Mike McCracken

I am constantly cultivating my capacity for productivity, so I have decided to put my ideas down for future reference. Since I am doing that, I might as well share them. Please feel free to put any important points you think I have missed in the comments.

Clean Environment

While working, being in a clean environment can be incredible important for maintaining the focus you need for maximum productivity. If your environment is too messy, leave and go to a coffee shop where you’ll be surrounded by people having loud, often inane conversations. If for some reason you can’t do that (say, you are having a war against your stupid laptop) try really hard to ignore your mess.

Think About What You’re Doing

Even if you’re working really hard, it doesn’t count as productivity if you’re doing something wrong, or something that will ultimately be usless. Yeah, what can I say, this list isn’t intended to be any fun. Speaking of that…

No Blogs

Blogs are a huge time sink and seldom render any actual benefit beyond a mere chuckle. They are only to be approached when you have 4 or more hours in which you are ok with a complete lack of productivity, and if that’s the case, you should really go to a bar. Hey. What are you doing reading this?

No Email Lists

See above. Email lists are essentially blogs that people are less discriminate about posting to.

Get Wasted Early

If you’re going to get hammered, start immediately after work and get into it quickly. The goal is to pass out by 9:00 so that you’ll get plenty of sleep and be bright and perky the next day.

Pants

I know, I know, no one likes pants, but I’ve found (much to my chagrin) that wearing pants improves productivity. Dresses are ok if you are a woman, but they are certainly NOT ok if you are a man. It is very easy to get distracted if you are a man wearing a dress trying to work.

“I know what side of the line in the sand I drew I’m on; what side are you on?”

At the 34th annual Conservative Political Action Conference:

Obviously she’s being funny, and it might seem worse out of context, but man, the bar has gotten so low in politics it’s shameful.

The Edwards campaign responded:

John was singled out for a personal attack because the Republican establishment knows he poses the greatest threat to their power. Since they have nothing real to use against him, Coulter’s resorting to the classic right-wing strategy of riling up hate to smear a progressive champion. And the Republican attack dogs will keep playing this despicable trick as long as they think it works.

Then they ask for “Coulter Cash” contributions to send a message that using tactics like that will only make your opponent stronger. I think that’s a pretty good response, and am glad (but not surprised) that Edwards has too much integrity to get sucked down to this childishness.

The entire text of the email response doesn’t appear to be up on the John Edwards site, but it and some commentary is available here. As a conservative, Lopez might know better than Edwards’ campaign manager regarding details of that evening, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

Apparently this hysterical joke was a reference to Grey’s Anatomy. I didn’t get it (as I don’t watch that show) and wonder how many of the cheering audience members did. I hope they did, but they could have been just cheering the bash, because even if it didn’t make sense, the subtext was loud and clear. The response is more interesting than the joke: a small acknowledgement of just how low it was, then an opening up of applause, including whistling. That, to me, gives credence to the point (above) that they feel threatened by him and can only revel in the cheap jabs.

Tangential thought: this reminds me of O’Reilly & friends “analyzing” the Colbert Report after their exchange program speculating about how the (overly liberal) media wouldn’t favor a hip conservative comedian the way they favor Stewart and Colbert. Well, if this is conservative comedy anyone with a conscious would probably not particularly favor it.