while doing something I'd been putting off... 
When Kelly & David talked about having something in mind you'd been procrastinating on, I thought "raking the leaves in the backyard". It was PERFECT - I realized I could do it while listening to the podcast!
And I realized one of the reasons I'd been procrastinating on it is I was afraid it was a much bigger project than it turned out to be.
Last year I didn't rake any of the leaves in our enclosed backyard until they ALL had fallen off the trees and it took hours & hours & hours to do when I finally got to it. Exhausting, messy, and annoying. If I'd done it earlier in the season, I could have just raked them out the gate in the back fence. The homeowner's grounds-keeping service would have taken care of them when they got the leaves that fall in the common areas. But because I was weeks past when the leaves stopped falling, I had to bag all of them and put them at the curb for recycling. Never again!
So, after finishing that project last year, I set a recurring weekly task for this year from mid-October to mid-December to "rake leaves out of the backyard" - I figured that time-frame would cover the window of time when the leaves tend to fall off the trees here in northern Virginia. But then I didn't do anything about it. My 'thinking' brain knows that if I spend anywhere from 15-45 minutes every week during the Fall season raking the leaves out the back gate and bundling up any small branches that have fallen (to put out for recycling with the trash), it will be very do-able.
My "doing" brain sees "rake leaves" and says "OH NO!!!!! THAT IS GOING TO TAKE HOURS!!!! WHERE ARE THE CLEAR YARD-REFUSE TRASH BAGS??? IT RAINED A FEW DAYS AGO, THEY'RE GOING TO BE ALL SOGGY AND HEAVY AND MESSY. I DON'T WANT TO SPEND THE WHOLE HOLIDAY (Veteran's Day) RAKING LEAVES!!!!!!".
Great webinar! The 'thinking' brain was right.
Total time, including dealing with a lot of small branches that had come done in earlier storms -- something I'd also been procrastinating on -- was 45 minutes. And the leaves have been falling for about 2.5 weeks already. Next week should take even less time. And, for about 2 minutes, before the wind started blowing again, there was no "backlog" of leaves to rake.
When Kelly & David talked about having something in mind you'd been procrastinating on, I thought "raking the leaves in the backyard". It was PERFECT - I realized I could do it while listening to the podcast!
And I realized one of the reasons I'd been procrastinating on it is I was afraid it was a much bigger project than it turned out to be.
Last year I didn't rake any of the leaves in our enclosed backyard until they ALL had fallen off the trees and it took hours & hours & hours to do when I finally got to it. Exhausting, messy, and annoying. If I'd done it earlier in the season, I could have just raked them out the gate in the back fence. The homeowner's grounds-keeping service would have taken care of them when they got the leaves that fall in the common areas. But because I was weeks past when the leaves stopped falling, I had to bag all of them and put them at the curb for recycling. Never again!
So, after finishing that project last year, I set a recurring weekly task for this year from mid-October to mid-December to "rake leaves out of the backyard" - I figured that time-frame would cover the window of time when the leaves tend to fall off the trees here in northern Virginia. But then I didn't do anything about it. My 'thinking' brain knows that if I spend anywhere from 15-45 minutes every week during the Fall season raking the leaves out the back gate and bundling up any small branches that have fallen (to put out for recycling with the trash), it will be very do-able.
My "doing" brain sees "rake leaves" and says "OH NO!!!!! THAT IS GOING TO TAKE HOURS!!!! WHERE ARE THE CLEAR YARD-REFUSE TRASH BAGS??? IT RAINED A FEW DAYS AGO, THEY'RE GOING TO BE ALL SOGGY AND HEAVY AND MESSY. I DON'T WANT TO SPEND THE WHOLE HOLIDAY (Veteran's Day) RAKING LEAVES!!!!!!".
Great webinar! The 'thinking' brain was right.
Total time, including dealing with a lot of small branches that had come done in earlier storms -- something I'd also been procrastinating on -- was 45 minutes. And the leaves have been falling for about 2.5 weeks already. Next week should take even less time. And, for about 2 minutes, before the wind started blowing again, there was no "backlog" of leaves to rake.
But after over 20 years in Colorado where there aren't a lot of trees unless there is water, I really love all the trees & fall colors here in northern Virginia. [Plus the tree is in the neighbor's yard...]