Monday, November 14, 2016

See Dirt, Clean Dirt

I once knew a person who had a remarkably clean house, and at the time, I was going through a depression and had been struggling with the condition of mine. Her husband was a house builder, and they had a fairly large house. They had two small kids, and she had a busy life. I asked her, what was her approach? Did she do the housework on a schedule? Did she hire someone to clean? She told me no, she used a "see dirt, clean dirt" approach. I've adopted that approach ever since.

Let's translate this to work styles in general. Some people do well with long to-do lists and are very productive when they have everything planned out on a schedule. I am not one of those people, however. I have much more of what I've now come to call an "ad hoc" work style. I used to get frozen in place by daunting mountains of work tasks ahead of me. Nowadays, I combine "see task, do task" together with another thing I once also learned from a friend, which is "most things take five minutes," and I'm amazed at how much can get done.

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