PocketMod, planner for a pauper’s pocket

Found the coolest little portable pocket planner. Write your notes on it, stuff it in your pocket and toss when done. It’s called the PocketMod.

It’s an easy do-it-yourself - where you add the mini-pages that suit your planning needs then print it, fold it. It’s a bit of an origami puzzle till you get the hang of it… - make sure you print out the assembly instructions on one of your demos so you can review the process offline.

Plastics pandemic

From “The Graduate” 1967.  Mr. McGuire’s career advice to the young Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman):

Mr. McGuire: I want to say one word to you. Just one word.
Benjamin: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: Plastics.
Benjamin: Just how do you mean that, sir?
Mr. McGuire: There’s a great future in plastics. Think about it. Will you think about it?
Ben: Yes I will.
Mr. McGuire: Shh! Enough said. That’s a deal.

Oh how right Mr. McGuire was.  From various websites I’ve culled a few of the dozens of terrifying facts about our love affair with plastic.

When I was in Vietnam and Cambodia this spring I saw what happens when everybody uses plastic and plastic waste management is virtually non-existent.  This photo is from the Phillippines, but I saw the same thing in Cambodia:

Plastic Bags

Each year, an estimated 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide. That comes out to over one million per minute. Billions end up as litter each year.

Plastic bags don’t biodegrade, they photodegrade—breaking down into smaller and smaller toxic bits contaminating soil and waterways and entering the food web when animals accidentally ingest.

Windblown plastic bags are so prevalent in Africa that a cottage industry has sprung up harvesting bags and using them to weave hats, and even bags. According to the BBC, one group harvests 30,000 per month.

Plastic water bottles

Americans bought 8.3 billion gallons of bottled water in 2006.

Producing PET bottles uses more than 17 million barrels of oil and produces over 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide each year.  For each gallon of water that goes into a PET bottle, two gallons of water are used to make the plastic bottles and purify the water . 462 million gallons of oil are needed each year to transport water bottles from the factory to the point of sale.

Plastic residues

In the North Pacific, an enormous gyre (slowly circulating spiral of water) is now known as the “Eastern Garbage Patch. The currents here tend to force any floating material into the low energy central area of the gyre where it stays in the gyre, in astounding quantities estimated at six kilos of plastic for every kilo of naturally occurring plankton.  This tower of trash covers an area the size of Texas. This is only one of several gigantic gyres in the world’s oceans.

Larger plastic items are consumed by seabirds and other animals which mistake them for prey. Many seabirds and their chicks have been found dead, their stomachs filled with medium sized plastic items such as bottle tops, lighters and balloons. It has been estimated that over a million sea-birds and one hundred thousand marine mammals and sea turtles are killed each year by ingestion of plastics or entanglement.

This poor albatross must have had a horrible stomach ache before he died.

Dutch scientists have counted around 110 pieces of litter for every square kilometre of the seabed, a staggering 600,000 tons in the North Sea alone. These plastics can smother the sea bottom and kill the marine life which is found there.

For more information see Green Sangha - Lots and lots of good stuff, including a Powerpoint presentation  you can use to spread the word.

Also see Reusable Bags

Best of Life magazine on the ocean gyres.

I’ve been using cloth bags when I shop for a long time. Now I’m washing and re-using the plastic baggies that I seem to accumulate regardless.  Your ideas welcome.

Post #100 - Persistent Practice Pays!

Yay me!  I’ve averaged one post a day for the past three+ months in pursuit of my main goal in blogging: to create a daily writing practice.

I am a writer by profession, but only write under deadline–if you don’t count the occasional dreary whines into my journal.   If one wants to improve in skill or expand one’s ouevre (love that word, ouevre - sounds so Important), one should write every day.

Since self-discipline isn’t my strong suit I had to create a ruse to make me place pen to paper (fingers to keyboard). I needed to feel that I was talking to someone outside my own skull, and that that audience (however tiny) expected me to keep my agreement to produce on deadline.

It’s said that it takes 21 days to make something a habit. For those of us with self-discipline issues, it may take longer.  For me, it took about 60 days to arrive at a point where I WANT to produce a post.  I called the blog 365Pwords, but at this point I suspect I could go on forever, because there thousands of great P-words, and many of them are worth revisiting several times.

Three side benefits of keeping my focus narrow (at least it seemed narrow when I began):

• I see the world through p-colored glasses.  P-words pop up in unexpected places like colorful toadstools after a spring rain.  Oooh. I have to write about THAT.
• Roget’s Thesaurus is my new best friend.  If something noteworthy happens and I’m plagued by a paucity of P-words to describe it, I get out Roget’s and lose myself among a plethora of word associations until I find the perfect one.  (Forget the online thesaurus, folks. Or the alphabetic ones. If you want to boost your creative thinking, you need the original Roget’s on paper.)
• I’ve discovered the dictionary. When I was little and asked the meaning of a word, my mom would say, “Go look it up in the dictionary…” which just pissed me off.   I had resisted it ever since, until the P-word Project.  What riches lie within those pages! Try it yourself sometime. Again, the paper dictionary, not the online one.

Perseverance #4 - a motivational parable

* At the annual sales meeting of a large corporation, the motivational speaker talked about the importance of persevering, despite obstacles.

He asked the crowd, “Did the Wright brothers ever quit?”

“NO!” the crowd answered.

“Did Helen Keller ever quit?”

“NO!” the crowd answered.

“Did Lance Armstrong ever quit?”

“NO!” they yelled, really getting into it.

“Did Thorndike McKester ever quit?”

The crowd fell silent. Finally one man near the front raised his hand and asked, “Who is Thorndike McKester?? We’ve never heard of him.”

The speaker snapped back, “Of course you’ve never heard of him; that’s because he quit!”

OK. That’s a silly story, which actually neglects the most important point. We don’t persevere to become well known; we persevere to accomplish something that is important to us.

Don’t expect you’ll be famous if you keep on keeping on - unless your goal is merely to become famous - which I say is a pity.

* Story adapted from one in the current Toastmasters Magazine

Other tales of perseverance here, here, here, here, and here.

Prolific Posting is good for you

prolific: adj. producing abundant works, results, or offspring

prolix: adj. wordy and tedious

Since I began this blog April 6 of this year, I have created 81 posts. Whether I’ve been prolific or prolix is up to you to decide. I’m having fun and (almost) don’t care what you think.

My purpose in having a blog was/is to practice, practice, practice the art of writing. For years I’d been saying that writing was a priority, but I wasn’t doing it, so mission accomplishing.

Am I saner as a result of such prolific posting? Probably not. But evidently some people are.

Last week Newsweek reported that some mental health experts believe that the confessional blog has therapeutic power, and are incorporating it into their treatment plans.

They say that blogs are a step up from plain old diaries, chiefly because of the built-in audience. We feel someone is listening. Someone who sympathizes. Because of the anonymity, “It’s high intimacy with low vulnerability.”

This blog is definitely a step up from diarying for me. My diary is where I whine or process material not fit for human consumption. In fact, the other day as part of my paring down process I opened a box of old journals and came darned close to tossing out the lot of them. Such drivel.

Why do you blog?

Pedestrian

Pedestrian: a person traveling on foot; a walker, esp. on city streets. Undistinguished, ordinary, dull.

The two main definitions of “pedestrian” are at odds with each other, in my experience. Sure, the most ordinary way human beings move through space is on foot, walking. We walk from here to there all day long, not even thinking about it.

But walking is hardly dull. How better to move through a neighborhood than on foot? You see and hear and smell things you miss at a faster pace. You meet other people face to face, maybe even have a little chat.

Compared to a car, biking is more experiential too, but you move pretty fast and need to keep your eye on the road.

Portland is designed for walking. Most neighborhoods have a central area with shops that provide basic services within easy walking distance. You feel safer on the sidewalks because they’re nicely separated from the street by planter strips - often with trees.

Perhaps because Vancouver, WA (where I live) was primarily rural until quite recently, sidewalks are rare except for downtown. On some of our lovely country roads cars may be occasional, but they go fast and a pedestrian often has to dive for the ditch to stay alive.

For years developers ruled in Clark County. They didn’t want no stinkin’ sidewalks because it added expense they couldn’t easily recapture. Furthermore, cars rule in rural and suburban America - only fools and poor people walk.

Now the county planners are wising up and requiring new developments to incluede sidewalks, but the result  is still a mishmash. You’ll have 100 feet of sidewalk along the roadway, then 1/4 mile without, then another couple hundred feet with sidewalk, etc etc. Maybe ten years from now it will be continuous, but meanwhile these pathetic little strips only emphasize our lack of foresight.

On Monday The Oregonian ran a front page story on the Sunday-Parkways car-free streets event. Interestingly the photo was of a mob of assorted human powered wheeled contraptions - mostly bikes, but also strollers and tricycles. My pedestrian friend and I started early enough that we weren’t run over. But for that couple of hours, this pedestrian loved being king of the road.

Planning - a prerequisite for profit

Plan: a detailed scheme, program or method worked out beforehand for the accomplishment of an objective.

Prerequisite: required as a prior condition to something

Profit: the positive return on a business enterprise after expenses have been paid

I have been doing feng shui and color consultations as a sideline since 2002 and it recently dawned on me to put some effort into marketing my services. I’m good at what I do but have never made an effort to promote what I do beyond a smallish sphere.

This morning I had coffee with a guy who had seen an article I’d written for the local paper and figured we should meet because he does organizing. I wouldn’t know how good he is at this, but he did share that he’d gotten a lot of help from the gal at the Small Business Development Center in town - a FREE service of Washington State University. (Who knew???) He suggested I call her.

First I looked up the SBDC on the web and right there they list the 15 essential steps to creating a solid business plan.

Business plan???? I’m an Artist.

Perhaps I should consider my business a bit more seriously, ya think?

Procrastination

Procrastination: putting off intentionally something that should be done,
from the Latin, pro (forward) and crastinus (of tomorrow)

Ben Zimmer at Slate.com says

How fitting that the word is lengthy and Latinate, taking its time to reach a conclusion. Alcoholics Anonymous founder Bill Wilson once wrote that procrastination is “really sloth in five syllables.” And yet the word denotes so much more than mere sloth or indolence: A procrastinator meticulously organizing a sock drawer or an iTunes library can’t exactly be accused of laziness. Likewise, procrastination is not simply the act of deferral or postponement. It implies an intentional avoidance of important tasks, putting off unpleasant responsibilities that one knows should be taken care of right away and setting them on the back burner for another day.

Noting Ben Franklin’s dictum “never put off until tomorrow what should be done today,” Zimmer reminds us of MarkTwain’s response: “Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.”

Which brings us to another great P-word perendinate, meaning “to put something off until the day after tomorrow.”

And - picture stories being worth 1000 textual declamations -join me in procrastinating a minute longer with cartoonist Lev Yilmaz. Laugh while you wince in self-recognition.

One of the main reasons I started this blog was to explore the P words that pave my path to Perfection. Procrastination is one of those words, and yet I’ve posted 60 entries on this blog without touching upon this pimple on the ass of Progress.

When I was preparing for a party last week, I reorganized a couple of kitchen cabinets, gathered a box of books for the second-hand store, and hung a bunch of pictures. Today, in preparation for an appointment with my divorce* attorney, I’m writing in my blog about procrastination.

John Perry, a Stanford philosophy professor whose public radio show Philosophy Talk is a favorite of mine, calls this “structured procrastination.”

I have discovered an amazing strategy that converts procrastinators into effective human beings, respected and admired for all that they can accomplish and the good use they make of time. All procrastinators put off things they have to do. Structured procrastination is the art of making this bad trait work for you. The key idea is that procrastinating does not mean doing absolutely nothing. Procrastinators seldom do absolutely nothing; they do marginally useful things, like gardening or sharpening pencils or making a diagram of how they will reorganize their files when they get around to it. Why does the procrastinator do these things? Because they are a way of not doing something more important. If all the procrastinator had left to do was to sharpen some pencils, no force on earth could get him do it. However, the procrastinator can be motivated to do difficult, timely and important tasks, as long as these tasks are a way of not doing something more important.

Structured procrastination means shaping the structure of the tasks one has to do in a way that exploits this fact. The list of tasks one has in mind will be ordered by importance. Tasks that seem most urgent and important are on top. But there are also worthwhile tasks to perform lower down on the list. Doing these tasks becomes a way of not doing the things higher up on the list. With this sort of appropriate task structure, the procrastinator becomes a useful citizen. Indeed, the procrastinator can even acquire, as I have, a reputation for getting a lot done.

Ah. I feel better now.

*Divorce - I’ve been separated for 7 years from my almost ex, but we have yet to finalize it. This gives you some sense of my capacity for procrastination.

Perseverance #2

Perseverance - continuing resolutely despite obstacles, opposition, importunity. Tenacity. From the Latin perseverare: per- through + severus severe

Twice a year, spring and fall, I call in the troops because my yard is in a state of emergency. Our fertile soil has produced more plant material than I can handle. Fecundity, they call it. In the spring it’s the unwanted - weeds; in the fall it’s the remains of plants I wanted – dead perennials, leaves, nuts, twigs.

Raul has been my main man for about fifteen years. He used to come with his two cousins. Now he’s the big boss and he sends three guys who whip thru the cleanup in a few hours laughing and singing.

I usually work with them, though not at their pace. They’re workers, not plant people, and I want to make sure they don’t mistake one of my babies for a weed.

But yesterday Raul’s crew was busy elsewhere and he just sent José. (“Call me Joe,” he said.). My heart sunk. The yard has never been more overgrown and I get one guy?

My back yard, where he started, is much worse than the front and I could tell that Joe was somewhat alarmed by the task ahead. I told him I wouldn’t be able to help because of my pulled muscle and asked if he wanted to send for reinforcements

He just shrugged and struck his hoe into the dirt. “I can do,” he said.

And he did. Section by section, hoeful by hoeful. Perseverance in action.

He worked for nine hours with only a lunch break. He pruned back a hedge and transplanted a rose too. In nine hours he transformed my yard from a jungle into a place of order.

Sure, there are still pockets where more work will be needed, but this just teaches me once again that no task is impossible if I would just hack away at it a little at a time, and again and again and again.

Once I set my priorities…

Priorities - #2

Priority: a preferential rating- especially one that allocates rights to something in limited supply; something given or meriting attention before competing alternatives

Yesterday, in my paralyzed position of pain due to my pulled pectoral muscle (how’s that for a plethora of powerful P-words) I was forced to be a watcher instead of a doer.

I watched a video of the dying professor who looks so good, Randy Pausch, give one of his “last lectures” on time management at University of Virginia. He is a man who has the unenviable perspective of knowing that his days are numbered. (I know, I know. All our days are numbered, but we think our death will be decades or eons from now.)

Time is the most precious gift we have, he says. We must remember this. Over and over and over. Once a moment has passed, it’s gone forever.

I didn’t listen to the whole lecture, so I don’t know if he touches upon the Eckhart Tolle (Buddhist, Taoist, etc etc) mantra of being present to THIS moment instead of clinging to the past or fretting about the future.

But he did talk about setting priorities. What’s important? Why am I doing this? Does this matter? Is it on purpose?

I don’t know about you, but I find it pathetically easy to get lost in trivial pursuits. Reading stories in the news that are unimportant and have no bearing on my life. Rambling thru internet searches that are fascinating and purposeless. Phone calls that chit-chat on an on about nothing in particular. Meetings for the sake of meeting.

The other issue is that I complicate my life with more than an underfunded single woman past middle age can handle on her own:

• A 3,000 sq ft home that needs cleaning, organizing, beautifying and occasional fixing
• A 1/3 acre yard/garden that needs weeding, trimming, feeding, watering, re-organizing and occasional fixing.
• A mind that is hungry for new learning and new experiences – and therefore continuously thinks up new projects to sink into.
• A soul that is hungry for music, dance, beauty, connection, color, flowers, love.
• Friends and family I love dearly – some of whom can only be visited by airplane.

I can’t do everything to my high standards. I probably can’t even do half of everything to my standards. Where do I cut back? What is my highest priority? What is the highest and best use of my time?

Since I’ve been a feng shui consultant I’ve become especially sensitive to clutter in my own home and have gotten rid of a lot of it. But what is left is still always talking to me: use me, put me away, fix me, spend time with me.

If I want to focus on priorities I need to majorly downsize. Or find a partner with whom to share the bounty and the work… It’s time to make downsizing a Project - a goal with specific steps.