Written on the giant white board in my office is the phrase "Do Things Right Away." It seems like a self-explanatory, pretty straight forward thing. Right?
How do I wish that I always lived by those words.
Over the New Year weekend, we decided to repaint our living room, dining room, and office. While everyone was out reveling the new year we were pouring paint into trays and navigating boxes of nick-knacks, books, and collections of the stuffs of our lives. On one hand I love to party in the new year, on the other, it was really wonderful to spend time working together on the house.
We haven't done much to our office since we moved into the house nearly seven years ago. The space gets a clean-up for a party, or when guests come over... but a deep-cleanse hasn't really happened. There's good reason for that.
It scares the crap out of me.
I hate being confronted with how much I blatantly violate my own "Do Things Right Away" rule. So now it's going to take weeks to put the office back together as I sift through the piles of paperwork and files that piled up over the years. Some of it will just end up in the garbage without analysis or proper filing. Some of it will bring back good memories and cause me to pause in happy reflection. And some of it will be tedious.
Sometimes we are too busy to be able to properly do things right away, or we have to put out another fire before we can get to a "right away." But taking the time, carving out the moments to take care of an item, or yourself, is the most important. That fire can rage on for a few minutes while you take the time to do something right away that will save a future fire from igniting. And then you don't have to beat yourself up so much when you go to do that deep office cleanse again.