Talk amongst yourselves for a bit
It's a school night and I've left it a bit late to blog anything interesting tonight. How are you all doing anyway? I know I've been a bit self absorbed for the last... well, thirty years or so if I'm honest, but I promise I've not buried my head in the sand completely - even if I've lately started to feel I've dropped off the edge of the world a little.
I remember watching a video, as part of a training session, in which Stephen Covey (I think) gave a simple demonstration of how to approach problems. He graphically illustrated it by asking a volunteer to fill a container with a number of rocks and a pile of sand. As you're probably aware, the only way to complete the task is to fill the container with rocks first, and add the sand afterwards. The moral of the story being that if you fritter your time away worrying about the smaller, less important items on your to-do list, you'll be unable to accomplish the more substantial projects later.
It's a lesson I've never quite managed to learn, despite the fact that I'm intimately acquainted with the basics of it. At the moment all I can see are the small problems, and though I know there are larger headaches out there, I'm not sure I can bring myself to acknowledge them, let alone do anything about them. After all, I find myself struggling with the sand just now. Perhaps I just need to start building sandcastles. That's got nothing to do with stretching the metaphor, by the way - I just like the idea of sitting on a sunny beach somewhere building sandcastles...
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Well, that's one way to look at it. Another is to separate into 'urgent' and 'important' categories, because sometimes it's impossible to get a proper run-up at the large, important things until you have all the urgent (or immediate) smaller things off your plate. Of course, I'm very sure that all these 'guaranteed' methods for clearing up one's life only actually work for those people who have the same temperament, right-or-left-brain-dominance, sensory loading, learning style AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, the same desired end result as the trainer involved. I agree about the sandcastles, though. We went to an international sandcastle competition a couple of weeks back with the kids, up at Harrison Hot Springs in BC. We were the only people (apart from the competitors) who actually went out onto the beach with their kids and made sandcastles. I ended up so pissed off with everyone's apathy that whenever anyone passed by, I'd shout, "Look at our sand sculptures. Aren't they wonderful?!" just to embarrass them. It worked. I had fun. I foresee a bestseller self-help book about sandcastle-building and life-enhancement in our near future, Mark, accompanied by a whirlwind public speaking tour and a spot on Oprah.
The spoof Stephen Covey illustration stats with him putting rocks and sand in which signify certain things in your life and ends with him pouring beer in, which obviously fits.
"There's always time for beer"