Tag Archives: muddle

A New Week

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I don’t have to go to work for three days!

Don’t get too excited I get to go to a 7 Habits course. Do I understand that the 7 Habits are suppose to make me a more productive and organized employee? Yes.

Do I still think I’m going to want to stick a pencil in my eye? Yes.

I am going to go into it with as good an attitude as I can muster. Also I could use some reminding lately of organization and priorities. I’ve been scattered and a little muddled for months now. Perhaps this will pull me back and put me back on track. Also I get to spend time with some coworkers. It’s become so easy to hide at my desk and perhaps it’s also time to get out from my cubicle and get to know my coworkers again.

The company since I’ve been there has been through so many changes and I guess I need to figure out if it’s changed too much for me to be happy there again or if its time to move on. Either way the 7 Habits should come in handy both professionally and personally. Curious how it will go, I know there will be participation and that always takes me outside my comfort zone. Wish me luck!

One Thing At A Time!

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Coming out of a funk is always a good thing. I’m feeling much better but now I need to catch up on the stuff that wasn’t getting done while I was in a funk.

The filing, getting stuff back in order, eating right, back into a routine of exercising and writing.

My problem is that now I’m not in a funk muddle I’m in an overly ambitious muddle. I want to do too many things at once. I start something and get distracted by something else I need to do and then get distracted again and again and again. Pretty soon I’ve started a dozen things and completed nothing. Then I get confused as to what to finish and run in circles. I end up with piles all over, nothing where it should be. When the dog is here he gets tired just watching me.

I need to spray paint “ONE THING AT A TIME” on my wall. With partially completed tasks all around me I finally sat down and made a list, then I numbered the list. Things are getting done. Dishes…. check Laundry….. check Mail opened, organized and filed …. check

Things are coming together and once I’m caught up it gets easier. I have a plan by the end of the weekend I should be back on track and then I can just fall into a routine. Stop running in circles and making random piles and be able to focus more on the writing and bike riding.

One thing at a time and a plan, that’s what I need to remember.

Beware the Muddle….

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“Take an old man’s word; there’s nothing worse than a muddle in all the world. It is easy to face Death and Fate, and the things that sound so dreadful. It is on my muddles that I look back with horror – on the things that I might have avoided. We can help one another but little. I used to think I could teach young people the whole of life, but I know better now, and all my teaching of George has come down to this: beware of muddle.”

―Mr. Emerson in E.M. Fortster’s “A Room With a View”

It’s one of my favourite quotes. “Beware of muddle”. Words to live by.

How then do we ward off muddle? By making good decisions from the beginning, by not avoiding or taking the easy road when we come to a cross roads.

I find friends who are in a muddle financially tend to compound problems by continuing to use quick fixes such as more credit or consolidating debt on their mortgage and continuing to spend beyond their means. When they should be tightening up the budget and spending less instead of spending more.

There is usually no quick fix to a financial muddle, the best thing to do is regroup make a budget, a plan and learn to live on less. The thing people in a financial muddle seem to have in common is they are waiting for the big pay off, then they’ll be okay. Then they’ll be all caught up. It has been my experience that the big pay off rarely happens (DAMN! Somebody else won the lottery again!).

The slow, steady, consistent build seems to be much more effective. It takes time but one day you look at your savings account and you have money!

In relationships muddle can almost always be attributed to communication. Somewhere there was a miscommunication or somebody is assuming the other person knows something or they are avoiding saying something or they are hiding information. Muddle creates resentment, makes people question trust and starts to build walls. In a relationship, any relationship the best course is to communicate. People aren’t psychic and things in the open can be dealt with, decisions can be made by both people, understanding comes from communication.

Anytime you feel a muddle coming on it’s a good time to step back and look at the big picture. Look at where each decision will take you further down the road not just tomorrow. Might be easier today but will it create more of a muddle later?