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mapsedgeThis article impressed me. I worked at the computer from just about 8:00 yesterday morning until nearly 10:00 last night (with breaks for eating and eliminatory processes - and the odd cup of coffee). Most of it was day-job, some of it was side work, a little was personal: all of it was sitting on my butt working through challenges of logic and technological barriers.
I know that Michelle doesn't like it when I do that. She gets outraged on my behalf, and sometimes it's kinda cute. I was getting things done yesterday, though, and was frequently in The Zone. Some of that is almost meditative, when I'm not totally focused on Getting Something Done, when my fingers and my mind are only distantly connected.
The article below explains that Zone pretty well.
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rowangolightly
From the Philadelphia Inquirer
Drudgery: A task worth celebrating
Admit it: It's a big part of your life. So enjoy.
As we slog into the New Year, I want to share one of my personal enthusiasms with readers. This pastime requires little or no expense or equipment, and it can be engaged in wherever you happen to be. It can be practiced in solitude or with others. No batteries or instructions are required.
Let us welcome 2009 with a celebration of Drudgery. I admit that Drudgery does not evoke any of the glittering promises of advertising and the media - the words that invariably arrive with an exclamation point: Sexy! New! Fun! Cool! Exciting!
Drudgery is none of these things, and it takes a certain quiet pride in the fact. Rarely does the word arrive with an exclamation point at its side.
Samuel Johnson, the great English essayist and creator of the first comprehensive English dictionary, defined lexicographer as "a harmless drudge."
The painter Gauguin wrote in his journal, "Work is leisure." Yet, when I think about it, his might be an exceptional case.
"Monsieur Gauguin, what do you do for a living?"
"My profession is painting beautiful, partially clad native women in the tropical paradise where I live."
It would be superfluous to ask if his job came with a good 401(k) program.
One reason to appreciate Drudgery is that it makes up much of what we call work, and not a little of what we call recreation. The author Logan Pearsall Smith wrote, "The test of a vocation is the love of the Drudgery it involves." (I wonder if he was a gardener).
Do not confuse Drudgery with its sibling Hard Work. There are certain people who complain, with great self-satisfaction, about all the Hard Work they do.
I do not deny the existence of Hard Work. I grant a soldier assigned to deactivating land mines that his is Hard Work. The emergency-room physician who tends to patients nonstop for 18 hours - that is Hard Work indeed. Working three jobs to support your family can only be called Hard Work.
There are other kinds of Hard Work that are less extreme and debilitating. To labor at a task that is altogether uncongenial is hard. Working in a nasty, unsupportive workplace is most hard. To work at something for which you have no aptitude: hard again. And it is sure hard to accomplish one's task without adequate tools or guidance.
But when an executive or politician preens himself over his Hard Work, what he's really talking about is diligent application - the persistence needed to accomplish a task. For him to complain of this as Hard Work is like a cow complaining of all the grass it must chew, or a hen kvetching about the ordeal of laying eggs.
If you consider your day's work, and grade the degree of difficulty of each task from 1 to 10, you will probably land in the sweet spot of Drudgery - somewhere between Gauguin's 1 or 2 and the land-mine remover's 10.
In decision-making, sometimes the hardest thing to do is the easiest. Often, the greatest challenge is to step away from the task for a time and come back to it later, with fresh eyes and a rested, open mind. Many a military, investment or marketing blunder might have been averted if one brave soul had the temerity to propose that the assembled company of Hard Workers go home and play with their children.
It was as he was lowering himself into his bathtub that the Greek scientist Archimedes had his "Eureka" moment. I doubt the discoverer of specific gravity grumbled about the Hard Work involved in bath-taking.
Contemplating Drudgery brings to mind the image of Japanese Zen monks sweeping the sand in a temple garden. They look happy. There is contentment in their movements. They turn sweeping into poetry, a chore into an exercise of mindfulness.
We are, all of us, fated to lives filled with Drudgery. How very lucky we are.
I know that Michelle doesn't like it when I do that. She gets outraged on my behalf, and sometimes it's kinda cute. I was getting things done yesterday, though, and was frequently in The Zone. Some of that is almost meditative, when I'm not totally focused on Getting Something Done, when my fingers and my mind are only distantly connected.
The article below explains that Zone pretty well.
Ganked from
rowangolightly From the Philadelphia Inquirer
Drudgery: A task worth celebrating
Admit it: It's a big part of your life. So enjoy.
As we slog into the New Year, I want to share one of my personal enthusiasms with readers. This pastime requires little or no expense or equipment, and it can be engaged in wherever you happen to be. It can be practiced in solitude or with others. No batteries or instructions are required.
Let us welcome 2009 with a celebration of Drudgery. I admit that Drudgery does not evoke any of the glittering promises of advertising and the media - the words that invariably arrive with an exclamation point: Sexy! New! Fun! Cool! Exciting!
Drudgery is none of these things, and it takes a certain quiet pride in the fact. Rarely does the word arrive with an exclamation point at its side.
Samuel Johnson, the great English essayist and creator of the first comprehensive English dictionary, defined lexicographer as "a harmless drudge."
The painter Gauguin wrote in his journal, "Work is leisure." Yet, when I think about it, his might be an exceptional case.
"Monsieur Gauguin, what do you do for a living?"
"My profession is painting beautiful, partially clad native women in the tropical paradise where I live."
It would be superfluous to ask if his job came with a good 401(k) program.
One reason to appreciate Drudgery is that it makes up much of what we call work, and not a little of what we call recreation. The author Logan Pearsall Smith wrote, "The test of a vocation is the love of the Drudgery it involves." (I wonder if he was a gardener).
Do not confuse Drudgery with its sibling Hard Work. There are certain people who complain, with great self-satisfaction, about all the Hard Work they do.
I do not deny the existence of Hard Work. I grant a soldier assigned to deactivating land mines that his is Hard Work. The emergency-room physician who tends to patients nonstop for 18 hours - that is Hard Work indeed. Working three jobs to support your family can only be called Hard Work.
There are other kinds of Hard Work that are less extreme and debilitating. To labor at a task that is altogether uncongenial is hard. Working in a nasty, unsupportive workplace is most hard. To work at something for which you have no aptitude: hard again. And it is sure hard to accomplish one's task without adequate tools or guidance.
But when an executive or politician preens himself over his Hard Work, what he's really talking about is diligent application - the persistence needed to accomplish a task. For him to complain of this as Hard Work is like a cow complaining of all the grass it must chew, or a hen kvetching about the ordeal of laying eggs.
If you consider your day's work, and grade the degree of difficulty of each task from 1 to 10, you will probably land in the sweet spot of Drudgery - somewhere between Gauguin's 1 or 2 and the land-mine remover's 10.
In decision-making, sometimes the hardest thing to do is the easiest. Often, the greatest challenge is to step away from the task for a time and come back to it later, with fresh eyes and a rested, open mind. Many a military, investment or marketing blunder might have been averted if one brave soul had the temerity to propose that the assembled company of Hard Workers go home and play with their children.
It was as he was lowering himself into his bathtub that the Greek scientist Archimedes had his "Eureka" moment. I doubt the discoverer of specific gravity grumbled about the Hard Work involved in bath-taking.
Contemplating Drudgery brings to mind the image of Japanese Zen monks sweeping the sand in a temple garden. They look happy. There is contentment in their movements. They turn sweeping into poetry, a chore into an exercise of mindfulness.
We are, all of us, fated to lives filled with Drudgery. How very lucky we are.