Rafting Time

Flying Pages will be on vacation until August 9th, rafting the Colorado River, Cataract Canyon, Utah, and polishing it off with a family visit in Phoenix.

Flying Pages wishes you a fun and adventurous few weeks, and looks forward to reconnecting on August 9, 2013. Stay cool. Stay dry.

Setting Priorities

     Nooo, this can't be me! It can't be me.
     Oh, yes it is.
     Who says so? Who are YOU?
     The "me" inside of "you," that's who, and it's not the first time we've chatted. 
     No matter. The point is I know you too well. You think you can achieve more tasks than you can possibly get done in a given period. Aren't you  feeling just a tad overwhelmed because you underestimate what it takes to complete each task? Your to-do list increases exponentially every day, as do the crossed out, unstarted items. You procrastinate. You don't know where to begin so you hedge for something else to do. And the next thing you know, "poof," deadlines have passed! 
      So I've missed sticking to my to-do lists, or setting priorities. Sometimes I've said, "yes," when I should have said, "no." I've repented. I thought I'd learned. Now what am I going to do? 
     Well, honey––it's not too late. Just get back to good intentions––and they were good, remember! Review how much you want to do/get done/get accomplished. Ask yourself, "Did I carve out too much to do in a short time? What needs to get shaved off? Should I go back to the drawing board? Slow down, even?"
     I knew Me's facts were right––she was on target. I had backed myself into the denial corner. I knew the solution, but it takes a crisis before I can wrap my head around what caused the disintegration.
     After serious soul searching and a cool face wash, I pushed everything aside on my desk (actually everything went down to the floor to be dealt with later), and created a five-point table with individual  summaries to bring me to a better threshold of sanity.  

     That was a year ago, and I've been a stalwart student of Me. I'm also more in charge, in control, and I don't feel nearly as fatigued or stressed. I'm still tweaking some of it, and that's okay. If, in the end I add a point, it'll be to my advantage. Take a look at what I created as my strategy. It could be, some of what I've set for myself might be useful to you.


   1. Let go of perfect

For too long, I believed I could. Do. It. All. Stumbling and falling too many times showed me I can't do it all, and certainly not perfectly. It's not been easy to ditch a point so ingrained, but the truth is, to hold onto it is too damaging. Even here, it's progress, not perfection, but it's important enough in my life that I wrote it as the first point.

   2. Say "No"and "Let it go" 

Besides letting go of perfectionism, I learned to adapt daily and let go of things that would only frustrate my efforts to do what was important for the day. It was an either/or situation: Either let go or be dragged.

   3. Use fresh hours for important tasks

I'm not an early, early morning person, but I am a morning person. Reading, thinking, planning, creating, writing––all have a better chance of a good outcome when mid-morning is given over to it.

   4. Set priorities based on deadlines

Priorities have deadlines. Deadlines are priorities. I've learned to shuffle and to adapt. I strive not to overestimate just as much as not to underestimate. This has thinned out my procrastination tactics. As a result, it's immensely satisfying to put my mind and shoulder to the task, and to move if not accomplish. Also, I'm tackling the challenging tasks first, and feeling a new confidence about that. Another is that I use a system of red checks (done) and cross outs (not done). At week's end, I know what my priorities of priorities will be for the following week. It's been working.

   5. Allow for contingency

Something will always come up that wasn't planned. Be prepared to breathe in, breathe out, and accept: phone calls, visiting friends in a hospital, traffic snafus, stubbed toes.

   6. Set particular days of each week for repetitive to-do's

     Mondays are solely allocated to household management tasks: laundry, pressing, hair cut, dog groomer, vet appointments, dry cleaner, and grocery shopping. Not all these need attention every single Monday, but that's the day I've set aside to accomplish those tasks or chores even if it requires setting up appointments ahead of time.

     Tuesdays  I start the day with a review of my writing priorities for the current and next weeks. After identifying deadlines (if any), I spend two to three hours (sometimes more) engaged in some process of writing. Piano practice. I factor in contingency planning.

     Wednesdays  As a student in classical piano, the day begins with practice, which leads to a two-hour session with my instructor, and a return home to review new areas covered in that class. Any time left over is spent returning phone calls, reading, or time on the internet.

     Thursdays  Alternate Thursdays, my writing group meets mid-morning for two hours. Piano practice. Writing on these days happens between three to six in the evening.

     Fridays are Blog days, and I am consistent with it. Whether it's creating a new post for the day, or preparing posts in advance because my calendar indicates a Friday or two when I will have other commitments. Piano practice.

     Saturdays  This is the "catch-up-day." Piano practice.

     Sundays  This is "family day." That can take many forms based on many variables, but it speaks for itself.

     Take a one-minute peak in what Stephen Covey, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, has to say on setting priorities. If you've got the book, check out "Habit 3: Put First Things First." He begins the unit with a quote from Goethe:

Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.

If you have a successful time-management plan, congratulate yourself, and if you do please share some of your tried-and-true methods. Or if you're just beginning to carve out something doable for yourself, has any of the above helped advance it? Or do you have something very different? I look forward to hearing from you. Stay cool and dry this week.

Writers and Their Typewriters, #2

     My fascination for typewriters––their intimacy, and the famous writers who have used them in unwavering loyalty––continues to grow. To type a poem or manuscript requires a slower pace with a  typewriter. It also enhances better thinking––stimulating the brain to be mindful of what matters, resulting in fewer mistakes.
     Steve Leveen, founder of Levenger (purveyor of fine reading and writing tools), reproduced in bookend form, the typewriter of historian, David McCullough. For today's post, I've excerpted a portion of what Steve Leveen and Levenger Press Editor, Mim Harrison shared on Steve's blog Well-Read Life on December 3, 2009. It speaks for itself.


“I don’t want to go faster,” writes David McCullough. “If anything, I probably ought to go more slowly.”

The two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author   (Truman, John Adams) and recipient of a lifetime achievement award from the National Book Foundation may be talking about the way he types, but David McCullough is revealing how he thinks.

“When rewriting, I’m not just typing it all over again, I’m thinking through it again, rethinking, rewording where need be, saying it a little differently on second thought.”

And David McCullough is not typing on a computer. He’s using the pre-digital dinosaur that requires a considerable force of those digits called fingers: the typewriter. Not even a zippy electric version, but a 1940s vintage Royal manual typewriter that he bought second-hand in the 1960s.

So if you want to know how it is that David McCullough’s books always hit the New York Times bestseller lists, capture Pulitzers, and have never gone out of print, it just may be this old machine.

The mind of the machine

When Mr. McCullough graciously agreed to let us reproduce his typewriter as a bookend, we thought the story would be about the machine. But the real story is how an accomplished mind works—not at the speed of a computer, but at a pace that’s thoughtful, deliberate, contemplative. The machine helps set the pace.

And so you have to wonder: What would happen if we all slowed our thinking down a bit, if we dialed it back to the point where we were actually thinking rather than scrolling and texting, and cutting and pasting? Would we all trade in our laptops/notebooks/smart phones for a typewriter?

Probably not. But it would do us good to remember that machines are supposed to make our lives better, not faster. Perhaps we should unplug just a little before we become undone. Such decompression is why we think so many Levenger customers savor the pensive pause of the fountain pen (which David McCullough also uses).

In fact, Thomas Mallon, who just wrote a book on the letters famous people have written through the centuries, maintains that pens and typewriters have more in common than do typewriters and computers. Typewriting reveals its own quirks of the writer, much like penwriting. Computers can make us all look the same.

Here’s how David McCullough looks on his typewriter; he takes the typed sheets and edits them by hand:

Another writer, Carl Honore, realized the value of slow when he found himself contemplating 60-second bedtime stories to read to his toddler. He caught himself in time. “The secret is balance: instead of doing everything faster, do everything at the right speed,” he advises.

 For David McCullough, that means typing “at a pretty good clip,” as he says. And then typing it again, because what he’s really doing is thinking about it some more.

He and his typewriter are, in fact, currently at work on his new book about Americans in Paris. What do you want to bet that as soon as it’s published, that slowly written book will hit the New York Times bestseller list in no time flat. 

I hope I've continued to pique your interest on typewriters with this second in a series (see Writers and Their Typewriters #1).
Do you have a typewriter? If not a typewriter, what do you do or use to achieve a slower pace for better thinking? And last, did you know you can blog with a typewriter? The technique is called "typecasting," but more on that later.