Gerry Cueto

Part I | Part II

You’ve asked for it and it’s time to introduce the Having Fun Getting Organized part 2 article which stems from my most popular article on this site so far. Thanks for your feedback and I’m really excited to get to it later on in this post. I would say this is the only article so far with the most honest comments because they actually get a proper debate and discussion going.

Personal Reflection

Before I get to the main stuff, I want to write about how my life is going so far as getting organized is concerned. The ideas in part one have changed my life without a doubt that the people who’ve seen my house used to say it looked like a train wreck… now things are in order, but it doesn’t look at good as it could, and I’ve noticed that I’m not applying the techniques as often as I should. I’ve been so busy with other things, I found getting organized a little hard to keep up with, but when I’ve been doing it, it has been extremely fun nonetheless. I also want to refine the techniques from part 1 as well.

I noticed that when you organize your physical room, it also helps you organize your thoughts better. I still love the “commercial break” technique though and I don’t feel like I need to drop it, but I want to make it to work more efficiently. I’ve been applying it daily, and I don’t think I’ve had a day where I haven’t picked up anything for at least 2 minutes.

New Adjustments

The 2 minutes per hour technique is still in effect; however, for every hour not done add up the 2 minutes, so if you missed an hour, the next hour becomes a 4 minute job. Even if you missed an hour or two, the added time is still not that overwhelming. I would say on average I’m awake for 15 hours a day, within those 15 hours; they count as active organization time. Even if you’re out at work, out of the house at all, or partying, they still add up. If you’re gone 6 hours you know what to do; 6 x 2 = 12. So you have 12 minutes of cleaning which is not bad at all.

Tuning out Distractions

I don’t know how most people build up their work frenzies and focus but I have certain techniques I use when I need to do that. I guess some people like to go into spring cleaning mode where they start organizing for about an hour a week. That works for me on things that don’t have to do with cleaning however.

While extroverts naturally get distracted by people, I get distracted by web surfing, emotional problems from the past, and inanimate objects. Since I’m pretty introverted by nature, when I need to deal with people in social situations like calling for business or arranging a date, I’ll lock myself in my room and not be allowed to leave or use the computer until I’m absolutely certain I’m going to have a great conversation with the person. A parallel of this method might be good for people who take a clean workspace very seriously.

Starting vs. Finishing

I don’t really have that unfinished business type of problem because I don’t mind leaving my mess untaken care of. The 2 minute technique is designed for things that you don’t necessarily have the desire to do. If you find things like writing an article, organizing your workspace, or washing the dishes extremely high priority because without them, you can’t function regularly in your work, then use a more focused approach. I can work with a mess however; I think it has to do with different kinds of personalities. If you’re like me and don’t think being organized is that detrimental to your work performance; then you’ll love the commercial break technique. I believe starting a project is more important than finishing because planning to finish something usually overwhelms me from even starting in the first place.

Jarkko’s Boot-up Challenge

Jarkko left me a comment in the Part 1 article stating how he makes the bed while his computer is booting up, and I’m actually going to try that challenge when I boot up my computer from now on and see how much of the bed gets made while it’s booting up. That sounds like a very intelligent solution, Jarkko.

May 22, 2008 - This article is now part of a series. If you’d like to see the series extended, please post your response in the comments section.

Part I | Part II

The Eleventh Edition of the Carnival of Improving Life

Worldviews are a lot more complex than most people make them out to be. That’s why people often do things that contradict their own worldviews, like a priest molesting a child, a preacher caught in a homosexual affair, or a president lying about his sexual conduct to the masses. It is extremely unlikely to keep a black and white morality system when even the most remedial moral philosophy course is far more complicated, but when you begin to understand the complexity of moral decisions, you can have more control over your general worldview.

I always wanted to live the best possible life, but being entrapped in a religious worldview and not being allowed to think outside of its box, left me fantasizing about the life that I always wanted, but since I was not really allowed to make it happen on my own, I would rely mostly on prayer. I believed that I was supposed to surrender my goals to Jesus and he’d make anything happen according to his will. I was always reminded to cast my cares upon Him because He cares for me. I didn’t start learning about setting my own goals till I was 18, which is pretty pathetic.

When I was a Christian I had the same goals I do now except for the fact that I have a little more control over the results I get because I don’t need to pray to anybody to make things happen.

“Strengthening” my Faith

I always expected to be Christian for life, so when I did my research on Christianity, I knew it would strengthen my faith. I then looked at the apologetics side to see what they were saying, and then to be fair I compared it to the polemics side… like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins… Unfortunately, they don’t teach that kind of unbiased inquiry at my church, but I took on the challenge anyway because if Christianity is the Truth with a capital T, then it can withstand any sort of crappy polemic argument… Well, when I found out the polemic arguments were a lot stronger, I started sharing them with the members of my church. However, they accused me of being biased. Oh really? Me? Biased? No wonder they only tell Christians to listen to apologetic arguments that only seem to be preaching to the choir, and ignore those diabolical polemicists. Hmm, I wonder who the biased ones are now.

The problem with the apologetic arguments is that they’re all based on circular reasoning. Even if they start with some tangible evidence, all I need to do is question the evidence, and the apologists start pointing to the last piece of evidence they used and it all keeps going around in a circle. Furthermore, they’ll accuse me of avoiding the real issue at hand by asking circular questions. For instance, take the problem of Jesus, “How do we know Jesus is God?” They’ll point to a Bible verse that affirms Jesus’ divinity. Then ask, “How do we know the Bible is right when it says that?” Then they’ll turn to another verse in the Bible to answer that last one. The next thing you know we’re back in the first verse. This is circular reasoning at its worst and they’ll accuse the skeptic of asking circular questions and avoiding the evidence presented. I’m sorry, but it is perfectly logical to question evidence until you find a contingent source.

Evilution

Another question I had while growing up was, “Why do Christians attack evolution so much?” I’m not a scientist, but I kind of know how peer review literature works and that those scientists have to be intellectually honest with their findings. If they fabricate anything, they get kicked out, but in Bible class we’d find out that they fabricated all sorts of evidence for evolution and that there’s a big conspiracy to keep Creation Science out of public schools (on top of that, they’d point to some Bible verses that “prophesied” the persecution of Christians). These are the same scientists who lose their tenure for intellectual dishonesty right, or are we talking about the authentic scientific community here?

Well I decided way after high school, when I was 20 years old, to do my research on whether these claims were true or not and I discovered that there is a lot of evidence to support evolution. You can search up “observed instances of speciation” which has to do with species mating and evolving into other species that can’t mate with their ancestors anymore. Other fossil evidences like the Archaeopteryx, a reptilian bird, and the Tiktaalik, a four-legged fish, convinced me that there were massive transitions even among different types of animals. The evidences started piling up and were outstanding proofs for macroevolution while on the creationist side I kept getting crappy arguments like “irreducible complexity” which is a thought and research-terminating idea because “if biology is so complex, we need to stop our inquiry and introduce a magic supernatural being as the solution”. However, the theory of evolution has enough information and evidence already to answer why life is so complex.

One Size Fits All

The general problem I noticed with the religious worldview is the need to always have a simplistic “God” answer to both unique and complicated problems. Let me use a moral example here. A Christian believes pornography is always bad. When something is always bad, it should always have a bad effect when applied. Why does pornography not always do this? Religious fundamentalists give all sorts of convoluted rationalizations for this failed prediction, like “sooner or later it will have a bad effect”. That’s a weak argument because it leaves the consequences up to chance, and that rule can apply to any recreational activity. If you become addicted to anything, it can have a bad effect. Why does pornography get the badge of honor for being an intrinsically vice-filled addiction while a TV addiction or a video game one is something to take less notice of? Apologists provide a lot a slanted anecdotal evidence for pornography being evil because it “leads to rape and murder” and will use a rare, fringe case to prove their point. Well let me provide some examples where pornography can be a good thing. Let’s assume a hypothetical, typical, conservative married couple with a sex life that isn’t all that hot, and the man his and wife decide to watch a porn flick that provides new positions and ideas to try out to enhance their sex lives. Where is the evil in all of this? The wife is finally sexually satisfied and the man is happy. Let’s paint a more extreme situation. A man’s sex life is so bad that his woman is banking on leaving him, and then he watches and analyses some porn and his performance in bed improves 10 fold. In his case, porn was what saved the marriage, and his wife is extremely happy and satisfied that he bought the porn flick…but I guess that doesn’t satisfy the Christian apologists. I constantly keep hearing the black and white religious argument that if she was planning on leaving him in the first place, she wasn’t grounded in Jesus enough or didn’t have enough faith that God would keep them together. Give me a break. There is no simplistic one size fits all answer to every problem. What happens if she gets more faith and still wants to leave? What would one do then?

Science has answers that supersede religion a million times over even when it comes to moral dilemmas. The problem is that people don’t want to deal with science because it’s so complicated and filled with trials and errors that they would rather have easy consistent solutions, black or white, true or false, giving them a higher probability of getting the right answers. Unfortunately, life is not a true or false question, that’s why we see countless examples of dogmatic solutions failing us. We have pastors that become homosexual (against their own code of ethics) or pedophiliac. Apparently they had the God solution but it didn’t seem to work pretty well.

There’s a funny saying on Jarkko’s blog, “Got to have a plan because having a plan makes it all better,” which is totally true. An effective plan doesn’t need to include every possible misfortune, yet a lot of times my plans are very detailed to the point where I try to be a perfectionist. They plan for every single possible worst-case scenario, and even though I can never have a 100% secure plan, I can be detailed enough to the point that I won’t leave the planning phase until I feel motivated enough to start putting it into action. When I feel the intuitive itch to start doing something, then I know I have a good plan on my shoulders and it’s time to move on.

Start small

Focus on the smallest things instead of just the greater goal at hand. Have a detailed plan that starts you off with the easiest thing you can do to get started. There’s nothing wrong with having a detailed complex plan as long as it contains simple beginnings. Chances are, if it doesn’t, you’re not going to follow through with your goals

When you’re planning a step-by-step process to accomplish goals you’ve never accomplished before, keep in mind that your plan is just an educated guess. So you can’t be dogmatic about it. When you’re finally taking action towards your goal, you want to detach yourself a bit from the plan and flow intuitively, that way you’re more likely to be open to opportunities that will help you reach your goal faster. When it comes to goal-setting, your intuition is far smarter than the detailed plan, so build your plan around it. Do you need to know every step along the way? No, but you should be able to visualize your goal to enhance the accuracy of your hypothesis.

Personal Development Parallels

Sometimes there are concepts in personal development that fit various different scenarios. I’ve had areas in my life where I would simply revisit old journal entries and copy their hypothetical solutions into my new journal entry and realize how they work pretty well together. For instance, I found similarities between dating relationships and business relationships. When I get stumped in a business relationship, sometimes I’ll go back to my dating journals and copy one or 2 paragraphs out of there and rework it for the business relationship. Even though they are completely opposite kinds of relationships, they both involve social dynamics. Make a mental note and write down the actions that worked and refine or throw out the ones that didn’t. If you have the drive and ambition and never give up, you’ll achieve your goals.

When you have a strong personal, emotional connection to a belief and you’ve internalized it, it causes you to focus 100% on goal and not give up, but the question is how do we use self-discipline to keep that strong connection to that goal? You can do it by coming up with new ways to keep the goal psychologically appealing. Personal development should be fun! For instance, if you read my “Having Fun Getting Organized” article, it comes up with some really interesting ideas to make you want to stay organized. The purpose of self-discipline is getting you to WANT to accomplish your goals instead of just needing to do them. Ask yourself how to turn your need into a desire.

My latest personal development project is to become funnier. The techniques you’re about to read were done in trial and error with friends, family, and even recording myself analyzing everything that was said. I then came up with techniques that can be implemented further to enhance anyone’s sense of humor.

Joke Saver

This one isn’t a personal favorite of mine but I find it very effective when the joke falls flat. Usually the saying that works for me is, “It was funny if you would have been there.” However, I’ve seen other comedians use stuff like, “Is there anybody there?” or “Does anybody here speak English?” I don’t recommend using too many of these in one session because it could show lack of comedic talent, but it’s a valuable crutch nonetheless.

Wordplay

This technique shows wit, intelligence, and creativity in your joke-telling. For example, “Get a good-reputation mentality”, is a quote I use to remind myself and others that a good reputation comes from how well you view yourself, not necessarily how others view you, but the way it is worded gets a chuckle here and there. Notice that I just used wordplay right now. A chuckle here and there is a lot funnier than just saying something was pretty funny. Work on your day to day vocabulary to get more chuckles out of people.

Paradox (True Lie)

A paradox is a statement that sounds contradictory but there lies a deeper truth within, or vice versa. It also could be the way people interpret the quote. Since a lot of paradoxes are open to the imagination, people will start to get funny images in their heads which the comic may have never intended to provide in the first place.

A couple of days ago a friend told me that if I didn’t convert to Christianity, I’d go to hell and burn for all eternity to which I replied, “No mean thing I could ever do would ever come close to what you’ve just told me,” which at first sounded untrue because he was just spouting mere words at me, but when he finally thought about eternal punishment, he realized the truth behind that paradox.

Another paradox which is open to the imagination is the saying, “Pussies are never funny.” Now you’re probably getting a bunch of different images in your head depending what kind of person you are. Some readers are probably thinking about a woman’s physical vagina while others are thinking about a wimpy male, but the fact is that this statement embodies all of these things.

I don’t really think that wimpy males are funny. Some might argue that point with me, but what makes them seem funny is that funny things like failure always seem to happen to them; life is a grand misfortune for them. They are the obstacle of the humor and are not the humorists themselves.

• Sub-paradox (Paradox of the paradox)

“A vagina never makes me laugh,” is an example of a sub-paradox to the original paradox I previously mentioned. This still leaves a lot of imagery open to the imagination. Some people are again thinking of a literal vagina while others are thinking of an actual woman. I know it’s rare but I’ve heard some strange people call women vaginas… One thing I have noticed though is that the more beautiful a woman is, the less likely she is to make me laugh. I’ve seen crazy, sexy, hot girls tell a great joke on YouTube and not one chuckle from me, yet an ugly guy telling the same joke will have me breaking out in a laughing hysteria. Is this a biological function? I’m consciously trying not to discriminate against the attractive woman, but rather I find myself wanted her to shut up and start posing for the camera. Christopher Hitchens talked about this phenomenon, and I agree with him that the funnier females are not that attractive. They’re probably fat, loud-mouthed, and obnoxious, like the Moniques and the Roseannes.

There’s also something intrinsically funny about faith healers and I think it has to do with the paradoxical rule of comedy where what looks like is being said is the divine Truth of God, but whether you question their authenticity consciously or unconsciously, the end result usually yields laughter.

Self-Analysis (Breaking down the breakdown)

Self-analysis in and of it self is pretty funny. Saying you’re going to break down the breakdown for someone who doesn’t understand the breakdown is pretty hilarious. Hearing an artist come out with a remix of the remix of the remix also leaves a few chuckles here and there. Why remix the remix when there’s already a first remix? I guess the world will never know.

Success, Pause, Failure

If you’re wondering why you’re giggling at this title, it’s probably because it applies the comedic “Rule of Three.” Had I taken out “Pause” and left it as Success vs. Failure, it wouldn’t have been funny at all.

Success, Pause, Failure has to do with getting excited over one’s success, pausing and sarcastically mentioning a failure. It could be about yourself or other people. Here’s one I just made up. “Hey I’m a professional blogger now… Not much has been made though, like 20 bucks or something.”

The Unexpected

The unexpected in general is pretty funny; it’s the core of what comedy is built around. If you don’t have a sense for the unexpected, humor might not be the thing for you… Anyway, here’s an example. Let’s say I’m digging through files thinking of another topic to talk about, “I’m going to find another topic here…” all of a sudden I see a car, freak out, and yell “CAR!” Your mind was heavily concentrated on me finding that other topic, so to introduce the car out of nowhere was pretty funny because it was unexpected. This happens a lot on dates where my girlfriend and I find ourselves laughing at quick, random conversation transitions.

Stereotypes

Stereotyping is another favorite comedic technique I use, and no I don’t mean the positive, affirmative, politically correct new stereotypes you’re supposed to say, but ones that may be a bit more taboo to discuss in public social scenarios. When it’s more taboo to criticize something or make fun of it, it gets more chuckles because it’s not expected of you to do so. Here are some examples; white people who run corporate America aren’t as funny as white folk who like to go huntin’. An African-American running for president is not funny, but picturing an extended black family ordering fried chicken, fruit punch, and cornbread in front of you at the Wendy’s line is hilarious.

Accents and Colloquialisms

When you see a comedian that’s really not supposed to have the accent s/he does but does it really well, you get more than a lot of chuckles here and there. It’s almost like every word that comes out of that person’s mouth is funny. Take Larry the Cable Guy for instance. He’s really from Nebraska yet he does that redneck accent so well that whatever comes out of his mouth is nothing but pure hilarity.

You probably also got a giggle out of “white folk who like to go huntin’,” in the stereotypes section, because goin’ huntin’ is a lot funnier than going hunting.

Part I | Part II

You’ve probably heard the cliché, “getting organized starts with organizing your mind.” I believe this to be true, so my goal is to come up with a mental solution for every feeling of disappointment, frustration, apathy, or boredom that could creep up to stop me from organizing my workspace. I used some of the concepts from my “Finding a Meaningful Career” article to help me come up with some of these ideas.

Figure out what’s junk and what’s necessary

I’ve had all these papers, from a college fraternity, lying around, and I wasn’t quite sure if I would need them later on. I realized that if I was ever to go back again, I could throw away the copies I have now and get new copies whenever I decide to rejoin. Sometimes a little critical thought about the junk lying around can make a huge difference in optimizing your workspace.

The “Commercial Break” Technique

I did a 30 day trial for organizing my office awhile back in which I would clean for 30 minutes a day, for 30 days, as a test to see if I could install a new behavior pattern in my daily routine, following the time boxing example on Steve’s site, but as days went by, it became rather overwhelming for me to stop everything I was doing just to clean up my workspace. So I came up with a new concept that’s the opposite of time boxing, great for tasks which you feel are not that important.

Take a radio station for example, they’re having all the fun for an hour playing music, and then they spend 2 minutes each hour doing their work by collecting money through advertising and commercials. So every 2 minutes of every hour, I’d get to work on organizing my workspace while I was there. You can start by picking up anything: a shirt or shoes on the floor or any random object that needs to be attended to. You’ll notice that as the hours add up, you’ll turn a cluttered work space into a spacious room. When I started using this technique, my room was so cluttered that everything would sound flat, but by the end of the day, there were echoes all over the room when I’d talk.

Even if you watch TV all day and you want to organize your home, you can watch TV for an hour then during the commercial break, organize stuff and be back in time for your show.

Prioritizing

Whenever I wake up, I want to get right to work regardless if my bed is made or not because I see writing articles as a higher priority than making my bed. The problem with this, however, is that some days it never even gets made, but with the “commercial break” technique, I can write an article and make the bed in the last 2 minutes of the following hour, that way important work gets its prime time slot and the minor things like sorting out the knick knacks in my room and making the bed can be done during the 2 minute breaks.

Organizing Knick knacks

Because of the lack of drawers in my room I realized how convenient the blank CD cups were and how they could be used to hold pens, cables, and other knick knacks lying around. Now I know where all the pens are and where all the cables are supposed to go. The more jumbo-sized blank CD cases I get, the more space I have to put stuff lying around, and it looks pretty cool and original.

Emotional Blocks

Emotional problems can be a major stumbling block in organizing your workspace. For instance, you get into a bitter argument with the family and cleaning your room is the last thing you want to do. A simple solution that has worked for me in that situation is to get on the computer, open the sound recording program, and start rambling about what’s frustrating me over the microphone. Do a 30 minute set and play it back, within 10 minutes you’ll be yelling at the screen, “shut up! You’re so annoying.”

When you hear somebody complaining, you want to make them shut up, but when you’re complaining, you want other people to hear you out. Playing your audio back on the computer helps you realize that your problems aren’t that big of a deal. It puts you in the second person’s position to help you realize that you’re getting frustrated over nothing, and a lot of little nothings can build up and cause you to not want to organize your workspace.

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This article was featured in The Eighth Edition of the Carnival of Improving Life

May 22, 2008 - This article is now part of a series. If you’d like to see the series extended, please post your response in the comments section.

Part I | Part II