It’s time for a little tough love in the Chaos to Order series because it’s time for me to write about discovering those things that I shouldn’t be doing.

Enter the list

When I refer back to my Chaos List, I can see some items, most of which are recurring, that shouldn’t be on this list. They’re the time-wasters, procrastination tangents, and epic responsibility-avoidance mechanisms that I either fool myself into believing are fine to do or that I don’t evaluate until later, and then hate myself for falling into.

The obvious ones

I shouldn’t be spending hours watching Amazon Prime television and movies during the day, and yet, if I look back at my weekly report on what my browser was doing, there is plenty of that.

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Social media is the bane of my daily work schedule! It’s so easy to get sucked into fruitless debates, cute animal videos, and chatting with friends who are using me as a way to avoid their own work.

That mobile phone I have isn’t going to check itself every five minutes…what if something important happens and I need to know within 10 seconds of it happening?! There was a time in my life when I absolutely needed to remain that up-to-date on world events because the job(s) I had at the time might very well be impacted, and have an impact themselves. I haven’t had one of those jobs in almost a decade, yet the habit is still there, and mobile phones are designed to keep us picking them up, even when we don’t really need to. Honestly, nothing is so pressing in my life that I need to have a constant connection to the planet like that.

That, too?

Getting up and walking to the fridge and back, even if I don’t take anything from it. A weird quirk of mine that I’ve noticed is that if there is a break in my concentration while doing something, my habit is to walk away from it. My home is small, so my trip is usually to look in the refrigerator, notice that nothing has changed since the last time I looked and that I don’t really want anything in it,  and then walk back to what I was doing. Then I have to mentally regain focus and get back to the task at hand. It’s fucking annoying, and I don’t know how to prevent it.

The right task, wrong time

I also noticed that on my Chaos List, there were some tasks that I did at odd times, probably to avoid boring or loathsome tasks. In the next part of this series, I’m going to talk about organizing tasks on a more granular level than on that monthly calendar I’ve already written about. I’ll be referring to something inspired from a friend of mine, the Pinterest Rockstar/Goddess herself, Cara Chace, called The Perfect Work Week. It’s a template I’m using to ensure that my week stays on track and productive as it can.