn't teach you to be perfect, it teaches you to accept who you are. It will not teach you to get to the top by adding things to your to do list, it gives you the skills of working out what is important and reducing the chaos.  Most of all, it gets rid of guilt and once you do that, you achieve so much more.


And that's because Graham understands people, projecting a sense of calm insight into every word he writes. When you read this book it makes so much sense that you cannot quite believe it took someone else to tell you. To the rest of us with our scattered paintball approach to organisation, Graham Allcot is like a sniper.


And like all the good things - it all starts within.

 http://www.productivityninja.co.uk/.

Profound my arse

I have just had a deep and meaningful conversation with one of my dearest male friends.

I shared my revelations.

His summary was as follows:

• You are lovely the way you are

• When men flirt with you they are only ever interested in one thing. 

• On the whole, most men are tossers

• You should remain cynical of any man that comes anywhere near you

It would appear that any threat profound thought placed on the shoe collection has been dealt with. 

Being superficial and cynical is apparently a much safer haven.

I give up

Irony, insight and a new perspective

I had a conversation last night that hinged around the fact that I was considered to be insightful. Apparently to the point of Witchdom.

Over the years I have grown used to the fact that the way in which my mind works can and does intimidate people. I have had countless friends tell me I need to stop analysing things and just accept things as they are. Which is advice that comes with a strong thread of irony.

Ironic since with all the love and intention that comes with those nuggets of advice, is perhaps the lack of acceptance for who I am. There is no question that my mind has been the vehicle for deep routed pain. When people hurt me, they can do so to a level that sometimes forces me to question whether others feel the same pain. It’s invariably not with malice, more of a result of not accepting their own issues. The problem with my mind is that I can work out the issues and thus can never hate the person for behaviour that my gut instinct tells me – makes them unhappy. 

So I accept that they are not unkind. Understanding their behaviour affords me no vehicle for anger. As a result, my own process of healing takes considerably longer than would be reasonably expected.

So last night was an evening of yet more irony. I had a conversation with a man who further back in time had messed with both my head and my heart. I learnt a lot from him. Mainly that the issues he had, were ones that were also part of my own personality. I don’t have a fear that a relationship might not work. I have a fear that it might.  My Achilles heel is vulnerability.

A friend advised recently that I need a man that doesn’t put up with my thought process. That advice comes from love, since as a friend - she knows the real me. But she is wrong – what I would need is a man perceptive enough to see through defence mechanisms and strong enough to not be scared of them.

And I scare people, which all comes down to the insightful thing. If you have an issue, I will nail it. I don’t seek to, it’s just the mind I have. I don’t have a problem with people’s issues but if they do, it becomes a problem. There can be nothing harder than trying to pretend you are the toughest person in the world only to have someone raising an eyebrow in your direction. Which I will.

Yet last night was a revelation to me. I have spent many years thinking that my life would be simpler and less painful if I didn’t have a mind that thought things through from every angle, in a split second. It’s not a new issue, I vividly recall feeling deeply lonely as a child - wishing with all my might that my brain would just stop whirring. It never did.

So the real irony is that in seeking to understand others and accepting them with their faults is the one thing about myself that others can often find hard to accept. In this they never really accepted who I am which in turn, means I never have either.

So as I sat last night listening to a man that I have always understood too well for his comfort, talk about my insightfulness in positive terms - was a watershed moment. He spoke of my blog, his view of my insight and my perception of situations with what appeared to be genuine admiration. More importantly, it was a brief moment without guard and without suspicion. And for a brief moment I saw that in accepting me for who I am, showed a glimmer of the man I know him to be.

Perhaps one day I will meet someone who can accept that I am who I am. The things I have written on this blog may have been raw, they may have been harsh but they all came from my bizarre thought process and they all came from honesty.

Maybe one day I will get past the meaningless flirtations, the challenging banter, to trust that when a man shows an interest – it’s not merely because they may consider me to be attractive. Perhaps when I enter into flirtation and banter it might be that I stop assuming there only to be one goal at the end of it, and it isn’t my mind. Perhaps one day, I will meet a man that doesn’t turn me into their mission because I challenge their pre-conceived ideas of what a woman should be. Perhaps, just perhaps I will get to a place where I can trust someone makes the effort because they see the real me, not the one I offer.

So to the man that fucked with my head, I thank you for offering me a moment where being me felt valued. To offer a view that was unsought, unexpected and with no cost attached. It was a long road and I am glad that what I always saw is who you are. I wish you nothing but happiness.

As for me, I may at some point – consider dropping the sparring gloves.

But it will take an insightful man.

I may have to think about all of this.

When it bites you from behind

Just occassionaly my veneer gets a bolt form the blue that causes so much unexpected hurt that it actually makes me want to vomit. It's an irrational response to stuff that is no longer relevent but its unaddressed. Unaddressed because I will simply never understand why anyone would want to cause someone pain.

Wouldn't life just be peachy if everyone that came into your life had integrity. It's not rocket science - the thing is that if you treat people kindly, you don't damage them. If you treat people kindly, you may hurt them but you don't mess with their head.

And yet it seems the hardest thing in the world, since on the whole - most of us walk around in denial about the impact we have on those that we meet. Perhaps if we lived in a society whhich was founded on giving rather than taking- perhaps it  would less of an issue,


I am running out of inner strength

Thank God I am not a spider

I have never really been sure if I believe in horoscopes, taking the view that you make your own future. State of mind, attitude to life, openness to people and experience must surely play a large part of the road you travel. But I'm also open minded. There are so many things that I know so little about that I believe that it is far better to be open to a wider concept than to follow the thought that if I don't believe in it, it doesn't exist.

So on the whole, I don't read horoscopes. After all, if the predictions for the coming week were accurate they would affect everyone of the same birth sign. In a small town, life would only have variation dependent of the number of star signs.

Sometime ago and perhaps I posted it on here - I completed all the relevant birth details for an online horoscope profile. The accuracy of my personal traits was quite disconcerting. I have idea as to how banging in my DOB, place of birth and exact timing would profile me in such an accurate way, but it did.

The Cancerian Crab, with an emotional shell around so hard that it takes some perseverance to get inside. Yet once penetrated, deeply loyal. One man in my life said "Hard as nails on the outside but  marshmallow inside" This statement made before extra few pounds were added and the outside became more like a marshmallow too. Ironic that he spent month bashing down barriers until I finally said I cared. At that point he had to be attached to an ECG machine. Not an experience that encourages one to be forth coming.

But it's a fair point.

I had supper with a friend on Friday evening and we had a long conversation on the very matter. Unable to see how I could be seen as hard, she made the fatal mistake of being really, really lovely. So I cried. On the positive side, the waiter was so alarmed he didn't advise me of the option for tipping, so it was a cheaper night than planned.

I don't like being vulnerable, if I let my guard down and think someone may hurt me, I'll retreat faster than you can blink. It's not a good thing. If I get hurt, I would rather chew my toenails than admit it. I spend a lot more time than is necessary assuming I need to outwit people. Its limiting.

I blame me. I'm perfectly normal with men that don't interest me. With men that cause an eyebrow to raise in interest (not a common occurrence) the defences go up, which really is the opposite of what should happen. It's tricky.

Clearly a crab. Thank god I'm not a black widow spider

Paralysed with guilt

Ten days ago, a teenager I refer to as my half child was seriously injured in a car crash. The child of a friend who had died and life long chum to my own son - he has, over the years been very much part of the furniture.

Now he has spinal injuries. Whether he will ever walk again is unknown and whilst he lies in a hospital bed pondering what the future may be, there is another teenager who also had his whole life turned upside down that night. For him, there is physical proof of the acute pain he will be in.

And that is the driver. A boy who having only driven for a month, miraculously walked away without injury. Except this poor child, through no fault on his part lost control of the car in horrendous weather conditions. Perhaps another 20 years driving experience may have made the difference, perhaps if they had left an hour earlier, taken the first right, driven 1mph slower, perhaps if he had done all of this and more - the crash wouldn't have happened.

But the crash did happen and no matter how much he relives the accident in his head, nothing can change the events of that night. This boy, a mere 18 years old himself, has just had his innocence ripped from him and though reassured by others that no one places any blame at his door, will be suffering the kind of soul destroying guilt that most of us are lucky never to experience.

How could it possibly feel to be the driver of a car in which one of your best friends is potentially paralysed. How could you carry on with your venture into adulthood, maintain that spring in your step, hold onto the kind of wide eyed optimism that you have at 18?

When someone you care about is hurt or killed in an accident, it is human nature to question 'Why them and not me?" When you were involved in the cause and are just 18, this is the kind of accident that can leave the most monumental psychological scar. You can be certain that this boy is not thinking as the rest of us are "Thank god none of the others were hurt. Frankly, much better one seriously injured teenager than three. It sounds harsh but in a car crash involving teenagers there really is a worse case scenario.

I cry when I think of the half child but take positivity from each and every tiny sign of progress, from the support he has from family and friends to the staff around him. I have confidence that he will receive the best level not just because of the extent of his injury but because when you meet him, you cannot fail but to adore him,

As for the boy driving, I know that it's frequently the unseen things that cause the biggest harm.  My heart breaks for him.

Life is harsh