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| LIFO
Thursday, July 7, 2022
LIFO (last in, first out) is a term I learned first in the 80’s – in an inventory/accounting context for business, whereby the ‘oldest’ in terms of cost stayed on the books, and the ‘last in’ was the ‘first out’ sold – it was an economic sleight of hand. It had considerable implications for big businesses, it was about accounting and tax and complexities for inventory management and logistics and issues I didn’t work with much, and it got left in a crevice somewhere in my brain.
But what it meant, and what lingered for me, was ‘new tasks got attacked and disposed of first’.
Now that might be a perversion of what the LIFO concept meant to bean-counters. Still, for me, it rationalized a different concept – that of dealing with today’s mail, today’s tasks, today’s phone calls, today’s emails/texts with a sense of immediacy and urgency before getting to work on yesterday’s or the lingering items/tasks from last week or last month.
To be clear, I did consistently operate with a sense of ‘most urgent things first’, and striving always for inbox-zero. The reality is that things postponed don’t get taken care of, or they get taken care of in a disproportionate relationship to their urgency and importance. But did that mean I was working on what was most important first?
When I look back at my patterns of behavior, there is much to learn, and I think much to modify.
That’s how my brain has worked for decades.
More about that another day, soon.
Time for change!
Reader feedback:
Thought provoking and heart connecting musings this morning , Mark! One of your reader’s comments about the Trudeau government on another musings also rang my bell 🔔 of Truth, phrased better than I could…thanks for the link this morning to the unexpected entrepreneur. You connect us all to each other my friend! Greatly appreciate you, SF, Lethbridge, AB
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