Hello friends!
It's Monday again! This week flew by!
I spent the past week doing prep work for my brother’s wedding. Planning a wedding amidst COVID is a challenge, but it was refreshing to feel in a situation closer to what we knew as normal. The wedding was a blast! The bride and groom partied all night long, alongside family and close friends.
Here’s what I want to share this week:
This week felt like running a marathon, which I still have on my bucket list. I felt we were crunching against time to create an Instagram- perfect wedding for my brother and his wife. My brother-in-law reminded me of Parkinson’s law published in The Economist in 1955 where Parkinson says, “If you wait until the last minute, it only takes a minute to do.” Even though we spent five months planning, we prepared everything until the last two days before the wedding.
Parkinson talks about the expansion of time, stating that “Work complicates to fill the available time.” Whatever time you assign yourself for a specific task, you will fill it up with work. I don’t consider myself a “last minute” person because I like to do work with enough time before I have to crunch it down to the last minute. However, I do consider myself to be flexible and enjoy improvising.
When I go through experiences with little or no time to prepare, just like last week, I feel I am testing my organization skills. Testing to see if I will keep up with work, family time, and house chores. The reward, in the end, feels greater than if I use more time to do the same amount of tasks. And doing the same amount of tasks in less time is more efficient if managed smoothly. So the reward I perceive is larger.
Today I have a large to-do list and only have 2 hours to get things done. So I assigned this newsletter 45 minutes of my time. I hope to ship it off to you on time, and having tested Parkinson’s law as I write! I am already down 15 minutes, 30 more to go!
This past week was our first week of #writual. Every morning we meet with a group of friends from Write of Passage to support each other in the challenge of writing a short essay every weekday for the next month.
Check them out!
I would love to hear your thoughts about these!
In Essay #1, Write of Empowerment, I talk about my biggest takeaway from the course, Write of Passage.
Essay #2, The Seesaw of Language, is about using language as a form of leverage.
Technology is changing what, how, and why we read is the main idea in Essay#3, Redefining Reading.
In Essay#4 I share about a made-up Twin Multiple Name “Syndrome,” and how important it is to identify people by their name, especially twins.
When Alone time is turned into reading time, we are able to value the abundance of alone time we have had in this pandemic. In Essay#5, Alone Time, I share how valuable it can be to spend alone time reading.
I am down to 4 minutes before the alarm goes off. Parkinson’s law has proven right, I was able to write the newsletter in 45 minutes, and now have 1 hour 15 minutes more to check more items off from today’s checklist! Now I am off to write my short essay of the day #6/20. Check it out tonight in my Twitter profile.
Thank you for reading!
Stay safe, stay healthy!
Until next week!