Jingling Our Lives Away

Some of you who have been listening to the Beyond Productivity Series may have noticed something different in Episode 4. Or maybe you didn't, which will show the point of this post.

It didn't have an intro and outro jingle. Listen to the beginning and end of Episode 3 to see what was cut.

You may have also noticed that the vocal intro and outro was much shorter. Or maybe you didn't, again showing the point of this post.

What's In A Jingle?

A few projects attacked me yesterday during the time I had reserved for editing the audio. In case you're wondering, it takes about 4 hours from opening Garageband to hitting submit on the post to complete each episode. Luckily, it's one of those projects that doesn't take a lot of creative juice to do.

Project attack happens. But yesterday was unusual for this time of the year in that it was actually tolerable outside here in Lincoln, which meant that Angela would want to go for a walk while it was warm.

The audio took a bit longer to prepare than I expected despite the flow I was in, and the waning daylight posed a hard constraint.

Then came the moment - I had finished editing the audio from the call. I looked outside - crap, only a little more time left.

I had a choice to make.

I could spend the additional 20 minutes splicing jingles and vocals, in which case we couldn't go on the awaited walk together, or I could get the vocals in sans the jingle, post it, and go for the proposed walk. (Of course, I could have finished the audio later, but we were slated to hang out later that night. And I had committed to get the audio out yesterday.)

We had a nice walk.

It's Not About the Jingles

The point of the story here has more to do with priorities than jingles. It's entirely too easy for us to get wound up about things that probably won't matter and let go of things that are important.

You see this when graphic designers spend hours obsessing over 3 pixels on something that only they will notice while their kids sit on the couch waiting on them to play. Or when programmers spend a week coding a feature that .5% of their user base cares about at the expense of sunlight, exercise, and the features that 80% of their users want. Or when entrepreneurs get stressed out about and over-plan for one-off contingencies that may not manifest or that, even if they did, could be managed successfully and faster when they happened than they could in the abstract.

Part of what I've been reminded of lately is the importance of taking all of your priorities seriously. Some of you may have thought I was being hyperbolic about the walk that created the deadline stress above, in which case I would ask why the default answer is to negotiate the personal aspect of our lives instead of the work-related aspect. Shouldn't we take the time and expectations of the people we're in meaningful relationships with as seriously as we take the time and expectations of other people?

The walk and time spent with my beautiful, supportive, and patient wife was important and needed. The jingles were, well, jingles.

Think about it.