Doris Puls

Deadline or No Deadline

What “jobs” get done first in your home and/or office? What are your priorities? Some of the obvious tasks that need to get done are the daily needs like eating, cleaning up, taking care of our children and spending time with those we love.

Then there are appointments that we make and keep whether they are for professional services or meeting a friend for lunch. All the dates we put on our calendar could be considered those with deadlines. They are on our calendar and we follow through with them.

Then there are those tasks that have no deadlines.

Opening up a closet and having things fall out on us still may not make us take the time to clean it out. Going to our storage area and spending precious minutes searching for something we need or want still may not make us spend a half day cleaning out that area.

When there is not a deadline for getting something done, it often stays as it is because we are either too busy with the “deadline” tasks or we don’t want to deal with these “jobs” that require time, effort, and decision making.

I’ve heard older people say they aren’t ever going to clean out their storage areas and know already that they are leaving it to their children to go through and deal with. There are no deadlines unless they need to move.

We just got new carpet in our living and dining rooms. This meant clearing off three huge bookshelves of “precious” books we have saved over the years. Something happens when you hold them in your hands and really ask yourself if you are ever going to read them again. I was able to part with a couple of boxes of these books.

Then there was the china cabinet. If I have not used the items, I put them in the donate box. I’m sure I will miss nothing.

Now, we need to put everything back that we want to keep. We want to eliminate a bookshelf, but I haven’t figured out where to put all of the extras that were in it so right now our hallway is still full of all the stuff we took out. The absolute deadline will be when someone wants to visit and spend the weekend. Deadlines make us do things we don’t necessarily look forward to doing.

What makes you set your priorities? Do you do what you like to do first or do you get finished with the stuff that’s not so fun so you can do the fun stuff?

Do you wait for deadlines to make you accomplish tasks or are you a self motivator?

Sometimes when I arrive at the homes of people I organize with, they are already deep into the task they called me to do. Their “deadline” was to get started before I got there which helps them to know what they want to accomplish. Some deadlines are forced on us while others we can make ourselves to get.