Personal Development for Smart People^TM

Sometimes when we’re focused on doing all the “important” stuff, the little stuff begins to gradually pile up. I’m not talking about little stuff that’s perpetually on your to do list that you never get around to. I mean the little stuff that never makes it onto your list in the first place because it’s so trivial. The door that squeaks when you close it. The 60W light bulb that should be replaced with a 100W bulb. The pictures that need to be put in a photo album. The tire on your car that needs a little more air. That unwanted gift you still have to return. The leaky faucet that needs a new washer. The fan in your PC that rattles. Your collection of web browser bookmarks that needs purging. Old software that should be uninstalled or updated. That barking dog next door that needs a good sniping (sorry, Fido).

If you look around your home and/or office, you can probably identify at least a dozen “little things” that individually aren’t important enough to bother with, but collectively they can nag at you and become distracting. Every time you hear that squeak or see that broken object, it drags your mood down just a bit. Make a list of all these little things, and dedicate a block of time to handling them in one fell swoop — if you have a lot of them, consider dedicating one full day to the process of abolishing annoyances. Fix what’s broken, oil the squeaks, return or sell or give away items you don’t want, etc. If you take the time to handle all this little stuff in one big batch, you may be surprised at how much your mood and your energy level improves.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 27th, 2005 at 9:34 pm and is filed under Motivation, Productivity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.