Happy Sunday Friends! Here is 1 quote I’m musing, 2 Ideas, 3 of my favorite things from the week, and 1 question. If you find it useful or interesting, please feel free to forward this along to some friends or others!

One Quote I’m Musing

“Putting things off is the greatest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future.”

-Seneca

Parkinson’s Law is the idea that work expands to fill the time available. I’ve found this true when planning and working through the maturation of Clipt (App Store / Play Store) as well as in my work in cyber.

Although our real deadlines for completing a project are weeks or even months away, such a long time to do the work is unhelpful. We’d put it off, then we’d run into logistical issues, then some of us would take vacation, all while the very idea of doing the work would be a weight on our shoulders.

I didn’t have an actual name for this until recently, but I’d already coined my solution a decade ago.

“Efficiently Lazy.” The inverse of “It only takes a minute if you wait until the last minute.”

Knowing I had a deadline meant that I had to spend some amount of energy knowing and thinking about having a deadline.

If I get it done right away, via a shorter artificial deadline, I’d be done and not have to even spend that small amount of energy through procrastination. This avoids my unnecessary time wasting, and ensures I actually get the important things done.

Parkinson’s Law is a helpful bit of knowledge to keep in mind in any endeavor. Work will always expand to fill the time we allocate to it. Several years ago, I gave myself a week to write a speech, that speech took up the whole week. A week or so ago I had a short notice speaking engagement and had about a day to write the speech. I gave myself four hours to write it so that I could have a couple others proof it, and it only took four hours. I don’t think there was much difference in quality between the two.

I’ve been actively thinking about the Law more often whenever I need to get something done whether it’s with Clipt, Cyber, or just personal life stuff. Hopefully you’ll find it useful as well.

Two Ideas From Me

We don’t have control over the result, so there is little value in it. What we have control over is the effort we put in.
Influencing our future requires that we control the focus of our attention in the present.

Three Favorite Things From Others

“In a moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing to do,
the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.” - Theodore Roosevelt
“How soon ‘not now’ becomes ‘never’.” - Martin Luther
“The person attempting to travel two roads at once will get nowhere.” - Xun Zi

One Question

Are you being effective or simply busy?

Have a wonderful week,

I’ll see you Sunday.
-e