Monkey Day

I have a new toy. It is a mouse that has no wire, and it has a pretty red light on the bottom that you're not suppposed to look directly at, but you do anyway because it's so pretty. I am having fun with my new toy.

But that's neither here nor there. I have an occupational time management technique I'd like to try out. Maybe some of you will find it helpful as well. I call it Monkey Day.

Okay, you know that client you have to call sometime in the next few days and he's a jerk and you're dreading it? He's a monkey. And you need to vacuum the floor of your office but you'll have to change the filter on the vacuum and you've got more important things to do but you can't stop thinking about your floor and how it needs to be vacuumed? Monkey. Those scenarios are office-oriented, because I work in an office, but most everybody has monkeys. They're not urgent, but they do have to be done eventually, and you feel a little queasy every time you think about it. Maybe for a painter it would be ceilings. I don't know. Jaimie, is it ceilings?

Anyway, today I got tired of feeling sick about the things I didn't want to do. So I did them. All of them, all at once. And now I feel so much better. So I think that once a week, I'll have a Monkey Day. I'm thinking of making mine Friday, because Fridays are a little more relaxed and I'm usually in a better mood, and because that'll give me a fresh start the next week so maybe Monday won't suck so much ass. No Monkey Mondays! Yay!

I hypothesize that two good things will come of this:
1. My backlogged projects won't pile up so high, so that even on the days that I have to deal with unpleasant tasks, there won't be so many of them.
2. I'll spend far less time worrying about things that aren't getting done, because I know exactly when they will get done. As a result, I'm not constantly beating myself up about getting them done now.

I hope this experiment works out to my benefit, but I'd also be curious as to whether it has broader applications. So if you're having monkey trouble, try it out and let me know how it goes. If it works well, I'll write a book and give you all a cut of the profits.