Asymptomatic

There must be intelligent life down here

Principle #5 - Work Should Feel Wrong
May 27, 2009

By now you should know that I've been posting a list of personal principles for the past few days. Yesterday's was about moving forward every day. Today's is about getting the most out of work.

I remember growing up always being encouraged by my parents to reach for the stars. There wasn't anything they discouraged me from when thinking about what I wanted to be when I grew up.

It started at an early age, when I wanted to be an astronaut. Now before you laugh, I put some actual planning into this. I had a kind of path to my goal sorted out -- I would enter the Air Force Academy to be an aeronautical engineer, become a pilot, and eventually fly the space shuttle. All of this came to a crashing halt when, in preparation for my future years of touring the stars, I took a drafting class in high school and found myself in a remedial math class on fractions for the vo-tech crowd.

There's nothing wrong with vo-tech, and nothing wrong with remedial math, but when I was taking Advanced Placement Honors Calculus at the time, remedial fractions broke my delusions of getting ahead in aeronautics in high school. Nonetheless, my parents were still encouraging.

Principle #4 - Move Forward Every Day
May 26, 2009

I took a break yesterday from the principles to play some Rock Band 2. I hope you did something to rest yourself, too. But today continues from Sunday's revelation of the Tetris Principle on to "Move Forward Every Day."

If you come by here or read the site's feed often at all, you'll notice that I complain a lot about not having any time to get anything done. I assume that this is a characteristic that many creative people share, since there always seems to be at least one - usually more like 50 - big project that you're always talking about getting done, or simply looming out there, taunting you...

Sorry, I was just distracted by those three novels I want to write.

It's not a simple matter of budgeting time. There are plenty of systems that will help you do that. If you look at GTD, it even quantifies this particular rule pretty well with its "next action" idea. But that's still not the full picture, even if there's some implication of it there.

Principle #2 - Go Ahead and Be Picky
May 24, 2009

Today's entry is next in line of my personal principles, after yesterday's rule, "Give Love Freely". This principle starts with bananas.

A few years ago, I loathed bananas. Couldn't stand the smell, much less the taste. I don't know why, but that's just the way things fell out. But in discovering that I didn't like bananas, it turns out there were a lot of other foods that I don't like: Nuts. Strawberries. Soup. Watermelon. Anything flavored with lemon.

Wow. I'm really picky. What the heck, Owen, don't you like anything? Sure, I like stuff. In fact, I just don't like these things as much as I like other things. What I'm saying is that since I'm being given the choice, I'd rather not waste my time with things that I know I don't like, no matter what other people think of them.

This is much different from avoiding new things. In fact, it's almost the opposite, since I usually love trying new things. But if I've done something, there's got to be a really good reason for me to re-try it if I didn't like it in the first place. When given this world full of pleasures, why torture myself with things that other people insist I should like that I know I don't?

Principle #3 - The Tetris Principle
May 24, 2009

Yesterday's principle on being picky was part of a series I'm writing on some unrefined personal principles; some general rules that I follow day-to-day. As I mentioned yesterday, today's is my favorite of the bunch.

I went to college at the University of Pittsburgh in Johnstown. It's kind of like the ski lodge remote campus that you see in the National Lampoon movies. Really, the dorms looked just like ski lodges. I mentioned before that I was a DJ in school, and one of the perks in my second year (since, the year we before basically turned the radio station from a bumbling classic rock joke into a burgeoning modern/alternative contender) was having the opportunity to live in "Radio House" - basically a fraternity house for people involved in radio.

Principle #1 - Give Love Freely
May 22, 2009

Yesterday, I announced I was going to list a few of my personal principles. This is the first. This is a new one for me, and I think it's perhaps the hardest principle of the lot for me to follow. The idea seems pretty obvious, but I think - as with all these principles, and with most things from which you can derive wisdom - there are undertones and tributaries that make it complex.

How did I discover this rule? It's an odd story, as you'll likely discover as I tell the story of each of these rules.