Gray Wolf Productions

Tag: psychology

  • Finding That Perfect Brain Time

    Hmmmm Is there a perfect brain time?

    As part of the ongoing blog challenge, and honestly part of my almost every day personal/business challenge, is making a specific time to work only on a specific goal – usually part of a long-range goal. I do that during the day but I don’t have a specific time, it is more random from day to day and therefore on many days I let other things get in the way and then all of a sudden it’s time to go to bed and it’s the next day and I haven’t done the one or two things I know I need to do to keep working towards a specific goal. Another part of my problem is that my goal[s] tends to vary from day today – that’s me and that something I’m working on.

    But, and this is good for me, as part of the challenge today I am to figure out a 15 to 20 minute part of the day where I will work on my goals. Only 20 minutes or 15 minutes? I think I can figure out what times of the day that can happen and happen daily.

    Puppy Energy

     I’ve done something like this before and I know it works. But me, being me, stops using tactics like this after I finish one major project and I get into other stuff and then get off track again. So what I am going to do is go back to what I know worked before. That is to start my day with my coffee and my first 20 or 25 of focused activity. Given that I have a dog and I eat and I drink more coffee I will take a break after that 25 minutes and have breakfast. I will also have more coffee and then take the dog for her morning stroll. Then I shall come back and do another 20 minutes or 25 minutes. I know I work better with breaks so that will be session number two and I will take a break after that and do fun type stuff. Then I will come back and do another 20 or 25 minutes of work.

     I know my best work hours are between 9 AM and 1 PM so I shall do these 20 or 25 minutes segments in that period of time and not try to push myself past that 1 PM timeframe. I may do yoga in between some of the 25-minute work sessions because I also think yoga helps me get my mind back on track. It certainly keeps my body feeling better.

    What I will do that is a bit different than what I have done in the past is to spend the first part of the first 20 minutes session prioritizing what it is I am going to be doing that day. When I tried making myself a priority list the night before I forget about it – it’s written down and my brain considers it done. So I have to get back to prioritizing my day after I am awake and while I’m having my coffee.

    As it is now mid afternoon and I’m still on a roll I may get some of my focused work done today even though it’s past my usual work hour. Part of what I’m also working on is the ability to refocus at different times of the day or night.

    Thoughts? Ideas? Comments? Thank you!!

    This blog post is in response to Natalie’s 10 Day Freedom Plan Blog Challenge Day 5

  • Blog Challenge Day 2

  • My 2nd Udemy Course Is The 1st One Done

    stop stressing about stressOver a year ago, I started to put together an online class about Nutrition.

    I told Udemy it could be ready in 6 weeks. I was a seasoned college professor and thought I could quickly put together the syllabus and start filling in the “lecture” content and do the videos. HA!

    My first setback was when I discovered that my old Sony camcorder was not “good enough” anymore as it didn’t do HD recording.

    So I had to figure how else was I going to do the video since the courses have to be video. I tried different things and kind of just gave up for a while because nothing was working.

    Then I got a new [and much needed] computer with a good camera and microphone. But first I had to learn the new operating system as I went from a very old Mac to the newest one.

    After fiddling with lights, etc. my decision was to do an “easy” PowerPoint presentation with voice over. Alas, it turns out there’s a glitch in the newest version of PowerPoint for Mac so that when you record a voice over on PowerPoint it won’t save the narration.

    Having already bought Keynote – I decided – “okay I guess it’s time to learn Keynote” [but I didn’t really want to do that.] Luckily, someone teaching on Udemy did a course on Keynote and I learned how to use it and started back to work on the Nutrition course.

    In the middle of all of this – and teaching an online course for a local college – I finally found the Lab puppy I had been looking for. Which, if you have ever done puppy things, meant house training, taking care of, and all those other puppy events.

     [I look back now and wonder how did I ever manage to do the puppy stuff again. It had been many years since I had a puppy as the last dog I had was adopted when he was three.]

    Working away at the course and other life stuff, my hard drive crashed. Yes it was a relatively new computer, only a few months old, and all was under warranty. It is a laptop – but getting it fixed meant having to keep going back to the Apple Store because there were constant glitches that prevented my being able to get online. And I really needed to be online because I had to download my storage from the cloud backup.

    Finally, the entire operating system had to be re-downloaded and re-installed.

    And in the midst of all of this, it turns out I had a puppy who did not like being left home alone – so each time I had to run down to the Apple Store I had to get a puppy sitter. Luckily my neighbors could keep her a few times, and a good friend of mine was in town visiting her son and she had the time to come over and puppy sit. I am so thankful for good friends…

    During this time, the course on Nutrition kept growing because I realized I had more to say than I originally planned. And honestly, by then I got sick of the whole process because that course reminded me of the problems with the puppy and the computer.

    And, because it was again  nearing that time of year, I had to get ready to teach my other online class for the local college.  I decided instead to do a very short Udemy course on stress.  [Gee – I wonder where that topic came from.]

    Even though it was to be a short course and it basically is, I do not have a linear brain and it’s very hard for me to follow a template or a pattern so formatting the course sections took longer then it would for most others.

    And middle of all of this, I upgraded to the Mavericks operating system. And that meant there were updates to most everything on my computer including Keynote. ARGHHHHHHHHH

    I’m not even getting into weather related issues, my ability to procrastinate, or the death of a friend….

    To make this rather long story much shorter, I basically decided I was just going to finish this thing, publish it, and see what happens!

    I was literally getting sick and tired of working with Keynote, fiddling with having to make things kind of similar from lecture to lecture, and all of that – so I recorded stopped fiddling, recorded the slides with voiceover, exported into QuickTime, uploaded the files to Udemy, finished all the other little thingies like descriptions and all that and hit publish – basically without really reviewing the whole thing because I was that sick of it.

    But it’s done…and I feel a sense of relief….

    I had taken my own advice to Stop Stressing About Stress

    And maybe, just maybe, I can get back to the 1st course, the one on Nutrition…..

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • 6 Down; 6 To Go

    6It is the 1st day of the last 6 months of the year.

     

    What have you gotten done?

    What will you do with the next 6 months?

     

    it is hot

     

    In North America we are into summer and for many of us it is stifling hot….

    But don’t let the weather determine your goals – summer is a good time to keep working on whatever you were working on…refine it, add to it, finish it. Sell it! Make money for your business!!

    If, like me, you are a daylight person, the added hours of sunshine mean added hours to get things done….

    Stay cool! Stay focused! 

    Are you more [or less] productive in the summer?

     Comments? 

  • Ozymandias and Yertle The Turtle

    Every so often these 2 writings stick in my head. Now is one of those times. For me they have the same theme.

    SandI am not sure when I first read Ozymandias – it may have been in grammar school or high school but I know it was way before college and it’s always resonated with me. As does Yertle the Turtle

     

    Ozymandias

    I met a traveler from an antique land
    who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
    stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
    half sunk,a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
    and wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
    tell that its sculptor well those passions read
    which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
    the hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
    and on the pedestal these words appear —
    My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
    look at my works, ye mighty, and despair!”
    Nothing besides remains. Round the decay
    of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
    the lone and level sands stretch far away.’

                  by Percy Shelly

    It’s that last couple of sentences about look at my works and despair. Yet nothing beside remains [except the legs and the sand]

    It speaks to the futility of a lot of the grandiose ideas and  projects that we do thinking we are more important than anyone else.

    Projects that probably cost a lot in terms of money, human time, and human lives.

    Then there is Yertle, which also has the same kind of theme running through it.

    I’m Yertle the Turtle!
    Oh, marvelous me!
    turtle
    For I am the ruler
    of all that I see!…

    That plain little turtle whose name was just Mack,
    Decided he’d taken enough. And he had.
    And that plain little lad got a bit mad.
    And that plain little Mack did a plain little thing.
    He burped! And his burp shook the throne of the king!

    By Dr. Seuss

    Yertle wants to rule everything he can see but Mack, the lowly turtle, burps and destroys the throne of the king.

    Sand, burps, time and tide can wreak havoc on our egomaniacal plans. Be careful how you treat others and the environment. Karma!! Leave a legacy that helps future generations; not glorifies you????

    Thoughts? Comments? Thank you.

     

  • Muses, Cycles, Emotions, and Staycations

    writing_scroll

    I woke up with this post in my head and I’m learning to just “go with it.”

    Over the years I’ve seen that I work in cycles of various lengths.

    Jobs? Two years max!

    Daily exercise at a club? About 1.5 years!

    Regular worship attendance?  Very varied so I guess it is never what you could call “regular.”  

    But writing? That’s one with a cycle I cannot yet figure out and now I am no longer trying to figure it out.  

    I just finished up an e-book about the 10 Commandments [a political snarky take on same] and I thought “wow! I’m on a roll with writing – let me finish up another of the ones I’ve started.”  [There are more than a few.]

    Bad idea. I could not put words to computer at all or even work at videos, etc. – instead I sniped at anyone who talked to me. I was in a very foul mood and still I tried to write.  

    Then I basically said, “screw this” and decided to give up on writing about anything.  It felt like a big defeat.  

    I took a staycation. I played computer games, read a whole lot of books, spent time on web browsers – mostly feeling like my own words had left my head forever.  

    But aha!

    After 2 weeks, the muse came back. I am writing this, getting back to videos, and I working on material for a class I teach.

    But that muse won’t touch e-books right now!  

    Lesson learned? My muse did not desert me.

    • She needed a break. 
    • She too has a cycle – just like me.

    Why did I not know this?

    • Because when I was in my foul mood I was not thinking.  

     

    2nd lesson learned?   When in a foul mood – do not make major decisions about anything – and do not try to write!    

>