The Duplo Day

JANUARY 25TH, 2016 — POST 021

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that Lego is probably the best toy ever made. It’s not saying much to say my childhood was built around Lego. Most childhoods in the developed world are built from Lego. Yet Lego is not for all kids and you might recall another product the company make. Because of the small size of Lego pieces, and as such the choking hazard and demand of fine motor skills, the company make chunkier, more toddler-and-up-friendly bricks called Duplo. I remember Duplo as a kid. It was the stuff I never wanted to touch. I prided myself, even at 4 or 5, of being able to assemble Lego Systems with age ranges far above my own.

Even if I no longer play with Lego because of the time, money, and space it requires, I’ve realised that I much prefer playing with Duplo. Or at least a loose analogue of it.

Anyone who’s into learning about productivity styles, time management, or simply those “How the world’s most successful people organised their day” would have come across Benjamin Franklin’s breakdown of his day:

However, most reads on this draw attention either to the similarity this has with what most people naturally do, or to the questions on the left side of timeline about doing good in the world. Forgetting the latter for now, I’m not convinced the arrangement of Franklin’s day is consistent with what most people naturally do. I’ll grant that the times in which Franklin does certain activities basically aligns with the times I do those things. That’s why most writers pull up its similarity, like they looked at it and thought it was a “As you were, carry on”. So, because those times lock up, I could assume that my day is arranged like that. If I put it to paper, it might even look like it. But, and I’ll bet most people agree, it surely doesn’t feel like it.

Franklin was building his day out of Duplo before Duplo was even invented. What’s most striking to me about the arrangement of his day is that there are 6, chunky, blocks. This seems relatively few in comparison to my own day which sometimes feels like a stack of slivers. Even if there’s a loose semblance between the typical day and Franklin’s, the conception of it as built from Duplo establishes missions and deadlines, two things which cultists of productivity crave.