Graphing Day
September 30th, 2020
Starring: Jay & Neil (male, 35-50)
Jay’s office/cubicle. He’s wearing a button down, but also sweatpants. He’s drafting something, by hand, on a large piece of paper. Neil pokes his head in, knocking on the side of the door/wall.
NEIL
Hey J-dizzle. Haven’t seen you all day. Care to accompany me to meeting?
JAY
Ha, I’m not going today. I’m taking the day off, but in-office.
NEIL
Never heard of that. A little work staycation, huh?
JAY
Yep. It’s graphing day.
NEIL
Hm?
JAY
I take off every last day of each month.
NEIL
To graph—?
JAY
My actions. Over the month.
Like
Here
...
You divide it into fours.
Quadrant 1 is “Things I did want to do, and didn’t do.”
Quadrant 2 is “Things I did want to do, and did do.”
Quadrant 3 is “Things I didn’t want to do, and didn’t do.”
Quadrant 4 is “Things I didn’t want to do, and did do.”
Then within each quadrant, the y-axis is “importance” and the x-axis is “time.”
NEIL
You come up with this yourself?
JAY
It’s complicated. Let’s just say I subscribe to a lot of productivity newsletters.
...
So once it’s all drawn out, I start to graph points in my quadrants.
NEIL
You don’t label them?
JAY
Nah, I know what they are.
…
Then once I’m done plotting, I connect the dots.
NEIL
And what does that do?
JAY
It makes a picture.
NEIL
But like what does that do?
JAY
It creates a visual manifestation of my actions.
This month is...a frog losing his house in a tornado.
See?
NEIL
Oh...yeah.
...
So does it work? Like have you found now you do more that you did want to do?
JAY
Well no, not always. It’s not really the point.
NEIL
No?
JAY
The point isn’t the point. The picture reminds me that I can’t be defined by a singular point. Every action or inaction is a part of a whole.
NEIL
Right. Cool.
...
Can I be honest with you J? As a coworker-ish friend?
JAY
Sure. Fire away.
NEIL
Well...it’s a very slick system and all, but I feel like if you’re pouring all this energy into something, but it doesn’t really push you towards anything productive, then I’d go so far as to say that it’s, well...counterproductive.
JAY
Sure. I see how you’d think that.
NEIL
That wasn’t meant to hurt you...but yeah. Just from the outside…
...
So I gotta run to meeting—
JAY
Hey Neil?
NEIL
Yep?
JAY
One last thing.
Jay slaps Neil. It’s not super hard, more shocking than painful. They both stare at the other, standing in the strangeness. Neil, embarrassed, breaks away and walks off to the meeting. Jay watches him go, then sits back down at the graph. He smiles, drawing another point in Quadrant 2: “Things I did want to do, and did do.”