CARDBOARD BOXES and FRAGMENTS
Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2019
Support comes from lots of places. The best often arrive unannounced from the most unlikely sources and people from the most unlikely places in their life, geographical location, or time of day. They show up when least expected – and, precisely when we need them.
Case in point, one recent morning – from somewhere out there on earth, far-flung; where she’s from doesn’t matter, but suffice to say – someone living a far more challenging life than me offered a little applause for something I wrote, offering a short comment, a massive gift of advice ~ she gave me a link to a phenomenal TEDtalk video I had never seen, and now treasure, presented by Tim Harford.
It runs counter to, or rather, down a different path from my ‘staying singularly focused on one thing at a time’, because I’ve felt so distracted by having too many things on the go. I am no Einstein or Darwin – but my understanding of multi-tasking has shifted.
In his TEDtalk, Tim Harford mentions Twyla Tharp’s method of not losing track of things, or forgetting them – so she uses labeled cardboard boxes for sorting things. I use cubbyholes – I have a 16 squares IKEA shelving unit, four high, four wide. Sticky notes above each one for what will be housed in that ‘box.’ Not every box gets attention every day, but nothing leaves its box unless I’ve looked at it enough times to know for certain, and then throw it away.
Some boxes gather dust, but not much dust or for long.
If I adopt the advice Harford offers, maybe I need another 16-cube shelving unit. Or perhaps just a cardboard box. One reason this rings so wholly true and valid for me is a little trick I’ve been using in my writing lately. So many things come to mind and often get scribbled on a piece of paper I will later lose or cannot read because I scribbled it in a hurry, so I’ve changed that to this process:
- ah idea arriving in my mind, I send an email to my writing desk where it gets deposited in: F- Fragments
- an email comes in about something I might want to write about or explore further – it gets filed in F-Fragments
- something I read, or write in reply to someone, strikes me as ‘worth saving’; I send it to F-Fragments
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