Don't make any plans...
Consonant reader,
Any New Years Resolutions yet?
Of course not, and why start now of all the times in the year...
You've had all of last year to sort out that gym membership, fix that hinge, paint that door, nail that bit of lino that keeps flicking up and tripping you at the most inopportune moments or even start eating shredded wheat again and watching that rude foreign film your friends told you to watch.
Why begin to torture yourself by setting up a list of perogatives to be dealt with, you're not going to attempt them! Heaven forbid you've actaully gone and created a Week By Week hitlist of jobs to do! Christ No!.. Step into my office.. watch the cat.
Ok. Rules. ..I don't think so. You'll never stick to them anyway. If you had seriously wanted to do them, if you were really that arsed about it, you would have done them by now.
Some things we have to do.
For example: "I'm hungry. I want food."
...Time passes...
"The state of hunger has increased over time and I am still hungry. I must eat."
...More time skips along the clock face...
"I am ravenous. I need food immediately or I will start gnawing on this kettle in front of me which is, by all accounts, made of metal and inedible for a humung bean like myself."
Now, before you started salty vinegaring your favourite Morphy Richards, you would have sorted out some type of sustainance way in advance. Of course you would. Same goes for breathing, blinking and in some extreme cases, walking. This type of proactive problem solving is prevalent in our everyday lives and affects many essential activites. These are our 'immediate tasks'. They're fine, we can do them without really giving them any real effort.
However, another area of our brain tells us there are other jobs out there, jobs that need to be done which do not contain themselves within the 'essential' realm of things to do. This is where the problems begin.
These are our 'peripheral tasks', and it is these tasks that rarely show themselves in real life. They lay dormant in the recesses of our minds, waiting to come into fruition one day, hoping you will spring up from your sofa and 'get on the case'.
Sadly, we never or seldom rarely do these tasks and they continually float around in the vacuum of our imagination. After New Year shoots past we decide it is time to polish off our peripheral tasks, give them a re-think, prioritise them into order of importance and get ready to work through them one by one. We make lists, stick them on fridges or pin them on our walls or just paint them on our cars, whichever works the best.
Before we know it, its February and we're already back on the sofa. Those tasks disappear, and we are left waiting and wanting and needing to know what to eat for tea the next evening.
By their very nature, peripheral tasks are constantly elusive and will rarely see the light of day. It is only through years of effort and training can we truly unlock these thoughts with ease. For the majority of us, we are stuck with only the idea of fixing the suacepan with the wonky lid or the idea of cleaning out that drawer that seems to collect tickets, money and tissues. If you really wanted to do it, you'd have done it by now.
As the proverb says: "Don't put off tomorrow, what you can't do anyway", or something like that.
B x.
p.s. You managed to read this blog, so at least that's one chore out the way. You obviously aren't affected by everything I've just been talking about. Shit.
Any New Years Resolutions yet?
Of course not, and why start now of all the times in the year...
You've had all of last year to sort out that gym membership, fix that hinge, paint that door, nail that bit of lino that keeps flicking up and tripping you at the most inopportune moments or even start eating shredded wheat again and watching that rude foreign film your friends told you to watch.
Why begin to torture yourself by setting up a list of perogatives to be dealt with, you're not going to attempt them! Heaven forbid you've actaully gone and created a Week By Week hitlist of jobs to do! Christ No!.. Step into my office.. watch the cat.
Ok. Rules. ..I don't think so. You'll never stick to them anyway. If you had seriously wanted to do them, if you were really that arsed about it, you would have done them by now.
Some things we have to do.
For example: "I'm hungry. I want food."
...Time passes...
"The state of hunger has increased over time and I am still hungry. I must eat."
...More time skips along the clock face...
"I am ravenous. I need food immediately or I will start gnawing on this kettle in front of me which is, by all accounts, made of metal and inedible for a humung bean like myself."
Now, before you started salty vinegaring your favourite Morphy Richards, you would have sorted out some type of sustainance way in advance. Of course you would. Same goes for breathing, blinking and in some extreme cases, walking. This type of proactive problem solving is prevalent in our everyday lives and affects many essential activites. These are our 'immediate tasks'. They're fine, we can do them without really giving them any real effort.
However, another area of our brain tells us there are other jobs out there, jobs that need to be done which do not contain themselves within the 'essential' realm of things to do. This is where the problems begin.
These are our 'peripheral tasks', and it is these tasks that rarely show themselves in real life. They lay dormant in the recesses of our minds, waiting to come into fruition one day, hoping you will spring up from your sofa and 'get on the case'.
Sadly, we never or seldom rarely do these tasks and they continually float around in the vacuum of our imagination. After New Year shoots past we decide it is time to polish off our peripheral tasks, give them a re-think, prioritise them into order of importance and get ready to work through them one by one. We make lists, stick them on fridges or pin them on our walls or just paint them on our cars, whichever works the best.
Before we know it, its February and we're already back on the sofa. Those tasks disappear, and we are left waiting and wanting and needing to know what to eat for tea the next evening.
By their very nature, peripheral tasks are constantly elusive and will rarely see the light of day. It is only through years of effort and training can we truly unlock these thoughts with ease. For the majority of us, we are stuck with only the idea of fixing the suacepan with the wonky lid or the idea of cleaning out that drawer that seems to collect tickets, money and tissues. If you really wanted to do it, you'd have done it by now.
As the proverb says: "Don't put off tomorrow, what you can't do anyway", or something like that.
B x.
p.s. You managed to read this blog, so at least that's one chore out the way. You obviously aren't affected by everything I've just been talking about. Shit.