Progress

OK so here is my current workplace. Have I progressed?

And the answer is ‘yes’ but probably not in the way that is immediately apparent. I mean my three chairs still in the study. Now there’s a dog bed in there (isa Mocha, still a baby!), and a green box which contains ‘machines’ that were on the floor before but have been put away in this box for now.

What has this to do with learning?

Answer, what looks like procrastination is actually a complex web of sequences that is bound up in why these items are still in my workplace at home.

So in a completely different head space but it really is connected, I came to the realisation that whilst I am a procrastinator, actually I am someone who unconsciously puts all these sequences of events together so ‘something has to happen’ before other things can happen and in the case of my workspace at home, there are about 8 major interconnected themes that have to do with work, technology, house maintenance, counselling for fragile personalities (isa Mocha!) and a few others.

The trick to progress I learned is to actively work to find the key that gets things moving for the sequence to occur.

I believe my writing is rather opaque so let me become more concrete. I’ve been struggling in the home maintenance front to fix first one and then 4 days ago another sink outflow. There was inexplicable leakage coming out the bottom of two sinks. I mean I’m not Mr. Qualified plumber and when I see this …

Oh yeah, this makes perfect sense!

… I think ‘eek!’ I better ask a professional!

The professionals were where I bought the original sink from thinking ‘well it’s their fault that this has broken’, and this has gone on for several months.

With the lockdown and with me not being able to get to the people I bought it from (not a main DIY store), I decided to reopen the bottom cupboard and have a proper look. Once I did that I isolated several places were I thought the leaks were coming from. I then went to Vinod Patel and spoke to the gentleman who mans the plumbing sections who has always helped me before. I brought the offending part in and he quickly was able to find a replacement.

Now there was some ‘tweaking’ to be had as previous plumbing work had not been done properly so pipes were not lining up properly. I had watched my brother in law use a heat gun to bend plastic pipes by heating up the plastic to the point of almost melting, certainly becoming soft.

Guess what I have in my green box? Yep a heat gun! See I did not want to put the green box completely away because I know that once it’s ‘out of sight’ the operation tends to also be ‘out of mind’. Just another set of barriers to open up the storage space to hunt out the green box with the heat gun in it.

All up I paid about $45 to fix both my sinks, it took me 2 hours once I had the correct piece identified and replaced. The ‘key’ in this case was opening up the cupboard and looking to see exactly where the leak was coming from and then, a leap of faith, taking that part to the hardware store and getting help from the sales person.

On top of that the next photo you will see of my workplace at home will not have the green box in it, or other home maintenance appliances on the floor.

Haven’t figured out how to identify the key that holds up this kind of interconnected sequence of events that prevents an action happening fast BUT I feel some sort of progress that I need to put an effort into finding a key more often.

My wife still thinks I’m just a procrastinator 🙂