Less haste

Just lately, I've been noticing my habits around tidiness. The stand-out discovery - a BFO (blinding flash of the obvious) - is that I'm most untidy when I am rushing. Or when I am concentrating on something else while I do a task.

When I focus on the matter in hand, I'm quite tidy after all.

It's when I'm not present while bringing the washing in off the line that I find pegs on the kitchen bench - where I answered the phone - and the clothes strewn across the back of the sofa - where I flung them as I was looking for a pen to take a message.

Focussing on the task doesn't make the task get done faster, but it does close off the 'ripple tasks' that flow from it. The old saying says if you haven't got enough time to do it properly, you better have enough time to fix it later. Or 'a stitch in time saves nine'.

For the past few weeks i've been free of large scale mopping up operations: the great surface recovery and the desperate putting away of the laundry pile. More speed, but less haste.

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