Task substitution

Planning is a great thing, don’t you think so?

But what if you plan a task and then instead of doing it, you choose another one to fulfil.

What if…

… instead of doing laundry you cook a cake?
… instead of dusting you organize your stuff?
… instead of proofreading an important contract you call your mum?

Just because you don’t feel like doing the planned task? Not motivated enough or trying to postpone something you know you need to do but are not especially eager to fulfil? So not to waste time entirely by just being lazy and trying to calm your conscious you choose to do something useful in a different way…

For Monday I had a plan to learn German but was baking a cake instead. For yesterday I planned to write a post but was wiping the floors in our house instead. And today I wanted to read some long postponed documents but was editing some of my photos instead, eventually coming here to write the post planned for the previous day.

Here is one of the photos, by the way…

I definitely need to catch up with learning the German tomorrow, I have another lesson planned for Thursday… But what if…

All of the performed activities were useful yet substituted one another in a disorganised way and I didn’t like that. I believe in self-discipline and if I plan something, I prefer sticking to the plan if possible.

And yet there is something soothing in the awareness of the fact that as long as you have your goals in your mind and pursue them, as long as you stick to the important, you can live happily with some task substitution here and there. Wasting your time would be a much worse option.