Cleaning Off my Desk so I can Do My Work
Hello Steemit!
Hello 4th quarter!
Spent much of the day today tidying up. Whenever I get in that mood, I am always reminded of a meme I saw once: "I clean this place once a year... whether it needs it, or not."
Dealing with the archaeological dig that is my desk brought home one of the eternal banes of my existence:
I keep operating under the delusion that if I just create a better system or get better organized, I will somehow be able to keep up with the flow of paper and information that flows through my life.
Tiny wild aster in close-up
I use the word "delusion," because that is precisely what it is.
The particular "elephant in my room" that I seldom seem quite willing to embrace is the fact that I simply have more stuff going on than a single human could hope to keep track of... and still keep their sanity.
I remember an article in a magazine at the doctor's office, in which some prominent time management specialist (who had retired) was arguing the point that when you feel like you're constantly at the edge of a stress meltdown from overwork the answer is not "better time management," it is to work less.
And therein lies the rub.
"Working less" isn't in the cards for a very large segment of the population.
Some months back, I came across United Way's latest ALICE research study for the US. ALICE stands for "Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed," and basically tracks the plight of the working poor in the US.
More than 50 million households are "at risk" in this country of ours. At risk, meaning they are not 100% where the rent money, or the grocery money is going to come from, this month. And if they were to face something like a larger car repair bill? They'd basically be hosed.
50 million households (not "people") amounts to something on the order of 40% of the population. That's not a pretty idea.
"The economy" may be doing well, but individual people's economy... not so much.
Well, enough gloom and doom there! It's good to be back to posting something again, now that the HF.20 storm has pretty much blown over.
Comments, as always, are invited and welcome!
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Created: 181003 01:23 PDT
Work less, or just use less paper? :)
There's plenty of paper bills that pass my desk that I would eventually do online banking for. Not totally trusting of that process yet, but I have been slowly switching over. After that, most of the paper that ends up on my desk is what I generate myself. I could probably put them in some kind of file form on the computer, but they're so convenient when they're in paper form to move around and consult anytime I want. No electricity or batteries required. And most of them end up being thrown away at some point, anyway.
Many do work from paycheck to paycheck. Working less could be an option though if working for more is. I don't know if that could happen universally, but it might for some. I guess it depends on the quality of life that's obtained at that point, and what there might be left to give up that people would be willing to live without. So much of what we do is more to keep up with the Joneses than it is of any necessity. The cable, the smartphone and the internet could all go away and I don't think I would be worse off.
I wouldn't be able to get on Steemit so well without the internet, and I am somewhat of an information junkie, but my wife would be happier, since it would mean I would probably end up doing all of the chores and projects she wants me to do. :)
I'm slowly getting rid of the paper @glenalbrethsen... most of that stuff I was dealing with was already pretty old, and I'm tired of it all just ending up in the recycling bin because "I didn't really need it, anyway."
Being self-employed, I experience life more as living "shutoff notice to shutoff notice." I think the issue a lot of self-employed people wrestle with is less "elasticity" in being able to have price increases. When I was a contract technical writer, I know a lot of the clients who came to me sought me out in expectation that I would be cheaper than working with someone attached to a larger services company. People seem to shrug and say sign of the times with a large company raises prices, but when an individual tries to follow suit, you're suddenly "price gouging."
There are quite a few things we have already chosen to do without... cable TV, an assortment of subscriptions, a host of $3.99 a month apps that we never use but they nickel-and-dime you to death.
I hear you. I didn't realize you were self-employed. I probably should have. I don't know if I've mentioned this to you but I owned and published newspapers for 15 years, so I'm pretty familiar with the self-employed gig. We were more than just me for most of the time (the living from shutoff notice to shutoff notice happened for about three years at the beginning of that run). My wife went back to work part-time for about three months (may have been six). Fortunately, that was enough to keep us afloat until I was able to get into a partnership with another local newspaper owner.
From there, though, things finally picked up.
I do know what you mean by raising rates. We managed to do it a couple of times, but we were so stinking under anyone else's prices that we could have doubled or tripled ours and still been okay. Instead, we would end up raising fifty cents or a dollar. But it made a difference to us, because we were small—lean and mean. :)
So, publishing newspapers, we literally had paper everywhere! All that didn't end up getting sold or saved for archiving went into the recycling bin. And then there was all the paper work involved with things like affidavits and proof of publishing, etc. Still have invoices and other things hanging around that I probably could get rid of now since its been nearly six years that the last paper went out the door.
Ah, self-employment. What can you say? You do what you got to do, I guess. It's certainly not all the glamor and glitter people might think it is.
I may complain about the situation from time to time, but on the whole there's no way I'd trade my self-employment status for anything else.
I may complain from time to time, but I'd rather try to reinvent myself for the 43rd time than sell my soul to some soulless 3-Initials Corporation that uses people like Kleenex.
So yes, we get caught in the squeeze from time to time... and then we "deal" and go on.
But you're right, it's not all glitz and glamour. As I am fond of telling people: "Because I am self-employed, I get to set my own schedule! I can work ANY 60 hours a week I choose!"
Geez it’s quite sad that In a country like America 40% of its population find it hard to pay regular bills. The spread of wealth between the rich and poor is too uneven.
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It's a growing issue that doesn't much get talked about because "the economy" is strong and "unemployment" is relatively low. That being that case, everything should be OK, right?
The problem is that the above is true, but the flow of money is heading towards the "investor layer" of the economy. Corporate profits have to keep rising to keep investors happy. If you use those (or some of) those profits to increase wages, or invest in plant and capacity... profits don't increase immediately.
It has all become a race for the highest stock price. A rising stock market is a primary indicator of a good economy... NOT whether the average person can afford to buy goods and services.
...'more stuff to do', definitely leads to more insanity...
Oh, hang on! I do bugger all, and I'm nuts.
Scratch that comment...
Maybe insanity is just a general affliction of creative people.
Perhaps I need to look at the possibility that I have grown too attached to things like electricity and running water...
DITTO!
I did the same thing over this past weekend. Threw away sticky notes, organized my post schedules, got my budget in order for autumn and the oncoming winter months... it felt SO GOOD!
(except by Friday it will be an image of its previous state guaranteed!)
It's pretty amazing how "other stuff" has a way of sneaking into the space just vacated by stuff we got rid of. It has always amazed me how easily that happens...
Somethings gotta give... if it’s not quantity of work, it’ll generally be quality.
I never got into the habit of having a lot of paper artifacts, so that’s nice. But the flip side is that my email has 20,000 unread messsages. So there’s that 😂
I'm pretty good at opening and sorting all the "electronic stuff" into the appropriate folders and such... and clearing our multiple email accounts on a daily basis. But I seldom have time left over to act on the various alerts and notices I receive. Simply processing them seems like an endless time sink.
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