This morning's thought...
I hope I may have found (at last) a system that will reinforce my desire (and therefore commitment) to plan, manage tasks in time and achieve personal and work goals. I'm quite excited that I may finally have found a contemporary framework I like and will really make use of it to progress: dare I say it, to actually achieve outcomes I want.
About fucking time, I almost hear you say. I am, after all, only 67!!
Decades ago (when I was employed by Lothian Regional Council's Social Work Department in Scotland to establish and lead the Lothian Coalition of Disabled People -- from 1989 until about 1995 or 96) I attended a time management training course for emerging leaders; at the The King's Manor Hotel on Milton Road, not far from Portobello beach where I had my accident (5 years before).
The trainer arrived late. I kid you not.
Anyway, the course was essentially a day spent being introduced to a Danish rival to Filofax (the over-priced, leather-bound 'must have' personal organiser from the early to mid 1980s that was -- we were invited to believe -- a sure sign one was a Master of the Universe). Our lower rent version was branded as Time Manager International.
Simple really. Set goals, identify no more than 10 key areas, create a set of themed categories (finance, HR, policy objectives, not-fucking-up, etc.) with associated task lists. There were "Don't Forget" pages and an 18 month pocket diary (two adjacent pages for each month, one line per day and 24 hours per line ... I thought it was pretty nifty).
We each received one Danish Filofax-style ring-binder and a box of notes in a clever desk top dispenser (vertical) about the same size as a tissue box. We were then sent into the world to manage time and achieve great things.
Over the next six years or so, the Lothian Coalition of Disabled People did, indeed, make some remarkable achievements:
Edinburgh became the first city in the world -- that is, on the entire actual planet Earth -- to enforce a rule that all new taxis must become wheelchair accessible. Ten years later (around 2004) the entire fleet of Edinburgh's 1,000 black cabs was indeed that. Accessible. Long before the UK's Disability Discrimination Act required it.
We supported the development of the first three self-directed disability support packages in Scotland (for Archie, Shand and a woman whose name I can never remember).
Winnie! That was her name!
You could never meet a nicer, sweeter 'little old lady' in a wheelchair than Winnie. Her first job (during the War) was as a colourist of black and white photographs. Winnie would not have said boo to the proverbial goose but her quiet resolve to take charge of her own destiny helped to pave the way for what we now know (in Australia) as the rights-based principle of choice & control.
We created Scotland's first user-led CIL - the Lothian Centre for Inclusive Living - which continues to operate to this day. I was its first Chair. We employed 5 people at first, including peer supporters. We were part of something bigger than us and we were aware of that energising fact.
I am pleased Australia now has its National Disability Insurance Scheme (and that I played a part in creating and launching it). But "our NDIS" (as some surprising people now describe it) truly wasn't the first cab off the rank -- so to speak. Neither were we (even in the early-1990s). But we did help shape the global future that is our now, for better or worse. Mostly for the better, I believe.
We were making it up as we went along. Like all good change that occurs. With or without not-Filofaxes velcroed to our wrists.
Grapevine, a disability information service.
IDEAL Training, a disability awareness training company. We nixed the 'experiential learning' format of role-playing. Focused on rights, diversity & inclusion instead.
We created EdAbility Lothian (crap name but we were in a hurry) a user-led educational brokerage funded by the European Social Fund's Urban Program. We persuaded technocrats in Brussels that social and economic disadvantage were not solely related to location and that within, around and between geographic pockets of pervasive inequality and poverty there could be 'hidden population' sub-groups who were additionally held down by virtue of identity related factors, e.g. disability. We had program partners in Toulouse and Dublin.
I loved visiting our partner's travel agency project in Toulouse but -- to tell you the truth -- I would have really welcomed a visit to their office in Tahiti. I did not fully understand back then, for European Social Fund purposes, French Polynesia was treated no differently to mainland France. If I'd known, I'd have done our budget differently and taken my social disadvantage & poverty work to a beach on a Pacific island.
Or maybe that was LCIL? I'm old. I forget. We got European Social Fund support for both projects. Like Monty Python asked ... what did the Romans ever do for us?
Quite a lot actually. You Brexit nincompoops.
We created Lothian Shopmobility. Ended up shaking hands with The Princess Royal at our opening. Don't ask. Not my idea. But it got us in the local paper.
We campaigned successfully (and unsuccessfully more often than not) across a wide range of rights and inclusion issues.
We irreversibly changed the lives of hundreds of disabled people (mine as much as anyone's) who discovered pride, voice and greater agency. As one always does when you're campaigning.
We changed the world in our wee part of it -- Auld Reekie as it's known. And we were part of a worldwide movement that sought and achieved fundamental change in the 1980s and 1990s. We knew that. It kept the fires of systemic advocacy alight when we suffered setbacks. Which happened often.
I loved what we did together in Edinburgh. But nothing lasts forever. I moved on before I became yesterday's news; stale or hanging on to an old man's memories of so-called golden years of agitation for progress. I've never had much use for rose-tinted spectacles.
Oddly enough, the Danish time management system did not play a major part in my work. When you're enthused enough to work all the hours available, time manages itself in a way. You do what needs to be done. Whether there is time enough or not.
You and your friends (and some people you don't even have to like) take on the world and revel in the winning (now and then). Nothing is better. In less fortuitous moments you think ... fuck it (when you lose). We'll lose better next time (to paraphrase Samuel Beckett).
I was, however, genuinely impressed by that time management system. But it was paper based. One needed to be able to write quickly and flick through page after page of handwritten notes every day, several times a day. Not my forte really. Not from the 90s on.
I am a C6 quad, you see, with no finger function and almost no manual dexterity. I'm forced to use both hands if I must 'hold' a pen. I could write if my life depended on a signature ... maybe if Luca Brazzi was standing next to me and his boss was making me an offer I couldn't refuse. But handwritten words come painfully, excruciatingly slowly.
So I never really used my not-Filofax 'personal organiser' and time manager system. I never became a Master of the Universe, although I still have versions of the Danish binder (A5 no less) and a dispenser full of redundant notes on a shelf behind me at home (as I type these words).
Forty years later and on a different continent. Still not using them. Go figure.
It's as if I've been seeking the Holy Grail of time management. I would have ended poverty, eradicated hunger, found the cure for Malaria and -- crucially -- Scotland would have made it beyond the group stages of Euro24 in Germany last month. If only I'd possessed the right day-on-a-page 'personal organiser' and planning notebook with an integrated diary.
I've searched for and tried out many alternatives - hard copy and online. Never found one that suited me.
Until today, maybe.
ClickUp (the free version) and entry-level Evernote. Who knew?
ClickUp allows me to construct an approximation of my late-lamented not-Filofax personal planner online. It works off the type of framework that attracted me to the Danish TMI all those years ago. Goals, key areas, themed categories and associated task lists. There are date-related email notifications sent automatically to my Outlook inbox (the Don't Forget pages of that old school, hard copy system). And in Evernote I can write, speculate, refine ideas and hone my plans, objectives and dreams. It's where this rambling text was born.
I will move mountains.
Following a pre-planned and carefully timed schedule.
I am intoxicated by the possibilities that open up before me. After years of fruitless searching I may have found / created / drunk from my very own, newly-minted grail.
As T. S. Eliot put it (in 'Little Gidding' from Four Quartets)
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."
Alternatively ... I may have been drinking the Kool-Aid again.
We'll wait and see.
Or we will not.
To quote another observation by T. S. Eliot (from the Prufrock poem).
I am no prophet — and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.
Dickhead.
Me, that is.
Not Thomas Stearns.
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