Episode 57 - Japan Makes You Busy
07Feb08
Let’s get deep again. I tried to mix it up with some pleasant thoughts, some interesting sights, and of course, always deep deep riveting commentary from yours truly (sarcasm goes to 11, you know).
Show Notes:
- Some thoughts about Saizeriya
- Topic: Japan Makes You Busy
- A bit about my lifestyle
- Spending my time on the computer
- “The Four Hour Separation”
- 1 hr of screwing around
- 1 hr of reading
- 1 hr of art
- 1 hr of life
- [Musical Break]
- Why is it necessary?
- Opportunity overload
- 6 hours spent doing nothing this weekend
- Putting more “real” in realtime
- Train announcer gets on my nerves
- Escalator Apologizers
- Some Closing Thoughts
- Music - “Atlantic Midnight” by Jaspertine from CCMixter.org
- Music - “Drugstar” by Pthalo
Thursday, February 7th 2008 at 9:14 pm
great solutions for your time problems! i can ENTIRELY relate to your neuroses. love this one hour limit idea, and i think i’ll try an augmented version for my own procrastinative problems
great stuff!
Friday, February 8th 2008 at 1:53 pm
So I googled for Saizeriya, and found their site. I clicked a random link (since I can’t read Japanese), and apparently came across a menu. I saw this:
http://www.saizeriya.co.jp/cgi-bin/menu/views.cgi?n=9
which includes something my kids would get in their grade school lunchroom. A bare hot dog, a bare hamburger patty, a few potato wedges, a ball of rice, cup of applesauce(?), and… a few shrimp? I hope that’s the kid’s menu I found
And the apologizers came out sounding just fine. I was wondering what hey were apologizing about when I heard them, so thanks for the explination.
Friday, February 8th 2008 at 3:35 pm
I agree that trying to spend your time efficiently is a good idea if you want to get a lot done, but I think somethings are just better done if you don’t think about time. I used to do a lot of B&W photography, and when developing, I came to realize that if I actually want to get a good picture out, it might take an hour or two to produce one picture; if you try to speed up the process, the pictures never turn out as well. In retrospect, it was kinda nice to lose track of time (which is really easy in a dark room), and just immerse yourself in what you are doing.
On a completely different note, its odd to be three comments down without a post from San.
Tuesday, February 12th 2008 at 12:00 pm
This was a great episode with some funny points, good stories, and good audio. Funnily enough, I need to do the same (make a schedule) because I waste a lot of time taking a “break” from schoolwork because I’m pooped and I want to do what I enjoy. But you mentioned how you were on the computer for fun when you were on the computer all day at work… same with me… yet like in your case it’s the only thing that entertains me. THEN I wind up getting hardly anything done. So yeah, good episode and it’s kind of funny that you and I are/were in the same situation.
Tuesday, February 12th 2008 at 12:54 pm
Chris, I enjoyed this podcast. I will be very interested to hear a follow-up in the future about how your plan of how you want your time works out. (Perhaps a future “Letters to my Future Self” segment?) I have found that it’s hard to maintain such a schedule without having any interaction with other people as part of the process. Let me give an example: I was taking a Japanese class which I was not very happy with last year; so I decided that rather than paying several hundred dollars to take it and being unhappy with it (plus it was quite a ways from my house) I would just study on my own. However I found that without that regular forced interaction with others it was really hard to maintain the discipline to keep up the studying. Now maybe this just says something about me and my lack of self-discipline, but I think that for many people, without any sort of interaction with other people, be it a class, friends, family, online community etc., it’s difficult to maintain momentum on projects such as these. I don’t think it necessarily has to be something as formal or structured as a class; I think something like a biweekly writers’ group or something following that model would work just as well.
I have been thinking about this a lot because I have been wanting to learn to draw (or at least draw better), so I bought a simple how-to book and have been trying to work through it. I have a hard time getting starting practicing the exercises they recommend, although I do enjoy it once I get going. It’s hard to force myself to do it when I’ve gotten home from work, exercised, cooked dinner with the wife etc. and there is only an hour or two of truly discretionary time in each day. So as I say, I will be very interested to hear how this time management experiment works out for you–maybe you can write the unofficial sequel to Getting Things Done if it does!
Wednesday, April 16th 2008 at 4:55 am
Thank you so much for this episode…
looks like we have a lots in common!
For some time Im trying to figure out the structure and idea for my podcast.
After this episode I realized that its not necessary good idea to focus on one particular thing and ignore all other points of interest. Such as Art, stock investing, technology…
I always tought that with such a spread of topics I will never be able to find any audience at all.
This episode (one of the best Ive ever heard) changed my mind.
Thanks a lot. I will update you with my first episodes once ready
take care !