Outside, the breeze gently wafts through the treetops as I write this column and peer out my window. The sky is a beautiful blue, and I would be tempted to take a walk around my apartment complex if I did not know that the delicate wind I am observing now would mercilessly pierce through my clothes and chill this native Mississippian to the bone.
My coworkers who have lived in areas higher in latitude may crack a smile reading those words because they’ve experienced days that have been more brutally cold. But considering my weather app is telling me that it feels like 21 degrees Fahrenheit beyond my front door, I am keenly aware that we’re still in the winter season.
Nevertheless, as I sit here wrapped in my Kirby (the Nintendo character) blanket and sipping warm tea from my “Back in my day, we had nine planets” mug, I have decided to do a little spring cleaning. Decluttering the desk in my home office feels satisfying, but decluttering my To-Do list is the real struggle, one that I know is necessary.
Generally speaking, I am an organized person. For crying out loud, I create spreadsheets to keep track of my hobbies in my off hours to relax! But I—and I’m sure I’m not alone in this—can sometimes fall prey to the practice of positive procrastination, which is when a person avoids a particular task they know they need to accomplish by choosing to be productive in other regards.
As a student, I would habitually put off that one paper I knew was coming up and instead work on other academic projects until the deadline was around the corner. You can’t spell procrastinate without Nate, people.
My years in college taught me methods to deal with procrastination, though, and I have carried those with me in my professional career. That said, every now and then, I realize that I have spent so much time being productive in one facet of my job that I let tasks in another area pile up. That’s where this professional “spring cleaning” comes into play, and believe me when I tell you, it’s so relieving to have the weight of those tasks I delayed off my shoulders.
Using online tools such as Basecamp and Google Suite, I have organized story tips by county, catalogued active assignments, and made shortcuts to drafts awaiting first and second edits. The work I have put in this week and will continue to put in next week is going to help me stay ahead, which is important in my work as an editor.
Sometimes, I don’t realize how much stress I’ve let accumulate by allowing the to-do pile to linger and grow. As it turns out, I feel much freer after doing what I know I should have done a week or two ago—go figure!
We have enough going on in our lives; we don’t need to add to our mental fatigue by avoiding those little tasks that we know need doing. File your taxes. Apply for financial aid. Renew your passport. Mail those thank-you cards. Book that wedding venue.
Whatever the tasks that’ve been patiently waiting for your attention, give yourself the gift of peace and tackle them, even if it’s just one at a time instead of all at once. We can all use that reprieve.
This MFP Voices opinion essay does not necessarily represent the views of the Mississippi Free Press, its staff or board members. To submit an opinion for the MFP Voices section, send up to 1,200 words and sources fact-checking the included information to voices@mississippifreepress.org. We welcome a wide variety of viewpoints.
