My past self

Image by Steve Buissinne from Pixabay

In a discussion some years ago with a friend of mine, we came to the conclusion that “if a problem seems difficult, maybe it’s because you haven’t made it difficult enough”. A simple problem will have several solutions whereas a difficult problem will have fewer solutions. Crank up the difficulty level, and you might find that an extremely difficult problem only has one single solution. This makes the problem well defined and a well-defined problem is something you can work with. It doesn’t mean that the work required will be easy, but at least you will know where you need to direct your energy to solve it. And then it becomes a matter of time and persistence.

The last week was a bit more challenging than a normal week for me. It started with my one year old son getting the winter vomiting bug, which then got my wife too. I was suddenly alone in running the household, a business and taking care of our two Labradors. Add to that several important deadlines on work reports that had to be delivered. This is a good example of a problem that is approaching the extremely difficult level. Consequently, my road ahead became very clear. Now, I just had to create a mental checklist of the required actions, prioritize and execute. It worked perfectly.

The evening between Thursday and Friday however, I started to feel sick myself. That slow crescendo of nausea that just gets worse by the hour. And I still had deadlines to meet and reports to be delivered. I could only see one way ahead. Around 22:00 in the evening I had finished all my “dad duties” and the wife, son and dogs were sleeping. I booted up my computer and finished my last report and got it delivered, because by now I knew I had a time bomb in my stomach that was about to go off in the coming hours. And just two hours later after that final report was delivered, I was turning myself inside out, completely immobilized until Saturday morning. In hindsight, I am quite satisfied with the outcome. Not too bad considering the conditions!

Here’s something I learned in the process. One of – if not the most – important persons in your life is your past self. When I became sick, I was grateful that my past self had organized and executed the work duties. I could rest instead of worrying about a missed deadline. I was grateful that my past self had organized my house so that I could find that bucket just in time when I needed it within seconds. I was grateful that my past self had done the shopping so that there was no need to leave the house for several days. The list goes on. But I could also find room for improvement. Last night I got a horrible stomach ache, and a good way to ease the pain is to use a heat-wrap pillow. I asked my wife where it was and she had no idea. So I started to look in all places in vain and in pain until I gave up and went to bed. But as a last resort I opened my bedside table and there it was, the heat-wrap pillow. My past self had put it in the only logical place to be and oddly the only place I didn’t look. Once again, thank you past self.

My lesson from this story is to de-clutter and clean up thoroughly in the future. And get rid of stuff I don’t need, that would speed up the process of looking for lost stuff tremendously. I know that minimalism, cleanliness and order create immense value in my life. I am by no means a role model when it comes to minimalism, but for sure it was a healthy reminder to see the impact it can have through the lens of the winter vomiting bug. What if I could organize my life like this every day? What if I could de-clutter and sort out all those things I have postponed for so long? I am convinced that I could literally save hours every single day. Just imagine how grateful I would be to my past self the next time the shit hits the fan, if my past self had paved the way in an optimal way.