I am reading a book given to me by my boss. It’s entitled Getting Things Done. I have come to recognize that I am in need of such a book (and apparently, unfortunately, my boss has come to recognize the same thing).
I am behind in all of my to-do lists. At work: fifty unactioned emails, a presentation due at the end of the week that I haven’t yet begun to write. In the house: the dinner dishes unwashed, the door of the study closed upon a mountain of clutter, and my mother is coming for dinner tomorrow. In my personal business: contact lenses about to expire and I haven’t even ordered the new ones yet, and the banking was late last month, and I haven’t done my expenses either. In my relationships: I owe someone a thank-you note, someone else a birthday call, someone else a reciprocal dinner invite. In my larger objectives: good God, I’m thirty-three years old and I haven’t even got an agent, let alone sold a book.
This is rather new to me. I am beginning to get a sense of myself as a person who doesn’t always get things done.
And yet I am generally considered efficient. Colleagues praise my responsiveness and my organization. I can always find my passport. I am rarely late. I bring the right files to meetings and I remember which books my mother wants to borrow when I go to visit.
Have I entered a phase in which my personal effectiveness has diminished? Have my coping strategies been defeated? Have my responsibilities finally become too numerous for me to handle? Would they be too numerous for someone else?
Since I don’t know the answer, I hope this book can teach me something. And I hope I haven’t procrastinated too terribly on something that will bite me in the ass this week. It has a bit of that feel.
Luckily, the one thing I always wish to do–even when I’m avoiding everything else–is write.
