Mike Vardy is the creator of the personal productivity parody site, Eventualism, and its implementation system known as EffTD (short for Effing The Dog). The site demonstrates a Stephen Colbert-esque take on the world of productivity and lifehacking, and he has interviewed many experts (and not-so-experts) as he attempts to preach the ideology of eventual productivity to the world.
He is also a regular contributor to the official GTD Times site, Productivity! Magazine and CBC Radio One's "Definitely Not The Opera." You can also find him podcasting at DyscultureD, a weekly podcast that “dyscusses and dysects” pop culture of the past and present...all with a very Canadian flavo(u)r.
“I hate to be a kicker, I always long for peace, but the wheel that does the squeaking is the one that gets the grease.”
The above is the actual quote (often commonly stated as “the squeaky wheel gets the grease”) attributed to American humorist Josh Billings. It’s from his poem “The Kicker” describing his frustration with being polite and not getting his way with the authorities. A kicker, by the way, is also known by a more common name: a complainer.
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As I write this, I’m on vacation…hanging out with my family and getting a much-deserved rest. Taking a vacation is extremely important in maintaining a strong work ethic for the rest of the year. I know many workplaces allow for employees to take pay in lieu of time off—I would advise against doing this. Your body and mind need the rest. Depriving them of that only saps your energy further and sets yourself for missed opportunities and letdowns. Take the time off…you deserve it.
That said, you can put yourself in a great position to “take care of business” while you’re pretty far removed it. It’s not terribly taxing to do, either. It just requires planning and setting up the right boundaries for you, your employer and your family in order to make sure you can do it both guilt-free and without sacrificing a ton of your hard-earned time.
During family dinners in my household, we’d all bring an item from the kitchen to the table. None was exempt from this ritual. No matter who cooked dinner that night, everyone ended up contributing to the meal because of what they brought to the table. What they brought was incidental–the fact they brought something was what was important.
The same applies in a work environment–especially in meetings. We all have different things we bring to the table. What we bring often depends on the role we have in the organization or the area of expertise we apply every day to our work. None of these are really any different than setting a dinner table – every part of the meal is important.
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