As I attempt to be an adult this is the rule I struggle with the most. It also has some very different applications in my life. First there is the day to day. See I have what I like to call grasshopper brain. It jumps for thing to thing always in motion. I look at a pile of laundry and think I need to do this and I think oh I will right after I do x. but then I come across the pile an hour later and lo and behold it still is not folded or put away! At this point I make a face at the pile and think oh yeah I need to do that but then I get distracted again until I meet my nemesis face to face later still looking innocent sitting in a laundry basket. At this point I’m in a rush to fold it and put it away. Sometimes Little tries to help by putting all the clothes I fold back into the basket or on the floor. Sometimes I’m cranky. More about the cranky later but her is this huge energy suck that put me in a cranky mood and all I had to do was just do it now. Fold it the first time. Fold it and put it away right away. Just in case you are wondering I don’t really have the laundry problem that much anymore thanks to flylady. The overall point can be applied to many things though.
There is a trickier version of this. It tries to look like Do it now but its not. While I am working on one project something else will come up. For ease of explanation let’s talk dishes. I am unloading the dishes. I am putting them away and some go on my counter because I can’t get into the cabinets they go in with the dishwasher open. As I set them there I see that there is a doll/ cell phone/ book/ bill that was left on the counter. The grasshopper part says oh lets just do this now and put it away. Only I will take the bill to my desk and then I will think I should just pay it and then I will notice that I never sent that thank you card and I should do that and then, and then and then. Before you know it, its time to cook dinner and my counter has a ton of dishes on it and the dishwasher is only half empty. This is the slow down part of my rule. I need to slow down and think. I need to finishes the task I am doing now and then move to the next one.
The long term application of the Do it now rule is rather different. Someday I want a bigger house. Someday I want to be a writer. Someday. Well why not now? Why can’t I do those things now? In the case of a larger house the why is that there just is not money in the budget to move or build on to hour home. However I can make my home larger by getting rid of stuff and organizing it better. So Do it now. Have a bigger house now by doing some deep cleaning, spring tossing work. The house certainly feels bigger and in the end that is really what I needed. Someday I want to be a writer. It is something I have wanted to be since I was a small child. Maybe that profession is in my future but right now I’m up to my elbows in family stuff. So the do it now became this blog. Some days I can’t write and some days I only write for a moment in between the park and the grocery store. Which is way more then I was writing before.
Slowing things down, thinking them through and then doing them now has really helped me feel more peaceful. As I said this is the one I struggle with the most. It is my nature to be sidetracked, but what a difference this rule makes in my life.
bookofshadowsandblessings 