Kind words of the day

The department of self-congratulations department posts the following compliment for the day. A mis-treated and badly abused author admitted that I was his favorite editor. Just goes to show, the worse you treat them, the more they respect you. I think there's a future for me in the old CIA.

Productivity Perceived

I got a lot of work done yesterday, or at least I feel as though I got a lot done. But how does one actually measure productivity? Am I fooling myself and do I have a false sense of having accomplished something when there's really nothing measurable? It's a curious thing, and I suspect has as much to do with feeling content as it does with getting anything substantive completed. So what have I done?

Mostly just answered a lot of emails. In fact, I've even caught up with a bunch of old emails that were waiting impatiently, nagging at the back of my mind for action. I shoveled the driveway three times, though with help. I chopped wood and made coffee. I finished a "handover" document (one of the bains of my existence) so that we can sign a new book for August,p[ and worked with Dave Mark to straighten out some of the confusion over our up and coming iPhone books.

It doesn't sound like much, and it's probably about average for any given day; really all in a day's work. But I finished the day without any bothersome and difficult things that should have gotten done. So I somehow have a feeling of having been productive.

Or perhaps it's that I finished the day and nobody was annoyed at me or felt I had let them down. Actually, I could be wrong about this and everyone is angry and annoyed, but just too polite to say so. I'll probably find out about it today, and that little happy feeling of accomplishment will vanish under the weight of today's realities. Time will tell.

Productivity

I got a lot of work done yesterday, or at least I feel as though I got a lot done. But how does one actually measure productivity? Am I fooling myself and do I have a false sense of having accomplished something when there's really nothing measurable? It's a curious thing, and I suspect has as much to do with feeling content as it does with getting anything substantive completed. So what have I done?

Mostly just answered a lot of emails. In fact, I've even caught up with a bunch of old emails that were waiting impatiently, nagging at the back of my mind for action. I shoveled the driveway three times, though with help. I chopped wood and made coffee. I finished a "handover" document (one of the bains of my existence) so that we can sign a new book for August,p[ and worked with Dave Mark to straighten out some of the confusion over our up and coming iPhone books.

It doesn't sound like much, and it's probably about average for any given day; really all in a day's work. But I finished the day without any bothersome and difficult things that should have gotten done. So I somehow have a feeling of having been productive.

Or perhaps it's that I finished the day and nobody was annoyed at me or felt I had let them down. Actually, I could be wrong about this and everyone is angry and annoyed, but just too polite to say so. I'll probably find out about it today, and that little happy feeling of accomplishment will vanish under the weight of today's realities. Time will tell.

Two in one day!

More from the department of shameless self-promotion department.

"Clay, I think you sell yourself short. You always amazed me. You're so much better than you think you are!

Hugs, Julie"

And it's not even from my sister.

Damn I'm Good!

Put this one down to the department of self-serving department. I've been feeling rather down and worthless, so I've decided to collect random compliments completely out of context. Here's one I received today:

"You're the best.

James"

Thanks to James, I've had my ego boost for the day and am able to carry on, firm in the knowledge that I'm not a total zero.

Things I haven't written about

I was supposed to blog about MacWorld. That was three weeks ago in San Francisco and I was working, and very much enjoyed it. I should have said something profound about the end of MacWorld, the absence of Steve Jobs, and the fact that I spent part of one day with Dikran, who had gone with me to the very first Mac World. But I didn't.

Perhaps I should have blogged about the inauguration, which I watched on TV. Wells to the bus from school and stood in the cold in the shadow of the Washington Monument and watched on a Jumbotron. Tommy went, too. He had tickets to watch the parade from inside the the Newseum on Pennsylvania Avenue, but I haven't really heard much from him about it. Wellie had a great time. Katharine wept as she watched. I found the important things impressive and forgave most of the rest. But I didn't blog about this, either.

But these things did make for a more eventful January than usual, and next week, on February 1st, I'll be taking my first trip to Germany for the Apress Editorial Conference in Heidelberg. It's our first chance to meet our Springer colleagues in computer science. Should be interesting, but perhaps not much to blog about.

Anxiety Attacks

I don't know why I should be so anxious. My outward mien is bluff and hardy in an outdoorsy, tough-guy way. Anxious is for milquetoasts, mamma's boys, and mealy-mouthed Melanie. And yet, I find myself thinking and not acting. I'm nervous about failing and I worry about displeasing people.

For example, I'm always behind in my work; never quite able to catch up to the backlog of emails awaiting answers. Katharine says it is the nature of my job that one can never really be caught up. There's always something else to do, which is true. It's also true that the harder I work, the further behind I become. This is either a truism or a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more I work, the more email I generate, and the more email I need to answer. What's wrong with this picture?

Last week we had our quarterly company call to learn about the end-of-the-year results from the publisher and senior management. These tend to be pleasant conference calls, and relaxing for me since I listen, lounge on the couch, and don't have to say much. Oddly, I started to get something like palpitations during the call. Everyone mentioned the success of my Mac OS X books. I should feel pleased, but instead I feel the inevitable let down when I'm unable to deliver similar successes in the future.

It's perverse. The more my success is mentioned, the worse I feel, so that by the end of the meeting, I feel as if I'm suffocating. I think that this must be what an anxiety attack feels like. However, my doctor tells me that anxiety, or panic, attacks often have no trigger. My episodes, and there are others, are always triggered by something, often the anticipation of a conversation or the disapproval of something I've done; that "bad boy" feeling.

In fact, Dimitri suggests that I have an "unhealthy" relationship with my boss, which comes as something of a surprise. This is the first boss I've had who I actually respect and admire and who treats my with kindness and understanding; more confusion. But he's right. There's some unhealthy, Freudian-like thing going on of trying to please so hard that you can never please enough. I need to work on this somehow. Perhaps I'm trying to hard.