Quiz

Q: Two people are sitting at two separate tables in a bakery. Each are waiting for a friend to arrive for a lunch date. How do you tell which one is a blipper?


A: I'll give you three guesses and the first 2 don't count.


First day back to work after a glorious week of reorganizing things at home. I have discovered that using a tickler system on-line has improved my ability to work through tasks 150% more efficiently. I've been the biggest naysayer when it comes to thinking a task organizer could help. I have always believed they would just add more time. The secret is, the second you know you need to do something, open your tickler or (at home it's Outlook tasks) write one aspect of the task you need to do. Enter a date you want it done and the date you're going to do it. Enter any pertinent data, like a phone number you will need when you go back to do it, or the codes, numbers, names...whatever will save you the trouble of looking it up a second time when you're ready to do the task. Save it, walk away. No sticky notes all over the place, no lists that sit on your desk for a year before you find it again. When you have time to come back and do the task, open it, do what it says, delete it, walk away again. No mess, no fuss....and no need to rethink what you were going to do. If you leave yourself good instructions, you only have to think about it once. If you are unable to do it on the date you entered, change the date to the next available date, and walk away. The only danger here is, how will you live without all that chronic stress??? Learning a whole new way of thinking...by faith, I do believe it's possible to change things. I have never worked through a pile of work after a vacation so easily and with such delight. It worked very well to walk into my office a week later, open the ticklers, work through them, change the dates on the the few that I couldn't complete, walk away calmly at the end of the day.

The whole time I was working on it, every phone call that came in, I either did what they needed right then, or made a new tickler with tomorrow as the date, then forgot about it while I finished the tasks already on my list. I did not produce one single sticky note or piece of paper today (except the forms I filled out and turned in) and the desk is clean...still.

I'm writing this in great detail so that if I forget what I was doing, I can slap myself and come back and read up on it!!!

OH! Almost forgot to make a note of this....we trapped one of the wild cats, Caleb. He's in the crate, waiting for his tutoring...I mean neutering tomorrow! I'm not terribly excited about dealing with him tomorrow, but it's better than the alternative....