O'Keeffe Woodworks – Lat: 40.1 / Long: -105.0 / Elev: 2168 m

January 20, 2017

20 January, 2017 by Geoff O'Keeffe Leave a Comment

Enso thanks to Kazuaki Tanahashi 1.20.17 Geoff Shōun O’Keeffe May all be seen May all be heard May all be loved May … [read more]

Happy Birthday, Viejo

4 January, 2017 by Geoff O'Keeffe 2 Comments

Happy Birthday, Viejo -Geoff O’Keeffe 01.02.17, 1000 h. Born in the cold dark of winter hoping to die on a summer solstice one bright day. Reading alone with coffee and a bagel young red-cheeked humans with time on their hands unaware. Baldwin said, “To act is to be committed to be committed is … [read more]

Baton Rouge

2 January, 2017 by Geoff O'Keeffe Leave a Comment

Image: Barbara Jackson (Editor’s note: My dear friend Barbara and I have known each other close to fifty years. We both come from that part of the Washington desert where nuclear waste lies in toxic holes in the ground, one of the nastiest places on earth. Barbara lost her mother in late 2016 and the … [read more]

Adventure Travel in a Far-Away and Exotic Land, Really

17 December, 2016 by Geoff O'Keeffe 2 Comments

Image poached from Google, used without permission. Adventure Travel in a Far-Away and Exotic Land, Really -Geoff O’Keeffe I dreamt of this trip for years, even decades. It had become my raison d-être. My office walls were covered with maps of Denver, Littleton, Aurora, Golden and the Tech Center. Bus schedules, museum brochures and photos … [read more]

Clues To The Election: An Amateur Analysis

25 November, 2016 by Geoff O'Keeffe 1 Comment

I am no political scientist. Rather, I’m an amateur but passionate observer of our national political Thanksgiving Day family dinner food fights. Most everyone I know and read was surprised by the presidential election results two weeks ago, pundits, partisans and politicos alike. “What happened?” we seem to be asking. I certainly do not know, … [read more]

Megan and NNC Beyond Normal Cap

12 September, 2016 by Geoff O'Keeffe 1 Comment

O'Keeffe Woodworks

4 weeks ago

Doing Just This One Thing

I don’t think anyone twisted my arm in the business environment and forced me to adopt the misguided notion of “multi-tasking”, which first showed up on the business landscape in 1965, referring to the capabilities of an IBM System/365 computer.

Someone thought it wise that we emulate machines. We can’t count on the corporate world to safeguard our health or sanity. Health and sanity are not metrics on a P&L.

I count myself guilty of including a line on many a job description such as “Must be good at multi-tasking”. I have included such a line on my own CV.

While it was a popular aspect of being an efficient executive time manager (picture the staff of Sorkin’s The West Wing, bustling about, juggling air strikes and whip counts while flirting and mugging as they walked) the practice and its promised benefits have been debunked by all manner of scientists and psychologists, and some studies show corporate America losing two-thirds of a trillion dollars annually due to multi-tasking (Matt Richtel, NYT, 2008).

But the expectation persists, and, in my view, no, it is not “caused” by e-mail any more than workplace misbehavior is “caused” by workplaces being co-educational.

But nobody made me do it. My penchant to please superiors, an over-active brain and insufficient awareness did that for me.

I have trained myself out of some of it, and have become selective and sequential doing tasks, but there is another aspect to this affliction that I need more attention to and practice with. I avoid, as much as is practical, choosing to do more than one thing at a time. I am comfortable asking others to wait until I can attend to their need or question.

But I remain a fully addicted planner and commentator. I often am doing while thinking about the doing or the next doing. I just now rolled the trash cans out to the street through wet, brilliant white snow and sorted out where I will publish and post this piece, all in my head. Surely I missed something about the snow.

As a writer, there is an added aspect to this addiction. All too often, as I am doing something, in my head, I am writing about it. It reminds me of a quote I cannot find the exact words to, from Nathaniel West, (either the graphic artist or the author) that goes, roughly, “Tracing the shadow of the hand that traces.”

While I am not actually doing the next thing, I am mentally and physically preparing for it. Unloading the dishes, I know I will sort my laundry next. I have broken a few dishes this way. Driving home, I feel the pull of exactly how I will enter the house, where I will put things away I acquired in town, the email reply I need to do, (but first I’ll grab a chunk of that good brie) and the sequence of responsibilities needing my attention before I can watch Rachel with a glass of wine. I only have twenty minutes. Go!

While planning and project management are fully worthwhile standalone activities, if done consciously, done in conjunction with other tasks, the combination leaves me unfulfilled and separated from my life. Like I ate the menu.

The cure is easily said, difficult to realize. Doing just this one thing, even if it is planning or reviewing, right now, all by itself, is that cure. Lists and calendars help as well.

For me, fear drives this. I think that fear is deeply held, that I will drop the ball, forget to do something I promised, let someone down, or worse, be embarrassed. Be ashamed. Not be seen as the image of Geoff I created for myself. That guy who gets stuff done.

This cure involves trust. In reality, there is little chance I am going to forget to pick up milk in town, or call my brother.

I need to practice this trust, all day, as well as remembering that the expansive intimacy with my own life that is available by doing just this one thing shines so much more brightly than the unlikely possibility of forgetting to put my pants on before leaving the house.

That intimacy is at once deeply tactile and textural while feeling like free fall.

What’s the worst that can happen?

Go! ...

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O'Keeffe Woodworks

2 months ago

(Just posted on www.okeeffewoodworks.com from guest contributor, Bob Woodward. The photo shows Woody in front of Sierra Designs' second HQ at Fourth and Addison in Berkeley, early '70's.)

TSWB

Almost everyone in my old Berkeley neighborhood had a nickname.

There was “Walking Wally” who dressed daily in a safari outfit (complete with pith helmet) and walked a huge Old English Sheep dog all over town for hours on end.

His housemate, Eddie, also known as “Spaceman”, was conversant with aliens. “Did you hear the Venusians in the yard last night? I think they landed their ship up on the high school football field and came down to check us out.”

Then there was “Mr. Chips”, the retired potato chip company deliveryman and the “Mean Old Man” with his chain link fence topped with concertina wire fenced in yard and two large German Shepherds on patrol.

A bit down the street “The Artist” painted in elaborate script just above each wheel well on his more-than-abused Mercury Cougar, “Coug d’ville.” And when whitewall tires proved too pricey, “The Artist” simply took some white house paint and masterfully created his own.

Then there was the octogenarian “Mr. Blue” whose everyday dress was a sharp three-piece suit, dress shirt and tie, a pair of well-shined black wingtip shoes and a black fedora. Thus clad, he’d stand out on the street corner tipping that fedora and chatting up people as they walked by. My daily interaction with Blue was always, “Hey Blue what’s going on?” “Just holding up the corner like I always do.”

So what was my nickname? I knew I must have one but didn’t find it out until a friend tried to find my house and got lost. He ended up in front of the corner liquor store asking if anybody knew where “Bob” lived. Blank stares all around and then one of the store regulars smiled and said: “Oh, you mean the tall skinny white boy? “

Nickname established. ...

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