Back in the fall I was involved in a little lunchtime book group at work. We were talking about productivity. One week the group leader gave us a sheet of paper on which to write down things that had been niggling at us. I promptly listed about 50 things, writing until I ran out of paper. I spent the next several weeks observing the outsize impact of these things on my mood: dealing with small annoyances has a big effect.
Recently on Ravelry I saw a link to this article, which argues that we're actually better at dealing with big irritants than small ones, because big irritants trigger coping mechanisms. "Ahaaaa," I said. If you've been around for a while, you might remember Weed Where You're Planted Wednesdays, in which I picked little trouble spots to smack around once a week. It's time to resurrect that strategy, I think. Want to join me?
...pause in which I consciously restrain myself from planning to Fix All The Things this week...
This week:
- Put away all of the Christmas stuff on Tuesday and vacuum up the resulting trail of needles
- Clean the grime-words from the front siding (I wrote "CLEAN ME" in the grime on the front of the house to illustrate the failure of the painters who were supposed to have power-washed it and to explain my refusal to pay for services not rendered, and then it got too cold for the painters to come back before spring)
- Smite cobwebs
- Discuss strategy for replacing speaker grille with Elwood P.
- If and only if the joy of completing these tasks is too much to contain, have a little baseboard-dusting session.
I feel better just writing it down.
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