Dangerous Thoughts

By John McDonnell

What will the world be like when we’re all wearing thought helmets?
Recently I read a report about “thought helmets”, which are devices the U.S. military is developing that will enable soldiers to communicate by sending thoughts to each other. Sensors inside these helmets scan electrical signals from the wearer’s brain and a microprocessor inside the helmet turns the signals into words that are then transmitted to a receiver’s hemet.
You can see how this would be useful in a military situation. Soldiers who are on stealth missions, such as sneaking up on an enemy camp at night, could communicate without making a sound. A soldier could direct his mates to avoid obstacles, spread out, get ready to attack, or any number of other messages, all at the speed of thought.
Things will really get interesting when these helmets are developed for consumer use -- and you know that will happen eventually.
Can you imagine a football team all communicating instantly about every play on the field? Or people at a business meeting exchanging thousands of thoughts an hour? Or the potential for fun at a party? It will bring a new dimension to social interaction.
Then again, what is communication going to be like when you can communicate at the speed of thought?
Most of us have a filter between our brain and our mouth, so that we don’t say everything that comes to mind. What happens when the filter is tossed aside? If you can think something and communicate it instantaneously, I can see problems. If we don’t have a chance to edit what we’re thinking, there could be some nasty arguments caused by those thought helmets.
Here are some classic cases where we don’t say the first thing we think, and imagine what would happen if you did.
Reporter to football coach: “How do you feel about losing 72 to 0?”
Reporter to player: “Is there anything you’d like to say to those people who booed you today?”
Boss to salesman: “Your sales results are down. It’s not because we raised our prices, right?”
Restaurant patron to waitress: “You expect a tip for this service?”
Used car salesman to customer: “Would you believe me if I told you this vehicle was hardly ever used?  
Parent to teacher: “Isn’t my Johnny the smartest student you ever had?”
Wife to husband: “Do these pants make my butt look too big?”
On reflection, maybe these thought helmets should be kept away from the public, like nuclear weapons. The potential for catastrophe is too great.

How To Squeeze Every Minute

By John McDonnell

The Internet has revolutionized our lives, but it’s also the biggest time waster in the last 10,000 years.

How do I know this? Because I sit down to write and then I get caught up in Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Wikipedia -- and before I know it, hours have vanished from my life. When I was in Catholic school, these kind of insidious temptations were known as the agents of Satan, and I think the nuns who taught me that were on to something.

I mean, did Ernest Hemingway have to deal with this? Did John Updike? Updike wrote more than 50 books in 50 years, plus reams of magazine articles, essays, and poems -- do you think he could have accomplished all that if he was checking email every five minutes?

Of course not!

Then why don’t I pull the plug on this black hole that sucks the time out of my days? Why don’t I just get rid of my Internet connection so I can produce more work?

Because I can’t.

The addiction is too strong. I can’t go half a day without my Internet fix. I had to take my computer into the Apple store last week and wait a whole 24 hours for them to fix it, and I didn’t know what to do with myself. I was sweating, unfocused, blithering. I couldn’t concentrate.

When I got the computer back I ran to my desk, set it up, plugged it in, and voila! I was back online, plugged in to the pulsing heart of the Internet.

I guess there are worse addictions.

It’s just that the older I get, the more I realize the most important quality a person needs to be successful is good time management skills.

It’s not talent. It’s not luck. It’s not even hard work, although that’s important.

It’s the ability to figure out what’s important to you each day, write down your goals, and then focus on the steps you need to accomplish those goals.

You can be a blithering idiot and still be wildly successful if you have the simple ability to do that. To know what your priorities are on your To Do list every day, and then focus on getting those items accomplished. It’s just putting one foot in front of the other, that’s all.

It means putting blinders on, and blocking out all the bright shiny things trying to get your attention every day. It means shutting your ears to all the chatter around you. It means not exploring that cool Web site you just stumbled on, or reading “just one” email, or taking that phone call you know will waste the next half hour when you need to be working on your project.

When I know what I want to accomplish, write it down, and take steps to achieve it, that’s when I’ve always felt the most productive. You can sleep easy at night when you’ve crossed off all the important items on your To Do list every day.

The more the distractions of modern life have grown, the more people are looking for quick fixes to deal with them and be more productive. There are time management Web sites now, and tons of software programs promising to help us all use our time better. We can put To Do lists on our smart phones, send ourselves reminders, trade tips and advice with other people on productivity forums -- and yet people are complaining more than ever that there isn’t enough time in the day to get everything done.

It’s really not that hard. Just write down a few tasks on a sheet of paper every day, then get them done. Know what your goals are, and review them on a regular basis to make sure you’re still on track. Learn how to say no to anything or anyone who pulls you away from your tasks each day.

This is not rocket science. It’s something I’ve known since I was 12 years old. I’ve done it at various times in my life, although not nearly enough.

Well, I’m going to do it again. I’m going to buy a yellow legal pad and start writing my lists out every day. I’m going to focus, focus, focus on getting my tasks accomplished. I’m going to change, go on an Internet crash diet. This time I’m going to do it!

Which reminds me, I need to do a Google search to find some good Web sites with time management tips.

THE END

Copyright John McDonnell, 2010. All rights reserved.

I Am Not Keith Richards

By John McDonnell

So Keith Richards has written his autobiography, and he’s being interviewed everywhere. The infamous Rolling Stone guitarist with the face that looks like old shoe leather has told all in an autobiography that has lots of spicy stories about his wayward life.

Apparently there’s enough detail about his extensive drug use that Disney is rumored to be thinking of writing his character out of the next Pirates of the Caribbean movie. “Keef” doesn’t fit in with Disney’s squeaky clean image, even if he is portraying the scruffy, disreputable father of Johnny Depp’s only slightly less scruffy Captain Jack Sparrow character.

If Disney needs a replacement, they could call me. I’m the polar opposite of Keith Richards. I’m a family man, I don’t do drugs, I’ve never been arrested, I don’t interrupt when someone else is speaking, and I shave every day. I’m what’s known as a Nice Guy.

That’s what I’ve been called pretty much my whole life. As in, “Gee, you’re such a nice guy, John.” I never got into fights as a boy, preferring compromise over confrontation. I’ve always been polite, respectful, positive. A Nice Guy.

The trouble is, nice guys don’t make headlines. It’s not a popular thing these days. People don’t aspire to be a nice guy anymore. “Nice guys finish last,” isn’t that the saying? Women say they’re looking for a nice guy, but their actions betray their words because they sometimes end up with a guy that looks like he has a sketchy relationship with things like soap, water, and manners.

There are no nice guys in popular music. Can you imagine a nice guy rapper? Shouting rhymes about how he opens doors for women? Don’t count on that happening any time soon.

It’s not just rap music. Keith Richards and his bandmates have a long history of writing songs that celebrate bad behavior towards women. From “Under My Thumb” to “Stupid Girl” to albums of others, there are very few Stones songs that would qualify as nice guy songs.

Maybe I feel this way because I live in the Northeast corridor of the U.S. Nobody in this part of the world aspires to be a nice guy. In fact, I think it’s actually illegal in New York city. Police are trained to take down nice guys because they’re almost as dangerous as terrorists. A cab driver who let someone switch lanes in front of him out of politeness would probably cause a massive traffic accident.

I’ve heard rumors that there are still some nice guys left in the South, but they’re a dying breed, rapidly being replaced by redneck comedians and Florida State football players.

I could get mad about it, but nice guys are non-confrontational. The most we do is get a little passive aggressive, maybe make a few wisecracks about how ridiculous it looks for a 67 year old like Keith Richards to be wearing leather pants, bandanas, and jewelry in his hair.

It’s just the way things are. Bad boys get all the headlines, while nice guys stay in the background doing all the boring little things that keep civilization from spiraling back into the Stone Age. Nobody wants to read the autobiography of a nice guy. We want to read about the crazy bad boys, the ones whose lives are filled with drama every day.

That’s okay, though. I wish Keith the best. He’s created some great music along with that bad boy image. He’s even given up drugs, or so he claims in his autobiography, and he’s devoted to his family. I hope he has many more years ahead of him.

But if my daughters ever want to marry somebody like him, it’s no more Mr. Nice Guy for me.

Should You Declutter Your Home?

By John McDonnell

I grew up in a family of eight, and we lived in a three bedroom house. These were not bedrooms as we think of them today, however. Three of my brothers shared a bedroom that was the size of a walk-in closet in a modern house. My sister actually did live in a closet -- her bedroom had been used as one by the previous owners.

Downstairs, there was a living room, dining room, a half-bathroom the size of a telephone booth, and a modest kitchen. After a few years we converted the garage into a TV room, but by today’s standards it was a tiny house for eight people.

And yet, it never seemed cluttered.

My mother liked things neat, and she trained the children to pick up after themselves. We had no multi-purpose furniture: e.g., the kitchen table had nothing on it except food. The flat surfaces in the house were always visible and uncluttered. There were no areas that looked like the back room in a junk shop.

Then why do I live in such a cluttered house?

My house has three times the space of the one I grew up in, and yet all that space is taken. There are stacks of mail on the dining room table. Sports equipment, lawn furniture, and power tools litter my garage. I haven’t seen the surface of my desk in years. And you don’t want to go down in my basement. That’s the place where old computers, toys, and furniture go to die.

How did this happen?

I like to tell myself that it’s because I’m a creative person and we creative types are not orderly or fussy about small details like having space on the kitchen table.

That could be true, but it’s also probably because my family has more of the detritus of modern life, more stuff than I had as a child.

How did I get all this stuff? I was raised in a family where my father grew up poor in the Depression, and he always acted as if he thought he was going to wake up one day and it would be 1933 again. He thought the world was crawling with people out to take his money, and by God he wasn’t going to let them have it. If my Dad spent money on something there had to be a dire need for it, and you were expected to use it till it wore out.

These days, when I’m looking for a book or a user’s manual or a gadget and I’m searching through all the clutter, I often find things that mystify me. “When did we buy this?” I ask. Or, “I didn’t know we had one of these,” or, “What is this thing?” Even, at times: “Did we actually spend money on this?”

I try not to be a sucker for every sales pitch that comes along, but my resistance breaks down more than I realize. You can’t get me to buy a pair of pants I don’t need, but for computers, gadgets, gardening tools or books I’m an easy touch. The rest of my family has different buying weaknesses, but what it all adds up to is that we play a vital part in the economic well-being of several Chinese villages. 

Combine that mentality with a reluctance to throw things out -- in my family, if we own something, it’s understood that we keep it till the sun burns itself into a cold, dark cinder and the universe implodes -- and you can see why there is so much clutter.

I know you’re saying there’s always eBay or a yard sale to get rid of the stuff, but that involves making multiple trips to the dark corners of the basement, organizing, collating, and actually looking at things like those Sesame Street sing-along videos we kept for 20 years since our kids outgrew them, and once that happens we get teary-eyed and decide we can’t part with them, so they go back in the box for another 20 years.

Maybe that’s what clutter is, the accumulation of sentiment. It’s the souvenirs we pick up along the way, and no matter how trivial they seem, they all have meaning. Even that electric bill I found in the back of my desk drawer, the one from the first apartment my wife and I lived in, is hard to throw away because it has meaning to me (“Honey, do you believe how little they charged per kilowatt hour back then?”). I can’t part with the stuff I’ve been dragging along, no matter how much it’s slowing me down.

Someday all this clutter will be thrown away, or it’s going to end up in the closets and desk drawers of my children, just like clutter has been passed down to me from my dead relatives. It goes on forever, does clutter.

Maybe that will be my ultimate legacy, my gift to future generations. My great-grandchildren will have things like restaurant receipts and old magazines and the model airplane I built in 4th grade to remember me by.

That will probably give them a more accurate picture of my life than anything else, because what is life all about anyway, if not clutter?

THE END