Tag Archives: time

Capability and Time

This post is about General Artificial Intelligence, but I’m going on a bird walk first.

My dad has had a health setback and will be on a long road to recovery. I heard him talking about his recovery plans and I felt had to share a personal example with him. When I went through 6 months of chronic fatigue I finally found relief after I discovered that I had a severe Vitamin D deficiency and started taking high dose supplements. Here’s the thing, I saw positive results in just 3 days… I went from hearing my alarm and wondering how I could physically get out of bed, to feeling normal when I woke up in just a matter of days of taking suppliments. However, it took over 6 months to recover to the point where I could put my treadmill within 90% of what I could do before the fatigue hit me. My capabilities improved, but much slower than I thought would happen. We are good at setting goals and knowing what’s possible, but we often overestimate how fast we can achieve those goals.

But I digress (my dad’s favourite thing to say when he finishes a bird walks on his way to making a point.)

Chat GPT and similar language predicting software are still pretty far away from artificial general intelligence, and the question is: How far away are we? How far away are we from a computer being able to out-think, out-comprehend, and our problem-solve the brightest of humans? Not just on one task, like they do on competing in Chess or Go, rather in ‘general’ terms, with any task.

I think we are further away in time than most people think (at least those people who think that artificial general intelligence is possible). I think there needs to be at least one if not a few technological leaps that need to happen first, and I think this will take longer than expected to happen.

The hoverboard and flying cars in the movie Back to the Future may not be too far away, but the ‘future’ in the 1987 movie was supposed to be 2015.

Are we going to achieve Artificial General Intelligence any time soon? I doubt it. I think we need a couple quantum leaps in our knowledge first. But when this happens, computers will instantly be much smarter than us. They will be far more capable than humans at that point. So the new question isn’t about when this will happen, but rather what we do when it does happens? Because I’m not a fan of a non-human intelligence looking at humans the way we think about stupid chickens, or even smart pets. What happens when thé Artificial Intelligence we create sees us as stupid, weak animals? Well, I guess time will tell (but don’t think that’s any time too soon).

Relations over time

I connected with a cousin yesterday. The last time I saw her was at my sister’s wedding 25 years ago. I saw her at 16 and then not again until 41. She’s married, has an 8 year old son, and has been working at the same company for 20 years.

I grew up surrounded by cousins. A typical Friday night at my grandparents could be a gathering of 16-20 with half of them being kids. A couple cousins who didn’t live in the province would come and visit for 4-6 weeks in the summer. As we grew up, we saw less and less of everyone. Then I took off from Toronto to Vancouver 30 years ago so rarely see any cousins including, (I must admit embarrassingly), one who only lives a 45 minute drive away.

When I consider how many really great cousins, aunts, and uncles I have, it makes me a bit sad that I’m not as connected to them as I used to be. I also appreciate that I had such a rich experience growing up surrounded by cousins. Not everyone has that opportunity.

Time well wasted

That’s the title of a comedy show and podcast: Time well wasted.

It makes me think, what do we waste our time on? Monday to Thursday I have a time limit set on TikTok because to me 30 minutes on TikTok is entertainment, but more than that is wasted time on a school/work night.

Is binge watching your favourite Netflix series time well spent or wasted? Is a 30 minute nap time well spent or wasted?

I can make a hundred suggestions of things we do, and then ask, “Is this time well spent or wasted?” And in almost every case the answer would or could be “It depends”.

For example: A 30 minute nap could be ‘needed’ to be more productive, or it could be a way to avoid work, or it could simply be a simple pleasure that is absolutely worth doing.

The question is, how good are our rationalizations? Because if you are anything like me, time well wasted isn’t often well wasted, it’s just wasted… and our time is valuable.

Time and attention

This is going to be one extremely busy week. I don’t usually get stressed out about about my schedule but I’ve got so much going on, pulling me in so many directions, that I get tired just thinking about it. Just cancelled a meeting I want to do, but know that it’s optional. This week is about focus and clearing my schedule for the big items.

Sometimes I can get a bit lost in doing the little things and in following the most recent issue in front of me. This week I need to keep my attention on the ‘must do’s’ and stay focused. Distractions need to be at a minimum. What I have control over is my attention. What I pay attention to gets my time. It’s a simple formula, but not always easy to follow… especially as a school administrator.

Sometimes emergent issues rule the day. Many times the priorities of others become my issues. But there are days when I need to look to others for support. Times when I need to ask others for help. And this week, I need to focus my attention on the things that need to get done right away. What I pay attention to gets my time… and this week time is precious.

Family gatherings

A week ago we celebrated my daughter’s 21st birthday. This weekend we celebrated my father-in-law’s 90th birthday, and the engagement of my niece. It’s wonderful to gather and celebrate these milestones. Next month I will be travelling across the country to visit my parents and sisters. While we won’t be celebrating anything specific, we will have an opportunity to spend time together.

As a kid I spent almost every Friday night at my grandparents with aunts, uncles, and cousins. Now every gathering is planned weeks and even months in advance. The spaces in between visits, gatherings, and special events seem wide. Nobody ‘drops by’ to say ‘Hi’, there is no “I was in the neighbourhood’ visits, no last minute invites for dinner.

Distances apart play a role in this distancing between gatherings, but so do changing norms. Maybe it’s time to rethink the way things have changed. A spontaneous dinner invite, a visit between meals that requires no extra work. A phone call to say, “what are you doing for the next couple hours’ followed by a visit.

Gathering with family and friends could be done far more often, with far less work and preparation. It just takes a little spontaneity, and an attitude that time spent together is too valuable to wait for special occasions.

Milestones

Today my youngest turns 21. It sounds so cliche to ask ‘Where does the time go?’ And yet it feels like a legitimate question.

One day you are bringing a bundle of joy home from the hospital… The next you are making sounds for them to repeat.

First steps, first time on a bicycle, first time without training wheels, first big fall from a bicycle.

First day of school, first day of middle school, high school, university.

Thousands of firsts, thousands of milestones, skipping past as fast as a skipping rock across a pond.

The firsts may come farther apart now, but they are to be cherished. Each ripple, a new moment, a new milestone, a new memory.

Nobody told me

Nobody told me that there would be days where all I do is go to meetings and deal with emergent issues. Or how important it would be to deal with these emergent issues immediately. Nobody told me that my priorities would be whatever other’s priorities are, and that my priorities would take a back seat on my to-do-list truck of things that need to get done.

But that is the job. It’s about getting everyone on the same truck, going the same direction, while emergent issues come at you from any and every direction. The biggest challenge: making sure you have enough gas in the tank… both metaphorically and literally.

Nobody told me there would be days like these. Strange days indeed!

Taking the needed time

I took a sick day on Monday for my first cough in years, and it got worse later in the day. Yesterday (Tuesday) morning I retested myself and tested positive for covid. I avoided it for 2.5 years but here I am now in quarantine in our spare bedroom, only leaving to go to the bathroom. My cough is still bad, but this afternoon my sinuses feel clearer and the low grade but constant headache that developed Monday night has subsided with the aid of Advil. I know it’s not over but if that’s the worst of it, a typical sinus infection of yesteryear was more unpleasant (though didn’t sound as bad with this cough). Still, I have a good feeling that I’ll be in full form next week.

What was interesting these past few days was that the headache kept me from my computer and screens more than usual. I took naps and I listened to podcasts and a book to pass a bit of the boredom by, but it was very unusual for me to listen to my body and not just work from home all day. I did do a couple pressing things and answered some texts, but overall I really took sick days and didn’t just work from home while sick.

This was extremely unusual for me. It didn’t come without stress… I haven’t had this many unread emails in well over a year. I have things on my ‘to do’ list that kept creeping into my thoughts even when I tried to let them go. And, I felt guilty that I wasn’t working. That’s the crazy part, I’m home sick, and much of the day I’m thinking about work or feeling guilty for not doing work. I don’t think that’s what’s intended to be done on a sick day?

I’m glad I took the time I needed and I’m willing to bet that I wouldn’t feel as ‘good’ (well at least as ‘fair’) as I do now, had I not taken this time mostly off. And yet I already know that even though I am not going in to work tomorrow, I’m going to be spending at least a few hours catching up. I should probably take the full day off, but I won’t.

I’ll take this as a win for taking the time I needed the past three days. But after 55 years on this planet I still need to figure out that work/life balance thing a little better, so that I can take a guilt-free sick day… to be sick. I’ll probably retire before I really know how to do it right.

Creativity with time constraints

I’ve learned over the years that whenever I try to do something creative it always takes much longer than I thought it would. The moment there is a design element to something I’m working on, I will spend too long tweaking it, and making it better. I actually need to give myself time constraints.

If I wrote in the evening with nothing on my agenda, I’d take over an hour to write this, but in the morning, I don’t want to miss my meditation or workout so I have to get writing. I have to write before I meditate, or I’ll spend my meditation time thinking about my writing.

When I edited my Halloween video I gave myself a 3 hour time limit and got it done in less than 2.5 hours. But when I watched it the next day, I thought of several clever edits I could have added. I had to convince myself that it was good enough or I would have spent well over another hour editing. It’s my nature to tinker, tweak, and just throw more time into something creative.

So for me, time constraints are a key strategy to get creative work done, because I could dive deep into something and time just flies by. I get lost in the flow of being creative, but my time isn’t well utilized. If you want me to really get my creative juices flowing then give me a realistic, but really tight timeline.

‘A’ Game

I had a conversation with a colleague in another district yesterday. I was thanking him for suggesting a great book I’m listening to. We talked about the unique nature of our jobs and he said something that hit a chord with me. He said that while he likes his job as an online school principal, and how unique the challenges are, he’s tired of feeling like there are too many things that come at him at once to give his ‘A’ game all the time. He mentioned that it feels like the best he can do is a ‘C’ or a ‘C+’.

He said, “But that’s not how I like to operate. When I was a teacher I had a lot of control about what my day looked like. Sure, I couldn’t bring my ‘A’ game to every single thing I did, but most of my day was determined by me, and I could regularly bring my ‘A’ game. I can’t do that in this job even though I want to.”

I totally get it. It’s like this job is a juggling act and every time you think you can put on a good show, someone adds one more ball to the balls you are juggling. You looked and felt confident juggling 4 balls, and suddenly you are fumbling with a 5th. Just as you feel good about the 5th ball, a 6th is thrown in. You spend more time picking up the balls than you do juggling. A juggler isn’t showing you their ‘A’ game when they are picking balls up off the floor.

My colleague and I both agreed that we like our jobs, and we want to stay where we are, but lamented about our ability to have control over our days… to decide at the start of the day how many balls we were going to juggle that day. I think that’s something every principal feels and understands. We like our jobs, we just wish we could bring our ‘A’ game to it a little more often.