What makes you go slack jawed with admiration?
I’m appreciative of many things, as no doubt, are you – but there are very few things indeed that make me stand in quiet wonder, with the rather sinking realisation that the feat I have just witnessed can never, ever be performed by me. And at the top of that list are people who live by their calendar.
Do you know the sort of people I mean?
I mean those exalted souls who put up a calendar entry to, say, read a book, or call a person, or set time aside to learn a hobby – and then actually do all of those things.
Me, I treat my calendar like my own, personal stand-up comedian. Submit final draft of presentation to client, my calendar might say on Wednesday morning, and I’ll chortle as I make my coffee. Send finished report to XYZ, my calendar will whisper urgently into my ear at 2 pm on a rainy Friday, and it’ll be the first I’ve heard of it. Pick up milk on the way back, will be the final missive for the day, and that one will lead to many a spirited discussion at the home stables.
No, after many years of using many calendar applications, I have come to the happy conclusion that these things aren’t for me.
I am organised the way the current incumbent of the White House is restrained, and I’ve made my peace with this fact.
It used to worry me earlier, my inability to get things done on time, but after numerous failed trysts with destiny, I have realised that this is who I am.
I, ladies and gentlemen, am a proud card-carrying member of the species who does their best work a unit of time after the deadline has passed. If it was to be delivered this week, it will be in your hands the week after. If I have to get up this hour, I will up and in a reasonably cheerful frame of mind by the next. Such it goes, and trying to change it will merely change who I am, and I wouldn’t want that.
But that is why I say that I truly, and unreservedly, admire those among you who get things done On Time.
On Time, in my case, is a mythological creature, existing in the same category of things such as Balanced Budgets and Sustained Diets.
One hears of these things, but one highly doubts their actual existence.
I’m happy to wallow in my morass of missed deadlines, strained bank accounts and expanding waistlines.
I may not live as efficiently, and there is a twinge of regret that I’ll never maximise productivity, but then again, on the other hand, my smile on surveying the chaos I’ve single-handedly constructed is seraphic in a way that simply can’t be achieved otherwise.
The challenge, of course, is to get the counter-parties to recognise that this is an ideal state of affairs for all concerned. The world, it would seem, is comprised of On-Timers and What-Already-ers, and it is a misfortune of the highest magnitude that those who expect work from me fall into the former category. Still, I have now begun to see it as my life’s mission to convert the former into the latter. It is a long, arduous battle, but somebody’s got to fight it. Join me, comrade, and the world will be a far better place. Think about it, won’t you?
Until next week, then. Maybe.
He doesn't expect the paradox to be resolved in his lifetime
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