The Art of Prioritization: Differentiating 'Nice to' from 'Need to'

We have a very large rhubarb plant that has a LOT of juicy, red stalks that are just begging to be harvested. But as the days go by... "make rhubarb relish" keeps getting bumped to the end of the line. There's too much other stuff going on.

But as the days go by, I start to get a bit panicky... "need to" get the rhubarb picked and chopped and make rhubarb relish! But then... I had a bit of an epiphany...

Why do I "need to" make rhubarb relish?

Who says I "need to"???

That made me pause for quite a while. And think. And mull things over. Because, really, making rhubarb relish is not a "need to". It is a "nice to". It would be "nice to" make rhubarb relish. It's not like we are selling it and our lives depended on it. There is no one standing over me demanding that I make rhubarb relish, "or else".

So where does it go from being a "nice to" thing... into a "need to" thing? Here are some of the factors at play.

1. Time Limited

Rhubarb season is limited. Pick it early and it is sweeter and not as tough. I always thought you had to pick it before it flowered but... that's an old wives' tale. You can just cut the flower stalk off. So there is a tiny bit of a time constraint. If I want to make rhubarb relish, then it has to be done soonish. But do I want to make rhubarb relish?

2. Friends Love it

Friends of ours LOVE the rhubarb relish that we make. We give them little jars of it every time they visit. And our supply is running low. So it is time to make more. But again, they are not standing over us demanding rhubarb relish. It is "nice to" give them rhubarb relish but if we are out... then we are out.

3. It's a Waste

Leaving the rhubarb relish stalks on the plant seems like... a waste. We are letting food go to waste. And somewhere along the way I learned that letting food go to waste is "bad". It's a sin. Although I don't remember seeing "food" in the list of deadly sins. Although it could probably be shoe-horned into gluttony or greed.

4. I had Plans

I was going to use the rhubarb-making pics for our Airbnb's social media campaign. No pics... no post. But it's only 1 post. Not the end of the world, right? But I had plans!!! And I hate it when plans change.

5. It's a Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda

As in... "It would be nice to make it..." morphs into... "I could make it..." so that translates into... "I should make it"... which leads to... "I need to make it"...

It's Bigger than Rhubarb

While this might seem like a pretty piddly thing... it's rhubarb for pete's sake...

But it's not just about the rhubarb. Because this happens in other areas of my life as well. Where I decided that something would be "nice to" do... Somewhere along the way, these "nice to" things get pressurized. I only have so much time. I only have so much energy. I can't do it all. But as time and energy fritter away... the pressure to get these things done increases. Or... I could just let them go. I don't need to make rhubarb relish. I could just let it go. I could say. "I really wanted to make it. But things change. And, right now, I don't want to make it anymore."

Because there are a LOT of things in life that are "nice to's". So many, many things. And some of them become "need to's"... but they can't ALL become "need to's". There is a finite limit to how much time and energy I have to devote to things. Saying "yes" to this thing means I have to say "no" to these other things.

So, rather than making rhubarb relish this year... I need to procrastinate on it (good procrastination) and bump it into next year. I made different choices this year as to what to do with my time. I didn't pick rhubarb. I was away part of the time. I did broombusting for another part of the time. Those choices are not wrong or bad. And I need to keep reminding myself... I can't do it all. I can't visit my Mom, do broombusting AND handle rhubarb. And I don't have to. Don't need to.

Sometimes I just have to say "no".

Embracing Procrastination: Why It's Not Always a Bad Thing

Zen Garden (Image by 18121281 from Pixabay

"Hello, my name's Gigi and I'm a Procrasinator".

Seriously... if there was a PA group (Procrastinator's Anonymous), I'd be a card-carrying member for life. I have always held procrastination as a bad thing... or BAD thing.

So much to do, so little time... and I'm scrolling the news on my phone avoiding my to-do list. WTH??? Why am I procrastinating again?? I should have this handled by now?

But I procrastinate. All the time.

And then it came to me... procrastination is NOT a bad thing. It is necessary. We can' escape it. We need to embrace it. We need to make friends with procrastination and see it as a valuable tool in our Life Toolbox.

Ready? Ok... here we go. Let me lay it out.

Time is a Limited Resource

We only have 24 hours in a day. Every single one of us. And out of that, we need to sleep 8 hours (give or take). Which leaves 16 hours to do everything that we need to do in life. That is not a lot of time. So we need to make choices on what we are going to do in any given day. We can't make more time. The only thing we have control over is what we try to squeeze in a day.

We Can't Do it ALL

We can't. Given that time is limited, and energy as well, we can't do it all. It is Impossible. It is physically impossible to go to work for 8 hrs, walk the dog for 2 hrs, watch the kids in the school play for 2 hrs, cook meals for 2 hrs, work on taxes for 2 hrs, clean the Airbnb for 3 hrs, run errands for 2 hrs and work in the garden for 2 hrs... all in the same day. Do the math. It's not possible. Oh sure, you can burn the sleep candle at both ends but for how long?

On some days, my Amazing Marvin to-do system tells me I have 25 hours of tasks scheduled for that day. Um. Let's talk about overwhelm!

Work Faster, Longer, Better is Not a Solution

I think that if I could just work faster, work longer, or work better, more efficiently, that I can get everything done on my to-do list. Society is speeding up, everything is getting faster and faster. There is always more to do. How come everybody else seems able to do more with the same amount of time? What are their secrets? I need to find out! Surely there is a key somewhere that if I just new what it was and where it fit... my life would magically clear up and all would be ease and flow.

More is not always Better. Sometimes Less is More

We can have too much of a good thing. We can volunteer too much. We can take on too much. We can think that we can do more, and more and more but... always we run up against time and energy constraints and the Rule of Life... We can't do it All. Sometimes doing less is... more. 

Procrastination is the Solution

As I said... I have always seen procrastination as a bad thing. But like all things in life, it has a good side and a bad side. Procrastination is not necessarily good or bad, rather it is how we use it. An ax is not good or bad... it's how we use it. Procrastination is just a tool...

And if I use it carelessly, without thought or focus or attention, then I just drift through life, scrolling the news sites and avoiding the problems in my life that just seem too overwhelming. Not today. Tomorrow. I can't deal with this right now. I need chocolate. I need a movie.

But procrastination used mindfully, strategically, can be a very good thing. I only have 8 hours to get stuff done today. What are my priorities. What tasks am I going to focus on. What do I need to defer? Oooohhh... see... good procrastination has a new name... Defer. Or maybe Postpone. A rose by any other name...

I can't get everything I want to get done.... done in one day. I have to defer things, postpone, procrastinate. I have to choose what I am going to work on and say... these things are a "yes" and these things are a "no". For now. For today.

Rather than fighting procrastination, what if I embraced it and used it wisely? Might change things... dramatically.

Confessions of a Productivity Junkie: My Latest Obsession with the 1-3-5 Method!

It's been a while since I wrote a productivity post. Lest you think that I have given up on my productivity junkie ways... nope. That was just the last 4 months of pre-posted blogs! But now... under the gun from having frittered away my 4 month blog buffer... productivity is front and centre again. Which means, of course, that I am re-evaluating my time/energy usage and looking for something that can keep me focused and efficient. Enter... the 1-3-5 Rule!

What the Heck is the 1-3-5 Rule?

A very good question. At it's essence, it's really very simple... in any given day, I should be able to accomplish:

• 1 Big Task
• 3 Medium Tasks
• 5 Small Tasks

Simple, no? But... what does big, medium and small really mean?

1 Big Task

This is the most important and impactful task I need to complete. It could be a major project, an important meeting or something else that requires a good 1.5 to 3 hours to complete. Lately... Tax Preparation has been my Big Task on some days. On other days it's "Clean the Airbnb". 

3 Medium Tasks

These are tasks of moderate importance that still need to get done. They are essential for keeping things moving forward and keeping me on track. They aren't as big as the Big Task. I sort of ballpark them as 30 min to 90 min. Things like writing a blog post, running a daisy chain of errands, posting to our Airbnb's social media stream, mowing the hay field... errrr... back and front lawns.

5 Small Tasks

These are the little things that need to get done but often get overlooked. For me, they take between 5 and 15 min. Things like phone calls, sending emails, cleaning the heat pump filter. Writing or responding to guest reviews.

The thing with the 1-3-5 Rule is... there is only space for 9 (NINE!) things on my daily to-do list. Saayyyyy WHAT? Exactly. Before... I could have dozens of things on my daily to-do list. Talk about overwhelming. And I'd end up snacking on junk food tasks (the little ones) and never getting around to the bigger ones. BTW... updating my to-do list can seem uber important and urgent when there are dozens of things on my to-do list! And that can suck up hours of prime energy time. Sigh.

Anyhow... the 1-3-5 Rule puts an end to an Over-Ambitious To-Do List... there's only space for 9 things... and that's why it works so well...

The Beauty of the 1-3-5 Rule

The 1-3-5 Rule is simple and it's effective. It forces me to have:

Focus

I have to review my tasks and figure out... what's the big thing I need to get done today. Not "want" to get done... but "need" to... like spending a couple of hours on tax prep. Or cleaning the Airbnb because a guest checked out. I can only choose 1 (one!) Big Task so the 1-3-5 Rule forces me to look at my day and go... "OK... what's Priority #1 today).

Clarity

Oh, I get really clear on my priorities very quickly. In the past, I would think I could do 2 hours of tax prep and 3 hours of Airbnb cleaning and write 3 blogs... all in one day. Yeah. No. That doesn't work. I get really clear on what my big task is and I can let go of the other big tasks... for today.

Balance

My day is more balanced... there's room for a Big Task and a bunch of medium tasks and then the smaller stuff too. In the past, I might spend 8 hours of my day beavering away on some big research blog and... neglect everything else. That's a pretty quick road to exhaustion and overwhelm. I might "want" to do more but... there are only so many hours (and energy bursts) in a day so this helps me balance my day.

Achievement

There's nothing better than looking at my 1-3-5 list and going... Done and done and done and done!!! Looking at a list with several dozen items and seeing that I've only marked off 1 or 2... meh. Not very inspiring. While I might not get all of the Smaller Tasks done (they are easier to boot into tomorrow)... the Big Task generally does get Done!

But What About the 1-3-5-7 Rule?

But... true to form... there's a part of me that wants to add "more" to the 1-3-5 Rule. What about adding 7 Tiny Tasks? Things that take less than 5 minutes? Huh? What about that? What if I have a couple of calls to make or a few emails to write and they won't take 5 minutes each? What then?

Sigh. Rather than adding 7 Tiny Tasks to the 1-3-5 Rule... I've started bundling things. So one of my Small Tasks might be "Process Emails" and another might be "Call X and Call Y". But I do spend a moment on assessing if the Calls, for example, are going to be quick and short or if they might need to bounce up to a Medium Task.

Conclusion

So far, after a couple of weeks of this, I'm really liking the 1-3-5 Rule. My online to-do list program (Amazing Marvin) has a 1-3-5 integration. It automatically assigns things to the Big, Medium and Small lists based on the time duration I have assigned to tasks.

I tend to look at my 1-3-5 list for the next day on the previous evening. I assess my upcoming day and go "OK... no cleaning of the suite... tax prep is front and centre... and then writing a blog and then...". The next day, when I look at my list, it's all laid out. I might not "want" to do tax prep but... the list reminds me that this is important... it might not be as exciting as blog writing... but it's more important right now. And I focus and get down to it.

And it works. And that gives me a boost to do more!

Procrastination Nation: A Deep Dive into the Diverse Species of Delay

 Regular readers of this blog will know that I struggle with Procrastination. I know that I'm not the only one, but sometimes it does feel like a lonely struggle. I see so many people around me who seem to function at a higher level. Maybe I'm just not seeing their procrastination? After all... it can be easy to hide... to camouflage... for a while.

A few weeks back, I came across this cute graphic - A Field Guide to Procrastinators - 20px - Twenty Pixels. Every single one of them resonated with me!

Let's walk through them one at a time...

The Cleaner

Well... of course. Let me declutter my cupboard... or clean my desk, or organize my books or... vacuum the house. Any of these things is very productive... and helps me feel that I have done something useful. Plus... cleaning my space does actually help me to feel in control. But... ultimately... it isn't all that productive if it drags on for hours and days.

From 20 Pixels

The Panicker

I don't go here very often, but I do know this one! Leave it all to the last minute and then have a freak-out fit. I do have to say that I don't stay here all that long. There's a part of me that gets fed up with The Panicker and just says "Start Already!".

From 20 Pixels

The List Maker

Yes, yes... I know... this is me to a tee!! When in doubt, make a list! When faced with an overwhelming pile of stuff, make a list! Even better... make a spreadsheet!!! Or... ooooohhhh... find a new, shinier, better productivity app and transfer ALL of my to-do items into this new app and get them nicely organized and colour-coded and... hours go by. And at the end of it, I have done nary a thing on my list but... man... do I ever feel productive!!

From 20 Pixels

The Napper

Mmmm... not really my go-to. I tend to only nap if I'm really tired. But yes, that is what I do look like when I am napping... mouth open and drooling. Although the pet is a cat and not a dog...  But napping as a form of procrastination... not really.

From 20 Pixels

The Sidetracker

Oh boy... yep, this is me. Rather than working on the most urgent thing... I will work on the thing that is not as urgent... but is more fun. Or I'll work on an entirely new thing! And I can work like a fiend on the new thing and feel soooo productive but... then flip over to The Panicker when I realize how close the deadline is for the urgent thing... 

From 20 Pixels

The Social Sharer

OK... this is NOT me. I am not big on Social Media so I'm not going to be posting pics of myself not working. Although... I might write a blog about me not writing and procrastinating! Is that the same thing? Nah... not really? Oh... it is?! Sigh...

From 20 Pixels

The Internet Researcher

OK... yes... I do get sucked into cat videos every once in a while. But on the whole... my internet research is very on-point! I can happily dig around for hours, researching my latest blog topic... or a week or a month of blog topics. Anything to keep me from actually sitting down and writing. Yep... I just need more info, more data, more certainty... before I can commit to having an opinion or moving forward on a project. Research makes me feel sooooo productive!

From 20 Pixels

The Snacker

Noooo... I don't think this is me... is it? No not really. I'm not someone to go and stand in front of the fridge and look for something to nibble on. Not my mojo.

From 20 Pixels

The Gamer

Also not much of a gamer! Although I can see the draw of this one. Soooo much to do in the virtual world. If I was into Farmville (or whatever)... I'm sure I could do this... Actually... now that I think about it... I used to play Age of Empires incessantly as a way to stave off work... even Minesweeper! I was paralyzed by uncertainty and I would use computer games as a form of procrastination. I do seem to have kicked that habit though. Don't play computer games. Have no interest in computer games. But... give me a new productivity app!!! Oooooohhhh... 

From 20 Pixels

The Watcher

Mmmm... yes... I could see this happening. Although we tend not to watch a lot of TV anymore.  But yes, I have done this in the past. The next show comes on and I'm so deep into needing to know what happens that... it's easy to just binge! And the work gets left undone... just one more episode....

From 20 Pixels

The Delegator

Hmmm... nope, this isn't really me either. No kids to pass things off to. No underlings to burden. If things aren't getting done... the buck stops with me. Although... I could delegate to Future Me but... we all know how that works out!

From 20 Pixels

The Perpetuator

Oh yes!!! There's me!!! It's getting too late now... I will just start tomorrow.... Or, even better... I need at least 4 hours of solid time in order to work on this project and I only have 1 hour or 2 hours and... you know... that's really not enough time to do anything meaningful... so I'll push it off to next week!! Yes, because next week is wide open and I'll have tonnes of time to work on it then! Sigh.

From 20 Pixels

Which Ones are You?

Just to recap... these are my Top 5 Go-To Procrastination Habits... ranked in order...

1. The List Maker - let's make a fresh, new list!
2. The Perpetuator - tomorrow I'll have time... maybe next week
3. The Internet Researcher - I need more info...
4. The Sidetracker - oooohhhh... new idea...
5. The Cleaner - must do laundry... must declutter... first...

I don't really do these ones... or only rarely...

• The Panicker - OMG! It's due tomorrow!
• The Watcher - just one more episode
• The Delegator - you do this, you do this... I'll rest
• The Napper - just a quick nap
• The Social Share - here's a pic of me not working
• The Gamer - just one more level-up
• The Snacker - I need something to nibble on...

Soooo... which are your go-tos? And how do you dodge them?

Sweeping vs. Shoveling: The Wisdom of Regular Maintenance

I keep coming back to this lesson in life. In a nutshell, I snow-plough small (and sometimes large) tasks ahead of me until I am faced with a mountain of tasks. All frozen together into this massive ice-mountain.

I stare at it and am so totally immobilized, because at that point, it's hard to even see the individual tasks. It's just this amorphous blob of "stuff to do".

I can't be the only person who does this. And it annoys the heck out of me.

Case in point... I keep our joint finances updated once a week using GnuCash, an Open Source accounting program. It works beautifully.

It takes about 15 minutes a week (give or take) and then a longer spell at the end of the month when I transfer totals into a spreadsheet and produce our monthly financial report.

I know that if I don't do the weekly updates... and push them too far into the future... it's going to get messy, very fast. If I'm trying to catch up on 4 weeks of finances... ugh... it's a massive snow blob! And it takes me hours as I stare at receipts trying to figure out what those cryptic product descriptions are. "What the heck did I buy at Home Depot that day?" In a normal household, this wouldn't be a big deal but since we run a business... I need to know what I bought to see if it's a business expense!

And then there are my personal finances. I might enter my credit card purchases and keep the bank account info up to date every couple of weeks... but... I don't transfer all of that info into my personal financial spreadsheet. Ugh. It's probably all of 2022 that needs to be processed. It's tedious. It's a huge pile of snow-ploughed small tasks. And... I just keep turning away from it... until it's March and tax time is looming.

The thing is... it's easy to hop over the little tasks in life... all of those individual tasks are so small that I can say... "I'll do that later... next week, next month". But I never do. And then I'm facing tax time and... I need to know what I spent last year on various things like website hosting, book purchases, research costs, etc... all of which are tax deductions. Sooo... this is where the pedal hits the metal. I knew this time was coming and I pushed all of those tasks off... and now they have come home to roost.

Our joint finances are usually in great shape for pulling out info for our tax accountant. Yay me!

Personal finances... not such great shape. I've done this repeatedly. Every time, I get annoyed with "Past Me" who didn't do the small steps that would make "Future Me" happy. Nope. And it seems like I forget this lesson. Once tax time is done... I slack off again. It's November and... guess what... my personal finances haven't been updated since... March...

So here's my thought... when I do those monthly financial reports for our joint accounts... I will take 30 min and do my personal financial report as well - transfer all of that monthly info into my spreadsheet. I'm already on a roll from the joint report... so it won't take as much effort... will it?

It's true that regular maintenance takes less time than trying to catch upon several weeks worth of stuff. It takes less work to clean the stove after every meal than to let stuff accumulate there and then you're scrubbing and grumbling and... you get the picture. Same with shoveling the driveway - it takes way less effort to shovel a few inches of snow every couple of hours than to wait until there's a foot of snow on the driveway. Ugh.

Regular maintenance does take some commitment. I'm not sure why this particular task of personal finances is so hard for me. Perhaps it seems less important than the joint finances? Perhaps I don't want to know how much I've spent at Starbucks every month? I'm a little gloomy that it's November and nothing has changed. Although... if I caught up now, that would be better than trying to catch up in March! Right? Right!

Small regular steps... that's the key... you'd think I would have learned and absorbed this by now!

How to Make Extra Work for Myself through Procrastination

There are some days where I could just kick myself. I see something that I need to do but I don't "feel" like it right now... so I don't do it and then... I end up making a tonne more work for myself. I don't know why I continue to do this... but I do. So I must a little mole hill ahead of me and at some point, it hits a magic threshold and POOF!... it turns into a mountain.

Here's the most recent example... We have an Airbnb in our basement and we ask all of the guests to please put their recycling into the blue box in the carport.

We don't want them to put it in the big blue curbside bin in the driveway because... our recycling system is complicated and most guests have absolutely no idea as to what can be recycled or not. They go by what works in their city or town. And even though we have diagrams on the fridge outlining what can and can not be recycled, inevitably, they make mistakes.

You see, our recycle (and garbage and green) bins get picked up by a huge truck with a big mechanical arm, that picks it up and then empties it into the top of the truck. And as it gets dumped out, a camera scans the items to see if there are "non-recyclable" items - like glass jars and styrofoam and filmy plastic. These are all huge no-no's as they can contaminate an entire load of recycling which then ups the rejection rate at the recycling plant for our city trucks which means that the city gets charged more and... our property taxes go up.

On top of that... you might get an emailed notice from the city saying that you had rejected items in your blue bin and to please do better. So far, we have been clean but... I don't want to start getting notices!

And so... we ask the guests to put their recyclables into the blue box in the carport. I then sort through that and place items in the appropriate bins. Some people are very optimistic as to what can get recycled... like price tags made out of cardstock. No... really too small. Anyhow, the system works for us. And for things like glass, styrofoam and filmy plastic, I bundle that up with ours and then take it to the local recycling depot. Because while they can't go into the truck... they can go into designated bins at the depot. Like I said... complicated.

Anyhow... there I am last week, and I see that the blue box in the carport is getting full and I think... I really need to sort through that... but I didn't "feel" like it. I'll do it "tomorrow". Yeah. Right. And that evening, I'm sitting in my office, with it's window overlooking the driveway and I hear cans and glass bottles hitting the bottom of a plastic bin. Noooooo.....!!!! Yesssssss... I see our current guest standing by the blue bin dumping the indoor recycling bin AND the blue box into the curbside blue bin. Nooooo... 

I guess they had more recycling in the suite and the blue box was too full for them and they... decided to just dump it all. I utter several suitable swear words. Now... I've got a bigger problem on my hands. The curbside blue bin is deep, like 3.5 feet deep and getting stuff out of there is a hassle. and it's all in a big schmoz and... bummer.

So... on a Sunday afternoon, when the guests were out... I spent a good 20 minutes rummaging through the bin, dumping stuff out on the driveway and pulling out all sorts of non-recyclables... glass jars, filmy and crispy plastic overwrap, styrofoam trays and an inordinate amount of Tim Horton's cups. While the cups are recyclable in the curbside bin, they need to be washed otherwise they contaminate the paper stuff in the bin. Same with the little yogurt containers and the margarine container and... on it goes.

Now, I would have had to pull all of those things out of the carport blue box when I sorted that... which is maybe why I procrastinated on sorting it then. Because we took all that stuff inside and ended up washing it. A lot of people would have just tossed it into the garbage bin but... we are somehow eco-nerds and sooo... we washed a good 2 dozen Timmies cups and various other plastics.

And then my partner came up with a bright idea... we have now put a large, clear, plastic garbage bag into the blue carport box as a liner. If ever the box is close to full but I don't feel like sorting it... I can just yank the bag out, toss it in the backyard and put a new bag into the box.

Hopefully one small step now avoids a much larger step later!

And perhaps I will learn the life lesson that... procrastination does NOT make the task easier or less onerous. In most cases it makes it harder and bigger and more icky! Lesson learned??? Only time will tell!

PS - We came out one morning after the recycling bin had been cleared out on collection day. There were several more unsorted, unwashed items in the bin. I pulled them out and decided to temporarily put them in the carport blue box. We then happily placed all sorts of recycling into the blue bin. And then... yesterday, a Saturday... I found that they had dumped their blue box into the blue bin AGAIN! Even though the blue box wasn't even close to being full. So... all those items that I took out... are back in there again. So much for solving procrastination!

PPS - The latest iteration of my procrastination habit saw me watching weeds grow in the front yard, thinking... "I need to go and stab those out". We are in the thick of summer, so the lawn really doesn't need mowing, the weeds needs removal. I procrastinated for a couple of weeks and when I finally did it... half of the weeds had gone to seed puffs and the job was so much harder and took much longer than if I had done it when they were small! Ugh!

Why is it so hard to "Just Start"??

I am a Master Procrastinator. There are so many tasks that I procrastinate on. "I'll do it later." Later might be in a few hours, a few days or even a few months and... dare I say it... a few years! But whyyyyy???!!!!

When I look at these tasks... the common denominator seems to be uncertainty which makes me uncomfortable. Maybe I'm not sure how to do it. Or I need to phone someone (I hate talking to people on the phone). Maybe I need more information... or think I need more information. Sometimes I just don't "feel" like it and will choose something "easier". Because some tasks are just "hard"... or rather... I think they are hard - which is an entirely different kettle of fish.

Photo by Dayne Topkin on Unsplash

Although some tasks are genuinely hard and unpleasant... like phoning the telephone company (for the xth time to tell them they are still (still!!) overcharging us by $10/month. Or at least... I think it will be hard and unpleasant based on my experience of the previous x number of calls that have been hard and unpleasant... and long!

But I digress...

A Movie for Procrastinators - Long Story Short

Don't wait. Do it Now. That's the basic message of a cute movie we watched a few weeks ago. The Australian film - Long Story Short (2021) - weaves a love story in with a bit of time travel, resulting in a wake-up call for us procrastinators.

I'm not going to spoil the movie for you but... if you get a chance to see it... it's on Netflix Canada. The basic idea is... a "I'll do it later" type of guy, Teddy, is advised by a stranger not to wait and gives him a tin can for his wedding. A can that he is told not to open for 10 years. The next morning, after his wedding, he wakes up and is completely befuddled. Everything is different... the house is fully furnished... his wife is 18 weeks pregnant. A year has flown by. And then a little while later, another year flies by. Teddy gets a fast-forward view of how his tendency to procrastinate has impacted his life, his marriage, and those of his friends. What happens at 10 years? Well, you'll have to watch the movie!

Heads up... this is not a deep movie. It only got 50% on Rotten Tomatoes from critics, although viewers gave it more like 6/10. But it did get me thinking about how life is short. Really... in the grand scheme of things, it is incredibly short. And we never know what is coming down the pipe. Will we be here in a year? Will our parents, friends, coworkers be here in a year? We don't know. We assume they will be. We assume that we have all the time in the world. But all we need to do is read the news to know that... it's a big assumption.

As a procrastinator... the words "later", "tomorrow", "next week", "next month", "next year" show up a LOT in my internal (and even external) conversations. I don't feel like. I don't want to. Now is not the right time. It's too hard. I don't know how to do it. I don't have time. Always pushing whatever it is out into the future.

As if I will have more time in the future? Seriously? If I don't have time for it now... what makes me think I will have time for it in the future? The idea that life will somehow magically calm down in the future? When the reno is done... then I'll have time? When the trip is done... then I'll have time? Nope.

Or, that somehow, it will get less hard, less confusing, less uncomfortable in the future? Whoo boy... that's a big one. Because oftentimes the opposite is the case. Things get MORE uncomfortable the longer we push them out. And they get more confusing because they are still hard... and we are filled with more uncertainty because we were so sure it would get easier but it's not and... what the heck!

And then there's the excuse that "now is not the right time"... I'm really not sure what the "right time" would look like. When I feel like it? Or I want to do it? That might have worked when I was a kid... when you could scream "I don't want to!" and you might get away with it. But as an adult... there are literally a gazillion things that we don't want to do but we actually HAVE to do. Like prepping taxes and paying taxes. Or vacuuming the house. Or taking the car in for an oil change. I mean... really... we don't HAVE to do any of those things... but then we can pay the price for those later with a busted car, the tax man on our heels and rampant health issues and allergies due to a filthy house.

There are also the bigger things... on the scale of dreams and visions of what we want to do. Things like take that trip to England. Learn Spanish. Walk the Camino. Drive across Canada. Start our own business. Write a book. Next year. When the time is right. When we have the money. When... when... when... Sometime... just not now.

I wonder sometimes what my Long Story Short movie would look like. If I jumped forward a year every 10 minutes. What would I find? Would I find regrets? Would I find unfulfilled dreams? And if I could see that... would I do anything differently now?

I just did a little exercise where I mapped out my life over the last 10 years - what was happening in April each year. And what would I be thinking as I made that jump 1 year forward... repeatedly. I think I'd get whiplash! There have been big shifts in my life. Moving cities. Changing jobs. Deaths in the family. Illness and injuries. Dreams unfulfilled. A lot of life-changing events.

At the same time, there were trips, house purchases, dreams coming to fulfilment, books being written and published. Gardens planted. Despite everything else that was going on... some dreams did still come to fruition. And for that I am grateful.

Now though... what would my next 10 years, in 1 year jumps look like? What are the dreams that I have now that... if I ended up 10 years in the future with them undone... I would wonder what the heck I had been doing!?

I guess that is the question... because we don't know how long we have. Or how long the people in our lives have. So seize the day. Seize the moment. Don't put off till tomorrow what you can do today. Tomorrow never comes.

Some Day... One Day... Tomorrow... or the Next Day...

A pilgrim on the Camino

Are you a "some day" person? You know... the "some day... one day" litany...

• Some day I'll get around to learning Spanish
• One day I'll take that upgrading course and start my own business
• Some day I'll travel to Antarctica
• One day I'll learn calligraphy
• Some day I'll read War and Peace
• One day we'll need those pavers in the garden
• Some day I'll need that jigsaw that I have, so far, only used once
• One day I'll hike the Camino
  
• I might need this... some day... one day...

Could Four Simple Questions really put an end to my Procrastination?

I'll do it later.

Man, if I had a loonie, or even a quarter, for every time that phrase passed my lips, I'd be set for life!

I don't know what it is. Maybe it's the pandemic. Maybe it's middle-age. Maybe it's the alignment of the planets. But procrastination has been rearing its ugly head with a vengeance. Sometimes it's as simple as "I don't feel like it right now. Maybe later." There's really no rhyme or reason to it and it happens with big things and with little things. I know that some things will only take a minute or two and yet... I still default to "I'll do it later."

I'm always on the hunt for an antidote to this procrastination; reading news articles and blogs to see if there is something, anything, that can make me procrastination-proof. I came across a BBC article from late last year which touted Four Keys that could help me Unlock Procrastination. Excellent! Fire away.

Sooo... the gist of the article centres on the idea of asking yourself four simple questions when you find yourself sliding down the slippery slope of procrastination:

1. How could someone successful complete the goal?
2. How would you feel if you don't do the required task?
3. What is the next immediate step you need to do?
4. If you could do one thing to achieve the goal on time, what would it be?
   

I think I'm going to have to print out these questions at some point... no wait... right now! ... OK, I'm back, that took like a minute to copy and paste into a Word doc and fill a page with five sets of the questions. I'm going to tape them to various strategic locations in the house. The bathroom mirror seems like a good place given that the sink and toilet need ongoing cleaning... and showering has become a less than daily ritual. On my office desk is another good place and on my computer monitor, because not filing papers or replying to emails immediately is a pet procrastination peeve. Maybe one in the kitchen by the patio door too, for encouraging a myriad of outdoor tasks. And one by the front door to encourage me to climb Beast Hill in the morning!

Will these four questions make a difference? Well, I already like the first question. How could someone successful complete the goal? For exercise and general fitness, I only have to think about our sports medicine guy who is an avid runner and super lean and trim. He's definitely successful in the fitness/health category. I know what he would do... he'd go up Beast Hill in the mornings, come rain or snow. I know the question says "how could someone" as opposed to "how would someone" but I'll try it this way and see where it gets me.

The second question... How would you feel if you don't do the required task?... hmmm... I know how I feel when I don't do the task... it niggles at me and sucks up brain space. I think about it at various odd moments during the day and feel guilty. Yucky feeling.

The third question could be helpful too... What is the next immediate step you need to do? When I'm standing, brushing my teeth, looking at the bathroom sink which could really use a quick wipe, I always think, "I'll do it later". Because I'll have more time later? Or I think cleaning the sink is going to take too long? Argh. But... ask the question... what is the next immediate step that I need to do? Just get out the rag from under the sink... and then the spray bottle of cleaner.. and a scrappy old tooth brush to clean around the drain. I'm sure I could give the sink and counter a quick once-over in just a couple of minutes. So focusing on the next immediate step might be just the ticket.

As for the fourth question... If you could do one thing to achieve the goal on time, what would it be?... I think the answer to that will usually be "Just get started! On something! Anything!" But... who knows, as I work with this, other things may appear.

Right then, I'm taking my printed sheet, cutting it up into strips and taping these around the house... I'll report back in a few weeks if this has made any difference to my procrastination.

Photo by Brett Jordan from Pexels

Fliriting with a new Producitvity app

I was trying out a new productivity app over the weekend... one called Workflowy. I've flirted with Workflowy before and always come back to Remember the Milk (RTM). But... you know, they are always adding tweaks and improvements sooo... I thought I'd give it another shot. This happens to me on a regular basis. I find myself swamped in a sea to To-Do's and I think that a new productivity app will save me. Sigh.

So I started copying all of my To-Do's and projects from Remember the Milk (RTM) into Workflowy... which is essentially an infinite bullet list. About about half way through this migration, I realized... "You know what... this isn't going to solve anything". I could already see that Workflowy was going to frustrate me eventually because it lacked some key features, like being able to edit a swack of things all at once. So, I stopped the process and began to think... there has to be a better way.

You see, the thing with Remember the Milk is... I have all these great intentions about what I'm going to get done in a week or over the next month, and I schedule thing accordingly. "I'll do this on Monday and this on Friday and I'll put that into next week... and I'll put that two weeks from now." Which, when you think about it, is kind of crazy because things always come up that throw my schedule out of whack and then I start snowplowing To-Do's and I get into this frantic mode where I suddenly have 20 To-Do's scheduled for one day and I'll start madly postponing things by a day or a week or two weeks or three months. Which means I then have 40 things snowplowed into next week... and so it goes.

Like I said... there has to be a better way. My little affair with Workflowy did open up one possibility. Because Workflowy lacked due dates as a feature, I added tags like #nextweek #soon #nextmonth #someday. My idea was that each Sunday, I could review all the #nextweek tags and then identify what I was going to tackle on Monday... and then do the same for the rest of the week. Keeping my focus very narrow. Then, at the end of the month, I would examine the #nextmonth tag contents and identify things for the coming week... Or something... I hadn't worked out all the details but... I think I'm going to import that idea into RTM.

You see, RTM can already pull out things that are due Today and things that are due This Week... but everything needs an actual due date (October 27 or whatever). And, as I've already mentioned, that doesn't work great for me. And, with RTM SmartLists, I can make up my own category of things that I want to tackle #ThisWeek. And maybe I'll be tagging things with actual months.... instead of #nextmonth, it'll be #November, or something like that.

Finally, my daily to-do list won't reside in RTM but rather in my notebook with a max of three to five items. I do tend to overestimate how much I can get done in a day... sooo... I'm going to try to shoot lower and then, if I have extra time, I can always revisit RTM and pull out some other items. Or not... maybe I'll just read a book... or pet the cat...

Feeling a bit Frazzled

My desk is starting to look a bit scary - I have piles of paper starting to accumulate, books that need to be read or shelved, and a variety of others odds and ends. My desk cycles through phases, kind of like the moon. I'll let stuff pile up for a few weeks and then do a bit of a cleaning/filing frenzy and get it under control again.

Which of reminds me of my email inbox which is also looking a bit plump at the moment. I currently have 32 emails in my inbox, a number of which need some sort of action on my part. I generally try to aim for Inbox Zero - keeping my email inbox empty, or close to empty... but... that's not the case right now. And, it's getting close to the magic number of 50... which is the number of emails Gmail can display on one screen. After that, older emails will be a whole screen click away... not a good scene. Out of sight, out of mind and all that.

On top of that... my nice little schedule of pre-posted blogs has run out. Not sure how that happened but I am now behind the 8-ball with no blogs in the pipeline! And not just this blog, but my other two blogs as well...

All of this contributes to a sense of frazzle... I know that a lot of this is self-imposed frazzle. I'm the one who makes the deadlines for the blogs... I'm the one who ascribes to Inbox Zero and the idea that I should reply to emails within 48 hours... I'm the one who likes a tidy desk where I can find things.

At the same time, however, all of the little unfinished projects, tasks niggle away at me. They all take up energy in my space. And they all seem weirdly insurmountable or fraught with uncertainty. Even the little things... like sending in the form for a toilet rebate to the city. It's been sitting on my desk since February... the plan is to send the form to the city. That's it. All it needs is to be put in an envelope, addressed, stamped and dropped in a community mailbox which is 1.75 minutes away. Easy? Right? Nope... you see... the application says that you need to have a receipt from the dump... landfill... transfer station... stating that the old toilet was disposed of and not resold on Kijiji or something. But... we had a plumber install the toilet and he took the old toilet away to dispose of it. Sooo... can I send in our rebate application without the piece of paper from the dump? The plumber receipt says the toilet was "disposed of"... So is that good enough? Or do I need to follow up with the plumbing (again)... and try to get something more official? Decisions, decisions... and so the rebate application sits on my desk and niggles at me. By the way... I have installed toilets before but this was a basement toilet on a tile floor and... I'm glad we went with a plumber... He was muttering to himself the whole time because the flange bolts were bent and the flange was goofy because the tiles were so thick and.... I'm glad I didn't have to deal with that headache!

And that's just one thing on my desk... Imagine the stuff that goes on in my head with all the other incomplete tasks!! Everything seems mountain-ish... even if it's only molehill-ish... but I keep reminding myself that the title of this blog is all about Small Steps... and so I sit down and stare at an empty screen and just start typing... because every blog start with one word... and every mountain gets conquered with one step.

I've been working on building a shed in the back corner of the yard... Build Shed has been on my horizon for a while but... "Build Shed" has really been a bit too mountain-ish for me. But a week ago, I went back there and just started by setting the foundation blocks for the shed posts... and then figuring out where the retaining wall blocks would go... then buying the blocks and setting them... putting the posts in the foundation blocks.. squaring them up and... on it goes... The shed wasn't built in a day but yesterday the roof panels went on and... darn it if there ain't a shed in the back corner of the yard. And all I did was a few small steps every day... because with each small step, the next step would naturally materialize and that didn't seem like such a big deal and... I'd end up out there for three hours and get a tonne of stuff done.

And I know we're in a pandemic and moods come and go... some days are better than others... some weeks are a complete wash! But... I just need to keep reminding myself to start with one small step...

Shrinking To-Do List

My To-Do list is losing weight, serious weight. I'm not sure if it's the Covid19 virus thing - stay at home as much as possible... or my new productivity method of scheduling things into my calendar but... there is some serious stuff getting done in and around our house.


Some of these things have been living on my to-do list for years. Yes, years. Some have only been there for months... but they all carry weight. Every time I looked at these incomplete projects, I'd feel a blip of guilt and a fleeting thought of "Gotta get to that"... And then I'd move on and ignore that little blip and that fleeting thought. Except... they'd still be there in the background, niggling at me. It gets exhausting after a while, carrying all that extra weight around.

But now... time seems to have expanded and with nothing better to do... I am tackling these projects and loose-ends with gusto.

Case in point... we had a wood-burning fireplace, complete with faux stone surround and hearth. FYI, this is one of those zero-clearance fireplaces (basically a metal insert), not a brick fireplace.

We decided to get an electric fireplace instead (our street does not have natural gas and it would have cost $$$$ to get the line extended).

Void left by hearth...

Sooo... we stripped off the wooden mantel, pulled down the faux stone, tore out the hearth and had a guy come in and install the electric fireplace and build us a nice stacked-stone looking fireplace surround.

Soooo much nicer! Less mess from wood and ash and so much easier to maintain and get started. Just the press of a button.

See the seam where flooring meets...

Except... removing the hearth, left a big void in the laminate flooring where the hearth had sat. We had extra laminate flooring, so I laid some perpendicular to the prevailing flooring and there it sat. It needed some floor trim to cover the three seams where old flooring met patched-in flooring. It even got the oak floor trim and stained it the right colour. But then just laid it down loosely and... we covered most of it with an area rug. But I still knew that the incomplete flooring trim was there... and it ate away at me.

Voila - finished floor trim...

Enter Covid19 and... I dug out the my little MasterCraft mitre saw and cut up some trim to finish another project (3 years old) and decided to do the floor trim as well. If I'm going to haul out the mitre saw... I might as well put it to good use!

It was a bit of a tricky business requiring 45° cuts and figuring out lengths because my trim pieces weren't long enough for the entire length of the hearth area and... well... it got done in less than half an hour.

WTF. Thirty minutes of work to complete this project versus the 15 months of niggling reminders and guilt as it sat undone. Sigh.

But... this is how my life has been the last week or so... getting a bunch of heavy-weight to-dos off of my list that have been sitting there for far tooooo long.

The First Small Step

Hi, my name's Gigi and I am a procrast-a-holic. Yep, addicted to procrastination big time. Total expert... need any advice on how to procrastinate... I'm your person! But that's a whole different blog.

Winston Churchill quote

I've been meaning to start this particular blog for months, but it always seemed way too overwhelming. What would I write about? Who would read it? What was the point? And so I procrastinated. Until yesterday.

Yesterday, I took a small step and decided to look for a url at blogspot.com that wasn't taken. I had been mulling over possible blog titles for a few weeks but they all seemed too "niche-y". "Small Steps" came to me yesterday morning - it is broad enough that I can work with it. I tweaked the subtitle a bit and... voila... we have us a blog title.

From that Small Step, it didn't take much to set up the rest of the blog - layout, theme, font, etc. Blogspot makes it pretty dummy proof and I have set up a few blogs in my time. The next Small Step was to do the same on Facebook - set up a page - get a cover pic and... it's done. Go figure... that didn't take long, did it?

I've read a tonne of productivity articles and books, hoping to find the key that would unlock the procrastination lock that clamps down on me. Realizing all the time that reading productivity articles was a form of procrastination! How's that for self-awareness. Sigh.

The thing that I keep coming back to, out of all the reams of advice thrown at me is this: narrow the project/to-do list/task down to one small task. Small, like... tiny, so small that the inertia hump is almost non-existent. Just work on it for 15 minutes... even 10... oh heck... let's call it 5 minutes. I can do 5 minutes can't I? Sure I can... particularly if I've whittled my overwhelming down to the next action... down to one small step. (Hat tip to Getting Things Done system by David Allen).

The impetus for this particular blog has been building for almost a year. I had been blogging about my Dad's journey into dementia... and the struggles that he, and I, as his caregiver, both faced. He passed away in February 2019 and inspiration for that blog slowly sputtered to a stop. So I idled in neutral for several months.

Well, not entirely true... I did get my book on my grandfather (The Spy in the Tower - the untold story of Josef Jakobs, the last person to be executed at the Tower of London) published in May 2019, followed by promo efforts. So I haven't been... like... totally procrastinating. I have been productively working on something else. But even during that time... this blog has been niggling at me. Conceived out of some forgotten interaction or article... it's been gestating inside of me. The last few weeks, it's been pushing to be born and... here we are. I'll follow this Muse and see where it leads.

So... long way of getting around to... what the heck is this blog going about? The original conception was something around climate change... of making a difference to increase the wellness of the planet, in some small way. In the last few months, however, I've embarked on my own journey to wellness. My cholesterol (the bad one) crept up and up... and my doctor was muttering about statins. Yikes! My blood sugar was also creeping up... double yikes! My weight had been creeping up for years... You get the point. I realized I was no longer 30... could not longer eat Hawkins Cheezies with impunity... could no longer take wellness for granted. It was time for a change.

Margaret Mead quote

In some ways, it's kind of like climate change... it too has been creeping into the danger zone. Scientists tell us we have crossed the line... like my cholesterol. But what to do? What the heck can I do about global climate change? I'm just one person... and it's anxiety-producing and depressing to feel that powerless.

But the more I read... the more I realize... it's not just me... it's all of us. Grass roots... we can make a difference. If we all take small steps... if we move against the flow... we can alter our future. And so... these are my small steps to wellness - for me... and for the planet. Cause, surprisingly enough... wellness for me seems to support wellness for the planet. Maybe my small steps will help you in taking your own small steps... to wellness... not just for yourself but for your community and for the planet... Join me?