Happy holidays and a happy new year! I know I am a day early on the happy new year thing, but I am a good week late for those who celebrate Christmas. Having said that, I still fall into the holiday range, so a general season’s greetings should do!
I am celebrating this year in Newfoundland with my family and I have discovered that being home is not conducive to computer time. It is conducive to eating vast quantities of junk and flaking out on the couch to watch home renovation shows with my parents. It is also not conducive to finishing off my draft of the Iceland book that I did such a great job on starting with NaNoWriMo last month. Even the pressure from the German has not been enough to get the draft reopened since December 1st. (German’s do not let things go easily, at least the one I adopted does not. Since I do so enjoy grand sweeping statements, I like to take my comments that are based on my limited observations of one particular person and apply them to an entire country. I do not recommend this approach at home).
I do however have to bow down to his ability to actually achieve “stuff.” Whereas I mostly talk, he mostly does. I have talked about wanting to write a book since I was 10 years old. He declared a couple of years ago in June that he “might” want to write a book and by December it was off to the printers. I have discovered his secret however, the almighty list! (Do not mock the list as I have done, this list can power you all the way around the world).
As mentioned, at first I mocked him (openly). We were travelling in South America and he would have these lists drawn up – lists about what he needed to buy in the cities, lists about who he needed to email, lists about the lists he wanted to create. And if I tried to scratch something off the list he would become rather indignant. It was his list, and he wanted the pleasure of being able to cross it off. Who would not use that as ammunition against someone?
And then I noticed he did actually get stuff done. He very rarely forgets to do something, and he never spends hours on the internet only to look up dazed and confused without any memory of the past 4 hours. Why? Because of the almighty list!
When I flick on the computer I have a vague idea that there was something somewhere that I wanted to do at some point. But first my web comics and facebook and email, and then I end up following links and my hour is gone. Patrick however has a list, a list that gives him purpose, he never has to think “what is that I wanted to do on here” he just does it. There is no “write book” but rather “finish first draft of chapter 2″ or “look up info on Iguazu Falls.” And magically it happens!
So my New Years resolution this year is to make more lists! Before I know it the book will be done and so will the massive amount of stuff we need to do for our world trip!
So my only resolution this year is to make a list of everything I want to do this week and when I flip open my laptop I check out the list first so I have direction to my computer time!
