Month: August 2022

I use a digital organization tool to keep a running list of my active tasks and projects. We also have a daily standup call and so each morning I am able to update the list and assign due dates for different tasks. It has been a helpful part of my professional organization system.

In recent weeks, though, the list has grown longer. I could blame this on our increased workflow, but it was more a lack of organization as I put things on the list that aren’t pressing tasks and that just sit there and fester. Over the weekend, I listened to a podcast that proposed a different way of organizing my task list. Instead of a single list of tasks, I now have four lists—things to create; things to review; emails to send; and things to discuss. This little change helps me organize my days better— send emails and have discussions at the beginning of the day during the daily standup call, create in the morning, review in the afternoon. Obviously, email flows in throughout the day and I have to deal with things that arise. At least now I feel more comfortable closing the email window while working on a task and I have a better list to which I can anchor so that I am able to drive things to completion better instead of being sucked into making progress on lots of things but not getting any single thing done.

I am only a few days into this new iteration of my task list, but so far it has helped my frame of mind. For those who use to-do lists, maybe consider batching similar tasks together yourself this week to see if it makes things better for you too.

I hosted a dinner party on Friday. Well, I’m going to call it a dinner party. It was really just having a couple friends over, but that is more than I have done previously in my current residence. The food was simple, a beef stew cooked in the crock pot served over rice with a side of roasted bell peppers. Are those complimentary? Maybe not, but that’s what I had so that’s what I made. The food wasn’t really the point anyway.

The purpose instead was live, in-person social interaction. I had very little of that during most of July and so have taken some steps in August to add more. Not much more, mind you, but more than zero. We discussed topics ranging from the mundane to the comical to the serious. I wasn’t the only one who had suffered from COVID during July, so we commiserated about that. They told me about a blowout wedding they had attended and the possibility of expanded social connections in the Triangle for all of us as a result. They did their best to get me to finally purchase a new set of golf clubs and join them on the course, something I haven’t done yet. I told them about the vision for the law firm over the rest of 2022 and about my efforts to sink some roots here so that I don’t feel compelled to leave again as I have lived the last decade mainly in 2 and 3 year stints in different places.

The conversation lasted several hours and was just the sort of thing I needed. There were even pastries from one of Raleigh’s local bakeries for dessert (and breakfast on Saturday morning). It was the sort of evening I’d like to have more of in the future.

I have reflected on my approach to reading this week. In doing so, I came across an article from one of the few blogs I check on a semi-regular basis and have been chewing on its contents over the past few days. This missive incorporates from the whole piece, but focuses on a few sentences (helpfully bolded in the original): Read old books. Read the best ones twice.

When it comes to knowledge, time is the greatest filter. What is useful is remembered, what is not is forgotten. To survive for more than a few years (or sometimes even months), a book must have something real. It need not have more than a single core idea, but that idea must have substance. Even if the examples are no longer relevant, the idea still matters. Those are the books I want to absorb. As an aside, allowing the filter of time to work its magic is also why I gave up reading the news a few years ago, a decision that continues to bewilder some but one upon which I have no intention of reneging.

I plan to begin this new course by re-reading books I have already read, or more realistically re-reading the bits I highlighted or underlined when I read them the first time. After all, returning to the highlights is why I made the effort in the first place. I still haven’t gotten to the point of feeling comfortable writing my own notes and summaries in books—one step at a time.

With my fiction reading, I am taking a different approach as it serves a different purpose. It is more for entertainment and helping me wind down and get to sleep. Even there, though, I am steering away from the newest books and allowing time to filter for quality. Now I just need to cut out some of the mindless YouTube videos so that I may set upon the path, something easier said than done after the many hours I have spent on that particular platform over the past month.

I have finally recovered, so this will be the last of three posts in a row centered around a movie/show I watched while I couldn’t do much else. At a pace of one episode per day, I watched a courtroom drama mini-series set in London called You Don’t Know Me. I cannot recommend it for children, but last week’s piece was about a show tailor made for the kids so I don’t feel too bad about that. The show starts with the prosecutor’s closing argument, and the evidence is stacked heavily against the defendant—the gun used in the murder found in his apartment, in a shoebox with his passport and some money no less, the victim’s blood recovered from under the defendant’s fingernails, CCTV footage of the defendant driving to the scene of the murder, and cell tower data placing the defendant at the scene of the murder too.

With all of that wrapped up in a nice summary package, the real drama starts. The defendant has fired his own solicitor so that he could deliver his closing argument himself. Through a series of extended flashbacks, the real story unfolds, and there is a surprise at almost every juncture. How the judge allowed him to tell the whole narrative strains credulity from a legal procedural perspective, but people who aren’t attorneys probably won’t need to suspend disbelief as much as I did. I won’t spoil anything in case people want to watch the series, but it is definitely one where you can debate the ending after the credits roll on the final episode.

This mini-series was based on a book. I commented a few weeks ago about how movies based on books are almost never as rich as the original works. Extended television series face the same problem to a lesser extent, as those who read the Game of Thrones books would surely attest. The extended television series, though, is what ushered in the golden age of television that we have experienced over the last decade or so. This is perhaps because of the genre’s ability to tell more complex and layered narratives and to delve deeper into the character’s minds than was possible before, to be more like a book.