Wednesday, December 2, 2009

21 Days: Being on Time

So I know I brought up this notion of changing habits in twenty-one days and then abandoned it. Well, I first tackled the habit of putting things away, which has somewhat stuck. A bit. Okay, we're all works in progress, right? This time I'm working on being on time.

I'm chronically late. I think it's worse since I had kids, but I don't recall ever being someone absolutely on time. My friends are very kind and tell me that they don't notice, but I'm sure they do. I do, and it bugs me. The problem is, as I can so far identify, that I'm a multi-tasker. A multi-multi-tasker. I can't seem to do anything unless I'm also doing something else. This means I leave a lot of half-finished projects lying around, along with a lot of half-drunk cups of coffee. I did not say I was a good multi-tasker. Thus, when I'm getting ready to go someplace, I'm also folding laundry or blogging or reorganizing the dress-up bin. I look at the clock and think: I've got just enough time to do X before I go. The last thing I'd want is to arrive early someplace and waste an extra ten minutes waiting around that I could have spent doing something else (gasp! ten minutes of just hanging around! the horror!) It's never enough time, of course, and therefore I am always late. I know I am always late, that I shouldn't try to do anything except get myself out of the house on time, but that doesn't stop me.

But I'm ready to be on time. See, I don't think that I can change being a multi-tasker--somehow I think that's a hard-wired personality fault--but I can control my multi-tasking mayhem. So twenty-one days of making it a priority to be on time, and maybe I'll learn to temper my tasking in the process. We can all say that I started yesterday for ease of counting (I failed miserably yesterday, multiple times!), but today I made it on time to both swim class and preschool pick-up, surprisingly serene. Maybe if I wasn't in a bunch about getting everywhere I might not have an ulcer, eh? I'm making it a rule that I cannot do anything in the fifteen minutes before I have to be anywhere, and I'm trying to tell myself NO-STOP-FOCUS! as vehemently as possible. It's funny, though, that I'm always harping on the kids to find their listening ears, and I seem to have misplaced by own.

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