The Day before Classes Start

 

When I was a youngster, the last day of summer was always Labor Day.  School always began on the Tuesday or Wednesday after Labor Day.  Since I began teaching again in 2010 as an adjunct at the College of Lake County (CLC), everything has moved up a week.  It is the same for North Park University where I have taught since 2012.  Classes start the Monday before Labor Day.  So, the Sunday before the Monday before Labor Day is essentially the last day of Summer.

If not used to school starting a week before Labor Day, I am certainly resolved to it after 15 years.  Yet, I strongly believe all schools should start after Labor Day.  It is such a logical marker.  School starts after Labor Day.  School starts in September… not August.  This was my entire experience as a student.  From Kindergarten through graduate school, this was the way it was and thus in my mind, the way it should be.

Chicago Public Schools and a few other K-12 districts around here started class two weeks before Labor Day.  In other parts of the country, I read that school started even earlier in August.  While I am used to starting a week before Labor Day, any earlier and… Well, let’s just say that I hope that never happens.

I am writing this on Sunday, August 24^th, the day before classes begin.  I am looking forward to starting bright and early tomorrow morning with an 8 am Operations and Supply Chain Management class.  I am excited but, as a professor, I am missing some of the wonder and anticipation of what new classes and new subjects will bring.  I am also missing joy of getting, organizing, and reveling in new school supplies.  I will dutifully take a first day of school photo tomorrow and share it with my grandchildren.

How will I spend this ‘last’ day of summer?

The nice thing about being in Chicago and being Armenian is the St. James Street Fair in Evanston.  They close Clark Street on the block that St. James Armenian Church sits and fill it with food and gift booths, picnic tables, space for a band and dancers.   I love playing at the Street Fair and attending when I am not. 

Beyond the Armenian food, the people, the Armenian music and dance there is something else that really makes the St. James Street Fair special.  It is the weather.  They always get beautiful late August weather.  In the eighteen years that I have been attending, the weather has always been spectacular except for one year when torrential rains washed out the event.  I used to attend and play at a similar picnic, at St. Gregory the Enlightener Armenian Church, in White Plains, NY.  The weather was always amazing at that picnic as well. 

These kinds of Armenian gatherings are wonderful way to spend this Sunday before classes start. I leave you with a video of a medley of songs we played with guest singer Harry Kezelian back in 2016. 

 

Personal Productivity and Change Management

 

My last post was about productivity

So is this one, though I am adding a change management component.

The reason I am addressing this again is because of a few graphics I saw on social media that provided some very practical advice.  Also, I have two friends suffering from cognitive issues.  One I talked to on the phone.  She is having trouble speaking.  The other, I visited in hospice in a memory loss facility.  These two friends, a few others struggling with serious medical issues, and having lost a few other friends recently brings a blunt reality of my mortality and focus on what I might want to do and be moving forward.  In other words, I am at an age the runway is getting short.  To put it technical, I am out of slack time for putting off of what I want to be and what I want to accomplish. 

Certainly, this reality has always been with me.  I was aware of it, but honestly, it was more conceptual and applied to other, you know, older folks.  The blunt reality of seeing what others in my generation as experiencing has me realize I am definitely one of the older folks.  The notion that each day is a gift, means more these days than ever before.

Both of the graphics I saw are focused on time.  The first was motivational:

In six months, you will have six months of excuses, or six months of progress.  The choice is yours.

Being a master of procrastination and postponement, I have many six month periods of excuses. 

The second graphic was in the same vein but more tactical.  It is from a FB post of the a entity named BeHumanBeKind.  The title of the graphic was simple and straightforward:  “You’ll Stay Average Forever Until you Master These 4 Powerful Time Rules.”  The rules are:

 

[1] The 8+8+8 Rule

- 8 hours for you – workouts, hobbies, friends

- 8 hours for laser focused work

- 8 hours of deep, guilt-free sleep

 

[2] The 1-3-5 Rule

- 1 massive goal that scares you

- 3 key tasks that move you forward

- 5 quick wins – chores, messages, errands

 

[3] The 10 Minute Rule

- Work with deadly focus for 10 minutes

- Rest for two minutes

- Repeat

- Kills procrastination.  Builds momentum.

 

[4] The 90/90/1 Rule

- 90 minutes

- For 90 days

- On 1 life-changing goal

- You’ll shock yourself

 

Clearly, the rules are designed to work together.  The first, the 8+8+8 Rule, is how to segment your day.  I would amend the first bullet to read “8 hours for you – health and fitness, hobbies, family and friends.”  And the third bullet, “8 hours of deep, guilt-free sleep” is sound advice.  But, for me, getting 8 hours of sleep may well be the “1 life changing goal” in rule 4.  I sleep 5-6 hours and it is not deep sleep as I get up around 2-3 times in that time.

The second, the 1-3-5 Rule, is to set your daily To-Do list.  The principle here is to have a balance of long term, complex goals, that procrastinators always postpone with the trivial “quick win” type of goals.  I often put a lot of these quick win goals on my daily To-Do list along with the meaningful work and life goals simply up the percent accomplished to make myself feel productive. 

The 10-minute rule may be the most important in my regard.  By working in 10 minute bursts, rest for two, and repeating, I would get 50 minutes of work done each hour.  The challenge is to be task oriented and stay off social media.  Lots of us lose crazy batches of time by just checking social media for a quick second.  This is why the Rules includes words like “laser” and “deadly” focus.  There are simply too many distractions in our modern world.

The last rule is to manage and accomplish one lifestyle change.  Start now, spend 90 minutes a day writing a novel, playing the guitar, lifting weights, or whatever, and you will have 90 days of results instead of 90 days of excuses.  Do that twice in a row and, voila, you will have six months of results.

I actually dabbled with this a bit today.  I jotted down a To Do list of four items.  I set the timer on my phone for 10 minutes and, dang, if I didn’t accomplish the list in short order.  When I had to look for something online, I kept the laser focus in mind and didn’t meander off and squabble time on social media.

I will do this again today.

A Lethargic July

 

This year I have had two full knee replacement surgeries.  The first was on January 8th and the second was on June 9th.

The physical recovery of the second surgery has progressed faster than the first.  Physical recovery is only part of the recovery.  The other part of the recovery is the return to a normal work schedule:  the productivity recovery if you will.  This part of the recovery is lagging behind the first.  July was to have been a month of productivity.  It was not.  It was a month of lethargy.

For people my age, we try to be attuned to changes in physical health and mental acuity.  We worry because we fear the onset of anything that might indicate the start of a chronic condition that erodes our physical or mental well-being.  I do not believe that my July lethargy is the start of anything serious because I am feeling less lethargic and keener to get all my classes ready as soon as I can for the Fall.  Well, that is what I planned to do in July as well.

Lethargy is a state of physical, mental, or emotional sluggishness. It involves feeling unusually tired, weak, drowsy, or lacking in energy or motivation. Unlike typical tiredness after exertion or lack of sleep, lethargy can persist even with rest and may signal an underlying issue.  This is exactly what I was feeling.  And, I was beginning to wonder if this was signaling an underlying issue.

In my own defense, since retiring from my corporate career and becoming a full time professor, July has never been a productive month.  I work relatively hard during the school year and spend the summer months like a full retiree.  I have always aspired to be more productive, but I generally await until mid-August to get going pressured by the procrastinator's tenet:  keep procrastinating and putting of any task until that point in time where you have to work full-time, fast and furiously, under stress to complete the task by the deadline. 

So, maybe, this July lethargy is normal for me.  It has been my rest and recharge month for the past ten years.  The reason I am actually writing this piece is because this July felt different from years past.  It felt like a deeper and more weighty lethargy.

Part of me wanted to believe that it was the lingering effects of the anesthesia (I had a saddle block and not a general anesthesia).  I discounted this because in January, I was back at it in two weeks going full blast.  Why was January’s mental recovery so much better?  Quite simply it was necessity.  Classes started two weeks after the surgery.  I simply had to do it.  I taught online the first two weeks, but I did teach and had to be ready to go.  I had to engage the brain and get stuff done.  This principle is the same reason they get you up walking and even climbing stairs immediately after surgery.  It is the same reason they start physical therapy immediately following.

I probably should have pushed myself more mentally.  Part of the reason my physical recovery was faster this second time around is because the home care physical therapist really pushed me. 

In summation, there are many factors involved in my July lethargy. The fact that I have on syllabus done in July which is more than I have ever done.  This post is surely living up to the subtitle of this blog, A Monthly Letter of Musings and Meanderings.