I once started to read The Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People. First I got hung up on the title. Seriously? Highly effective people only have exactly seven habits? That's my problem. I have way more than seven habits.
But in the first chapter he talks about rating things on your to do list based on IMPORTANCE and URGENCY. If something is really, really important but not urgent, move it down the list. If it's really, really urgent but not important, delete it. I think most of my habits involve things that seem really urgent but are not at all important.
Then I throw in a factor for things I like to do and things I hate to do. I think the only reason I have a to-do list is to keep track of things I hate to do. If there's something I like to do, I just go ahead and do it. It never makes it onto the list. Very few of the things I like to do are either urgent or important. So I spend quite a lot of time on things that are neither urgent or important. But damn it! There ARE things that I like to do.
For example, this morning my to-do list says:
Embroider flowers - 30 weeks overdue. It was supposed to be Maggy's Christmas present
Water plants - yesterday. Okay I watered the orchids but none of the outdoor plants which really need it.
Litter boxes - today. I dunno. Maybe later. In my defense this shows up on the list every other day.
Blazers to dry cleaner - no date. But I'm sure it's been on the list for more than a year. There are reasons.
Anyway, I don't want to do any of those things. But for some reason I was looking for something in what Microsoft politely calls my "Archive." It occurred to me that I could clean up said archive a bit. There was an entry titled "blog post." Spoiler alert: if a title is not capitalized, it's probably not important. In fact this was an unfinished post dated 6/23/10. It was pretty good. So naturally I went to the blog to find out how it turned out. Apparently it never made it to the blog. But there was some pretty good stuff there, so I kept reading. And now, more than an hour later, surprise, those four things that I don't want to do are still on the to-do list. But I realized I haven't written anything there since 2021. So, I think I'll add this to the blog. Check it out: Fivewells.blogspot.com
I'm not looking for advice. Believe me I know I have trouble concentrating. You can't imagine how much advice there is out there for people who have trouble concentrating. And honestly, it's not that I have trouble. It's just that sometimes I don't want to.
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