Xen Living 1: Do It Now

foreman-grill.jpgI subscribe to ZenHabits, a cool site on simplicity and productivity. I wrote a post this morning I thought might work there, but when I checked on the site, they don’t accept outside submissions. So. I’m gonna start doing it myself.

I’m calling this post, and others to follow, “Xen Living” because every form of the word “zen” appears to be taken. Zen Living, Zen Tiger, Zen Dog, Zen Pig … I finally gave up when I found myself about to Google “Flaming Zen Buttocks.”

Xen. Let’s say it’s pronounced the same as Zen, but have it mean something different. I picture Xen as something ballsier, more determined to make positive changes. The philosophy of Xen, as I define it, is “Don’t just complacently adapt to the life that’s presented to you. Make IT adapt to YOU.” (But don’t make a xenhole of yourself.)

Xen Living 1: Do It Now

I cooked a salmon roll for dinner on my George Foreman Grill. And then left the grill there on the counter overnight.

But in the morning, I just didn’t want to deal with cleaning the fishy oil off of it, so I let it sit another day. Hey, it was closed, so I didn’t have to look at it, and from a few feet away, I couldn’t smell it. Out of sight, out of mind. I’ll get to it, I promised.

A day later, I was busy. The day after that, I was out of the house most of the day, and when I finally got back in, I was tired. The next whole week my schedule was erratic. And the week after that.

No, I’m not a dirtbag. It was just this one thing I let hang. For three weeks.

I finally got to it this morning. The fish OIL had morphed into some sort of fish GUM, and I had to scrub and scrub and scrub, with multiple applications of dish soap and rinse water. Finally I had to get some mild cleanser and scrub it vigorously for a good ten or fifteen minutes before I was sure I’d gotten it all.

What should have taken all of three minutes that first night ended up taking close to half an hour. Not to mention the psychic drag of seeing the thing sit there day after day, undone. Every trip to the kitchen, it nagged at me, and I sacrificed several square feet of scarce counter space for the whole time it sat there.

Every day you put something off, it gets worse: Clutter makes it harder to find things. Bills grow late fees. The frayed shoelace, unreplaced, breaks at the most inconvenient time. Confusion allowed to reign in your workplace soon becomes institutionalized; eventually it’s almost impossible to straighten things out.

Things don’t get easier if you put them off. That’s not the way the world works. They get harder.

Sure, some jobs are distasteful. That’s why you have to bite into them aggressively. If you know you have to do it, and you hate the very thought of it, it’s better to have the unpleasant memory of it in your past than the unpleasant thought of it in your future.

Make a list of five things you really don’t want to do. The first one might be “Make this damned list” — because it will mean you have to face the fact that you’ve been avoiding too many things.

Pick the one you hate the most, and take a big bite: Do it.

Clean your desk. Do your taxes. Make that appointment for your physical. Deal with your email. Start tearing into your work files and rearrange them in a way that will make your job smoother. Pay the bills — or call your creditors.

When you’ve finished the first worst one, celebrate! Treat yourself to a walk in the park, a hot fudge sundae, a long restful night’s sleep.

Then wake up and start on the second.

Do it now.