It’s the small issues that will get you
Image by Ralf Kunze from Pixabay
Yesterday, I was microwaving my son´s lunch and forgot to put the protective cover on, which resulted in me painting the inside of our microwave with baby food. Later in the evening, I was preparing dinner for the boy again while telling my wife about the ordeal and how silly I was to forget the cover and what a mess I had made that I had to clean up. While we are talking, we hear the familiar sound of hot food exploding inside a microwave. I open the oven lid and witness the inside covered in food once again. The protective cover was lying right in front of me all the time, as I was telling the story of its importance. Isn´t it interesting how strange our mind works sometimes?
When summer and vacation approaches, the workload of an engineer like me is often reminiscent of a crescendo that builds up to a climax and then suddenly stops. Maybe it is the same for most of us? This past year has been the most intense in my life, and I have never looked forward to the vacation as much as this one. Not because I don’t enjoy my work (I love it) but because I have been running close to the redline and sometimes over-revved my mental engine for a bit too long now. I have noticed that I am making small mistakes more often. This is an instant giveaway that you are pushing a bit too hard. It is time to release the throttle and let the system cool down for a couple of weeks, so that I can floor it once again in august.
By rest I don’t mean to just do nothing, you can rest while being active. But the choice of activity is crucial. I have so many small things around me, especially in my work environment, that have needed attention for months. None of these things are critical on their own, but when you superimpose tens of them simultaneously, they can have a considerably detrimental effect. A fresh reinstall of my laptop is a good example. It came shipped with a ton of bloatware from HP which is supposed to “keep my system snappy” and paradoxically, it does the complete opposite. But I haven’t dared touching the reinstall button as long as I am actively working in projects. Another thing that I can’t wait to get started, is to clean my office, install my new desk and do some proper cable management. Simply put, just make things nice and beautiful around me. Declutter. I think this is the perfect remedy for me.
If you get too stressed out by work, or anything else in that matter, I don’t think it is one of the “big” issues that will get you. It’s a million of small things accumulated. The same goes for a marriage. A heap of small issues shatters your focus whereas a big, important challenge sharpens it. The good news is that a small issue is always within your reach and very easy for you to fix. And because you have a lot of them, you can get started right away. Where to start doesn’t matter that much, as long as you get some traction. My wife had a brilliant idea last year when we were about to sell our apartment. We had to keep it nice and tidy for months, so that the real estate agent could bring potential buyers on a short notice. That is not simple feat if you have two Labradors and a baby. She wrote down a cleaning schedule on the refrigerator. Seven days with actions, divided among the rooms of the apartment. If it was Wednesday, for instance, you just looked at the refrigerator and knew what three things you had to do in the bedrooms. We did a little every day but a lot in one week. A couple of days ago, she re-created that schedule in our current home and I am witnessing massive improvement in less than a week. It’s a dead simple method really, yet so powerful.
It is truly a wonderful experience when all those small things start to produce constructive instead of destructive interference, as an acoustician would put it.