11Jan/120
Reader Questions II
Some more great questions from readers! 
How do manage to find times of focusing for all of the comic, EnergyWise, Trevor and general life?
"How on earth do you find the time for all this" is a question I was getting asked a lot, and it's why I started a time management blog - because it took a lot of experimentation and learning to get to where I am now and I felt I had some knowledge to share. It's not perfect by any means, but here are some posts that cover what I consider to be the most important aspects of my time management strategy:
How do you decide what will take priority over what?
Prioritizing does take quite a bit of practice; it takes time to discern between things that are urgent but not important (like getting to the store to buy something that's only on sale today) and things that are important but not urgent (like working out or spending time with your family). It's important to also weigh the consequences of doing one thing instead of another: what happens if you let this slide today and/or every day for the next ten
years?
In my life, I tend to put relationships and personal health and happiness towards the top. There's no sense being the best in my career if I destroy my health and relationships.
Career/Life Legacy is second place. Things cross over of course (Career affects happiness and health affects relationships etc. so it's a judgement call) but stepping back to think about the priority at all is a good start.
I don't always do it properly, but that's the order I'm trying to adhere to. Like all of us, I'm still learning what the boundaries are.
For more here's a post I wrote about prioritization:
http://www.angelamay.ca/index.php/2009/09/prioritizing-five-questions-you-should-ask-
yourself/
How do you manage the general information overload from e-mail, social media and other sources on and off the internet?
Information is addicting, but it also can affect your emotions. It takes discipline and practice to know when you need to turn it off and actually managing to do so. I treat every information outlet differently. I quit cable and I also quit "The News".
I read a lot of blogs, but I have them ranked and sorted in a particular way, and I'm ruthless with the "mark all as read" button. Facebook and G+ I'll check once a day, maybe every few days if time is tight.
I love me some twitter, but I make sure that I never guilt myself out for
"missing something" - I dip in and out whenever I have time.
Recognize time traps and 'bad candy' websites for what they are... I had to quit 4chan a few years ago. Gotta quit the daily reddit habit soon probably :/
Email is its own kettle of fish, I write about my strategy here:
- http://www.angelamay.ca/index.php/2010/02/conquer-email-1-of-2/
- http://www.angelamay.ca/index.php/2010/02/conquer-email-part-2-of-2/
How do you find time to get, cook and eat food? If I've understood things on WT and twitter correctly you and Trevor do not cook together.
I'm vegetarian, but I love a variety of foods. Trevor has... how can we put this... an extremely limited palate. He won't eat most vegetables or anything with a spice in it. He'd eat spaghetti and meatsauce every day if he could and I definitely need more variety than that. There's an economy of scale in cooking for multiple people, but I'd have to cook separate meals for us and I just don't have time for that. So, we fend for ourselves when
it comes to food. (I'm not heartless... I bake for him occasionally 
It's not a common arrangement but for us it makes the most sense.)
It's not a common arrangement but for us it makes the most sense.)I organize my culinary life around a concept I call "utility food". I want my food to be healthy, inexpensive and quick to prepare. I can cook... but I don't need every meal to be the most amazing thing I've ever eaten, and I don't want to spend too much time thinking about it.
I eat almost the same thing every single day. For breakfast I have steelcut oats and cinnamon, blueberries and cashews and a hardboiled egg (I cook both of these things in a big batch once a week), and I eat a piece of fruit in the afternoon.
I get my groceries delivered every week, so what I make for dinner depends on what is in season. Once a week I cook all the vegetables and I sometimes make a big meal on this day (like a big batch of stew or a casserole or something). I cook a big batch of a starch (rice, pasta, potatoes or cous cous) and a protein (tofu, beans, lentils or mushrooms). For dinner the rest of the nights, I throw together what I have available (veg + protein + starch), either as a quick curry, stir fry, burrito, omelette... whatever.
Lunches are either leftovers of the big meal or thrown-together combinations like I make for dinner. I also eat out with coworkers once or twice a week.
Are there any business practices you notice that are uniquely a product of the Canadian culture?
Yeah, actually! Canadian companies seem to put a greater emphasis on everyone in the business relationship getting along, long term. Not all American companies are ruthless, by any means, and Canadian competitors are competitive, but relationships between customers and suppliers are very carefully maintained.
I've also noticed that when an American company needs something they just go out and buy it. We need a thing - is this the best of the thing we need? Does it cost a ridiculous amount of money? No? Good, buy it. It's a fast decision made without stress.
A Canadian company will take quite a bit more time to consider the investment, especially if it's not something they absolutely need at this very second (like a replacement motor for one that has failed vs. new instrumentation). The process of selling something is a softer, longer sale.
Now, this isn't universally true, of course, you'll find really slow-to-decide companies in the US and ruthless companies in Canada, these are just broad generalizations that I've noticed. Neither is "right or wrong", they're just artifacts of differences in culture.
If you want to improve your abilities with a hobby (say drawing or writing), but time is precious and hard to come by, what's the best way to go about it? Is it better to spend your "spare" time on practicing by oneself? Should you spend more of if interacting with other people who are already successful at it?
It depends on the hobby and it depends on the amount of spare time, but usually the answer is a mix of both. Working with a group can help you learn faster, friends or teachers can point out things you might not have thought of on your own, and the pressure of "before I meet the group again" can be a great motivator. The best groups, I've found, are those that have a mix of people who are slightly less experienced and slightly more experienced than you. You don't want to be the far-and-away champion of the group, nor do you want to be a dwarf among giants. It might be counter-intuitive, but you'll learn faster among people who are slightly better than you than from a "master". Masters, compared to novices, work so fast and skip so many steps that you might not even notice what they're doing enough to learn from it, or know what to ask. (You'll also be surprised how much you can learn from those less experienced then you who try something different!)
Finding a good group takes time (so don't get discouraged if your first group doesn't work out), but once you get one it's the best! It takes more time to get there and back but you'll improve so much faster, so it's more efficient.
That being said, if you really want to improve, you'll still need to "put in the hours".
Many hobbies require quiet focus and study. Even if your hobby is soccer, you might need to spend some alone time reading about soccer technique, working out, practicing a particular move or visualizing. There's also many times when it's not possible or practical to meet with a group. You learn a lot, but groups can also be very distracting. Try to develop a good habit (work at it for at least a few minutes every day) and work on building the length of time you can successfully focus.
Whatever you do, don't use "oh I need to do this with people" or "I need alone time to do this" as an excuse. Whatever you do, just do SOMETHING, whatever you can and whenever you can!!
(continuing with the question) How do you stay motivated when those around you are already expert at it?
It's definitely disheartening when you spend hours on a project only to turn around and find someone half your age who did it in a third of the time and five times better. But when you work at a creative pursuit you learn: there is ALWAYS someone better than you (or there will be someday) and there is ALWAYS someone worse than you.
Yes, worse! Even if this is your first horrible stick-figure drawing, YOU ARE BETTER than someone who couldn't summon the motivation to pick up the pen at all.
When you get discouraged, remember to look back and see how much you have improved. Focus on the joy of the activity itself, and the knowledge that for every picture, poem, hour in the gym you are enriching your life - even if you can't yet reach the same level as whats-her-face.
Look up to others and learn from others but DON'T compare yourself to others. You are not them. You are not aiming for the exact same life goal, and you've had different lives up until now. Maybe they're better at this one thing, but are you better at something else? You have had experiences and achievements that they might not have - they might never have. And who knows, maybe they are already at their limit and with determination you can someday surpass them! You just never know.