Reviews – Lazy and Hazy

Time Management Bulk Book Review

Countless drab and lengthy books have been written on the subject of time management and it’s role in stress reduction. The exact titles of these books don’t matter because what is written inside them is always the same. That’s why I am doing a bulk review of all of the time management books that have ever been written, which makes the review itself an exercise in time management.

You may have, as I once did, turned to one of these books in search of help in better managing your time to create less stress about getting things done. What I have discovered from these books is that reading them is a good way to waste the time you are supposed to learn how to manage. I discovered this pretty much from just skimming through their tables of contents.

Books on time management invariably advise you to break down large tasks into a series of smaller steps and tackle them one at a time. This is poor advice, as it does nothing to address the root problem, which is that you have to do all the tasks.

The real solution is obvious. The easiest way to reduce your stress about getting things done is to not do them. If more people did less things we’d be a lot happier as a society. Think about your job, assuming you have one. When you are assigned a project at work it creates stress. Consider what it is about the project that creates the stress. It’s that you have to do it. It’s all those pesky deadlines and meetings and drafts and re-drafts and updates and reports.

Time management books tell you that there is a wonderful sense of accomplishment in finishing things. Don’t fall for this lie. When you finish things, it doesn’t make you happy – it makes other people happy – like your boss or your significant other.

Let’s say you finish a gargantuan project you were assigned at work. Who did you do it for? Yourself? No, you did it for your employer. And what was your reward when you finished it? Did they send you on a paid, month-long trip to the Bahamas to lie in a hammock on the beach and recover from the horror of it all and promise you you’ll never have to go through that nightmarish experience again? No – they probably said something like “Impressive job, Sheila – you handled that so well I’m going to give you something you can really sink your teeth into,” and assigned you an even more time-consuming project with more steps, more reports, more meetings, and more deadlines.

Back when I didn’t know any better and gave my all to those projects at work, they pulled that trick more times than I can count. I felt like I was climbing an endless series of Mount Everests. With every summit, another, larger peak loomed in the distance. I learned the hard way that hard work gets you nothing but harder work.

After years of these endless mountain treks with far too few hours spent in the idyllic village below, I stumbled onto the real secret to time management and here it is:

The key to managing your time better is to have as few things as possible to spend your time managing, and the key to reducing the stress associated with getting things done is to stop doing things before they are done.

Having made this discovery, I gave up my former job and went to work in a government bureaucracy. Bureaucratic jobs are low-stress because bureaucrats rarely, if ever, get anything done. Bureaucracy builds non-accomplishment right into the system. I’ve been amazed at how many projects I can let fall by the wayside, knowing they will get scrapped sooner or later anyway due to a “shift in priorities”, a “redistribution of resources” or a “reorganization.” The elimination of tedious projects at work means I can spend more time doing the stress-free things I really enjoy, such as coming up with mottoes about not doing tedious projects at work like “Well done is never begun.”

That would make an excellent title for a book of my own on time management, though It’s unlikely that I would ever finish writing one, and it would be hypocritical to finish a book about the importance of not finishing things. I would be like a hip-hop artist writing a song about the struggles of life in the hood from a poolside lounge chair in my McMansion in Dubai. I came up with the idea for the book and, from just that, I have achieved a wonderful sense of accomplishment, but endured no stress whatsoever to get it.

I have decided it’s better to stick to blogging, which is like starting on a Chapter One of a book with each new post, but without stressful deadlines or the need to ever get around to Chapter Two. So, fear not, dear readers, I won’t be abandoning this blog – which I know would be a devastating blow to you – to write a time management book. Go ahead and breathe a sigh of relief and put that little bottle of pills back in the medicine cabinet. Talk about stress reduction!

In keeping with the theme of this post, I am ending it here with no intention of finishing my review of books about time management after veering off on a tangent about writing my own book on the subject.

Until…whenever

Lazy and Hazy

Very Delayed Theater Review: The Second Half of The Addams Family

The Broadway show The Addams Family closed at the end of 2011, but since the movie was on TV the other day I thought that now, well into 2016, would be a good time to review the show. Also, it closed long enough ago that someone might get the bright idea to revive it any day now.

I remember fondly how, when this show was in its last season, I was subjected to repeated, almost desperate ads for it on the taxi cab screens. This was funny in a sad sort of way and made me realize two things – an ad for a Broadway show can be better than the show itself, and I take way too many cabs.

I happened to see The Addams Family (well, part of it) thanks to a free ticket from a friend, which is probably the only worthwhile way to see a live musical based on a movie series based on a TV sitcom based on a comic strip. I did not see the final version of the show starring Brooke Shields and… other people. I suppose it was her last hurrah before settling comfortably into the twilight of her career on a La-z-boy.

I wish I had seen that version instead of the one I did see – which was with the original cast starring Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth. Ms. Shields strikes me as a much better fit for a show like this as she possesses a familiar enough name to draw an audience without the staggering talent that might accompany it, thus avoiding the shattered expectations of seeing very good actors perform in a very bad musical – although there is a sadistic rubberneck thrill of witnessing the slow torture of talented people trapped onstage in a horrifically lame production with no hope of escape.

I will be reviewing only the second half of the show, which is mostly what I saw. Time and again, when reading Broadway reviews, I see that “after a promising start” a show “fell flat in the second act.” Like determined little trains chugging up a hillside, many productions lose their steam halfway to the top. They are the little engines that couldn’t.

With everything riding on second acts nowadays, it has become unnecessary to review first ones (unless it’s a one-act production). There’s no need to see the little engine off at the station. You need only wait at final stop the bottom of the hill to see if it arrives in one piece.

This makes life a lot simpler for theater critics. What does it matter if you’re running late and miss the opening scene? The curtain probably went up as planned. Who cares if you had a few too many last night and dozed all through the first big dance number? It was bound to have been performed energetically, compared to later numbers when the performers are all tired out. Restroom breaks are also not a problem. Spending a scene in a bathroom stall serenaded by flushing toilets instead of in the balcony serenaded by dueting lovers, you can rest assured that the pair managed to display adequate chemistry, since this is long before the end-of-the-first-act kiss and “How could you forget to use mouthwash again!” intermission argument. And, even though the scenery may move around, it will probably repeat itself, so you won’t miss much there.

There is a wonderful, unintended, cost benefit to skipping first acts. We all know nobody checks your stub after intermission so you don’t even need a ticket to get a gander at whatever it is and give a full, accurate and insightful review, which is just what I did with the Addams Family.

To begin, let me say that the show probably opened with a promising start, but everything fell flat in second act. I must admit that I did sit through part of the first act, though not on purpose. I arrived too early and it wasn’t yet intermission. Still, by the time I got settled in my seat, and my friend and the rest of her group finished glaring at me and muttering about how they could have given the ticket to someone else if I wasn’t going to bother to show up on time, and I’d finished rifling through my Playbill and rustling around in my pockets for a mint, intermission had arrived. During this time, I was aware of a vague swirl of sound and color in the general direction of the stage, but I promise I didn’t see a thing.

Many theater critics neglect to review intermission; a key part of the overall theater experience. I think it’s crucial to know how long the line to the bathroom is, if they are likely run out of Raisinets at the bar, and if, from snippets of conversation, you can tell the audience is packed with a lot of slowpoke tourists who are going to block your way to the exit after the show and increase your wait time for a cab. I’m happy to say that at The Addams Family there were plenty of toilets in the ladies room and there was time enough to use the restroom and grab a box of candy. There was not enough time to order a drink, too (unless you were with a male companion who never has to wait for the bathroom). The crowd was a healthy mix of fast-moving natives and languishing tourists, indicating that a quick getaway might not be out of the question.

The chimes sounded, the crowd made its way back into the theater, and it was time for the all-important second act. This began with a musical number, followed by several other musical numbers. There was a fair amount of music. Sadly, I don’t remember any one tune standing out (in fact I can’t recall any of the tunes at all). The better ones were probably in the first act. From what I could gather, the silly plot involved Wednesday Addams’ plan to marry a boy from a nice, normal family and the miscalculated interference of Uncle Fester, and various ghosts and undersea monsters. Give the subject matter, the plot really couldn’t have been anything but silly. Bebe Neuwirth and Nathan Lane clearly had a tough time rising above the lackluster second-act material. Lane seemed to put somewhat more effort than Neuwirth into getting cheap laughs but that may have been due to the confinement of her skintight Morticia gown. The scenery was impressive and it moved around a lot.

The second act of the Addams Family suffered mostly from being a musical without really wonderful music, which is sort of a must-have ingredient in a musical. What it lacked in quality it tried to make up for in quantity, with quite a lot of totally mediocre and unmemorable songs. When will people learn that more of a not-good thing is not a better thing? I’m sure you know that sense of camaraderie you feel when everyone walks out at the end of a wonderfully inspiring show singing the tunes.

There was none of that at the Addams Family. Nor was there that pressing urge you feel, when you hear a great song, to run out and immediately download it to your ipod (or whatever people use these days) so you can hear it over and over again, as with those enduring Rogers and Hammerstein, Porter, or Sondheim scores, or even Annie. This was not a best-selling cast album kind of show and I felt no concern whatsoever that I might not hear any of these songs, ever again.

When the show was over the audience gave the actors a standing ovation. Standing ovations are much more deserved when fine performers make it through three hours of humiliation without suffering a nervous breakdown onstage. I never understand why we all stand up and cheer when they’ve had an easy time of it in a great play with sharp, witty dialogue and divinely catchy musical numbers.

The curtain came down, the lights came up and it was over at last. Exiting the theater was not the log-jam it might have been, since even the tourists were grateful to see the end of the show and wanted to hightail it out of there. In fact, from the speed of the stampede you’d have thought someone was handing out hundred dollar bills to the first ten people to make it to the door.

For me, the highlight of the show was the end, not just because it was over, but because I got an awesomely cool Addams Family water bottle. A bad musical can make a good water bottle seem very exciting. Most of us don’t go to the theater often and when we treat ourselves to one of these special outings, we are determined to come away with something for our trouble.

My 4-year late review in a nutshell: great actors; lame material; mediocre songs; tolerable intermission; satisfyingly quick getaway; awesomely cool water bottle.

Until…whenever

Lazy and Hazy