Waiting until I "have time"

I had a revelation today. I guess it takes a lifetime to think about things from the correct perspective. I have a few things ‘hanging’. Little tasks that don’t have a deadline really, but still need to get done, so I don’t have to keep the part around and keep track of it. In summer I tell myself I’ll wait until it cools off a little. But really what I am waiting for is some time I don’t have anything else to do. Today I realized that time is a fiction I have invented in my mind. There will never be a day when I don’t have anything else to do! How funny is that? Humans have infinite ways to be self-deceived.

I have said to anyone who will listen, the most important ingredient to success in HVAC is to not let anything slip through the cracks. A lot of these things I am putting off for a time when I don’t have anything else are things I am not going to be paid for. Some of them have subtle deadlines, like ‘before heating season’, or ‘not in the rain’. September is past mid-way, soon it will start raining without a pause and that is too late to work on electricity on a roof. Some projects have become too big for me. I am not young anymore and I don’t have the energy to tackle some big projects. I turned down a customer who wanted commercial maintenance on a roof forty feet in the air. The problem was instead of putting in a stairway to the location it had two ladders with a landing half way up. Parts and tools would have to be pulled up on a rope. The builder didn’t realize how difficult they were making access to the equipment they put up there. It would have been fine with a short ladder the last 10 feet or so with stairs leading to that point. I discovered the other day that I cannot do a single pull up. Lifting my body weight with my arms is just beyond me at this point.

So, I am going to face my tasks and assign some value to them and make myself do them even though I have other things to do. Everything has some priority, and I have to increase the priority I assign to these small tasks. I refuse to say, “I didn’t have time.” The truth is I didn’t make time. All summer for the last two years I have wanted to take my windows apart to clean the moss out of the sill. Western Washington has its own lovely challenges. If you are wondering, moss grows on our cars if we don’t wash them frequently, and of course we get lots of moss on our roofs. (Another task I have to do before the rain starts again in earnest.) The problem is it is hot in the summer and removing the window is going to bring all that ‘hot’ into my much cooler house. So, I haven’t done this task. Now is the perfect time to clean the windows, but I suddenly have many other priorities.

Well, since I have just had this epiphany I need to become adept at developing a value for these tasks and letting that guide my time allocation. If you have already achieved perfection in this discipline, let me know your secret. If this is a revelation to you also, welcome to the club.