Had the house cleaned today. Mostly just doing basic chores I'm too lazy to do myself. It supports a local family out here, though, so I know the money is going to a good cause.
I had a friend over and they pressed me to answer how it benefited me. They'd seen the house before when it wasn't so spotless and didn't voice the slightest disapproval. "Lived in" was the term used. Maybe I have a little Type A or OCD in me, but I find an unkempt home distracting. I'm too lazy to do dishes, so they pile up in the sink. I put off washing them, so they clutter the counter. I'm brilliantly innovative at putting forth excuses to get out of labor. And then that labor sticks in the back of my mind regardless of what I do instead.
Gotta drop this bad habit.
"Do two things right, not ten things fast," I tell my fencers, and we tell each other at the mine. "If you do things right, they'll get done fast." I first encountered this advice watching Sean "Day[9]" Plott coach someone playing StarCraft. Doing one thing at a time, correctly, in a methodical order, "setting and forgetting" you might say, gets more done than doing too many things at once. One thing at a time, then completely moving on.
Having those chores on the back of my mind is a huge distraction, but this manifests itself in other ways. Watching TV while eating meals. Playing games while answering the phone. Listening to a podcast while in a lecture. Our minds can't fully process more than one source at a time. Multitasking grants a facade of efficiency. I get less done when I'm doing more. I leave tasks unfinished, which lets them fester and bite me in the back later on.
One thing at a time.
I've been doing the household dishes, laundry, and cleaning since high school (although those tasks have in part shifted to my younger siblings since my enrollment in college), so those aren't a problem for me. Actually, I'm kind of looking forward to moving out just so I can have complete control over the chores. I want to be able to wash everything, and know what all the dirty things are and how they got that way (because of me in this hypothetical). I am kind of afraid that when they shift from being responsibility to household chore I'll neglect them and become a messy bachelor, since I could see myself morphing into something like that (I have a bit of an absent-minded professor side to me), but I guess I'll just have to wait and see...or find a wife before I move out, and then not have to worry about all that.
ReplyDelete