When Getting Things Done is hard work

I've had a project on my list for over a year and a half. It really doesn't sound like much of a project--just three items. The first is "Research how to recycle Macs". The second item is "Call to find out times for Mac recycling". The last item is "Take Macs to recyclers". The project is to clear out the last of my Mac recycling stuff. I took in a bunch of old Macs to rebuild and hand out to folks. And I did find homes for some of it. I was left with a lot of stuff that I couldn't find homes for, taking up a lot of my upstairs space. When you live in an 880 sq ft house, you need that space!

I thought about loading up the pickup, taking a day and just moving all the stuff downstairs and taking it in a single trip. Jeffrey was a bit reluctant. He doesn't handle these stairs well, having hurt his shoulder when he slipped on them a few years ago. And the truck gets poor mileage. He suggested that I take them in the car, even if it took a few trips. That sounded like a good idea. Somehow I couldn't get myself to give up a weekend day to load the car up, then drive out on a Monday to the recyclers. I could not make any progress and the item stayed on my list, month after month.

I had an idea this last week. I have vacation time coming that I need to use up. The weather has stayed fairly clear. I tried to take two days off mid-week but got turned down. When I talked it over with workforce, they suggested I take this Monday and Tuesday off. Perfect--a four day weekend! And I could still have my weekend time free. I had a number of other things planned for the time off, things that had also been hanging around on my lists.

So, I started to tackle things yesterday. Since I'm still on my regular hours, and since the recyclers is closed during lunch time, I got off to a late start. I loaded the car to the gills and headed cross town. That makes it sound so easy, as you don't get the full flavor of lugging each monitor, each computer, each printer, down those stairs and out to the car. By the time I hit the recyclers, it was too late to do a second load. I had lots of great ideas--load the car again when I got home or first thing Tuesday morning. None of that happened as I ran into some major unpleasantness getting my hair cut and the rest of the day was gone.

I tackled the job again today. Loaded up the second load, also from upstairs. It included two ancient laser printers, very heavy. This time, I managed to make pretty good time and got there as they opened up after lunch. It seemed like I might have time for a second load after all. I was pretty confident that I could do it. Jeffrey and I discussed leaving the stuff I had stored under the house, as it really wasn't in the way.So I came back for the last load, about 7 all in ones that were thankfully downstairs. I got them loaded quickly enough that I had time to dig out the Macs stored in the basement. Managed to convince myself to take in the last OS 6 machine too. Got there in plenty of time. At long last, the task is done. I feel like someone should throw a party for me.

I could have tackled a lot of easier, less important jobs. I could have checked off a lot more items. When you finally get that one hard, draining task done, it's worth a dozen of the easy ones. Figure out what it would take to make that happen.