Getting Sidetracked - Set Priorities
Apparently it takes 17 muscles to smile and 43 muscles to frown. Unfortunately I am a health guy and want to work my muscles more, so does this mean that I should frown?Busy day today but I am not sure I have my priorities right. The basis of good time use is prioritizing.
The day started with a short workout. Not really a priority since I have a 5K race tonight which arguably could be considered to be exercise.
Made a big breakfast for the in-laws who are in town for the long weekend. No regrets about that. They are 90 and great examples of how life can still be good in old age.
I wanted to paint the trim on my front porch. It was peeling and I worried it might rot etc if not dealt with. I should preface this by saying I do not particularly like painting since I painted more houses than I care to remember in my high school years when I had my own painting business. So perhaps this is procrastination. I am fairly fast and good at it though.
So I get ready to prepare it and notice it is dirty so get the pressure washer. Then notice the siding needs pressure washing so do that. And the sidewalk going to the door needs pressure washing. And then of course then weeds in the cracks need pulling. And the wasp nest needs taking down.
Took a break to do a bit of email. Cannot get behind there.
And while I am painting, I might as well touch up the front door and look around the rest of the house. Bottom line, a 1 1/2 hour project has taken over 3 hours and is not yet done.
The same thing can happen at work. I know this so I pay high attention to the best return on my time.
posted by Jim Estill @ 12:34 PM 
2 Comments:
The industrial managerial psychologists have a word for this, "cascading project proliferation" or "autonomous task sprawl" or "retroflexive recursive feedback entropy syndrome" or "dynamic loop psychosis".
No, I think now that I made up those terms, just to give us tools with which to handle these nearly ineffable realities of life.
This type of sleeves rolled up, jacket off, deck shoes commentary on personal life, mixed with business insight or better, philosophical questions, is my favorite type of candid blogging.
There is a power in discrete transparency, and it's euphoric.
thanks.
Will have to think about my "cascading project proliferation". Perhaps add to the Wikipedia definition :-).
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