Counterproductivity tips

Someone posted some "productivity tips" complete with extraneous quotation marks from some nice-looking gray- haired lady, whose mane was sprayed and molded into one of those helmet-hair styles that I will always eschew, as I do most of her advice. She was offering tips for freelancers, which the more I thought about it, the more I found it to be so far off the mark that it started a whole train a thought. Climb aboard and enjoy the ride.

One of the pearls of wisdom my iron-coiffed scribe offered was the need for people to dress for work each day to be professional. She especially made note of the necessity of wearing shoes. Seriously? Shoes make you more productive? Why the hell might that be? The strapping on of some supportive leather with a rubberized sole will really make you crank out that work. The columnist asserts that people can tell in your voice what you are wearing.

Frankly, I'm pretty sure I have no idea (thank God) from anyone's voice what they might be wearing (or not.) I tend to be pretty uncertain about any aspect of their physical appearance. Although, like most of us, I love to make mental images of people I speak with regularly and delight in comparing the real-life versions with my imagined images. I'm really not interested in what anyone is wearing during my phone interviews and I'm pretty certain you can't tell from my voice whether I'm wearing sweats or a ball gown.

Another useless tip was to set office hours. I've noticed a lot of office hours being applied to journalists lately and all I can say is the people who are doing this are obviously NOT journalists. Journalism is the last profession that is 9 to 6 or 8 to 5 or any other business-day centered enterprise.

In the real world of trying to get in touch with people on a daily basis and trying to arrange to get together for interviews or for meetings, you'll find that the schedule is erratic. Some days can run from 7 a.m. to 1 a.m. Some days can start around 11 a.m. and wind down around 3 p.m. Ours is a reactive world. We follow people around and report on what they are doing and they tend to do things any old time. Anyone who is a real journalist will not be able to do the job effectively within an 8 to 5 framework.

Another tip was to make sure friends and family don't impose on your apparent lack of a schedule. Again this is old-fashioned talk. Most of us in my family work odd hours. Some of us are in the news business; others work at restaurants. Others are students. We work evenings. We work weekends. We work whenever we get paid, so we get together whenever we can. This means we'll have a barbecue in the middle of a weekday -- because we'll all be working Saturday night.

If I have work to do, I have no problems letting people know, and I go and do my work. I'm lucky that I've always been able to focus no matter what mayhem is occurring around me. The most recent example of this was Lindsay's baby shower, which I had already scheduled when I found out I had to cover the Strawberry Festival in Oxnard. I pretty much had to punt the party to Lindsay's mother-in-law Dorothy, Dena, Shelby, Amber, Janine, Jessie, Gen, Kaia and Lindsay and everyone pitched in and got everything set up and the food -- assorted frozen Trader Joes treats -- heated and plated.

When I came running in the door to a clean house filled with flowers artfully arranged by Dorothy and with people being served mocktails by Amber, I was delighted. As I sat at my computer in the dining room typing my story, people were being served all around me. "Oh the food is wonderful," they'd say. "Oh please make sure you get enough," I'd reply as I frantically searched through my notes to find out how to spell a source's name.

Even as the party continued, I had to keep answering editor's insightful questions such as, (names have been changed) when you say,"Irina Gonzalez and mom Juana Maria," do you mean Irina's mother? (Um, yeah.) Or when you say the giraffe, cow, goat, horse and piggy banks do you mean that the giraffe, cow and horse were all banks too (that would be the point of those commas separating the words connected with the word "and," which last I checked was how your write a sentence in English).

Nonetheless, I managed to whip up the Boston Cream cupcakes and berry vanilla trifle with the help of Tracy, Gen and Lindsay and we had a great time at the shower with a bunch of different people who have been very important to us over the years as we've made our lives in Ventura.

The long and short of it is I work when I have to work and I play when I have to play. As time goes on the stream of both aspects are sometimes difficult to disentangle. Because I'm a freelance writer I can do things like ask the lady at the animal rehabilitation facility in Simi Valley if it would be alright for my 8-year-old niece, who loves animals, to come along to see what an individual woman with a passion can accomplish.

Last night I had to follow the fire up by the Ventura landmark Two Trees, but while I was driving over to the east side of town and tracking down firefighters for interviews, I was also stopping at the local Vons and making a pasta bake dinner with garlic bread, salad and banana cream pie (store made) for dessert for Ollie, Lindsay and Ryan (and Rob). I managed to update the story and get the information in the newspaper about the hapless teen who set the fire, while preparing and enjoying a delicious dinner (if I may say so myself) with Lindsay, Ryan and Rob.

When I spend the morning around a bunch of wild horses and burros being adopted and heading off to new homes or go from festival to festival at the beach. When I spend a quiet foggy morning on Lake Casitas with exuberant 5th graders watching fawns eating at the shore, I'm doing something I would enjoy whether I was being paid to write about it or not, so often it's hard to tell when the fun ends and the work starts. I've decided that right now I work all the time and I play all the time, it's just a matter of degree.

The final tip was to make sure to remember to do enough work and to create balance. I finally had to agree with the author, the balance thing is tricky. It is tempting to work all the time. But I don't have any problems at all with the motivation thing. If I don't work, I don't get paid, so every waking minute is spent figuring ways to get more work, and thus more money. And everything I do, I do with an eye to writing a story that I can sell.

Sometimes I wish there was a little more cushion, but as far as my work, it's making me a much better reporter. Because I work on a piecework basis, which is the direction journalism is heading, I rush to crank out stories. Not for me the in-depth investigations into the county's groundwater supplies or the deep analyses of the municipal or college district budgets in Ventura County to see where the money is really going, and that is a real shame for the people of Ventura County if that kind of writing gets short shifted.

I do have some workday routines, such as a no-television-during-the-day-rule. But I use the flexibility to my advantage. I can do an interview at 7 in the morning or 11 at night because it doesn't matter what I'm wearing and I can sneak a nap in anytime I need one. I can go outside and garden while I want for people to return my phone calls. My yard has never looked better. My dogs and cats get constant attention, except for being put outside in the yard if they're being particularly vocal. I can make meals that need to cook for hours and elaborate dishes that require many steps that I can stagger between stories.

It's a good life overall and I love the freedom I have to chase the great stories around me. But I've always been averse to rules, finding them constricting and stifling more than they are beneficial. I suppose I do operate by some rules, but they tend to be more amorphous, like always keep learning and trying to improve. Figure out how much you need to do and then try to figure a way to give a little more than that. Be honest and try to respect the people who entrust you to present their stories in the most objective, fair manner possible. But I assure you, I will not be wearing shoes during the day and there will be no counterproductive work schedule.