All of our lives contain what my father called “churn”. Churn is any and all activities which may, but more often do not, support our main life, work, or professional objective. Churn has as its net effect the taking away of time from that main principal activity. Some parts of churn are necessary: sleeping, eating, personal care and maintenance, interactions with others, paying bills, meetings, doctor’s appointments, and keeping informed. All of these are examples of churn. Some bits of churn are readily transferred into massive, meaningless, debilitating, mind numbing “activities”. Activities with as much value as the surge of wave action has to a living sessile sponge. Many more items belong on the list above because the list is endless. Churn will expand to the maximum dimensions which are available. It is like an explosive thermo-plastic foam which expands to fill all available niches of time and space. Churn is the evil weed that must be constantly be a part of our awareness, a part of our pruning action plan, lest it grow out of sight and soon dominate the whole garden. We must recognize what churn is. We must label it for what it really is. Then we must prepare for, practice, and actually turn our backs on the allures of churn. We must refuse that extra helping of fancy and oh, so appealing churn, so that we can get back to our main concern: work, writing, or making a profit. So, how do we begin to eliminate churn? Start by examining your days. Start with the little things. Do you have trouble making decisions in the morning? Eliminate the need for them. Simplify your early morning life. Build routines for your medications, if any, on awakening. Implant a short period for physical exercise. Have some breakfast so that your brain is not working on a fuel deficit to make all of this even harder than it needs to be. Second, start at the bottom up. Do you need 15 pairs of shoes? In five colors? Reduce the color selection to one or two choices. When there is only one choice, even the most dedicated quibbler has an easy, swift, choice to make. In fact, it becomes a snap judgment. “Gee. Today I think I’ll wear black.” Socks. Do you really need all those styles and colors? Reduce it to one or two. When your choices are white or black, the choosing becomes easier and much, much faster. Undergarments. Likewise eliminate having to make choices. Outer garments may be more difficult to simplify, as there are many purposes and exterior factors must be included. Exterior temperature and water content of the air are two good examples. In my case, all of my pants are shorts. Legs cut off above the knee. In my climate, on the Big Island of Hawaii, that is appropriate. I have only to choose between black and burgundy colors. People here even wear shorts to funerals. Shirts. I only have two kinds- golf shirts and Hawaiian print shirts. I don’t golf, but I’ve worn golf shirts for over thirty years. I only have to choose a shirt color. And, since I have no color sense anyway, I just close my eyes and where the hand falls… Hawaiian print shirts are for very special occasions: funerals, marriages and the similar ilk. I can take my time for those few special events. With these few examples, you can now have simplified a major part of your day. O.K., the start of your day. Keep up the good work. Can you now extend this to the hours between breakfast and noon? You probably can’t do much about your commute unless you can find a way for someone else to drive. Can you get in three hours of productive writing, or planning, before noon? If so, half of your day’s work is done. You now have eleven hours to complete your other half of your day’s work. Subtract two hours for two meals. Be generous with yourself, subtract out an hour for a nap. That happens to be a Kindergarten lesson that more of us need to relearn. Eight hours left. You would not be very human without taking time out of your day for interactions with other humans. That is the definition of being human. As a writer you must maintain your human connections, for what else will you write about? Two hours. Six hours left. Thus, very, very quickly you whittle away your day. If you approach the problem in this way, you are fighting yourself. It is the wrong approach. Get back on track. Begin with your necessary work periods. Set up a written daily time calendar. First addition: three hours for work. Then add the rest. If the dishes don’t get done today, then do them tomorrow, or pay your teenager to do them. And the carpet. And the clothes. My mother-in-law, a very hard working professional, had five very simple rules for housekeeping: put cups and glasses in the dishwasher. Pick up and stack the newspapers. Empty the ashtrays. Wipe the coffee table. Do the rest on weekends. Prioritize. What is really important? Everything is not of equal value. Some things are more important than others. What activity makes your life real? What activity gives value to your life? If you are a writer, you must have time to write. Period. If your computer is dead, as is mine at the moment, improvise. Do as I am now doing. Go primitive. Use pen and paper. As long as the flow wants to flow, get out of its way and let it flow. Don’t build dams across the flow. For a writer this leads to writer’s constipation. The words are all jammed up tightly together with no way out. You can channel the flow, keep it between banks, but let the flow flood out. Be prepared for emergencies. Have a cassette tape recorder with back-up batteries and blank tapes. You can talk in the dark. You can type later. You may find that this is your preferred method of story telling. Actually telling the story. This way you can polish out the blemishes later. Remember one of the best ways to edit your story is to read your work aloud. So start with talking. Your ear will hear the problems and you can correct it on the tape. New digital recorders can record your voice for eight hours continuously. Keep spiral notebooks, yellow pads, and plenty of writing instruments constantly at hand. Ink pens dry out. Pencils can be sharpened, if necessary with teeth, or by rubbing on a rock. Carry supplies of paper, pens and pencils in your car. Be prepared to write what you see, or have seen. Be prepared to be a writer. 03/25/06
(c) Copyright 2006: George Wallace recently published a book on religion which lashes out at nearly all of the comfortable ideas about God, the trappings of organized religion, and the priesthood. His pithy comments and suggestions for a return to a God-centered personal religion will interest everyone. This article may be freely reprinted so long as all copyright attributions, and the full content of this resource box are included. www.OhGodIsThatYou.com
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