{"id":7352,"date":"2024-03-02T06:45:00","date_gmt":"2024-03-02T13:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dresan.com\/blog\/?p=7352"},"modified":"2024-03-01T20:48:30","modified_gmt":"2024-03-02T03:48:30","slug":"twenty-twenty-four-day-sixty-two-and-you-really-cant-tell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/2024\/03\/02\/twenty-twenty-four-day-sixty-two-and-you-really-cant-tell\/","title":{"rendered":"[twenty twenty-four day sixty-two]: and you really can’t tell"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Following up recent posts about things taking longer than you think. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trying to do cleanup, laundry, and organization before starting my next task? I predicted \u201ca few minutes\u201d. It took a bleeding hour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I need hours at a time to get coding done. I need focus. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t need to be interrupted by rescuing a cat from the rain! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But you have to anyway. Argh!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Time tracking (I use Clockify), if done pretty rigorously, can really dispel some illusions about how much work we can get done in a short amount of time – and, conversely, about all we did do in that block of time that didn\u2019t feel productive. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Case in point: I\u2019ve already done 6 hours of stuff today that wasn\u2019t on my agenda for today. And all this stuff \u201cneeded\u201d to get done – at least for a normal, human interpretation of the word \u201cneed\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I feel the need to qualify that as I\u2019ve been through cognitive behavior therapy (CBT), an evidence-based approach to dealing with stress, and while it is wonderful, it does have some intellectually dishonest components, like throwing out \u201cneed\u201d language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I get it \u2014 there are things we think we \u201cneed\u201d that we really don\u2019t \u2014 but some of the therapists I worked with pushed that to an extreme that didn\u2019t make sense. Sure, you don\u2019t \u201cneed\u201d to breathe, but if you don\u2019t, you\u2019ll pass out and\/or die. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, yes, the stuff \u201cneeded\u201d to get done in the normal, human sense of the word. I mean, sure, you could throw out all your clothes instead of doing laundry and order new ones online, but that would neither be efficient nor sustainable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But more directly, some of that was organizing my files for my current active projects, some of which I did indeed need to pull up and organize in order to take the next steps on those projects. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Funny how our busy-beaver selves sometimes try to convince ourselves that certain things don\u2019t \u201cneed\u201d to be done \u2026 but if we don\u2019t do them, we won\u2019t get anything done. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or the cat will have to stay in the rain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

-the Centaur<\/p>\n\n\n\n

P.S. And this post took another 15-30 minutes, as I came back to it later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pictured: the bottom coming out. It was short, but it was a hell of a rainstorm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Following up recent posts about things taking longer than you think. Trying to do cleanup, laundry, and organization before starting my next task? I predicted \u201ca few minutes\u201d. It took…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[193],"tags":[274,5],"class_list":["post-7352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-real-life","tag-blogging-every-day","tag-we-call-it-living","ratio-2-1","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7352"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7354,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7352\/revisions\/7354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}