I am a confirmed and unadulterated procrastinator. It is easy for me to put things off –
sometimes indefinitely. Often life has
to give me a swift kick in the keister before stuff gets accomplished. Not that I never get stuff done; it’s just
that sometimes stuff is done out of grudging necessity rather than in the
spirit of desire. I am also a long-time
mistress to whim, whose fickle fascinations easily lead me astray. One minute I’m on the road to this and the
next I’m beating a path back to that. Self-discipline
is not my biggest forte.
When I do get stuff done, I feel great. Accomplishment buoys my spirit. I am happy and proud and unfailingly renew my
resolve to “keep it up.”
Then I log into Facebook and those little icons in the
sidebar beckon me to click on them.
Three hours later I’m still third in the weekly Angry Birds tournament,
but I’m also kicking ass in Zuma Blitz.
I dare say that 100 consecutive gold medals for lobbing coloured balls
from a frog’s mouth is not exactly the kind of thing one wants to be remembered
for. And no stuff has got done.
Halloween has just passed.
Halloween, my favourite festive occasion – Ever! – is considered to be
the beginning of the Turn of the Wheel (aka a New Year). It is a time to
reflect on the past and set goals for the future. Not unlike the January 1st New
Years, Halloween is the point of new beginnings and fresh starts.
And resolutions.
I’m a bit loath to call them resolutions. They are more like updates. I tend to set the same, broad goals every
year: I will not procrastinate so much,
I will not eat so much junk food, I will exercise more, I will write more, I
will paint more, I will knit more, I will spend less money on unnecessary stuff… blah, blah, blah…
More than what? I
suspect that is part of the problem.
Anything more than nothing is at least something and, thus, the goal is
complete. I can still say that I did
all these things… just not to my real satisfaction.
So I am composing a new set of goals this year. Specific.
Detailed. Realistic. With time lines.
What a great excuse to create a spreadsheet! I love spreadsheets. They make me happy. And I rarely procrastinate when one needs
making.
I’m off, then. I can
see the colour-coded matrix of plans and details developing in my mind even as
I type (badly as it seems due to the high level of excitement about making a
spreadsheet…!) and I dare not wait, lest it slip through the sieve that is my
memory. Or I get distracted by another
idea. Which is far more likely.
Oh, man, I'm much better at setting a goal for the day rather than trying to set a goal for a week or a month or a year. But I do like spreadsheets, for getting things organized - almost as much as that lovely little calendar on Yahoo!
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