Time poor or master procrastinator?

One Hour Challenge - 1

What is the one thing I always seem to need more of?  Money?  Well, a bit more would always be nice.  Clothing? Well, I am trying to wean myself off that particular obsession?  Food?  Well, heck no!!!  What I need more of is time…or a kick in the pants.  I will let you decide.

The truth is we do live in a time starved world where everyone is so busy, they are running from one task to another without finishing any job fully, and not being able to enjoy the process or the outcomes. 

I can’t believe how my friends with children manage to do it…I think I would be a basket case trying to manage a home, job, organising school holiday care around that job, after-school errands, kids homework projects and the rest. I can barely get myself to work – trying to choose what I’m going to wear and making my own lunch feels like a monumental task some days.  Having to do it for more than one?  Incomprehensible.

I know there are evenings I do blob, but more often than not I’m pottering around, seeing to those endless tasks that never seem to go away.  So when it comes to the less pleasant jobs, it is often easier to just walk on by/over/around/through and ignore the issue…until you have unexpected guests arrive…and then you think…why didn’t I get around to doing that?  Probably because I was busy doing something else a little more pleasant…like ironing, or vacuuming or dusting – it’s amazing how those tasks can seem so much more palatable compared to others, you know, the real fun ones like cleaning the oven, weeding the garden, cleaning out the guttering, getting around to painting those window frames (which should have been sorted some weeks ago) or facing the horror of the garage.  Suddenly scrubbing the toilet is not that bad!

I remember when I was studying, my home would be sparkling but the assignment would remain unwritten, because cleaning the fridge was way more fun than cracking a book.  Is this procrastination?  Maybe…but it certainly got the curtains washed, the blinds dusted, and the skirting boards wiped.  Maybe I am the master of putting off the most unpleasant tasks, but there comes a point when the unpleasantness of the task is outweighed by the unpleasantness of the sight of that task not done!

That’s why I came up with a challenge – that is to set myself some one hour jobs around the house that I have been procrastinating over and see what I can achieve in that time frame.  And time can be relative – an hour of your favourite programme can be so short, whereas an hour in the dentist chair can feel like a lifetime.  Maybe by cataloging the event, and putting such a short time limit on some of these tasks will hopefully make that hour fly.  And filming it means I have to do it…so you see, by reading this (or watching the clip) you are doing me a service by getting me to stop procrastinating and start tackling some of those nasty jobs.  The state of my home depends on you…but no pressure!

My first task was the outside courtyard, including my pots of colour.  Now I know I covered those a few blogs back, but I travel away a lot for work (excuses, excuses) and there was a lot of rain all over the country (not my fault/an act of mother nature) and lots of wind (stuff fell over and I didn’t pick said stuff up because I was away…and then I was tired…and then I just stopped looking at it) so my tidy courtyard from the summer had rapidly taken on the appearance of a mossy, leafy, dirty and just generally grotty area.  As this is my main entrance, it was not much of a joy to be greeted by the sad little patio, where my newish flowers had been left to drown in impractical, non-draining (but they looked so pretty when I brought them) pots.

 

 

So I visited the local hardware store and grabbed some more pots of colour – this time some poor, unsuspecting polyanthas (you may have already worked out that I missed the “green thumb” gene), grabbed out the gardening tools, changed into my gardening clothes, set the timer and went for it.

 

 

And in that time frame, I managed to give the fluffy buxus hedging a quick “de-fluff”, scrape the moss off most of the concrete tiles (using some interesting tools of the trade), spray-paint a couple of flaking pots, repot the trembling polyanthas, tidy up the herbs and generally make the area a little bit more lovable by the end of the hour.  Plus, it was a flippin’ good workout. 

 

 

 

I was pretty impressed by what I achieved in that relatively short period of time, and the amount of happiness experienced from looking at my tidier courtyard definitely outweighed the hour I put in.  The changes may be subtle (almost non-existent) to you but they made all the difference to me.  Suddenly grotty, sad and tired had transformed into clean, tidy and fresh.  How quickly did the hour go by?  It flew. 

Would I do this again?  Heck, yes…I have some window frames to paint…when I finish washing the floor!

Watch the clip...
 

https://youtu.be/BVQIlWFEpBs


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