Two workers on the 17th floor of a building site sitting on the scaffold having lunch. Jenny opens her sandwich box and declares “Oh god not cheese again. If he makes me cheese again tomorrow I’ll throw myself off this scaffold”. Tim opens his box “Oh no Ham again. If I get ham tomorrow I’ll join you” he declares. The next day Jenny opens up the butty box, see’s cheese and throws herself off the 17 floor drop to the ground. Tim see’s ham in his and does the same. At the hospital Jenny and Tim’s partners are distraught waiting to hear if they will live. “Why didn’t Jenny just tell me she’s bored of cheese, I would have got something else”. “I don’t understand Tim’s decision at all” his wife sobbed “he makes his own sandwiches”.
Tim isn’t actually as mad as that joke implies. I run my own business and there are many times when I’m punishing myself for decisions and mistakes that I chose to make. I write a “to do” list then hate myself for allocating many arduous and demanding tasks. Then when I don’t do them I beat myself up by seriously underlining the same task on the next to do list. My appraisal, which I’ll be both running and attending, is in a few weeks and will result in me issuing myself with a final written warning. AGAIN.
Although heavy going at times I am loving Elkhart Tolle’s “The Power of NOW”. He talks about how stress free and productive we are when we just do things in the NOW rather than fret over what we have not done (the past) so what we must plan to do (the future) and then stress over both rather than just doing it and moving on in the NOW.
So I’m trialling a new system but am far too entrenched in my old ways to dispense entirely with my daily self-flagellating To Do list. Tuesdays and Thursdays I’m simply DOing. As it occurs to me (which theoretically it has to do when I put a list together) I simply go Nike i.e. just do it. As such I end up with a Done list and no reason to beat myself up or throw myself out of a 17th floor window!
