It’s that time
of year again – the time of resolutions and good intentions. Be more organized. Get rid of clutter. Start the year with a clean slate. Clear your to-do list. Be more productive. I’m always fired up with enthusiasm at the
beginning of January, ready to take on the world. I’m going to have my house running like
clockwork, my family organised and ready for every eventually. And I
do – for about three weeks. Then all my
good intentions start to return to comfortable familiarity and I find myself
doing things at the last minute, muttering about why I’m always the last to
find out about anything.
I mentioned
this to a friend recently who recommended that I should listen to a recording
of a motivational speaker talking about being more productive. How can I possibly be more productive, I
wondered, I’m busy through every moment of the day! But listening to him talking (whilst doing
about four other things) made me actually sit down and stop for a moment and
think. Most of us are busy all of the
time, but we’re not actually that productive.
How much do we actually achieve in a day?
The basis of
the talk (and here I must confess that I’ve only heard about half of it – there
have been too many other things to do recently, including a small celebration
that you may have heard of called Christmas!) is that we should do less things,
do them more often and get better at them.
Do less things? But there are so many things that I need to
do every day – how can I possibly do less of them? The world is such a big place, there are so
many experiences, so many things to try, places to go, people to see – surely
we need to pack more into our lives,
not less?
I asked my
husband about this. “I’ve been telling
you about this for years,” he said (although I pretended not to know what he
meant). “By doing too many things at once you end up not doing anything very
well at all and just wear yourself out and feel as if you haven’t achieved
anything when you might actually have done a lot. Doing less actually gives you more time.”
I have to be
honest, he has been telling me this for years.
He often comes home to find me doing half-a-dozen things at once, and
yes, I do get frustrated at the end of the day when I feel as if I’ve spent the
day in a rush and haven’t finished everything I wanted to do. So perhaps it’s time to listen to the words
and take some notice. Take the time to
work out what’s really important to me and focus on that, not worry about all
the experiences I think I might be missing out on.
Do less things, do them more often, get better at them. As resolutions go, it’s not too bad.
That's a good idea, but the idea of prioritising which things I want to focus on. ?. Well, it just isn't going to happen really. I'm just about able to set some goals, but that might be as far as I get most days. One day I will be organised. One day I'll have my priorities set and a plan to follow. ... but that day isn't here yet. Have you any plans for how to achieve your resolution?
ReplyDeleteActually, when it comes down to it there are only a handful of priorities for me, revolving around my family, my home and my work. I've realised that it's OK for me to focus on those without feeling that I have to try to save the world before lunchtime as well, and I'm going to try very hard to do just one thing at once before moving onto the next thing. Who's to say it will last any longer than January, but the thought of it makes me feel calm and I think that's a good place to start! xx
DeleteI totally agree with everything in your post, but it is to hard sometimes just to stop and decide what to do first and what to put on waiting. .. Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteLluisa xx
The prioritising is hard, I agree, and if nothing else this year hopefully I'll get better at doing that! xx
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