3.12.2014

synergy at work





I haven't been getting much done lately. It doesn't quite make sense because I'm currently unemployed and therefore have 'all the time in the world'. Yet aside from looking for work- which I do diligently- I lose much of the day to inane tasks (read: chores) and timesucks (read: Candy Crush and YouTube). The upside to having no job is having loads of free time but the downside if having none of the money with which to do all the fun things you wanted to do with the free time you didn't have when you were working. *breathe* So there's stress. This gets rather compounded by the piles of unfinished projects that surround me and new ideas that spring up in the middle of the night. It seemed impossible to find a starting place in the tower of tasks so... I just ignored it.

I needed change. I needed to make a list.

Today, while praying before really starting the day (though, to be honest, I had already watched 2 YouTube videos at this point), God said not to make a typical to-do list (as I'm prone to loading it with things I want/can easily do) but to get on paper the 8 million things that circle around in my head daily. Doing this would free up space in my head to actually begin doing work.

So I started. Then a tweetpal tweeted the above video. (I'd add Twitter to the list of timesucks, but...sometimes it helps...kinda/maybe). I clicked it. I won't spoil it. But it soothed me. I'm prone to overanalyzing, wanting to know all the ways a thing can go wrong before doing it (another reason why very little gets done). So to have a sort of immediate validation that I am, at present, proceeding down a viable path, eased me.

Most of the list items require no expense except time. Most of the list items wouldn't take more than a week to complete depending on how consistently I work on them. There are enough of them to keep my variety-loving self amused. These are things I've been avoiding in hopes that... they'd magically get done? I don't know. That by not doing them I was keeping my time open to do other things? That sounds crazy but when locked in my head it made sense... kinda. When the tasks had balled themselves into an indecipherable ball of impossibility, ignoring it seemed the best way. No way could I get all of those things done. And little slightly neurotic me was right. I can't get it all done at once, but marking each task down clearly (or quasi-clearly... my handwriting has gone to pot), I see the possibilities, my brain has room to work... and have already gotten 2 of things done.