Sweet

Turbo 

If you don’t recognize this from Spaceballs, I am questioning the entire foundation of our relationship.

Ever have a day that you feel like you hit your own personal turbo boost?  Your reflexes are faster, your attention is more focused, your productivity can’t be stopped?  Like that 10 minutes after your first cup of coffee when everything shifts into perfect focus only lasting for 12 hours?

Monday I returned back to the office after a week of vacation.  Sweet glorious sunburned nose and umbrella drink vacation.  I walked into my office and through the dark I saw that little flashing red light blinking from my phone.  It was welcoming me back with the notification that I had eleventy billion messages.

If I were Stallone in the movie “Over the Top” this would have been the part where I turned my mesh trucker hat backwards and got down to business. I was a sight to behold.  Luckily no one really saw it because that is the kind of productivity that can set expectations way too high.  I plowed through phone calls and emails scheduling meetings and solving problems.  I didn’t get up to pee, I didn’t eat lunch. For a solid 9 hours I was a machine.  I not only got my personal wheels of commerce moving again, I gave the squeaky points a shot of oil and got them running better than they were before.

I knew it wasn’t going to be fun, but I knew I had to do it and when the day came to a close I was pleased with the fruits of my labor.  I think we all have days like that where we get into a groove and can’t be stopped.  The satisfaction from a day like that sometimes makes me question why I don’t do it every day, but then I remember how much I love the internet and wasting time and how I never shy away from setting a bar too low in order to make my leaps over it more astounding.

If we could, we would put that kind of day in a bottle so we could use it whenever we needed to.  Some people do it every day and I commend them, but for me it doesn’t come around quite as often.  That was my Monday and it was totally sweet.

Weak

Coasting 

If Monday was a high-octane turbo adventure, Tuesday was cruising down a hill with your foot off the gas.  Perhaps I wore myself out or misplaced my mojo but Tuesday started something like this:  Made it to the gym first thing in the morning.  Broke a sweat untangling my earbuds.  Hit the showers.  Bought a $6 smoothie.  Buckle up world, I am on fire.

I hope I am not the only one that has these kind of days on occasion.  Where there just seems to be a light haze over everything and even going through the motions seems to require more effort than you are willing to part with.  You get the work done that has to be done but those little nuggets of productivity in the day seem to fizzle fast.  You read some blogs or stuff on the internet, look at boat trader for what seems like forever, catch up on some words with friends turns and before you know it, it is already 9:15.  What?  How can it only be 9:15?  I feel like I have already wasted the entire day.

If you were born with a special gift and talent for coasting like I was, you don’t have to dig too deep to maintain your low effort prowess for the rest of the day.  As new tasks arise, you calmly push them aside because you are still full from the big bowl of lazy you had for breakfast.  Eventually the day begins to come to a close and you smile at your accomplishment of basically keeping a seat warm and laughing at some potentially questionable internet humor.

The end of a day like that gives you a whole different feeling.  I would tell you what it is but I was way too lazy to remember it.  It is something like a very relaxed dusting of remorse sprinkled over empty. I take solace in the fact that the coast days are not the norm and the high level assessment of my work ethic and productivity is pretty solid.  That being said, I think we all have those days that just seem to drift by with little or no contribution from ourselves.  Everyone likes to be a smidge lazy, but when you realize you coasted the whole time it is pretty weak.