I blew my right knee out somehow – I think it was general wear and tear adding up over time, but it hurts when I put weight on it. The school run still has to be done every day though, so I’m using that as a litmus test to see how it is healing, and how recovery is going. I’ve been signed off work for two weeks because there’s no way I can walk around for eight hours, lifting up and putting down boxes, so I’ve got a bit of time to focus on creating the life I want to live. It was the perfect time to build a bookcase to facilitate the organisation of my books. Just getting them all together, all on the shelves together with their related books, has worked wonders. And this has enabled me to see them clearly, so I can get rid of those that no longer serve me or my vision. I think I’ve said this before, that periodically having a clear out and a good tidy up really helps me build positivity and thus, motivation. It’s just that first little action that sets everything in motion.
Jordan Peterson was definitely onto something when he said, “Clean up your room”. I can’t speak for anyone else but setting my living environment in order makes me less anxious and less prone to procrastination. When things are messy and I know things are in the wrong place, it bugs me. But I seldom act in that first instance. I need to visualize where the thing needs to go, and if there’s anything I need to do before the moving of that thing. Do I need to move these things first? Then move that? What about if I rearrange these, I could free up some space and move these things of a similar nature to here?
I was spinning my wheels on the bookcase for ages. It was almost a month before I made it. I was waiting for the “right time”. I didn’t feel I could construct it, clear the space where it would go, fill and organise it in the time I had available. Other thoughts crept in, such as “can I actually build this myself?”, “do I need help?”, “should I just not bother making it?”. I get intrusive thoughts like this a lot, and they contribute to my tendency to procrastinate. In the end, I made it, and didn’t have time to position it where it was going to go or empty the smaller DVD unit that it was replacing. And that was ok. The next day I emptied the DVD unit and moved the bookcase to where it was going to live and filled it roughly with some things that were going to live on it. And that was ok. It took a few more days of organising and moving around before I was happy with it. The key lesson I took away from this experience was that I can plan and plan and plan for things in my head for ages, but until I actually get started those plans are unnecessary, unneeded and absolutely detract from getting things done.
This is something that I have noticed about myself and am in the process of working on. Less time deciding where things should go, more action.
And that’s where my motivation was, hiding in a flat-packed bookcase from Argos.
