Frantic might not fix it?

I ask myself - has it really been five years since the end of the Get-it-Done guy podcasts? And in your case, whatever are we talking about here?

It is a delight to be listening to a well thought out, constructive, self-deprecating and funny podcast. The Get-it-done-Guy podcast by Stever Robbins ran from 2007 to 2020 and I was a big fan. Stever would cover tips on how to work less and do more. How to plan out your time, avoid long meetings, spend wisely but not make silly savings - why not have a second key home cut that you can take with you on the days where you actually don’t need the car keys and the pile of office keys that tend to ruin your pockets and make you look daft? A small expense, admittedly, but a little improvement on many days.

The overall tone of the podcast was modest and funny and the advice was helpful. How to organize your inbox. What to do about to-do lists - is it better to write them on paper so that you physically need to copy them over to the next list and hence reflect on whether you ever intend to really do that onerous job you have been avoiding but still hangs in the app? And should you outsource administrative tasks and try to focus on jobs at which you excel and can consider your time well spent? You get the idea.

Step with me, if you will, into the next room down the corridor, the lair of the Stoic Calmness Guy. This fella works differently and his aim is not solely spending as little time of any one task as is humanly possible yet getting away with it in a largely defensible way. No. He is not so much the guy who has a second key cut in order to save a daily minute on taking his home key out of the bundle and putting it on a different chain on the days where he does not need the office or the car. SCG does this slowly and with relish. He may even be listening to calming music while he does it, perhaps smiling at the potted plants and giving himself a little pat on the shoulder for accomplishing another little task. Yesterday morning, the Get-it-done-Guy and the SCG both had to update their CVs for a grant application and they were large CVs yet not at all meeting the highly on-spec criteria of that particular funding body. A standard CV will not do at all, sir. Please do not try. We will not like it and we will not like you so there will be no money.

At eight a.m. both sit down at their laptops. The GID guy allocates thirty minutes to the task and already hates it. He tries to have one of the Large Language Models adapt his uploaded CV to the template that he links to and wait for five minutes for things to be done, expecting a need for revising the draft but hopefully just minor language edits and maybe adding in an extra flourish here and there. Damn - the CV is now full of mistakes and fluffy languages. A degree has been added as well as a Fellowship and a couple of awards. Okay, need to start again.

Next door the SCG languishes behind the screens, typing slowly into the template and copying in relevant sections from the crude CV on the other screen. The coffee machine is slowly percolating as he enjoys the process and the background music. Granted, there are many other important things on the to-do list but he has decided that this is the most important and somewhat urgent task to fix. He congratulates himself on finishing the first two sections and puts in a little bit of work on each of the other parts, mostly so that they are not entirely blank and empty when he gets to them. Also, he knows that his brain is probably still sorting them out in the background while he does other things.

Twenty minutes in, the GID guy sneers at himself for spending this long on a thankless mundane task that really isn’t justified, just to placate a the whims of a grants office. It would be coffee time soon but the half hour is almost gone and he has several items to edit and allocate to the right boxes. His to-do list isn’t getting any shorter and he feels bad about being stuck in this task while the long list glares at him. The task gives him no joy and he feel sure that others would be better at it and even like doing it.

It’s been two hours and both CVs are done and dusted. One is delighted to have done it so well and in so relatively little time, congratulates himself again and lets it sink in for a few minutes before getting up to change the music and decide which task to move on to. Next door, the other guy fumes with rage at being almost two hours behind with what he had planned to accomplish that day. He decides to punish himself by skipping the break and go straight into the next task on the list, for which he also feels at the same time overqualified and ill-equipped.

I think you get the message. Time management tools and lists are very helpful tools when used well but they should not really be our masters and how we pitch things to ourselves are important for our mental health and job satisfaction. Turning the efficiency dial up too far may blow a fuse or two and enough time to rest on the laurels and enjoy a work well done is important to most of us even when we don’t think about it. Also, Stoicism has become very fashionable and it is hardly the answer to everything. Sure, if your suitcase comes apart just as you were on your way to checking it in for a long flight it will not be of any use to start screaming like a four year-old, jumping up or down and throwing your toiletries at people. On the other hand, sitting down peacefully and rewarding yourself mentally for having thought to pack a suitcase at all won’t get your stuff on the plane. I have picked up a podcast series that is more about hacking your brain to be friendly and nice to you than about harnessing it for brute time efficiency (Sorry Stever, I don’t mean it like that!) - look up the Hidden Brain podcast if you are curious. I don’t endorse every episode and some episodes float my boat more than others. Stay caffeinated if your doctor allows it!