Precrastination

I came across this term "Precrastination" in Chris Bailey's newsletter. We all know about procrastination and its impact on our productivity. But precrastination is something new. 

From this article,

Originally coined by David Rosenbaum, a psychology professor at the University of California, Riverside, “precrastination” is a little-known productivity trap in which we rush too quickly into tasks.

The main intent of the article was to showcase how we rush into tasks, sometime on autopilot mode or the need to get rid of them to clear our mental space.

As I was reading this article, a thought struck me about areas where we precrastinate easily without much awareness.

For instance, you are working on something. An email pops up. It is a newsletter. You quickly scroll through it and find an interesting article. You click through the link and read it. There is a new article linked to it. You click through that as well and continue reading it. Turns out 15 minutes have gone by in a flash. The information might be useful and relevant. But it is unplanned. You have precrastinated to reading it immediately than planning it for a future time.

This kind of behavior happens quite a lot while we browse through our social media feeds as well. We drop in for a minute but we end up spending 20 minutes because of new information we come across - an article, a video, news update etc.

We "content hunt" all the time and it comes in the way of doing actual work.

I have been a victim of this behavior too and over the years, I have consciously taken a step back to not succumb to the new and shiny all the time. 

I love reading newsletters from many authors/thought leaders (Will do a separate post on my favorites). Instead of reading them as and when they arrive, I have scheduled specific time slots to read them. My morning tea time is one such time slot where I read 1-2 newsletters. Although Chris Bailey's newsletter came to my inbox yesterday, I went through it this morning at peace. The term "precrastination" struck me and I started jotting down this post during my morning writing time. 

This habit of scheduling specific times for reading new content is helping me quite a bit. Do give it a try if you read a lot of information from varied sources.

Connections

After a very long time, I wrote an email to a friend yesterday. Not 1-2 liners but 4 paragraphs 🙂 I felt so happy after sending it in the morning. When I received her detailed reply later in the evening, I felt doubly happy to read it. As you might have realized, I love long form content - both reading and writing. I rarely use new age slang like "hru", "hbd" etc.

In the early 90s, my cousin and I used to write a lot of letters to each other through inland letters - yes, the light blue colored ones. We used to stay 30 kms apart and there will be at least 2-3 letters exchanged every month. We had so much to write about - our school, our subjects, our friends circle, movies etc. My aunt (her mom) would tease us that we write in every little empty space in that inland letter 🙂 That reminds me - I should search my cupboard to check for these letters. I might still have a few!

Fast forward to 2020, we both have lost touch and I wrote her a short email in March to check if she and her family are doing okay amidst this situation. She replied with a short message. 

In this connected world, anyone can be accessed with a click of a button, yet we have drifted apart so much. Similar story repeats with many school friends and college friends as well. I should have kept in touch during my 20s but I didn't make enough time on it. Everyone is added as "friends" on Facebook but except for the HBD on birthdays, we don't get to interact much. 

Past cannot be changed, but from now on, let me take the first step to write either handwritten letters or long emails to my friends. Whatsapp, Instagram or Facebook are not the platforms to build deeper connections.

Have you sent handwritten letters when you were a kid? Share your experience in the comments below.

Curiosity

This phrase just popped out of my head while practicing Yoga this morning

Curiosity often leads to more experience. Knowledge is only a by-product.

What is the relevance of this phrase? 

Let me first try to share my thoughts on curiosity. Curiosity is a mere interest in someone/something, without any external trigger/recognition/rewards. 

I'm curious about music, cats, food, process of learning, brain, human body in general to name a few topics.

I would seek out experiences to explore these topics but I may or may not gather knowledge/technical know-how about the same. For example, I enjoy listening to music but I may not know the raagas. Whenever I see a cat on the road, I might stop and admire it but I may not be keen to know which breed it is.

We often tend to assume that people who exhibit curiosity in a particular topic has a lot of knowledge on the subject. This is a wrong assumption. People may seek out more experiences on the topic, as a result of which they might come across new information. Such information need not be collected/stored in memory. In this day and age, even if we don't know the right information, it is easy to access through a simple Google search.

What we need is sheer curiosity on a wide range of topics that may or may not be related to our career/earning potential/skill set. 

Through observation, we can understand the areas where we are curious about. 

What moments in life do we take a pause? 

What are the articles that we stop to read while scrolling through our social media feeds? 

What are the book recommendations that we add to our wish list? 

Whose thoughts do we resonate with - both offline and online?

Identify and make a list of those topics. It might be surprising to see that you are curious about so many topics. Keep the curiosity alive by seeking out more experiences. The universe will also do its part by providing you with the right experiences.

Are you a working woman?

Are you a working woman? - this is a question that I often get asked by school friends, college friends and on social media. It is curious that this question is asked mostly by women to other women. I recently got asked this question when I posted about how I budget my time, where all the work I do is clearly listed down. Inspite of this, the question still pops up. If your intention is to ask whether I work for an employer, please change your questions to "Are you working for an employer? Are you earning a monthly paycheck?"

In my opinion, all women are working. They work for the well-being of their family members. Child care, elderly care, home management - all these are such important and valuable contribution we do for the society. Yes, these are unpaid labour but they are still WORK. So please, women, let's give enough credit to ourselves for doing this work, even though there is no appraisal, paycheck, yearly hikes or promotions. Let's not judge another woman, based on whether she works for an employer or works for her home.

Let's also not put a value on ourselves based on the monthly salary we bring home. We are adding tremendous value to our family in so many non-monetary ways. Let's take pride in that and pat ourselves on the back.

MONEY - Is that all we value? It might be easy to quantify and compare. But relationships, personal satisfaction, good health, contentment and peace are extremely valuable, although they aren't easy to quantify.

I gain tremendous satisfaction and meaning from the food-related blogging work I have been doing for the past 5-6 years. I don't earn a penny from my blog but the comments and messages from readers are so valuable to me.

"My health has improved so much thanks to reading your blog. I have stopped eating all packaged foods"

"My pregnancy was smooth because I chose to eat home cooked foods as you suggested" 

Is it even possible to associate a monetary value to such comments?

Many women do similar work through which they find meaning for themselves and contribute to the society. Let's not ridicule their efforts by asking "Are you a working woman?"

P.S. I worked full time for 9 years before I had my daughter in 2011. Since 2013, I have been working from home / taking up part-time consulting projects / telecommute (partial work from office) etc. Right now, I don't work for any employer.

Friend's visit

What started off as a slight discomfort in the morning turned into a full blown migraine by the evening. Yes, "migraine", my college buddy used to visit me quite often earlier but thanks to many lifestyle changes, the visits have become sporadic. He still pays his visit once every 2-3 months. Nowadays, whenever he visits me, my first question is to figure out the reason why he has scheduled his visit now. My mind literally walks through a checklist

• Is it PMS? Both pre-menstrual and post-menstrual days 
• Have I been drinking too much of tea or coffee?
• Have I been spending too much time on devices?
• Have I been having disturbed sleep?
• Have I been having too many thoughts?
• Have I been eating too little of fibre?
• Do I feel acidic?
• Am I constipated?

As I walked through this list of questions, I figured out how he got the invitation - Have I been drinking less water?

A big, resounding YES.....The weather in Bangalore has been fluctuating quite a bit - bright and sunny on some days while gloomy and rainy on other days. As such, I don't like to gulp water in litres. I take a few sips as and when I feel like drinking water. I haven't been doing much of these sips too these days. And my mouth felt dehydrated for sure.

I nailed down the reason, drank a few glasses of water and slept through the evening. The next morning, I woke up early, did my Yoga practice, made breakfast but I still wasn't feeling energetic. I have always observed that the day after migraine attack, I experience a thoughtless state of the mind. My energy levels were low and my mind felt blank. The calm after the storm, maybe!

I wanted to check why this is happening and so I googled 🙂 Turns out there is a term called "migraine hangover" that many people experience once the pain reduces. 

So anyway, the friend waved good-bye and went off. The lesson I learned from this experience - be extremely conscious of my water intake. Drink warm water, if needed.

If your best buddy also goes by the name "migraine", do check out my earlier post - 8 ways to control migraine attacks.