Getting things done or…Don’t turn on the computer!

Every age, every new development brings ways to spend ones time – and not necessarily in a productive or intelligent way.

As a child my nose was always in a book except for the rare occasions where my mother caught me and made me 1) do some chore or 2) go outside and play. I wasn’t much better at school always hurrying to finish the assigned task so that I could take my book out of my desk and hiding it on my lap (or at least I thought that I was hiding: it was a rude awakening when I did my student teaching to realize that all those years, all those teachers, everyone could easily see the entire class – even the back row – and what the students were doing).

Although I kept my nose in books – and still do – other ages brought other ways of “wasting” time: the mini solitary deck of cards with which I whiled away the odd 10 minutes; the bundle of knitting that was my constant companion for many years; the 500 – 1000 piece puzzles that took days of not weeks to complete; the piles of magazines without which I feel insecure – all of these served to spend time, sometimes way too much time, although I am not sure that cleaning the house etc. would have been a more productive use of that time. Then there were the first handheld games: Game Boy and Tetris (swiped from my older son when he was at school: good thing that neither of my sons really read my blog!). And although I never got into video games, I will be the first to acknowledge that my use of computer games is not any better.  I can’t even claim that by playing Letter Garden I am improving my mind (most of the words I “make” are of the three or four letter variety – occasionally I’ll find a “write”, “exit” or “hazard”, but it’s rare.)  Are the bursting bubbles type improving my hand/eye coordination? Probably not even. Sigh.

So this morning in a fit of “I have to be productive today” I didn’t turn on the computer until 10:30. It’s amazing the amount of things I got accomplished: swept the laundry room, including picking up after the cats; cleaned the tops of all the cupboards therein and put away or otherwise disposed of many items; vacuumed my office and dusted the tops of everything and – drumroll – the best of all sorted through my guarantees file and threw away (as in actually tossed) 52 items!

I am patting myself on the back, but it will all be downhill from here on in as I have turned the computer back on and even if I do get some tasks done that involve having to have the computer on, I can guarantee that at least an hour (or two) of the day will be spent playing computer games, I mean, really how industrious can one be on a Monday?

Guarantees to be thrown out

reward for work done