Down the toilet?
Over the toilet.
The edge of the lid of the toilet sit was cracked, and while it didn't hamper function, it didn't look great and it was in the downstairs bathroom the guests use. It has been a couple months already, but since I was dropping my wife to work this morning and it isn't far from a hardware store, I dropped in to pick up a new lid.
Soft-close, of course.
I don't know why anyone would have anything other than soft-close these days.
But since I was there, I also bought a new ball thuja (plant) as one of ours from last year didn't survive the winter. And then on the way home, picked up some cheap plants to pot by the door and out in the garden pots - little pink carnations for the yard and daisies for by the door, to go with the dahlias on the other side, which will likely perform poorly due to lack of sunlight. Oh well...
So, once home Puusti watched with interest as I changed the toilet seat cover, which took longer than I thought it would and require tools. And then I took Puusti outside so he could observe my potting skills, which is far too rough and carefree - but things seem to grow. The weather was nice, so it was pretty enjoyable and at least in my head, it makes a difference to get done.
The toilet seat has annoyed me for too long.
The Nike "just do it" slogan should be incorporated for all the many tasks that aren't too hard to do, but we procrastinate over so they mount up and weigh us down. Getting those tasks done, no matter how small, gives us the sense of progress and when we are consistently knocking them off the to-do list, rather than mounting up as a weight, the load gets visibly lighter and we feel we can breathe again.
I was talking to someone today who has had a lot on their plate for a long time and they are starting to feel the pressure of it all weighing them down. In those kinds of cases, I think it can be valuable to stop for a moment and take a break instead. Go out to the movies, have a dinner and an ice cream down at the beach, or pack for a picnic in the park and just sit on a blanket on the grass. The tasks will still be waiting for later, but it is better to release the pressure before it blows a valve.
Having said that though, I reckon most people (not this person) avoid doing the things they know they are going to have to do anyway, and it just makes their lives worse. Constantly putting off tasks creates another kind of pressure, and they build up and up until the mountain of things to do is insurmountable. And what I find is, the people who put things off are far more likely to burn out than the people who have lots of things to do, but are consistently doing them. I have seen it in the workplace often - it isn't the busiest people who burn out, it is the disorganised people who avoid the things they don't enjoy doing. It isn't just the stress of the tasks either, as I reckon there is a type of guilt that comes with it.
And I have been guilty of it too.
But despite my many challenges over the years, I have been continuously trying to improve my consistency at doing things. I was very consistent at not doing things before, but I am trying to learn from the errors of my ways. I have got myself into difficulty far more often for what I haven't done, than what I have done. And I think there is a large hidden debt that we don't fully appreciate in what we don't do, because it feels like a counterfactual. But non-activity is an activity still. Avoidance is doing something else, or doing nothing, when we know we should be doing something.
What should you have done today, but didn't?
Why didn't you?
We all have excuses and justifications for not doing what we know we should, but I wonder if under scrutiny, how many of those reasons would hold up. I suspect that to try to stop that feeling of guilt, we tell ourselves lies as to why we shouldn't feel guilty. Most of the time though, we could have done something to improve our situation. What that is depends on circumstance, but we tend to make a lot of decisions out of convenience.
Have you ever thought what convenience is better than the inconvenient? Raise a child by convenience? Study by convenience? Choose a partner by convenience? Eat by convenience?
When is convenience better?
Working through an endless list of tasks is inconvenient, but having a growing list of tasks to do and the repercussions of not doing anything, is less convenient again.
Taraz
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