I suppose that part of the "charm" of being alive is the fact that we can't ever really predict what's going to happen.
This morning, I set out with the best intentions of getting a lot of work done on my eBay stores.
I was about to get started, when our beloved cat Shadow knocked a box of labels onto the floor.
So I got up, picked up the labels, and I was just going to return them to the packing table but then decided that they really should go back with the office supplies where they belong. In time, one thing led to another, and I ended up spending fur hours breaking down and sorting shipping boxes, reorganizing my work desk, reorganizing my work-in-progress box, vacuuming my office and a couple of other things... without ever actually getting started on the work I had intended to do.
In fact, by the time I was ready to start it was 2:30 in the afternoon.
Around here, we have an in-house joke that ends up being some variation on saying that we just ”sorted the tool shed, painted the barn, chopped wood for winter and had a garage sale all so we could put away two books.”
I suppose you could argue that it is a very productive form of procrastination, but is that really the case? The truth is that everything I did this morning were things that needed to be done, and things that — now that they are done — will end up saving me time with pretty much everything else I do.
Back when I worked in the IT industry, we called it ”tidying up my desk so I can do my work.”
It is basically form of procrastination. Of course, most of this basically constitutes the ramblings of an untidy mind.
Every few months I experience one of these sudden bursts of energy where I feel the compulsion to clean up everything around me because I feel like I'm living in the middle of chaos… and most of that chaos is caused by the fact that I rarely have contiguous blocks of time to work on anything, so a lot of stuff gets started and then set aside...
I get distracted, fail to resume what I started... time passes, and then I start something else and it gets set aside because I don't have time to finish it and suddenly I'm sitting in a room full of loose ends where nothing has actually been completed.
Shadow knocking the labels onto the floor merely served as a small reminder that even if I had wanted to start in on doing my eBay stuff I'm not entirely sure I would have been able to find the exact inventory I might have had in mind to put up for sale.
Now I can.
So did I actually get anything done today? Well, yes I did, but it just wasn't the stuff I had envisioned to begin with. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing? The jury's out on that one...
Thanks for reading and have a great week ahead!
How about YOU? Every rationalize that "something else" needs to be done BEFORE the thing you actually intend to get done? Do you think it's a type of procratination? Or just a way to organize yourself in amore practical way? Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!
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Created at 20220516 00:22 PDT
0575/1821
I'm glad to hear that doing a bunch of side tasks on your way to the intended task isn't just reserved to me. But, like you said, the side tasks needed to get done too, so at the whole, progress made, yet it still feels a bit like procrastination.
I think most of us ramble when it comes to sitting down and doing what needs to be done. Some more than others. But when the rambling is for tidying up or cleaning the workspace, it's still rambling, but I wouldn't call it procrastination ;)
Have a productive week!