Tag Archives: television

100-Day Challenge: Day 37. What can YOU do in 20 mins an hour?

06 Sunday Aug 2017

Posted by in General, Time Management

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Yup. Reading the PMS daily does make a difference: I exercised after work daily, and spent the week finishing my planner pages with ticks all down the page. Lost some weight, got fitter (a bit, it’s only a week). Couldn’t ask for more.

Or could I?

Some friends have often asked how I manage to run an Institute, give driving advice, run a speakers club, do the social and side-business that those commitments entail, write a couple of books and compile this blog.

I, on the other hand, ask them how they manage to get so much done because my perception is that they are constantly being, doing and having a better social life than me, and their homes are pristine. (Occasionally it occurs to me that their houses are spotlessly clean because they’re never in them.)

When it comes down to it, the difference must be in the way we choose to spend our time and what lies behind how we choose to spend our time.

I’m not judging – the way they choose to spend their time and money may be different to how I do those things, but that doesn’t make either side ‘wrong’. It merely provides tangible proof that the things we value are different. Alternatively (and this is a bit deeper), our values are the same but the way we address those values is different.

For example – and see which side you fall – whenever I have conducted a values exercise I can be absolutely sure that for those who are parents, ‘Family’ always come at or near the top of the tree. And I look at the room and I see people who work 80 hours a week and who rarely even see the family that is so important to them.

Then I reflect on that values definition, and realise that while my value of family is defined to include ‘presence’, their value of family might just as easily (and validly be defined as ‘providing for their needs and wants by working hard to get the money that pays for them’. So we act differently on what we value to be important.

And what we ‘do’ takes up ‘time’. What I do to take up my time is write and serve the organisations I have joined. My friends spend their time differently – for example, running around after their children helping them learn, play, perform and so on. Which is something I used to do but now my kids are adults. What I do now is not necessarily what I did then. And I forgot!

How we spend our time is a reflection not only of our values but also that of our current situation – our obligations, duties, interests, and so on.

I get a lot done because I prioritise and plan my time. As a result, the reason I appear to watch so much television is because I have the time to do that. And said television is so predictable I can read a book or ‘do’ Facebook at the same time. (20 mins of adverts per hour helps. It’s amazing what you can get done in short bursts.)

Learn values-based time management. Apply what you learn to what you truly value. See if you can do more of what you value, less of what you don’t, and still get the things done that need to be done.

It is possible.

Buy My Book HERE. Read the opening pages at ‘Look Inside’. Available in Kindle or Paperback.

 

Just for fun, this week.

30 Sunday Oct 2016

Posted by in Rants

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I love the telly, ‘cos it makes me laugh. The devices they use to enable quick resolution of a plot, which they then DON’T use in later episodes because they need to string things out. And other foibles. For example, a recently bought laptop has a geolocator in it, so they can find it in seconds. Next week, they can’t even open its hard drive. This week facial recognition works on a blurry pic, next week a perfect resolution shot baffles the system. And DNA can be done in a minute, not to mention (a personal favourite) a quick telephone call from NCIS to get a bug in a Mosque – I’d love to see the paperwork needed to get THAT done in less than ‘ever’.

This week, I watched an action programme I won’t be watching again. The good guy had one hour to get from an office in central Las Vegas to kill the bad guy. The lift would’ve taken 20 minutes to get to the front door of the skyscraper he was in, for a start. Never mind his lack of available transport. They also glossed over the fact that when the hour was set they had no idea where the bad guy actually was. Strike 1.

That wasn’t the whole howler for that episode. There was the bit when the ever-present access-from-anywhere CCTV hacked into by the goodies said, “They’re heading south on the Strip!” with a bleeping blob where they were – well south of Las Vegas. Good guy set off and caught up with them at Fremont Street (the famous part of old LV where they filmed the car chase in Diamonds Are Forever) – which is NORTH, and completely the other side of the city. Strike 2.

Final nail in that coffin was when the good guy got the the aforementioned unknown airfield, where bad guy was taking off in a decommissioned C130 Hercules transport plane, built in the 60s-70s would be my guess. Pre-internet/Wi-Fi. Good guy’s IT woman said, “I can’t get into the telemetry to switch it off, but I can get into the hydraulics’, so she opened the door for good guy to run up to the moving ‘plane, and jump on.

Telemetry – implies ‘transmission of data’. Hydraulic systems are independent units with fluid controlled operating systems. How the hell could she NOT do ‘telemetry’ but COULD do hydraulics? Even assuming she could do either? Strike 3.

(Not to mention how Good Guy shot the pilot dead and then bad guy jumped out with the only parachute, so good guy jumped out after him. Me, I’d have got in the pilot seat and hit bad guy with the ‘plane, then landed it with ATC assistance……)

I know that this is all cobblers, really I do. But my experience in the police shows that the general public actually believes this stuff is do-able, so when I can’t detect their crime in 20 minutes, including ads for a cuppa, they go all ballistic on me. And given HM Government’s belief that a computer-centred enquiry can be done with a 28-day bail period indicates that they have been watching the same programmes, where Good Guy deals with one thing at a time and concludes it (a) quickly and (b) before other problems arise.

On the other hand, I do laugh at these script devices, and that is something.

Now, is the ‘Detect Crime’ button to the left or right of ‘Ctrl’?……

bullshit

TV People Talk Funny

29 Wednesday Oct 2014

Posted by in Rants

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“Let’s make this news report more visually impactive”, someone once said. So they first had that camera zooming in and out ‘thing’ which has fortunately now stopped – it was giving people headaches. Including the cameraman.

But we still have two things that bug me. (Only two? Today, just two.)

First of all, the minor one is the hand waving. In the 60s and 70s we would watch the news and see a static, male (usually) outside broadcasting news reporter standing at attention, mic in hand, brow furrowed as they regaled us with news. Okay, a bit dull if informative, but we now have reporters waving their hands around like windmills, pointedly emphasising every word – so much so that they effectively emphasise none.

But the biggest bugbear for me is the ‘I can walk AND talk’ reporting that is so false it is a farce. It is not THE LAW – reporters and presenters MUST walk towards the camera as they speak. Furthermore, occasionally they must end their input by walking away past the cameraman, like a full stop.

Yesterday I watched a presenter. She was at the bottom end of what was clearly the top ramp of a series of ramps between levels in a building. She then talked at us as she walked up that last ramp to ‘end’ the previous footage and introduce the next article.

Why?

Why did it look like she was starting a conversation with us from 30 feet away half way up a ramp, when no one would do that in actuality? Why would anyone start shouting at us from that far away to tell us something that could wait 5 more seconds for a civilised word in our ears? Did she climb up all the ramps – or did she plainly walk down the ramp in order to walk back up it again? Did that movement make any difference at all to the quality of the report?

It’s a cliché. And I hate clichés.

That’s just the way I am.

And a THIRD thing! (I knew there would be.) Why is one newsreader interviewing another newsreader necessary? That does not make a report authoritative, it just costs twice as much! (Why does FOX News need ‘Five’ republicans to criticise Obama – isn’t one vapid, nasal blonde enough?) Etc etc etc.

Mini-blog 3 – Popular television. Is it really?

08 Wednesday Oct 2014

Posted by in Discipline, Rants

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My daughter is a bit of a slave to soap operas, where characters, usually minority stereotypes with the same predictable problems and an inability to call the authorities when appropriate (because doing so would solve the problem too quickly for any plotline), repeat the same old mistakes in the name of entertainment. I can’t stand them and am quick to point out that (in the UK at least) they have their own Awards because they don’t deserve any awards from legitimate sources.

The problem I have with them is that they are not, as they pretend to be, reflective of society. We are not all dishonest, adulterers, liars, drunks, hiding something from anyone and everyone. And (as a retired copper), police officers are not automatically stroppy, arrogant power freaks with no sense of humour. Contrast the reality cop shows with the characters in soaps. BIG difference.

Another thing is that they do not educate – bringing some situation to ‘the awareness of the public’ is not a true description of what they do because (a) the public is already aware or they wouldn’t know what was going on and (b) it’s dramatized to the point of inaccuracy. It’s just an excuse to sell what’s on in the adverts.

In the final analysis, soap operas are popular because they are addictive. They draw us in to see what happens next as if that was important when, by virtue of it being ‘pretend’, it is not. Like any addition, The First Resolution is the antidote. These programmes are not popular because they are good. They are popular because the media insists they are, and we (you) believe them and provide the loop they need to survive. Deny yourself the ‘pleasure’ of this pointless pretence and find some informative programmes – or even an alternative medium – and study that, instead.

As the (ironically titled) programme said in the 70s: Why don’t you just turn off your television set and go out and do something less boring instead?