Batching (and efficiency vs. urgency)

Batching is one of the best ways I know to get things done.

The concept is simple: combine all similar tasks into one batch and tackle them in succession. By doing this, you skip all the start up and slow down time, which is usually the most time draining part of tedious activities.

Today, I did a horrible job batching. I’ve been all over the place. I’ve emailed some (but not finished). I’m commented some (but not finished). I’ve written some (but not finished). I know this isn’t the best way to do it, even as I’m doing it. So why don’t I batch?

The evil enemy of batching is urgency. Urgency prompts me to take care of certain tasks first regardless of how efficient it is to work on them.

I think we – or at least I – do this through much of life. We focus on what’s urgent instead of focusing on what’s most efficient. We lean more to the urgency side.

On the other side, though, efficiency certainly isn’t everything. Sometimes urgency matters. So here’s my question of the day:

When is it best to focus on efficiency, and when is it best to focus on urgency?

Once you answer, there’s an even bigger question: how do you know?

Strangulation – what a memory

Once I was wrestling a giant boa constrictor. And losing.

I felt the coils of snake tightening about me. Never mind that snakes can’t actually crush you. Never mind that they have to wait until you exhale to tighten their grip. Never mind that.

I was suffocating. And then – like any ridiculous/good/ridiculously good sci-fi story – I woke up.

Turns out, the strangulation was only my mother and father sleeping in the bed with me. Seems I fell asleep and didn’t realize it. The Amazon suddenly felt so far away. My parents didn’t – I still had no space.

That’s one of my first memories. Ever.

7 difficult to measure goals for 2010

Last month, I posted some of my measureable goals for 2010. Those were the easy goals. The difficult goals are the ones that aren’t as measurable. The difficult goals are easier to fake, easier to justify putting off, and easier to quit without many people really caring.

Part of becoming the most marriable man is physical. The most marriable man probably takes showers regularly. Simple enough. Part of becoming the most marriable man is reputational (you know what I mean). The most marriable man is known for being amazing.

But another part, the more important part in my opinion, is not physical or reputational. It’s emotional, mental, and spiritual. It’s person and private. That’s the part that makes the biggest difference and takes the most effort to perfect.

Here are a couple of these I’d like to develop this year:

1. See past skin
2. Release the desire to choose every option
3. Become monogamous in my emotions, thoughts, beliefs, and goals (related to #2)
4. Switch my life to others-orientedness (I’m showing my current perspective by even saying “my life”)
5. Learn to love one-conditionally
6. Be able to marry anyone
7. Want to marry

Someone once said something ridiculously corny: “Any man can love a million girls, but only some men can love one girl a million ways.” The man who can love any one of a million girls a million ways is the most marriable man.

Guest posting is tense

This month, I’m trying to guest post more often. Last month, I did some, a lot more than I’d done before but they were mostly for just a few blogs. This month, I’m trying to have 10 guest posts published.

Ten guest posts in one month is a lot for me. That’s one every three days, which sounds like even more when I put it that way.

Writing the actual post takes time and effort, but for me the actual writing is the least difficult part. The rest of the process is the difficult part:

• Finding people to guest post for. Lately, I’ve been running through some of the comments left here at Stuff Christians Like. They all said they wanted Jon Acuff to guest post for them. Some of them are bound to want Marshall Jones Jr.
• Idea generation. I do have a lot of ideas as I’ve said, but as usual, my problem is in doing anything with them. Many of my ideas would take way too much effort to write about. And sometimes, if I have a fantastic idea, it might only be suitable for my blog. Creating ideas that work for other blogs is trickier.
• Pitching posts and ideas. This has taken a lot of time in the past because I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m working off a template now and just modifying it depending on which blogger I’m pitching. Hopefully that will make this easier.
• All the back and forth with email that goes into setting up the posting details.
• Prepping the post so it can easily be placed directly into WordPress and published.

All of this is stuff I haven’t had to deal with much before because… I didn’t guest post enough. Now I’m learning. Hopefully the outcome from all this writing (and everything else that goes into them) will be outstanding.

Either way, I’m looking forward to the challenge.

…Now, I’m off to get on it.

How I already won the Superbowl contest

So it’s Friday. I hear the Superbowl is this Sunday. That’s two days from today. I guessed the Colts were in it because of all the Peyton Manning talk. I didn’t know who they were playing.

To say I don’t follow football is… frankly, stupid. Like saying bachelors aren’t married.

But my friend, Kyle, has an amazing – yes, amazing… and you know I don’t throw that word around much – contest running right now. You pick the winner, the score, and the MVP for the game. BUT…

You can get extra points by doing other cool/spammy stuff like promoting Kyle’s blog. Pick me, pick me – I’m in, and I’m gunna win.

Since I know nothing about the game, I’m going to win a different way.

1. I crowd sourced my pick. I asked friends on facebook to tell me which team will win, what the final score will be, and who the MVP will be. I asked some other friends as well. I averaged all the info together. They’re brilliant friends, so I have every reason to be confident. My pick: Saints to win, 28-20.

2. If you check Kyle’s post, he’s made it easy for a guy like me to take the top prize by doing other random stuff for him. Here’s what I’m doing.

• (+2 points) I tweeted about the post.
• (+5 points) I’m subscribed to his blog and told him about it.
• (+4 points if correct) I’m picking Brees as MVP.
• (+10 points) I’m writing a guest post for Kyle’s blog. +10 points if he accepts it
• (+20 points) I’m blogging about Kyle’s contest, and I linked to it. Here’s another in case you missed the two toward the top. (Three links might merit some bonus points, right, Kyle?)
• (+2 points) I’m following Kyle on twitter, and I told him about it.
• (+10 points) I commented on his sister’s blog and on his dad’s blog. (Extra points for linking to them, Kyle?)

[The only thing I'm not doing is buying Kyle Superbowl tickets (+1 million points). I tried to think of some funny way to pull that off. But no, there's nothing funny about it. Nothing.]

Now, I figure even if I’m off with the team, the score, and the MVP, I’m still walking with 49 points. How can I lose, especially when everyone else is focusing on low-level skills like picking scores? :>)

Inspiration beats perspiration every time. Take that, competition!

[Update: Here's how it went down...

• Winner: Saints (over Colts)
• Final score: 31-17.
• MVP: Drew Brees.
• Competition winner: Marshall Jones Jr.

Zac Cross (the runner up) was scaring me, though frankly I wanted him to win so I wouldn't look like such a show off. What's funnier than predicting you're going to win a Superbowl competition and winning? Losing it.

Anyway, nice competition, Kyle. I hope you were able to get some fantastic promotion out of it.]

After midnight

4:20 am. I haven’t posted yet today. Or yesterday really. But for me, my day’s not over. Hence, I don’t feel like I’ve missed a posting day yet.

Is that fair enough?

Today’s been crazy. Lots of ups and downs. I’m exhausted right now, but I still have a blog post to write. I just misspelled the last word of that last sentence and had to retype it – I wrote “right.”

But here’s the deal. I’m doing what I love. I love staying up like this. I love writing. I love what I did today. So even though I’m exhausted and even though I’m misspelling “write” and even though I almost missed posting today, I’m lovin’ it.

I wish everyone were as excited and hopeful and thankful as I am. And I was just about to hit the “publish” button when a thought crossed my mind:

What if I died in my sleep? How would I feel about leaving this as my last post?

The answer is, it’s not my best post. I think I still have my best post in me (I’m still trying to get it out). But for now, it’s the best I’ve got. And you know what? I wouldn’t feel cheated if I died tomorrow.

And that’s a glorious thing.

Starting to jog and why

I jogged seven miles today. My knees felt sore. I hope I’m not pushing myself too hard.

About a year and a half ago, I got the crazy idea of running a marathon. I’m not even sure what inspired that because at the time, I wasn’t a jogger at all. Like not at all. At the time, I don’t think I’d ever even jogged a mile straight.

I put off the marathon though. I ran a couple times, three maybe, and stopped. Last year, though I decided it was something I wanted to work seriously toward for 2010. So I started jogging. Barefoot.

I wanted to jog the entire marathon without any shoes on. That’s difficult to train for in the winter. I’d still like to try it, but we’ll see. Right now I’m still not fully committed to doing the marathon at all.

I wanted to ask you first. What do you know about jogging? Specifically, can you give me any advice for marathon running and the training leading up to it?