If Life's So Great, How Come I'm Stuck Here Doing 20 Jobs Already?

 

Does this ring a bell? You’ve got a list of things you absolutely must really gosh do, a list you would hmm like to do, and a list of things which it would be nice to do, some time. And they’re all piled up somewhere in your mental filing cabinet, taunting you with their state of undone-ness. Is that even a word?

I’m finding that this syndrome is getting worse as time passes, I call it the Just in Time lifestyle, and I’m beginning to wonder if I’m not the only one who’s a sufferer. The problem is we’re being asked to do so much more now, as a natural part of our everyday existence. 

Life's Easy Pops, Just Get A Butler!
Sure, if you’re a native fisherman on a tropical island you’re probably good, but for those of us tied to this madhouse Western lifestyle (tm), things are definitely getting a little crazy. Just look at a few of the challenges we now face as a part of a routine.

Want to book an airline ticket? I'll have to fire up the browser, grab a search engine, come up with the right search term after a test or two, compare prices, check times, availability, mentally calculate whether it’s worth getting up at 2am to save $10 and so on. Say an hour, 90 minutes of intense concentration. And that's only the outward leg. 

Back in the day? Call your local travel agent, explain the requirement and put the phone down. 7 minutes tops. Need to pay my energy bill right now? Once more, either hop online or fire up the smartphone. In the latter case, I have to fire up the app - having spent a good 10 minutes trying and failing to remember the password - xKdjd)83&*du3. Thank goodness for Post-It Notes right? Then select the camera, walk down to my meter, take a blurry shot of the dial, check it, try again, repeat until a decent shot without the flash glare is taken. Hunt around for the Send button, click and exit. Time? Maybe 30 minutes or so (depending on the ambient light score). 

Old school? Open the paper bill, write a cheque, pop it in the prepaid, and put it on the table to post when I next go out. Around 7 minutes. Less if the pen is not at the bottom of the drawer. And so it goes on.

 

Did We Say More Leisure Time? Really?
We’re not consumers any more, we’re produsumers. We not only buy stuff, we also create it, manage it, support it, fix it and much more. We don’t buy a wardrobe any more, we buy a flat pack, then spend a day trying to work out why there are three screws left over, and how the heck did the hinge get assembled upside down anyway? We spend hours trying to log on to a local authority website to pay a parking fine, only to get repeated messages from some remote server in Turkmenistan, or wherever the Parking Dept is hosting, saying that our cookies are corrupted and could we please try again later. 

We don’t pop out to the shops, we sit on the couch surfing Amazon, eBay and Alibaba for hours on end to save $2 on the shirt we need for the wedding next week. Only to send it back when the color turns out to be eight shades off, making you look like the membership secretary of your local chapter of the Bee Gees fan club. It’s no wonder that with all this extra work, our daily to-do list has gotten so big we’re forced to employ gigantic mental holding patterns.  Rather like an endless procession of Air Malta 747s circling Dubai airport.

I now find myself running through a rigorous mental exercise at the beginning of each day, assigning an instant priority score to each task due to be completed. Then ignoring them. Just because I can. Hey, in a world where I’m losing control of my time, it’s good to be able to say ‘up yours’, right? It’s a tiny example of something I can control at least. 

Just Stop Whining, The Engines Are Already Switched Off!
Right now I know I should go out back and mow the lawn. It’s been on a mental holding pattern for a few days now. But I’m writing this instead. A really satisfying ‘stuff you’ to an increasingly uncaring universe. The grass can wait. Actually so can the haircut, watering the plants, fixing the vacuum cleaner and the other six things up there in my personal airspace. I'm losing control though, and pretty soon I guess there's going to an almighty crunch as my virtual mental cloud implodes under the weight of too much flying metal. 

But for now I mostly only react to Defcon 7 stuff, and keep the other stuff circling - no matter how important they ‘probably are' - in an indefinite holding pattern above my head. Am I mixing metaphors too much here? Have I already lost you? Are you thinking about the rear number plate lamp you should be fixing on your car instead of reading this? Join the club! 

So is there a solution to this problem? In manufacturing JIT was, and probably still is, considered a huge boon to efficiency. If you can keep your raw material storage down to a minimum, and your production belt optimally tuned, you’re good to profit. Is that the same for our mental and active states as individuals? I have to say it doesn’t feel very profitable. It feels like I’m just succumbing to a new disease, where procrastination is the virus. 

I know my friends have it too, because they give off signals. Defcon 7 emails I send out to them are replied to instantly, but if my message goes unanswered for longer than 3 days I know it’s in a holding pattern somewhere above Cranium City where my friend sits. I hope they’re enjoying the experience as much as I am. OK, time to shuffle around a few more tasks in the brainbox, and get back to surfing Steemit.