Here’s how it was – I saw a notice in the church bulletin for a three session course on Christian Life and Witness, sponsored by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

I thought, “That has to be good; I should go.” and so I went.

Part of the little course package they handed out was a DVD. When I received it, I thought, “Oh, goody. More overproduced Christian cultural advertising.”

But it’s not. Its the entire NIV bible as .mp3 and as text… And the NIV is the good version – the 1973 copyright version that’s not going public domain any time soon. Score!

I love getting stuff. Who doesn’t love getting stuff? It makes me feel Great to get stuff. I just got the most tremendous jag when I realized I’d gotten a whole free audio NIV and a whole free html version of the NIV.

But then I thought to my little idolatrous self – I have NIVs scattered about my house. I can search the entire NIV text online, already.

Our modern information age is making a spiritual truth more important than ever. This might eventually be a good thing; it might force us to learn something the hard way that we would otherwise never have bothered to learn.

In the Gospels, Jesus talks to a rich young ruler who knows everything and who has done everything. He’s flawless, and yet Jesus is able to speak right to the heart of what he needs. The ruler comes asking, “What must I do to gain eternal life?” and Jesus is able to pick out what the ruler hasn’t done.

The ruler hasn’t received the Scriptures inside him. He has read them and obeyed them and has followed all the commandments since he was a boy, but he hasn’t received God’s word inside him. This is why he is confused about eternal life, and this is why he ultimately goes away sad. Although the ruler has engaged the scriptures at a shallow level, Jesus opens up a deeper level to them.

“I have hidden your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.”

The psalmist’s declaration talks about receiving the Word of God. There’s scripture we know and have, and then… there’s Scripture we receive. Scripture we accept and make a part of us. The psalmist is talking about words to live by.

On the internet, information is becoming ever cheaper and cheaper. I have access to more information than I could ever glut myself on in a thousand lifetimes. But the only information that does me any good is the information that I take advantage of. Simply the state of having it available to me does me no good whatsoever. I look at it all and I get really sad, because I’d like to harvest it all, but I can’t.

If our modern internet world will teach us one thing, it will teach us that information is useless and that informed living is priceless.

Simply reading the scripture without making any commitment to doing what it says will put me in the same boat – walking away sad.

During the week that I logged my time, I blogged every day. It wasn’t any more difficult of a week that this week, but I managed to find time to fill out the log and post it.

Really, it came down to a decision. I remember feeling tired and wanting to go to bed and all that; I remember saying, “No, I have to do this.” And I did it.

It really struck me – I have time to blog every night. The time is there if I choose to take it. I’m not too busy; I’m not too tired. I’m choosing not to.

That’s not necessarily a good or a bad thing; it’s just a thing. But it’s a scary thought, because the excuses I was holding up as valid and reasonable are crutches; they’re false excuses. What else am I excusing myself from with false excuses?

Hmm.

Good Night and God Bless.

A little classic literature today. Aren’t we all looking out the balcony longing for a little more time? But Romeo and Juliet is just so… sappy idealized. I like the practicality of Mr. Micawber.

“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness.
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.” — Mr Micawber (Charles Dickens, David Copperfield)

Does this work for time? I think it does – in two ways.

The first way is punctuality. This is a bold statement, coming as it does from a procrastinator.

It’s not fun living a perpetual five minutes (or 10, or 15) behind the times. Eternally chasing deadlines is a sucker’s game. So why am I so good at it?

I have a funny relationship with procrastination.

• On the one hand, looking at the hard evidence, we are on the best of terms. We spend lots of time together. The love is flowing.
• On the other hand, I can’t think of another thing off-hand that has caused me so much unhappiness for so little reward.

There’s an outrageous disconnect here.

The second way the rule applies is with regards to volume. What happens when you try to fit 800 blocks of time in a 672 block schedule?

673 blocks? 671 blocks?

I tend to get frustrated when I can’t do things that I want to do. At the same time, I have a great quantity of things that I want to do, but I never seem to have the time. I also, looking at the evidence, have a number of things that I currently do which hog the slots.

Video games, for example, have a terrible time/value trade-off. Dragon Age is the first video game I’ve played in a long time, and while it is a fantastic game, it’s a time eater. It’s impossible to play in small doses – it’s the book equivalent of a page turner.

Which is great, except for the whole “other things I want to do” and “limited time slot” problems.

A. Lurkar rightly raised the issue that I haven’t yet protected my schedule from being indexed by the search engines and other web-crawlers. It’s possible that my week of Feb 01-07 will live on the internet forever.

I’m just not sure what kind of trouble this could cause me. There’s nothing particularly incriminating going on this week. I’m really struggling to figure out how someone could use this schedule to hurt me.

The people who could hurt me most, of course, are the people near to me – who know me. They’re the ones who have additional information which could give the schedule meaning.

For example, if Shaun knew I told Brad that I offered to help Brad with some programming stuff, he could tip Brad off that my Friday night was really being spent watching 80s television and playing Dragon Age.

There might be a possibility for someone to use this schedule to hurt me, but they’d better do it quick. The problem is, my schedule is dynamic. This week’s schedule is not a reliable indicator for future schedules – things change. If someone really wants to make my life miserable, they better do it quick.

The threat of data living on forever isn’t terrifying in this case, because if my schedule is findable in five years, it will be, well… It will be a trifle out of date.

Possibly the greatest real risk is that someone will find my schedule and judge me by it. What does it say about me? Does it say good things or bad things?

Perhaps I should put a little blurb up at the top which reminds everyone the diligence and strength of character required to log obsessively for a week. And then see if I can make the front page of reddit.

I dunno.

What do you think? If you click on the little “comment” link, you can let me know what your thoughts are.

Cheers.

Not much to see on a Thursday, I’m afraid – Work – Clean – Cook – Bible Study – Blogging – Bed.

The response to this little jaunt has been positive from all manner of folks. And my Mom hasn’t nagged me yet although she’s been on poor Shaun’s case.

Maybe come end of the week I’ll have some breakdowns and analysis. There are more lessons to learn, but not in my current state of tired.

Cheers.

Don’t forget to pay Shaun a visit!

Poor time-tracking during work hours today. I didn’t dedicate as much thought-space to logging as on Monday or Tuesday. I think it showed. In reality, I spent more time websurfing than might meet the casual eye, perhaps because I managed to break up my surfing into fractured little pieces  – 1, 2, 5 minutes long;  unworthy of explicit remark, but nonetheless significant when counted together.

I think I must be subconciously devious that way.

In particular, the way I’ve built my logging table means that I can’t have more than one categorization for slots, which is a shame, because some slots should be a mix of “work” and “internet”.

My day was also more fractured with more interruptions today, and I think that played a role. It also involved some technical stuff which didn’t go smoothly. When that happens I tend to get frustrated and want to surf.

Also I got to work later, which meant I didn’t have my usual ramp up time, so my surfing bled into a little later in the day.

Virtuous?

Today the buzz I felt on Monday has died down a little bit, but on Monday I felt tremendous pressure to be virtuous.

But what happens when I feel pressure to be virtuous? Does that mean I become more virtuous?

Or do I just change my behaviour?

I don’t want to diss behaviour modification, because I think it’s extremely important. But if I think that Scott the person is somehow magically different on this Monday because he’s scribbling notes in a little book and because he’s more task oriented, I’m sadly mistaken. I’m the same guy.

What does this experiment have to do with virtue as a state of being, with virtue as a state of soul?

The truth is, I’m not a different person this week, even though I may be behaving a little differently. (But not much, I still take naps in the evening and play video games. These are things that my pride would have me discard in an instant.)

But this does poke my pride. It does agitate some things that maybe I’m a little too attached to.

I’m quite self-concious about my web surfing, for example. It’s the thing I’m most interested in tracking. Am I some out of touch loser because my thought world is centered around the internet?

Virtue won’t come from my pencil and notebook, but my pencil and notebook might reveal some areas where peace and virtue need to make an appearance in my life.

Enough analysis. See you tomorrow, folks.

Shaun’s day is here.

A pretty average Tuesday. The lesson of the day is that an engrossing, story based game is very difficult to pull away from. I started playing Dragon Age with the intent to play for just half an hour, but doing so was very… unsatisfying.

Mind you, when I finally put the controller down after an hour and forty five minutes, it was still unsatisfying. Huh.

Not so much time on the internet today – time on the internet was mostly spent writing this blog post and updating the log.

However, there is some daily browsing that I find difficult to give up entirely. If I don’t find time to do it outside of work, it kind of sneaks its way inside work, in little bits and pieces that aren’t big enough to derail an entire chunk. But it still happens.

I find that the actual time spent on recording what I’m doing is very small (except for writing it up, of course). I only fill two sides of a pocket notebook sheet with writing.

But the mental burden is significant. I’m constantly thinking about logging, although perhaps less today than yesterday. I find myself annoyed with tasks that are not 5 or 15 minutes in duration. I find myself especially annoyed with tasks that are 15 minutes in duration but that extend on both sides of a quarter hour mark. Grr…

One thing I’m finding is that I’m always doing *something*. Even in my dead time, I’ll always find something that keeps me trivially occupied – I never spend any time doing absolutely nothing. The closest I got today was when I was eating supper.

I expect Wed – Thurs to be routine as I generally don’t have too much discretionary time. But we’ll see.

Approximate time on the internet: 2 hours 15 minutes.

Says Janet,

“ooh now this is a dangerous idea… I should try it!”

Is it responsible for a person with my controlling and obsessive tendancies to log everything he does at a high level of granularity?

I’m checking my watch so often I’ve developed tennis elbow.

But it’s great!

Wow, is it ever great! I don’t think I’ve ever had such a productive day!

Here’s what I didn’t realize:

If you’re auditing your time in 15 minute intervals, it’s tough to waste big blocks of time.

You can’t surf for 15 minutes. If you do, you’re going to have to admit you wasted the block. You’re going to have to put down that all you did was surf the net.

You can’t read dime store novels on the can for an hour. Well, you can, but you’ll have to say you did.

It’s impossible to lose track of time.

Now… Fair disclosure: Part of the deal I made with Shaun was that we wouldn’t cheat. We agreed we’d live just as we normally live. We wouldn’t change our patterns or activities just because we knew there were eyeballs on us.

I don’t think I’ve been cheating, but I will admit to suffering an enormous amount of pressure to do things that are respectable. I don’t think I’ve ever felt this much incentive to be virtuous.

There’s a little discussion that goes on in my head.

“You’re cheating, Scott. Usually you wouldn’t be working this hard.”

“Look, every day I intend to do the stuff that I’m doing today. I just don’t get around to it.”

“You’re cheating – you’re not surfing the net enough.”

“I’m just following through on my plan – the only difference is that I’m better at it today. Alright?”

“Yes but your hours are dishonestly skewed in the direction of virtue.”

“What – so I should deliberately procrastinate just because I usually do?”

“You know you want to. You know you should.”

I think I’ll have to follow up on this point, because there’s meat in it. I’m undergoing severe accountability shock.

But that doesn’t mean I did the dishes tonight.

Treasures are, by definition, those things that we treasure. But what is the act of treasuring? How do we express, how do we manifest the act of treasuring?

Does it mean we get a warm fuzzy feeling inside when we think of our treasure? Does it mean we are willing to spend money for something? Does it mean we think about it all the time?

I’m drawn to the idea that building  up heavenly treasures means a real, immediate and practical restructuring of my treasurings. It make sense; it feels right. How can I build up heavenly treasures without treasuring them first?

Isn’t this what it means to reap what we sow? That the treasures we wind up accruing are the things that we actually bother to seek out and treasure?

Moving into the real world

Shaun Adamson recently ran a nice post on time. He broke down where he spent his time, but was curious because his rough estimates were about 40 hours short. We got to chatting about it, and I realized I had a chance to do something I’ve always wanted to do.

So I challenged him.

“Write a log of everything you do during your week,” I said, ” broken down into 15 minute slots.” If you post a log, I’ll post a log.”

I’ve always wanted to make a detailed log of where I spend my time, but I’ve never before had the risk of public shame to motivate me.

So here goes. My pencil and notepad are at the ready. This week, I’ll post a highly granular list of all my activities. Each day I’ll post a synopsis of the day.

There might be surprises.

There might be revelations.

Where does the time go?

What does it say about my habits?

What does it say about my treasurings?

Will my own watching of my every move push me beyond the realms of neurosis into the world of bad, bad craziness?

I’ll try not to lie – I’ll try not to modify my behaviour – I’ll try to do things just as I usually would.

And if you really didn’t want to know the specifics of my life at this level of detail… well… don’t look.

Here’s the log.

Also keep an eye on Shaun’s blog, dear reader. He’s doing this alongside me, so if you ever wanted to snoop, you’ll never get a better chance.

Alea jacta est.

I’m posting this here for the benefit of my sister – she’ll probably stumble across it here. But you might enjoy it too

Cheating is a thin slice of human nature that doesn’t change. We can grow up, but we can’t grow out of it.
We want something. Our experience tells us it is a good thing (for us).
What are we willing to do to get this ‘good’ thing?

Two stories to read:

Story 1 (Two parts): A father seeing his son cheat at Candyland and teaching him a lesson. (Hat tip – The Old New Thing)

Story 2: Marvel comics fighting the heirs of Jack Kirby for the characters that will (perhaps) revert to his estate in 2014 (we’re talking Spider-Man here)

These are the same story to me.

In the first story a child wants to win because it feels good. That feeling is a good thing, and he is willing to do what he can to get it. It doesn’t matter that the game is no longer fair and that the other people are forced to lose.

In the second story someone (I don’t know who is right) wants to make millions of dollars. That money is a good thing, and they are willing to do what they can to get it. It doesn’t matter what the truth is or that they are lying about the nature of the original agreement.

A terrifying discussion of cheating can be found at the freakonomics blog. Read the comments; don’t stop until you at least hit comment #39. It frightens me because of the soullessness of the calculations, and it illustrates exactly how tolerent we are of cheating.

We?

Yeah, I mean me. I can vividly remember cheating on a spelling test in second grade. It was self marked (the things we do in the name of logistics) and as the teacher read out the correct answers, I silently erased my incorrect entries and wrote the correct ones down, putting a check mark beside them.

I wanted to receive recognition and I wanted to receive favour. It felt good.

But it felt real bad when the teacher asked me afterwards, “Did you change these answers?”

More recently when a colleague asked me if I’d performed a certain necessary task, I said, “Yes, of course.” Not having done the task would have said bad things about me; it would have meant admitting I wasn’t all that and more. After all, if I did it *before* our discussion, or did it *after* our discussion – what did it matter?

But I hadn’t done the task, and it felt real bad when I had to go back and confess that I had lied to him.

I’m constantly surprised at my own willingness and desire to cheat and deceive.