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What Andy's Doing
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Recently Written
- Passionate People: Get What You Deserve, Become a Career Renegade!
- Featured Blog: Patrick Rhone and His Journal
- Ask The Readers: Can You Disconnect And Still Be Productive?
- Why Working Long, Hard Hours Gets You Behind (?)
- How to Help Great Productivity Blogs Get Discovered
- My Scandelous Confession and A Royal Rant About GTD
- On New Beginnings (And More About Your Host)
- Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow
- How to Use Basecamp and Backback In Perfect Harmony
- How to Chill Out
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Why Working Long, Hard Hours Gets You Behind (?)
I was at a dinner party the other day and observed the following fascinating exchange (names have been changed to protect the innocent 
):
Cheryl is enjoying her wine and poking away at her Blackberry when she notices her acquantance Jude had just arrived. Cheryl gets up and walks over to Jude. They greet eachother with a hug’s and hello’s. Jude asks, “Hey! How have you been?”
Cheryl proudly replies, “I’m stressed out! I’ve been putting in 10 hour days to finish a very important project at work and I can barely sleep at night. Its all I can think about.”
Jude, appearing to feel inferior, retorts, “That sounds great! But, I wish I had your schedule. I’ve been working 10 hour days and most weekends recently!”
Cheryl gets a bit defensive and quickly shoots back with, “Well, I’d trade my weekends to get rid of these headaches. At least you don’t get migranes twice a week! But it’s worth it. I bought a new boat, its a beautiful 40 footer. I’m just not sure when I’ll be able to find the time to use it!”
At that point I had lost interest and stopped listening. I’m pretty sure the pissing match continued for a while longer…
High Stress = Success!
How to Chill Out
With all of this talk of accomplishing tasks, people like you and me can easily lose sight of one of the great pleasures of life. Freaking relaxing.I can tell you that I am usually finding myself consulting lists and checking inboxes when I should be enjoying the movie I’m watching or the book I’m reading. I get so caught up in the little mini-rush of being organized and productive that I don’t stop to smell the roses nearly as often as I ought to.
One way to curb this nasty habit is to pull the braindead move of putting your lists away. Whatever your data vault of choice happens to be, put it somewhere where it won’t be calling your name.
