It’s a strange fact of life that some of the things we can’t be bothered to take a few minutes to deal with actually end up wasting more of our time if we don’t do them. Here are a few examples:
Servicing / Maintenance
It may seem like a pain or an expense to get a boiler or a car serviced, or to cover that piece of garden furniture, or put some protective paint on a fence; but its a fact that if you look after things, repairs will be quicker and less expensive.
Filing
You know what it’s like – you finish a job and shove the paperwork in a pile to ‘put away later’ – or you buy something and toss the receipt on a table. The pile builds, the table gets more clutttered; then you suddently realise, a week later, that you need that receipt. You check your wallet; not there – your receipt filing (if you have such a thing); no bananas. Finally, after rooting twice through the filing pile on your desk you find the coffee stained receipt on your kitchen table being used as a magazine bookmark.
30 minutes wasted, when you could have filed it away in 30 seconds.
Sorting / Tidying
There you are happily nestled in your piles of unsorted stuff, when the unthinkable happens – Auntie Doris phones and asks if she can pop in for a cup of tea in twenty minutes.
PANIC STATIONS!!!
You pick up everything that’s hiding the floor and shove it in the first available drawer or cupboard, glug some toilet cleaner down the bowl, plump up the sofa cushions and quickly vacuum the worst of the crunchy bits out of the carpet with seconds to spare. Auntie Doris sits down with her cuppa wondering why you’re sweating profusely and using a pair of underpants as a tea cosy.
If you have a home for all your items, put things away as soon as you’ve finished with them and spend five or ten minutes a week dusting and vacuuming a room, you will never have to tidy for Auntie Doris again; and, more importantly, you won’t waste time after her visit searching for something that got shoved in a random drawer without thinking.
If any of the above things feel like a pain and a waste of time to do, you need to change your mindset. Realise that a small investment in your time now will save you time and money and reduce the chances of problems and stress later.
