Break

Moments Of Downtime

Garth Beyer

The motto, “how do you act when no one is looking” has sort-of run dry. With how plugged in we are, we know someone is always watching, we just care a little less or call making a Facebook post being productive.

Better to ask what one does when one has a moment of downtime. When there’s five minutes that no one is emailing you, the phone’s not ringing, you just wrapped up your latest task… what do you do then? I think that’s way more predictive of a person’s character than what they are doing when no one is watching.

Do you let the opportunity to start a new venture pass you up? Do you scroll through twitter instead of writing a thank-you letter to someone special?

 

Stay Positive & Downtime Is An Opportunity, Not A Break

 

A Dangerous Reminder

Garth Beyer

We’re all crazy.

I can say that because we love destroying things – rather, when we do destroy things, we have fun with it – a lot of fun.

Finally getting rid of your old desktop computer? Smashing it in the driveway sounds like a great idea. Stereo-system broke? Time to tear it to pieces and see how it works. Need room to build something? I’ll get the sledgehammer.

A few months ago my dad and I had to get rid of some wasp nests. Naturally we tried wasp spray, but it was ineffective. Then we bleached the nests. Still alive. So we poured gasoline and set it on fire.

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A couple of months ago my dad and I took apart my original droid. (After five years, it finally broke.) This is the outcome.

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It’s easy to break something, to dissect it, to experiment with what has already been created. It’s much more dangerous to build something from scratch, to experiment with your own creativity.

What puzzles me is how we can have so much fun destroying things, yet not be as insanely excited to create something.

There’s a few different ways to overcome this. All dangerous.

1. Build to destroy it.

2. Build to let someone else have fun destroying it.

3. Build knowing that you will already be building something new, thus, not caring whether it gets destroyed or not.

Bonus: If you want a real challenge. Build something new from the remnants of what you destroy.

 

Stay Positive & Whatever You Do, Just Have Fun With It

Garth E. Beyer

Two Options To Productivity

Garth Beyer

The real worker, the true productive worker gives herself two options when in the zone, in the workplace. Break or Hack

Break a few rules. Break the status-quo. Break the task into smaller steps. Break the consistency and add some more mistakes. Break her back to make it work. Break it down to understand it better. Break away from reality.

or

Hack the job to make it more efficient. Hack your work so you can do more of what makes you happy. Hack away at everything that is holding you back. Hack into the flow.

Both options lead to a productive – very productive – work day.

 

Stay Positive & You Just May Not Even Consider It Work

Garth E. Beyer