When I really evaluate my past three weeks since retirement began, I think I've made pretty good progress. But it's never enough for an optimist like me. I am sure that I am overly optimistic--overly optimistic about the size of the job and overly optimistic about my energy to finish it.
I made a master list of what I wanted to accomplish that first week and I must admit that I have definitely made progress. It's just not as much as I had hoped, but it is progress.
Twenty years of squirreling away 'stuff' and not taking time to declutter has created major must-do tasks throughout the house. And one job leads to another. Add to that my inaccurate estimates of time required to complete the jobs on my to-do list. Even with the addition of a 20 percent slop factor, I look back at the week and wonder why I didn't get more done.
My home office, which was command-central during all those years of telecommuting, is more open and less like a woman-cave. I've emptied the file cabinet, purged files, and reorganized the workflow. I've cleaned out two closets, one of which is the linen closet, and a bathroom cabinet. But have plenty more to do.
When I worked, my practice was to touch something once. That's hard to do with projects now under way. Every one of the completed tasks has had a link to another fairly substantial and unfinished task. In reorganizing my office, for example, I consolidated all my family research into one file--but all those papers need organized, too. and that's at least a full day's job.
I still have a lot to do, but if I don't prioritize, I'll only stew in frustration.
My challenge is to focus on the task at hand and leave the related tasks to another day. Maybe next week or the week after, but not today.
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