The Pot Noodle Rap

A report landed on my desk a few days ago with some statistics you should pull out your chair and sit down for: 54% of workers in the Merseyside area aren’t eating healthy food during their lunch break, and a whole bunch more are spending three or more lunch breaks at their desks, per week. The message to employers is loud and clear: give us more breaks, and we’ll be more productive. The message to me was much more habitual: your dietary particulars at work are shit.

I’m one of those people who find the task of being creative about more than one meal a day, a weekly, arduous and circular pain in the arse. It always starts the same. Monday, pick up milk from corner store (‘would you like a bag with that sir’, ‘yes’, ‘would you like a receipt’, ‘yes, just like last week’), push into office, dump milk in fridge. Come lunch time, I’m shuffling around Tesco with my blue basket, drifting from the veg isle into dairy, from meat into cleaning products. At every point the pretense is amusing only to myself – what should I get this week. The question mark is no longer a part of the mission.

Breakfast is easy and a comfort. Cereal. And it’s a standard all food should try and live up to: retrieve from cupboard, open, pour, fetch spoon, done. Cereal gets away with it because there’s a possibility it will be good for you. But four hours later, what are the equivalent options? I know soup won't fill me up and with that I turn to Pot Noodles. The ad tells us to put the pan down, but what it doesn't mention is how disgusting the result is. I once bought three Pot Noodles during a Tesco visit and felt victorious – three lunchtimes were struck down and accounted for in one fell swoop. It was halfway through the third step of the Pot Noodle experience I realised my mistake. Powdered veg should never fizz up like this. But, like a grim-faced dinner lady banging out trays of turkey twizzlers to blameless children, I pressed on with step 3. The curry sauce. It had the gelatine composition of fig jam and an appearance of a heavy smoker's phlegm.

I keep the remaining untouched Pot Noodles high up in the cupboard. A visual homage to the dangers of 3-step food after 10am. I'll never willfully put Pot Noodle in my mouth again, thus I can waste less time fussing over my work diet shortcomings and spend more time chewing over what the hell I’m supposed to eat for dinner.

My Approach to Box Checking is a Cavalier One - Part 2: Weekends

Weekends have a similar pattern of to-do list impotence, just with the day job bit cut out. That same list still exists, only this time, uncannily, there’s more pressure to get stuff done. Of course I’m entitled to rest, watch Dave and sit through a season of Top Gear in one sitting. This can’t hurt, comes the evil whisper. Why should I have to work, and serve the needs of these endless ‘lists’? It’s my weekend off GODDAMMIT. And what defines ‘productive’ anyway? I’m learning about cars, I’m laughing at Clarkson. I'm discovering contours on my testicles that I never knew existed. This is making me happy – this is what LIFE. IS. ALL. ABOUT.

Why does the brain need to tick off small achievements, little tasks, and efforts at communication to feel better? It’s that end game, the result, that makes being productive the most obvious medicine and the hardest damn thing to swallow. The distance between the short jizz and the long dream makes this a constant battle, between achievement and delay.

For a complete account of my fruitlessness see, My Approach to Box Checking is a Cavalier One - Part 1: Work

My Approach to Box Checking is a Cavalier One - Part 1: Work

The work day starts off with promise, and ends in sickening regret. Again. Things are achieved at the rate of flatulence, no rhyme nor reason and depends who's around. By 17.59 it's coming to a close. What is it I’ve done and fancy beating myself up over? Fuck all, is the answer.

The familiarity is the worst part of it, and the daily routine is inspired in its flaws: Alarm at 7.15am, snooze till 8.00am, out the door by 8.30am for a 9am start. Arrive 9.10am. Mumble something about tube delays. Ignored by team mates. Turn on computer and begin. So far so good.

Glance down at desk. Glimpse yesterday's to-do list. Glance skywards, mentally checking temporal lobe region of brain for tasks that have yet to be committed to paper. Commit to paper. Errands, emails, world domination. A series of bullet points with no end. I mark them ‘done’ and more appear. What's the point. No respite from the digital either. My inbox, the other infinite to-do list in my life. Superior to it's paper version in that I can project this evil tool onto others - sending emails and ramping up the to-dos for faceless wonders. Have that. And that. Oh, there's something from Ed. Reply to Ed. Ha ha, Ed's too funny. Ed and I back and forth for 48 minutes.

It’s my own bloody fault. I'm a yes man. I say yes to things. Fart. Fart. Fart. Back to the workday script. New approach, I try culling the main herd by removing to-dos and recategorizing on separate piece of paper (read: microtasking). But therein lies the art - what to cull and how much time for this new list? What is now an acceptable deadline? Too short and my own foot is back on my throat. Too long and next thing I know I’ve drifted toward a giant rubberband ball destroying a car on YouTube. Ah YouTube, desk-jockey absenteeism. It's a question of prioritising, I suppose. I concede, my priorities are all wrong.

Rant for CALM Blog - deadline, 11 Feb 2009

Weekends aren't much better: My Approach to Box Checking is a Cavalier One - Part 2.