The Mind Ain't Willing and the Flesh Ain't Either!

Last updated on March 31st, 2021 at 10:59 pm

It’s been a busy day, guys! But has it been productive? I guess that’s in the eye of the beholder. Between:

Going to Paperland to look at paper stock and discuss paper options (by the way—if anyone happens to run a paper store and has a bunch of discontinued stock they want to offload for cheap—I’m in the market! Let’s get you some cash!)
Finally getting my HP scanner to work on my Mac after about a year of trying to figure it out, which has let me clear out a whole bunch of sketches that were otherwise sitting around
Putting some more work in on potential invitation designs
Running through some ideas with a good friend of mine for some approaches he could take to some web design he’d like done
Getting more crap out of my life and into the recycling bin

Well, I guess I don’t see it as productive, but I suppose that it’s good that I actually did something, right? It definitely feels like not much has gone down today, though. Perhaps like I’m forcing the productivity out? So I guess it’s good that today’s topic is:

How to Get That Work Done—The Mind Ain’t Willing and the Flesh Ain’t Either!

So like I alluded to earlier, it’s felt a lot like a lazy Saturday. But the argument can be made that a lazy day to a quasi-workaholic might tire a true lazy person just from the sound of it. Even though I’ve written about moving forward, putting the work in to get things done and sorting out our lives before we can affect the world around us—none of us are perfect. I’m far from it. There are days where I rather not get out of bed; the ones where it might seem like my efforts at something are utterly hopeless—if you try to operate at 100% all of the time without providing your body with the resources that it needs to operate at that capacity, you will burn out! No doubt about it!
So what do we do on these days? I mean, as any good project manager can tell you, the situation will unfold in one of three ways:

The “do nothing” option, where you don’t do anything about the situation and que sera, sera—whatever will be will be…
The best possible scenario, where everything works out exactly as planned, like it all came out of a dream—let me note here that this is unlikely to happen, and the bigger the scenario, the lower the likelihood; we’re talking 0.01% occurrences here…
Any of a number of results in the spectrum with varying degrees of results—so in the context of getting things done, let’s say that you can get anything from 0.01% to 99.99% done in these cases

If you’ve been reading my blog so far, you know I like to examine case scenarios in detail, so what’ll I choose this time around. Hm. I’ve been doing a lot of work with hypothetical stuff; I think it’s time to pick something a little more tangible. Ah! There’s a basket of laundry that I told Sarah I’d do. It’s sitting by the door that goes downstairs to the washing machine; it’s currently 8:35 PM and I haven’t touched it yet. Let’s apply these three scenarios to the situation.

The Do Nothing Option

If I choose to do nothing, this means that:
I’m basically going to leave the basket there, giving the message that I don’t consider it important enough to take care of; or that I think Sarah should do it after all; or perhaps I just forgot that I was supposed to do it. This won’t end well—she won’t be impressed that I went back on my word, we’ll both be grumpy, and the laundry will still need to be taken care of. This is the worst scenario possible since nobody wins.

The Best Possible Scenario

Well, it’s about 90 minutes later and the basket’s still sitting there. In the epic best-case scenario, I would’ve put the laundry in 90 minutes ago! (Please note that right after writing this line, I felt like a bit of a douche, so I went and put the laundry in. There. Now I can avoid scenario #1!) It would be done, I could move on with my evening which would likely involve a crazily awesome party thrown primarily for my benefit and I would be presented with a magic box that is the solution to all of the problems with my life. Okay, that was a bit of an exaggeration. The box would solve almost all of my life’s problems 😊

The Somewhere In-Between Scenario

And then we have trusty, faithful option C. Perhaps I’ll only take care of one load today. Or maybe I’ll get the stuff in the washer and leave the drying until the morning. Either way, I’m part-way there. The point I’m trying to make here is that no matter what you do in Option C, you’re further ahead than you started. You gain nothing from Option A! Absolutely freakin’ nothing! Whatever you don’t do today will very much be waiting for you tomorrow! Option B’s never likely to materialize, so if you’re hedging your bets against it, might I recommend a new investment strategy? (Donations are accepted at any of our fine Finance Casey Palmer’s Not-So-Extravagant Life Foundation locations—please comment for more details 😉 ) You’re stuck with Option B as the thing you should strive for. There are 24 hours in a day; I think you should use them for something other than nothing. Sometimes it will yield results that you never expected! For instance:

If I didn’t go with Sarah to Paperland this morning, I wouldn’t have come across a Tastee bakery and got a box of extra spicy patties on the CHEAP. I love you, Markham, ON!
If I hadn’t chatted with mi amigo about web design, I wouldn’t have noticed how much more I know now than I did a month ago simply from constant study and practice
If I didn’t finally figure out how to get my old scanner up and running, I wouldn’t have been able to clean out a lot of the junk that’s been taking up room!

Don’t tell me you’re bored. Don’t tell me you don’t have the drive to do it. GET CRACKING. The only one who’s going to get you where you want to be is you!
NJ fired off a link to me yesterday—an avid reader of Penelope Trunk, NJ told me that I had to read yesterday’s post. From it, it covers these five main topics:

Geographic stereotypes are true.
Never say never.
It’s not about genes.
It’s not about values.
Emotions are contagious.

What can I tell you from this? Hang around lazy people, you too will be lazy. Find friends that believe in your ideas and drive and it’ll propel you forward. Things can happen that you least expect. You will be influenced by your environment, so make sure you’re not trapped in one that constantly gets you down. At the core of your being, you’re much like everyone else—choose to dream, but take the realistic steps towards standing out from the crowd, or that’s all you might ever be 😔

And that’s not what I want to see!

I think that’s enough soapboxing for one evening. I think I’ll go back to tonight’s menu of sketching ideas out, falling back in love with old drawings of mine and figuring out how to get rid of a wealth of stuff I don’t need. Hopefully, this will all make for a great Quest for Less post tomorrow 😂

Have a great night, everyone. I leave you with one of those old drawings. Why? Because I love it, I can, and so far, I’m the author of this blog 😏