Saturday, April 10, 2010

Getting stuff done

It's not much after 9am. David has gone to work and I have done the week's grocery shopping, have today's washing on the line, the dishwasher is emptied, animals fed, beds made, a couple of blog entries before that and...the day is mine. I can read, paint, garden, walk the dog, study horse form, do a jigsaw with Sam.

This post was prompted by a remark the checkout girl made to me earlier.(She's a student who has recently been studying in Leeds reading politics and art history). She said she wished her parents were as organised as I am. That they would do a proper shop instead of buying in dribs and drabs and that she had offered to do it for them but to no avail. I was surprised at her frustration but it caused me to reflect on why I am the way I am.

It goes back to a teacher. She was deputy principal and an utter battle-axe. She would yank an illegal piece of jewellery off your neck if she caught sight of it. But she was very kind to me when I was in the sick bay - a monthly unpleasant occurrence.

One day in assembly she told us that people regarded her as very efficient. "But you know what?" she said. "I am not. I am lazy. But I like to get what needs to be done out of the way so I can do what I want to do, which includes lazing around if I want to."

In a practical sense that is the philosophy I live by. It was bloody good advice.

4 comments:

Oswald Bastable said...

All progress is made by the lazy man want to make his life easier, by finding a better way to get what needs doing done!

homepaddock said...

Frustration over time wasted by being disorganised motivates me to be (a bit) more organised.

pdm said...

Your teacher must have been either my 3rd form Bookkeeping teacher or my 5th and 6th form English Teacher. Both were battleaxes but boy did I learn from them.

Neither attracted my attention enough for me to wonder what they were like outside of school.

Anonymous said...

Did you choose to paint? I paint at night, when the kids are in bed, this works a treat. Yep, it's all about organisation, but long sunny days are for the beach...