Between Dreaming and Doing

Sometimes my to-do list paralyzes me.  I mean, when I look at it (or just look around my house and scan the unfinished projects) I freeze and become completely unproductive.  I feel locked-in, sort of like Jean-Dominique Bauby, a la The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.  That may be an inappropriate example, first because one should not make light of a young man suffering a massive stroke which leaves his body completely paralyzed except for his left eye; second because Bauby actually wrote The Diving Bell and the Butterfly in his “locked-in” state, with the help of a gifted transcriber and unparalleled patience, and we can all agree that that accomplishment represents the opposite of unproductiveness. 

Usually my lingering between dreaming about getting something done and actually getting it done is due to over-thinking the “how” of completing all my tasks.  I try to figure out the order that is most efficient so that all the most important and worthy tasks will get done, and then I tweak and tweak it until I become totally bored and decide that catching up on “Glee” episodes is an important and worthy task as well – after all, I have to clear space on the DVR to make room for things like the Royal Wedding, and Hoarders.  So at the end of the day, my waiting to begin until I have determined how to get the MOST done results in getting NOTHING done, except re-fueling my mild-to-moderate crush on Matthew Morrison. 

So I’m reinstating my fifteen-minute rule.  I set the timer for fifteen minutes, walk around my house, and work on anything I pass that irritates me – crumbs on the stove top, pile of laundry awaiting folding, fingerprints on the TV.  I have to work furiously and without interruption for fifteen minutes, and when the timer goes off, I take a little break and then begin again.  The point is to remove the thinking from the equation – just to react to what I see that needs to be done.  (For some reason, a timer is good motivation to accomplish things mindlessly.  Works for preschoolers too).    

My writing process could use a version of the fifteen-minute rule as well.  My standard MO is to refrain from typing anything until I have a story I can’t wait to share, or one or two sentences that I love and around which I can craft a passable post, and then to sit down at my laptop.  But I think I’ll be a much more prolific blogger if I stop thinking so much and just sit down and write.  If what comes out is terrible, there’s “delete.”  When it comes down to it, in twenty years when my girls and I are flipping through a binder of wrinkled, printed-out pages of The Chronicles of Ingham, our favorite posts will be the ones that capture everyday boredom.  So I’m going to try turning off my brain.  Click.