When I was at my most impressionable age, there was a fad among upper-middle-class women of my mother's age for needlepoint. My mother was decidedly not a knitting/sewing kind of person. Some of her friends were unabashedly upper class—one family had a very elegant separate house on their property for their full-time servants. Yet for a while they all needlepointed. In the boutiques of the quaint little towns where we summered, needlepoint supplies were common in the gewgaw/fripperies shops, and needlepoint pillows were displayed in some of the windows. My mother successfully completed one very nice small needlepoint pillow (now lost, sorry to say) along with several unfinished starts.
Many of these needlepoint projects took the form of samplers, and I still remember some of the homilies I saw then, writ in needlepoint—"Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart"; "So Many Books, So Little Time," "My Favorite Thing to Make for Dinner is Reservations," "Too Much of a Good Thing Is Wonderful," "The Hurrier I Go the Behinder I Get," and so on.
That last one stings a bit. I am getting behinder as I go hurrier, and I don't like the feeling. With every day that passes I seem to fall a little further back. Yesterday we'd had four wet days in a row and the day broke sunny. I knew I could do nothing but get cranking on the grass, which was perilously close to being out of control.
I feel like I have too much to do. Writing TOP; moderating comments; writing for the magazine (I have a deadline on the 24th); working on my book; housework, which is in a state similar to the way the grass was yesterday; laundry; cooking (which, when you're trying to eat plants, consumes a surprising amount of time, and ditto for the shopping); feeding and exercising and paying attention to the dog; yard work; all my obligations for my 12-step program; exercise; reading; correspondence; research. And, where I live, driving. Up here, everywhere is a drive from everywhere else. Plus all the little quotidian details of running a life, from sorting mail to medical appointments to selling stuff on eBay. I seldom get out photographing.
And I don't even have kids! Or a commute. How do people get it all done? Who has time? I didn't even play pool much yesterday, which is the best indicator of how badly I needed to get to the yard.
Warren and Steve know everything
A pithy quote from Warren Buffet made the rounds a few years ago. I found it on Yahoo Finance, Inc.com, Forbes, Money.com, and so on. "The difference between successful people and really successful people," he (allegedly) said, "is that really successful people say no to almost everything."
Since it appeared all over the Internet, I think we can assume that Abe Lincoln, Albert Einstein, and Shakespeare are all nodding their heads in agreement too.
The double whammy, though, to drive the point home, was that Steve Jobs (allegedly) agreed. "People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully."
Oh, well then. If they both said it, then it must be one of the Big Secrets of success, and (not coincidentally at all) wealth. (Everyone wants the secret to wealth.)
"Notice that Buffett said almost everything," explains Forbes, helpfully. "What he is speaking to is our ability to master decision-making and time management. He says we must choose, with intention, what we say yes to and what we say no to. It all comes down to simplifying, prioritizing, and focusing our attention on what matters most."
Well, that's nice work if you can get it. But no one else is going to do my dishes or my laundry. If I say no things get ugly fast. One of the most pressing tasks I need to get to? Making a list of all the pressing tasks I need to get to.
I have 1.89 acres, and if I say no to yardwork it sure gets away from me in a hurry, this time of year. I'm happy to report that I got a lot done yesterday—finished cutting the whole yard, did a lot of raking and mulching, cut some brush, pumped up the tire of the wheelbarrow, cleaned up around the mailboxes, got the two-gallon fuel container for the lawnmowers topped up with ethanol-free gas (ten dollars for two gallons!!), even swept out the shed. I was a goin' fool. And so far, no consequences either (I have to be careful of my back).
As a bonus, the pileated woodpecker let me see him. He was inspecting a number of fallen logs on the hillside, investigating with his powerful beak. He let me walk to within 40 feet or so, hopping around in plain view (him, not me). Then he took off and flew to the backside of a tree. They almost always stay on the backsides of trees from humans; if you look very diligently for a long time at the spot where you know they are, you will eventually see them peeking around the edge of the tree to check up on what you are doing. But once they see you, they nip back into hiding.
Yes!
I do think the Buffet/Jobs admonition makes sense for photographers. Successful photographers either decide what they want to do or determine what they're best at, and then say no to everything else. We used to refer to it in art school as our "personal work." You might do everything, but there was one specific kind of thing you really said Yes to, and you gave that one thing your all, whatever else you did. The way I used to put this was to say "never have one wedding photograph in your portfolio." What that meant was: either specialize in wedding photography or don't do it at all. You're not going to sell a potential wedding client with only one sample shot in your book.
Of course, for AdAms (advanced amateurs), hobbyists, and enthusiasts, the opposite is the case. We happily say yes to whatever we feel like doing. An AdAm seldom meets a picture opportunity he doesn't like. And if you're like me, you take a lot of pictures that aren't even pictures; we pretend there's a picture there because it's fun to go through the motions. It's Yes at all times. Shoot it first and sort it out later. Ralph Steiner once published a book called In Spite of Everything, Yes. And if our work ends up as a motley of different styles and subjects, well then, "It's About Process, Not Results." (I did two weddings in my life, and both were very successful projects.)
Because that's the thing about needlepoint-worthy homilies: For every pithy saying, there's an opposite pithy saying. There's "The Love of Money Is the Root of All Evil," but there's also "Money Makes the World Go Around." There's "Clothes Make the Man," but also "You Can't Judge a Book by its Cover." "Birds of a Feather Flock Together," but "Opposites Attract." I'm not saying they all have the same truth value, of course—for the most part, opposites don't attract. All I'm saying is that you can make the needlepoint pillow say anything you want it to say.
So anyway, saying Yes! to pictures you know you shouldn't take might not be the road to success, but if it's more fun, then, you know, "Follow Your Bliss."
Mike
Another thing I really have to do is pick a new Book o' the Week
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Featured Comments from:
Keith Cartmell: "Ordinary people sometimes remark how a famous person they happened to meet was so focused on them. They have that luxury because they have staff that will catch their eye and murmur some polite variation of 'your next appointment is in X minutes.' These staff often take care of all the pesky details relating to a particular task so the famous person can concentrate on just the task. Plus, in the crass commercial sense, they can pay someone to take care of the tasks they don't want to do, like several items on your list."
Mike replies: A long time ago, Oprah had an expert on cleanliness on her show. He claimed that the average person cleans and changes their bedsheets just four times a year (which I still find shocking). He detailed a long litany of the microscopic critters, creatures and germies that live in dirty bedsheets, and urgently recommended laundering them at minimum every two weeks, with once a week being much better. But when Oprah mused that she thought fresh sheets every two days was best, the expert dismissed it with a wave of his hand, saying, "real people can't do that." Oprah's feelings were hurt!
Grant: "TOP is to blame for my 'behinderness.' Do you realize how many hours were lost to watching the snooker links? Then I had to spend hours trying to understand the complexities of a game called 'Go.' If TOP is going to go off topic, could it please be about food? That causes my eyes to glaze over and I get up from the computer and go and do something important. :-) My needlepoint would say, 'Try, Try and Say No to TOP.'"
Mike replies: How about you just say no to TOP LINKS? That way I won't have to add "go find a job" to my to-do list!
Grant replies: "If you flip my 'Try, Try and Say No to TOP' needlepoint over, you will discover that the back is adorned with, 'Resistance Is Futile.' Now, spend some time researching that quote!"
Mike replies: I did, and here's what internet says: "'Resistance is futile' was the trademark statement of the Borg, an amalgamated race of biomechanical beings determined to assimilate every group of humans it encountered. If the targeted population refused to be assimilated, they were simply destroyed and the Borg moved on to its next target."
Jeff1000: "'Simplify, simplify, simplify!' —Thoreau"