“The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.”~Sydney J. Harris, American journalist
Education is learning about yourself.
The Round of Words in 80 Days quarterly challenge continues to teach me about how I work.
1–Complete a good, polished manuscript of my memoir.
2–ePublish 1-2 shorter books
I have not made any time to work on these goals. Right now, my new #1 ROW80 goal is: List Our House. In order to do that, our 10 years worth of house has to be packed and moved temporarily into our rented storage unit so potential buyers have room to walk through the house and imagine it being their own. De-cluttering takes priority over everything else. I like to think that once the house is listed and only maintenance cleaning is needed, then I will relax and have space inside my head to play with words.
Haiku Horizons prompt #143: Row
3–Get my email Inbox below 500 emails.
4–Get my phone photos below 10,000 pictures.
As much as I want to do this, every day I press the “Mark Done” button on my daily “Delete old photos NOW” Due app reminder. Email is a distant thought. Even responding to voicemails feels an insurmountable task. Those to-dos are optional in my life these days.
5–Pack/toss/donate a whole buncha stuff.
SUCCESS! It hasn’t been easy to Let Go of my stuff, but I am doing this. It feels good to donate my clothes, books, appliances, dishware and more to a charity. I found a great website, DonateStuff.com, where a local charity organization picks up my unused items from my doorstep and turns them into useful items to others. You can go there, too; it’s nationwide. The directors are responsive to email questions and thorough with explanations. I highly recommend them when you’re ready to donate items.
However, there’s still a lot of crap in the house. Not trashy crap but fully-functional, unused clutter crap.
How does this teach me about my work habits? I can focus on multiple things at a time, but I need a running to-do list of tasks on note paper or sticky notes. I kinda knew this, but I’m seeing it in my daily actions, especially when I do my Plan With Me Happy Planner videos on my YouTube channel. Believe it or not, playing with stickers gives me focus. At least it gives me fun and funky to-do lists to play with.
I also cannot focus on multiple things at a time, hence the many to-do lists. The desire to do it all. The guilt of those unchecked checkboxes. I can forgive myself, but only so much at one time.
I tunnel-focus on the immediate, the present. Things like email and Facebook are not that. Other social outlets I miss, namely Instagram. After a week or so, posts disappear from the newsfeed. I miss out, and I miss that. That’s immediate but not present, or vice versa.
I may not be productive in my goals right now, but I am being productive in myself. The latter is more important. I can’t do the former without it.
