Have you ever found that you actually got more done by doing less?
Sunday clears away the rust of the whole week.
— Joseph Addison
The Luxury of a Quiet Sunday Morning
A few weeks ago, I decided to luxuriate in Sunday morning laziness which for me translates into simultaneously reading the Sunday paper, watching the Sunday Morning Show on TV while consuming oodles of coffee along with a decadent sweet roll – all while cocooned in my warm cozy bed.
The night before I’d programmed the TV to turn itself on at 6am which is when the Sunday Morning Show usually starts. As soon as it clicked on, I headed downstairs, got my coffee, my treat-for-breakfast and the paper.
Okay, the fantasy goes off track here… the paper hadn’t arrived yet and, back upstairs with my breakfast-in-bed, I discovered that the Sunday Morning Show wouldn’t start until 7am on this particular Sunday…
An AHA-Moment
Anyway, since I had no paper and no TV show, I spent the next hour reading another chapter in Barabara Sher’s book, Live the Life You Love
…for whatever purpose you were put on this planet, it couldn’t be to organize clutter.
Boy, oh boy, do I ditto that! Sher goes on to divide clutter into seven categories for which she’s developed “tricks” to free you from its burden. Her last clutter category sparked an AHA-moment in my brain:
#7: Stuff that has to be done, but you just can’t get started…
OMG! My Wish-It-Were-Done list and all my dreaded paperwork are, in and of themselves, just clutter of another sort. (I’ll need to moodle a bit on that concept.) What’s Sher’s “trick” for getting unfinished must-do chores done?
Call your friends and create a work party to help you clean your closets or organize your receipts. Feed them, and play some music…
I DON’T ditto that! Nuh uh. Sounds like an “unfriend” gesture to me. Not gonna do that.
More moodling to do. Note to self, find a “trick” of my own for my “Stuff that must be done…” I know, I’ll just put that on my wish-it-were-done list. … SMIRK.
Later Sunday Morning
Later, when I was thinking about what I intended to “get done” that lovely day, I had another AHA-moment and realized that just as the distance from the carwash to the bridge had proven to be farther than I expected, so too, my “Git-R-Done” today list was far more demanding than I expected. I was trying to cram too much into one day’s doings. Me-in-the-early-morning was full of vigor and vim:
I have a wide-open Sunday here, I can tackle these tasks and whip them out. Let me at it!
Me-mid-morning was running low on enthusiasm and realized:
Each of these tasks is a full-day’s project. What was I thinking?
The Yes… Damn Effect Strikes Again!
I’d said “Yes” in the light of dawn to too much and by mid-morning, I was saying “Damn, why’d I think I could get this all done today???” I’d overestimated my time and energy. I’d underestimated all those little variables that inevitably slow down progress.
So I did what I often do when I hit a wall – I took a break and did Som’n Else… I went to Church at noon instead of in the evening. And wouldn’t you know it, the deacon spoke on “an easier way to get more done”. Do you sense a theme here? He was promoting weekly bible study groups and he likened them to using Duct Tape and WD-40® for “holding things together” and “greasing the skids” as we journey through our week… yeah, it’s gotta be a guy-thing. Even more moodling to do.
BTW, I did get to enjoy my luxurious Sunday morning – by the time 7am rolled around and my TV show came on, the paper had been delivered and everything was a “go”. Yay.
And, when I returned home from Church, I whittled my list down to ONE thing only and I got it done. Ditto the Yay.
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