There’s this theory–maybe I would even call it a method. The idea is that you write a grid with a hundred blocks on it and each of those blocks represents ten minutes of your time in a day. When I first saw this I thought, everything would be so much easier in base ten. Instead of 60 minutes an hour would represent 100. That isn’t how it is, so this method means what you’re really doing is taking two hours and allowing yourself twenty minutes to relax.
In that time you’re supposed to write down all of the things you need to do. Ten minutes to sort and start the laundry. Ten minutes to pay your bills, and so on. When tasks are longer than 10 they get a second box and so on. It is a handy method to sort out your day and ultimately your life–if you can stick to it. I’ve tried to stick to a lot of methods. Most recently I tried to assess my own times and tasks by creating a checklist of things I have to do each day and checking them off as completed. This lasted two weeks and then sporadically for another two weeks until we wound up here, with me blogging about what went wrong.
So what did go wrong? I simply did not follow through. I have a hard time with organization right up until the point that my back is against the wall. This is how I wound up needing to write as much as I have to as fast as I have to over these next two months in order to make a deadline that should never have been a problem in the first place. What’s mad is that every time I get to the point where I am working and grinding out the words at this rate, I feel amazing about it and about life in general. Then the work ends and I go back into what is effectively hibernation. I keep telling myself if the work doesn’t stop then I will keep going and keep getting better.
The truth is that I need to force myself to stay in mode and, like with that grid, only take a small portion of the time off and get right back to it. If I stop for too long it is tough to get going again. It gets tougher and takes longer each time. Maybe this is in fact what getting old looks like.