The Prime Directive

An organizing colleague, Margaret Lukens, recently asked her Facebook Friends/Fans, "What is your theme word for 2013?" Hers in recent years have been "doubling," "fundamentals," "ease" and "focus."

I knew right away that mine would be a phrase rather than one word. I had just watched the 2009 movie "Star Trek" and was reminded of "The Prime Directive." (Friends and family, as well as some of my clients know that I am a bit of a Trekker.)

Captain James T. Kirk

(Geek alert for the next paragraph...)
The Prime Directive (also called General Order 1) is a law of the United Federation of Planets (I am paraphrasing, you can see the full text here). Basically, it means that Starfleet captains (and their crew) must not interfere with the development of civilizations on planets that do not yet have space travel technology or knowledge of other civilizations on other planets. The Prime Directive, on many occasions, has helped to guide a captain's actions.

My thought here is not so much about non-interference, but of simply having a "Prime Directive" in our own lives. Some may call it "priorities." I can see setting a prime directive for myself (and maybe several of them, uniquely crafted for different situations. I might call them sub-orders.) My overall Prime Directive for the year might be "All actions must not interfere with the accomplishment of goals set for the year." If an action seems to conflict with my prime directive, I must stop and take heed as any good Starfleet captain would, and carefully examine my actions and their consequences.

Captain Jonathan Archer

We are, after all, the captains of our own ship and in charge of our own destiny. Each of our actions, no matter how small, can have huge consequences. Before the Prime Directive was "law," a research crew accidentally left a book behind about "Gangsters and Mobs of the 1920s" on a developing planet. This made for one of the more amusing original Star Trek episodes. That planet's civilization took it as their "bible" and crafted their culture into the violent guns and revenge mania of 1920s mob society.

Captain Kathryn Janeway 

Some might call these "resolutions"
Some of my goals for the year are to reduce the "stuff" in my house, have my kitchen cleaner more often and write daily. So, having my Prime Directive as:

 "All my actions must not interfere with
accomplishment of my set goals for the year." 

My sub-orders might look like this:

1. Kitchen sub-order 1: By bed-time each day, the dishwasher must be either running a load or nearly empty, waiting to be filled (and no dirty dishes in the sink). All hand-washed items must be washed and in the drying rack. (Notice that I didn't say I must have my whole kitchen totally clean and sparkly! Just one little step to help with "keeping it up" without overwhelming me.)

2. Reducing stuff sub-order 1: Every day I will put at least one item in my "give-away" bag.

3. Reducing stuff sub-order 2: With every purchase I make (household, clothing, food), I will test to see if it fulfills my Prime Directive or runs against it.

4. Writing sub-order 1: An hour a day, that's all it takes! I might even add that an hour writing upon arising and an hour reading before bed shall be my new habit.

What's your Prime Directive this year? It's time to Make it so!

Captain Jean-Luc Picard

All I Need To Know About Life I Learned From Star Trek

As promised....(no it doesn't have much to do with organizing, but I love it!)

---

• Seek out new life and new civilizations.
• Non-interference is the Prime Directive.
• Keep your phaser set on stun.
• Humans are highly illogical.
• There's no such thing as a Vulcan death grip.
• Live long and prosper.
• Having is not so pleasing a thing as wanting; it is not logical but it is often true.
• Infinite diversity in infinite combinations (IDIC).
• Tribbles hate Klingons (and Klingons hate Tribbles).
• Enemies are often invisible - like Klingons, they can be cloaked.
• Don't put all your ranking officers in one shuttle craft.
• When your logic fails, trust a hunch.
• Insufficient data does not compute.
• If it can't be fixed, just ask Scotty.
• Even in our own world, sometimes we are aliens.
• When going out into the Universe, remember: "Boldly go where no man has gone before!"

UPDATE: I should have mentioned that I am not the original creator of this list. I haven't been able to find the origins--I had a poster of this for years, and I found it again on another person's website, un-credited.

Beware of cloaking devices!

In honor of the new Star Trek Movie that opened last week, I thought I'd use a Trek theme for my posts this week! Yes, I was a Trekkie (fan of the original series) and a Trekker (fan of the Next Generation series). For a special treat on Friday, I'll post the "All I Ever Needed to Know I Learned on Star Trek" wisdom!

Today however, I'd like to talk about plastic bags. Those nasty white things they foist upon you at the grocery store (or department store) when you have forgotten your eco-canvas bags.

Beware of them...for more than ecological reasons!!!!! They all contain the Klingon Cloaking Device and anything you put in them (or decide to leave in them) will be invisible to you forever. The bags themselves will become invisible to you.

To update your Trek knowledge for a moment here, let me explain the Klingon Cloaking Device. We first came upon it in the original series. The Klingons were a race of people who were, shall we say, just plain nasty. Like they all were having a bad-hair-day every day. Warrior types that went out looking for a fight. Somehow, even though they had not evolved like the logical and peaceable Vulcans, they had not only developed the technology for space flight, but were the only ones in the universe to have developed a way to make their ships invisible. The "cloaking device" (Such an archaic term for such a futuristic technology, huh?) used a lot of energy, and they couldn't fire their weapons with it on, so they had to use it judiciously. But it meant they could sit in the middle of space and wait for another ship to come by to pounce on when there was no planet to crouch behind.

Anyway, back to present time. I was reminded last night just how plastic bags can render anything invisible when I went looking for some soda that I thought my DH had put away. I checked the counters, I checked the fridge...no soda and I was hot and needed a caffeine fix.

When I asked him, he simply said, "It's in the fridge."

"I looked in the fridge. I didn't see it."

"Oh, I just put them in there in the plastic bag."

"Oh...that's why I didn't see them...."

Sure enough, I went back and found them. Now, I don't normally put ANYTHING in the fridge IN a bag, so the bag itself should have stood out to me. But no. These bags have special powers.

Why oh why am I going on and on about these bags?

Because I see them all the time in my clients' homes. (OK, so I must have special powers only when I wear my "CPO-CD" pin, I guess–it renders their powers useless!)

Time after time, while sorting and purging, we will come across many, many of these bags, open them and my client will exclaim "Wow, so that's where that is! I remember buying that (last week, last month, last year, when my married daughter was in diapers...) and I haven't seen it since!"

These bags can pile up so easily, hide food, crafts, clothing, gifts meant for loved ones...their power to conceal is endless.

My only advice is this: when you bring something home in a plastic bag, take it out of the bag, and set the item(s) on the counter (or wherever they need to go) and put that bag in another bag to recycle it at the grocery store when you have a collection of them!

This simple act will defeat the Klingon Cloaking Device without a single shot fired!