2X4 | Terre says | ENTERTAINMENT
2X4
January/17/08 08:39 PM Filed in: Terre says
Some days I think my life is an utter disaster,
bills and laundry piling up, correspondences
unanswered, the dishwasher needing to be
unloaded, again, inspections, insurance, reviews,
and for heavens sake who could bear to look at
those horrible fingernails? I find modern
urban/suburban life just so overwhelming at
times. I think anyone who’s house is immaculate,
children are polite well behaved overachievers
and who can sip martinis, politely knowing they
haven’t overdrawn their bank account, again, must
be freaks of nature, genetically superior in some
way.
Perhaps they are the pod people we feared in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I want to scream, you people are not normal! So how then, I ask, do normal people manage to keep their head above the paper, laundy, dirty dish stream of life? The answer is :One day, one dirty dish, one bill at a time.
One of the things I do with my students is teach them how to visually break down complicated subjects into simple forms. I am able to teach five and six year olds how to draw things like the Capitol Building or Chinese dragons. When children enter my classroom and see the project for the day, I often hear them exclaim,”I can’t draw that”!
But by the end of class they, and their parents are surprised by what they have accomplished. They did it one step at a time. That, I have discovered is the secret. All the time management/life coaches out there making fortunes off us hopelessly, overwhelmed, disorganized wrecks know this secret too.
I have decided that I will never be able to stem the tide of paper, dishes, laundry that fills my life. No sooner than one thing is finished it needs to be done again. So rather than cry “uncle”, crawl back in bed and pull the covers over my head, I have adopted a plan.
I call it my 2X4 plan. If I can do 2 things a day for my family, my job, my home, myself I consider I have had a successful day. I do more on some days but at least 2 things. I have found that I really do more than I thought I did. Consider cooking a meal or shopping for groceries or taking out the trash as discreet things we do. Sometimes the mundane tasks get forgotten and somehow we end up telling ourselves we never get anything done. I suppose the 2X4 plan is as much about chipping away at bigger things as much as it an affirmation that we already do a heck of a lot of things that we don’t even realize we do.
We marginalize the time spent doing certain things and then beat ourselves up for not seeming to get more done. If at the end of the day I can say I cooked a kick ass dinner and cleaned up the kitchen, returned 2 phone calls for work, cut my toenails and washed my hair, straightened up the living room and took out the recycle I can say I had a pretty successful day. I keep a list of things that need to be done. It helps me to organize and prioritize what I want to get done, but I don’t feel the need to plow through the list or lose sleep until it all gets done. And I don’t feel bad that things stay on the list for a day or week even. I have come to accept that I am a super woman not Superwoman. I’m not an overachiever but I don’t fall into the hopelessly lazy slug category either. My 2X4 plan enables me to celebrate the fact that every day I do accomplish things, maybe small, maybe few but accomplish nonetheless. Every day can be a success, its all in how you look at it. It is like the glass half empty /half full idea. Try, for one week to focus on all the things you have done and not all the things that remain undone and see how you feel about yourself.
Perhaps they are the pod people we feared in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I want to scream, you people are not normal! So how then, I ask, do normal people manage to keep their head above the paper, laundy, dirty dish stream of life? The answer is :One day, one dirty dish, one bill at a time.
One of the things I do with my students is teach them how to visually break down complicated subjects into simple forms. I am able to teach five and six year olds how to draw things like the Capitol Building or Chinese dragons. When children enter my classroom and see the project for the day, I often hear them exclaim,”I can’t draw that”!
But by the end of class they, and their parents are surprised by what they have accomplished. They did it one step at a time. That, I have discovered is the secret. All the time management/life coaches out there making fortunes off us hopelessly, overwhelmed, disorganized wrecks know this secret too.
I have decided that I will never be able to stem the tide of paper, dishes, laundry that fills my life. No sooner than one thing is finished it needs to be done again. So rather than cry “uncle”, crawl back in bed and pull the covers over my head, I have adopted a plan.
I call it my 2X4 plan. If I can do 2 things a day for my family, my job, my home, myself I consider I have had a successful day. I do more on some days but at least 2 things. I have found that I really do more than I thought I did. Consider cooking a meal or shopping for groceries or taking out the trash as discreet things we do. Sometimes the mundane tasks get forgotten and somehow we end up telling ourselves we never get anything done. I suppose the 2X4 plan is as much about chipping away at bigger things as much as it an affirmation that we already do a heck of a lot of things that we don’t even realize we do.
We marginalize the time spent doing certain things and then beat ourselves up for not seeming to get more done. If at the end of the day I can say I cooked a kick ass dinner and cleaned up the kitchen, returned 2 phone calls for work, cut my toenails and washed my hair, straightened up the living room and took out the recycle I can say I had a pretty successful day. I keep a list of things that need to be done. It helps me to organize and prioritize what I want to get done, but I don’t feel the need to plow through the list or lose sleep until it all gets done. And I don’t feel bad that things stay on the list for a day or week even. I have come to accept that I am a super woman not Superwoman. I’m not an overachiever but I don’t fall into the hopelessly lazy slug category either. My 2X4 plan enables me to celebrate the fact that every day I do accomplish things, maybe small, maybe few but accomplish nonetheless. Every day can be a success, its all in how you look at it. It is like the glass half empty /half full idea. Try, for one week to focus on all the things you have done and not all the things that remain undone and see how you feel about yourself.