I’d be willing to bet that at least once a week, you have some kind of subtle panic reaction when you think about what you’re doing with your time. We see this everywhere – people are always saying “I’d love to, but let me check my schedule” unconsciously knowing darn well that they just generally feel like life won’t let them have enough time for anything.  I even find myself occasionally pausing when someone asks me about doing something as simple as meeting for coffee. It’s like I have some time account somewhere that I fear is overdrawn because I haven’t balanced the ledger recently, and I’m worried I’ll get penalties for bouncing my time checks or something. Part of this is simple time management stuff, but part of it may be the QUALITY of your time, rather than the quantity of it. The facts are that first of all, time is an arbitrary measure of something that can’t be stored or saved. Or deferred. It’s going to “keep going”, to the extent that it exists at all. The second thing is, we actually have more leisure time than at almost any point in human history.

So how could giving away some of your time possibly ease your frustrations about how much you have? Well, a recent study by a trio of academics from Wharton, Yale, and Harvard ended up with some interesting results. This piece from the Association for Psychological Science covers it in detail, but the gist of the idea is that when subjects were given either an altruistic task to complete, a mundane task, or leisure time, the subjects that were assigned a task that involved helping someone tested as perceiving themselves to have more time than even the subjects who had enjoyed leisure time.

Feeling short on time? Maybe you should stop reading and go give some of it away!

Mopping is much less glamorous than everyone makes it out to be.

The other day I had a hilarious conversation with an old business connection that validated a theory I have about the best training a person can receive in their early work experience. So as not to embarrass anyone, I’m not going to get any more specific than saying that the business this fellow is in involves a packaged beverage product, and that he’s going through the early growing pains of turning a one-man operation into one that requires employees.

So what is the best work training a person can receive to prepare them for the world of work in general? A restaurant job. This friend of mine was a chef for a long time, and then a restaurant consultant, before starting his current business. And me? I was a waiter and bartender off and on for about 15 years. The laughs we had all revolved around a simple work task. Mopping.

My friend creates a premium product that has a certain hip prestige associated with it, and he’s a sharp guy, so attracts hip, sharp youngsters as employee prospects. This is all great – it brings a unique tone to the workplace and the product. But it highlights something that’s as valuable as practical information as it is amusing.

Want to see your young, smartphone-toting, Twitter-happy hipster employee turn into a deer in the headlights? At the end of the workday, say to them “Fantastic job today! You rock!”, and then pull the mop and bucket out of the utility closet. After the initial look of perplexedness disappears, and they accept the fact that they’re actually going to (gasp) MOP A FLOOR, the real comedy begins. No, the water has to be HOT. No, I mean reeeeeaaally HOT. WHOA! Not so much soap! The SOAP doesn’t do the work, YOU do! No no no! Squeeze that sucker out before you start! We’re CLEANING THE FLOOR, not WATERING THE GARDEN. By the time the person is done with this first terrifying mop experience, they’re so eager to get back to just SERVING CUSTOMERS that it’s like they had a six month training program in customer service.

Anyone who has worked in restaurants knows this routine all too well. In foodservice, you have to spend entire workdays cleaning up people’s drool, food scraps, and other dining and face-wiping debris, and then turn around and talk to them like you’re they’re personal butler. It’s like changing a baby’s diaper and then having the baby say “good job, now go fetch my pipe and slippers, will you?” A simple task like mopping almost becomes therapeutic. This is probably why the military places such an emphasis on cleaning in basic training. Six months of mopping floors and cleaning toilets, and you’ll do ANYTHING to move on to the next task, even killing your fellow humans.

But the serious point I’m making here is that foodservice – specifically in a full service restaurant – gives a person a range of training that you will find in no other job, anywhere. If a person is doing it right, they’re dealing with everything from sales and customer service, to maintaining product consistency, to ballet (try carrying a tray with six dinners on it through a crowded room!) to conflict resolution and therapy (some kitchen lines are more like battlegrounds than work areas) to sanitation tasks like mopping and waste disposal.

Next time you’re hiring some young green employees, don’t just look at their education and the more “professional” school jobs they try to pad their resume with, look for a year at Mel’s Diner.

Let’s agree that only part of this list is composed of topics that people are actually planning to read about. Many of the other terms are destination sites, like Facebook, Youtube, Pinterest, Pandora Radio, and Twitter. Google’s made it so easy to search for one of these terms that it’s almost easier to simply Google the word, then click on the link, than it is to actually go bookmark the site you use every day, for example. Which tells you something very important about how well Google has done its job as a provider of a service that people need (or at least want).

And I think you and I both know that people are searching for the IRS because tax day (in the US) is only a month away, and folks are thinking (like me), holy @$^$#%$#!!, how much $$$ am I gonna have to pay the IRS THIS time?”

But what about the rest? I mean, dudes, are you really still so wrapped up in the results of the Super Bowl that you’re still Googling it, or is the term’s proximity to the term “Madonna,” an indication that its actually a bunch of teenage girls or desperate housewives searching for a video of Madonna’s bland Super Bowl performance to see MIA blithely flipping off the audience? Actually (hold on to your shorts), I just Google-checked this and even before I had finished typing the word “with” (as in “who performed wi….”), Google suggested the search phrase “who performed with madonna at the superbowl.” I don’t know if you know it, but Google suggests searches based on what people are searching for. That’s, like, proof, dude. People are freakin shallow, and they spend waaaay too much time reading about things like teenage performers flipping off the international TV audience.

So why are you still reading this? Are you looking for a hitherto unknown fact about LeAnn Rimes? Some naughty photos of Gisele Bundchen? (I know I am!) The latest interview with Katharine McPhee?

Other than the blatant pandering to the lowest common denominator audience that comprises this article, you won’t find any of that here. No, you should be working on your latest project! Move your mission forward and don’t spend so much time crapping around on the anti-intelligence device. There are so many wonderful things awaiting you if you just kick your ass into gear! Do it now!

This provided us with a few valuable lessons:

1.) It’s hard to write something snappy daily.
This was perhaps partly a discipline problem. We’ll get to that in a minute.

2.) Ian is a bit of a windbag.
We won’t get to that in a minute. It should be evident if you peruse his articles here on the site.

3.) It’s important to adapt to new situations quickly.
It can often give quite the wrong impression if you don’t.

4.) Ian and Nick are not avid Twitterers
Is that a bad thing? Probably not. By the way, did you know that sending a single tweet uses a whopping 2MB of code?

So I’m willing to entertain the notion that if we had been more disciplined, writing a “Daily Fix” would have been easy-peasy. But the fact is that we launched this idea right around the time we were completing our recent book, and doing a soft release during the holiday season. At the same time, we’ve been working out the details of a contest involving YouTube submissions, prepping for promotional appearances, launching a publishing company, and starting a new book. Sounds a little like excuses, doesn’t it. Maybe so.

The Secret About Discipline

So I at least re-learned a little secret about discipline. You know what it is? The only secret to discipline is simply DOING a thing, persistently. There is nothing else. Except choosing not to do a thing. Which is what we’re doing in this case.

Writing Something Snappy Daily

I recommend trying this some time if you haven’t. I personally write a minimum of 500 words a day for my work. But “something snappy”? That’s an entirely different animal. I’m going to give this a shot in a different context soon just to challenge myself.

Adapation

We violated one of our own unspoken rules here. It’s common knowledge that in today’s world, it’s crucial to adapt quickly to new situations. I would submit that it was our own intrinsic commitment to follow through and discipline that actually left our “Daily Fix” column in a not-very-daily state. We will now be posting in this section when we feel like it. It’s entirely possible that we lost visitors who were interested in our daily content; we’ll never know. But by simply changing the name of the column, multiple burdens are lifted!

And that’s The Score.

See? I told you Ian is a windbag. He is in fact hoping that this long winded, self-referential diatribe will inspire Nick to write something snappy soon to bump it off the main page.

Beside being a remarkably creative and energetic person, Rob is fascinated with how the human mind and nervous system work. When the subject of healthy eating and weight loss came up, he told me about the studies he’s read that relate to willpower. In a nutshell, Rob said, we have only a limited amount of willpower in each day, and once that’s exhausted, we’re likely to fail on any decisions that require it. That’s why so many diets are scuttled by the last hour or two of the day – when you’re tired from work, family, household chores and you’ve exhausted your daily quota of willpower, you’re much more likely to give in to temptation calling out to you from the refrigerator or pantry!

That’s one reason that weight management systems like Weight Watchers work better than simply “dieting.” Depriving yourself is fine, but besides the fact that your metabolism will reset itself to accommodate fewer calories each day, you are likely to run out of willpower before bedtime. Too much day left at the end of the diet! But regimens like Weight Watchers provide you with meals, desserts, and so forth, so instead of having to eat nothing, you get to eat something, even if it’s not exactly what you might be craving.

I eat a modified version of the Paleo Diet, Atkins Diet, or South Beach Diet. What that means is that I eat very few processed carbs, few grains, and lots of vegetables, meat, nuts, and mushrooms. I really don’t struggle much to stay on the diet, because I don’t deprive myself, I just substitute. At the end of day, when I really crave sweets (baked goods and ice cream are my favorites), I simply eat as much as I want of other “snack” items – apples, oranges, carrots, kiwi, blueberries, walnuts, cashews, and almonds. I usually go to bed feeling full, but my weight, I’m happy to say, is almost exactly where I want it to be.

Have you tried to diet? Have you used any of the branded diet systems? What did you find was the hardest part of the day? And, most importantly, what dietary regimen made you feel the healthiest, most energetic, and most alert?

This made me think about what used to make me do this. Like most people, I have BILLS TO PAY, and going to work seemed the straightest path to solving that particular problem. But is it? I mean, if you hate your job, what is the purpose of going to it, if its only purpose is to perpetuate the life that makes it a grudging necessity? Many of us know there’s another way, but even after we realize we might pursue this path, we’re not even really sure what we really want any more.

How about some tools? Recently Nick and I were discussing the value of various kinds of tests. Although I have no degrees, I have most of the skills and gifts of trained therapists and counselors, because I’m an ENFJ (more on that in a moment). Nick however has a degree in psychology, and in fact worked for several years with Dr. Jim McConnell, author of what was for a long time the world’s best-selling college psychology textbook. We have plans to share various self-assessment tools in the coming months, but I thought I’d share a “fun” one that is based on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.

This was one of the first tests that helped me zero in better on my true gifts. As an ENFJ, I apparently share traits with people like Oprah, Dr. Phil, Ronald Reagan, and Barack Obama. How’s that for an odd mix? The “ENFJ” stands for “Extroverted Intuitive Feeling Judging”.

So what “Myers-Briggs Type” are you? If you don’t have time to take a real version of the test, there are plenty on line that are reasonably accurate, provided your input isn’t too biased. There’s one here that has a single page of 75 very simple questions. What type are you?

So what the heck does this have to do with substitutions? Well, the other day I was having a business breakfast with Nick, and we went to this local diner that has been around since we were kids. As we ordered breakfast, Nick made a pretty sane request about getting something instead of the toast, and before the words were fully out of his mouth, the waitress uttered the all too familiar “we don’t do substitutions”. We both sort of raised an eyebrow, probably thinking the same thing, i.e.: “when did this place hire the chef from the Culinary Institute of America with the pompous my menu is PERFECT don’t eff with it attitude”? We didn’t contest. This place has been in the same location, with about the same level of business for over thirty years. But you know what? About two blocks away, there’s a multimillion dollar business that was originally just a deli, and was started by two hard-working guys, who probably at some point grabbed breakfast at this diner in their early days. I couldn’t help thinking about one of the main reasons the nearby deli had exploded into the stratosphere of success, while this diner puttered along for decades. The deli guys – to this day – have probably BUILT THEIR BUSINESS around doing substitutions. In fact, I think some of their more popular sandwiches years ago were named after the customer that “invented” them.

I think the next time someone asks me to do something a little differently, I might try it. Who knows what might happen!

They might have hired a new person at work who could become your best friend.

The creator of this list is already up making money, so there’s none left for you.

That dude or chick at the gym that you flirt with might finally ask you out.

The boss might call you into their office. To give you a PROMOTION.

Maybe W. C. Fields was right when he said

“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There’s no use being a damn fool about it.”

And look at those wacky hands of yours, with that opposing thumb! How do you get all 27 of those bones to wiggle around cooperatively like that? I guess it’s some amazing combination of the light hitting your retinas and being transformed into images by the 100 billion neurons in your brain so that it can then make split-second muscular adjustments and decisions about what you choose to DO with them. I’m sure you’ll do something pretty amazing with them, because you’re  unbelievably awesome even when you’re just sitting still. Imagine how much MORE awesome you’ll be when you spring into action with the ideas in that brain. You’re AMAZING.