Work

I don't know too much about other people when it comes to productivity. But I do know that there are certain things that really get me productive - certain things that other people rarely appreciate or tolerate.

These are a few things that help me stay productive:

• Unrestricted Time: When I write 'unrestricted', I do not mean freedom from deadlines (see below). What I mean is that if I know I have something to do later on, it eats at my productivity. It's hard to be productive when you know you have to do something else soon. Thus, setting up schedules for such blocks of time is important.
• Deadlines: Deadlines are important; realistic deadlines doubly so. Coupled with unrestricted time (no meetings about why you're late, for example) allow for awesome amounts of productivity.
• Darkness: As odd as this may sound, it physically works best for me. The idea is less distraction. Knowing that the rest of the world around me is asleep allows me to focus completely on what I'm doing. In practical daylight terms, it means no distractions: no phone calls, no checking of email, no twittering, no Facebook, etc. Distractions, despite what some social media pundits say, is the bane of individual productivity - unless one measures one's productivity in retransmitting other people's stuff. And what a sad measure that is...
• Breaks: Break when it feels necessary - and always push the envelope on this. Where once I couldn't concentrate longer than 10 minutes at a time (as a teenager), I can go extremely long periods without a break once the above are kept in play. But sometimes, depending on the work, it is necessary to step back and walk away. Once you get into the productivity zone, it's easy to tell when you're falling out of the zone. Once fallen, recharge - if it takes 5 minutes or 5 hours, the productivity benefits of recharging typically outweigh the 'lost' time. But no time is 'lost'.

Over the last few weeks I've been so busy that I've not even had enough time to fix the main system (whose drives are being fixed even as I speak). Life happens. In an unexpected twist, myself and my cousins have been helping to run the family business - Rampersad's General Electrical Engineering. And since I've the most free time amongst them, I've been doing the most - just a matter of availability, really, until one sees how much needs to be done. Will we end up running it permanently? Will one of us? No one knows, but what we do know is that there is much we all have to do.

Work takes many forms for people; for some people it takes a singular form and for others it takes a myriad of forms. People have different tools for each type of work; for me the main tool is the Internet. For others it is a hammer, a saw, a needle or a pen.

My mother almost always brags that I beat her at Chess when I was 9. My father never spoke about when I beat him at chess that same month. In fact, he and I never played after that. But what I remember most about chess at that age is learning it and its effects.

My friends and I used to play checkers all the time. When my parents decided I should learn chess (poor them), I became very focused on chess and no longer wanted to play checkers - checkers was not a challenge. Chess was. I spent many hours alone, playing against myself, switching between perspectives of black and white and sincerely trying to beat myself. Whenever a chess set was available, I played - there was no Atari 2600 yet, no Nintendo... and while chess required 2 people to play, I pretended to be 2 different people. And this, to me, was all 'play'. It came naturally. No books to study.

Over the years, people asked me which piece was the most powerful. I used to say that it was the Queen, which of course has broad and sweeping powers. Later, I said the Knight, since it was capable of wreaking havoc at a distance when strategically placed. Ultimately, I ended up saying that the King was the most powerful piece on the board - something most people don't agree with. Still, the entire game hinges on the King. Protecting the King is how you keep from losing, trapping the King is how you win. Sure, its a slow moving piece with little offensive ability, but without the King there can be no game.