GETTING THINGS DONE

Well, this is what I've been doing.  For the most part, it has been a lot of slow progress and some very generously apportioned time off, which can happen easily when you are setting your own deadlines.  Which is to say: when there aren't any.

And then one Friday I visited Adrienne.  I haven't known her terribly long (in the greater scheme of things) but I learned very quickly that she is a doer.  I myself am more of a thinker.  I do things, of course, but only after I've spent unnecessary fathoms of time considering these things from all angles.  Meanwhile Adrienne gets things done.

I was moaning to her about how long it was taking to get this very small room prepared to paint.  I told her about my plans to have an office, and about how much more organized my life would become once the so-called office was completed, if it ever managed to survive to that point.  I explained that all my hopes and dreams in life rested on this room.  I was being melodramatic.

"So how many more hours would it take you to finish?" she asked.

"I don't know.  A lot."  I was feeling very pessimistic about it at the time, and apparently also given to vagueness.

"What if you just worked really hard on it all next week and got it completely done?"  She laughed after saying it, because she probably thought she'd said something silly and obvious.

In a way she had, but she'd also given me the deadline that the whole drawn-out process had been lacking.  I started sanding voraciously.  Then I vacuumed the room within an inch of its life to rid it of the mess I'd been making in it for the past seven months in the name of doing things right.  When it comes right down to it, you can cut a few corners in the name of actually finishing a project.  Given the choice between perfection and completion, it turns out the second option is the only practical one.

I did work really hard on the room that will be my office, every day for a week, and it still isn't finished.  But I think now that the end is in sight, and that twinkling, not-so-far-off endpoint is what fuels the fires of productivity.

The next time you see this room, it will be completely, brilliantly, blindingly white.