Panic Buttons

As an aspiring designer I panic about not getting enough done. I got this time management book called “Eat That Frog”. The author, Brian Tracey, says “there will always be more to do, than you can ever accomplish in the time you are given”.

So to combat this he suggests you should tackle the hardest, nastiest task (which are nearly always the ones which will have the most positive impact on your life compared to other tasks) and complete it first before any other. This is ‘eating your frog’. It plays on the old adage that if you eat a live frog when you wake up you will have the satisfaction of knowing it will probably be the worst thing you will do that day.

This is from an exhibition called Pop Noir- critical designs selected by Dunne and Raby:

“With Life Counter, you choose how many years you would like to or expect to live and start the counter. Once activated, it counts down the selected time span at four different rates: the number of years, days, hours, or seconds to go are shown on different faces. Depending on which face you choose to display, you may feel very relaxed as the years stretch out ahead or begin to panic as you see your life speed away before your eyes”

This is loads easier to understand and relate to as a useful panic button when compared to the Doomsday clock. The clock goes back and forth and feels confusing as much as anything else. This teetering on he brink without any kind of suggestions does nothing to create panic or action but seems a chance to procrastinate or be apathetic.

Perhaps we should embrace a final time. If there were a date for the end of humanity (human set or otherwise predicted) then we could accept our inability to affect nuclear holocaust or similar and better manage the time we have now to best complete our tasks and goals. And if the continuation of the species became unimportant what would be the biggest most important tasks for us- as a race and as people. What would be the frog that we would eat?

Tracey, B. (2004) Eat That Frog, London: Hodden and Stoughton
http://www.imj.org.il/eng/exhibitions/2005/design_for_thought/pop/popnoir.html#