Strategy for Snails: Stop!

Continuing in my series of blogs on strategies for snails, today I will focus on the concept of "Stop!".

Stop?  That seems counter intuitive for a "slow" person, does it not?  However, the inability to stop doing something at the appropriate time was a tendency I observed about myself.  It was a behavior that prevented me from accomplishing the things I needed to get done.  All too often I thought, "I just want to get this one little bit done and then I can go,".  Fifteen minutes later, I was fifteen minutes late for whatever I was supposed to be doing next.

Here is a classic example.  My husband and I work at the same company.  For many years, we worked in different buildings at different locations in the city.  We commuted together and he dropped me off at, and picked me up from, my building.  At the end of the day, he would text me to let me know he was on his way to pick me up.  I would be working furiously to finish up whatever I was doing, but somehow NEVER made it out of the building at the time he arrived.  He sat and waited 10 to 15 minutes for me every night.  This made us both unhappy and got the whole evening off to a bad start.  The usual time it took him to leave his building, walk out to the car, and drive over to my building was about 15 minutes.  What I should have done was work for 5 more minutes, shut down, gather my things, and walk out to meet him in the parking lot.  In reality, there was rarely anything I worked on that couldn't have been carried over to the next morning.  Or, worst case scenario, I could have continued my work at home.

There are countless examples I can give of activities that I (and maybe you?) do beyond when I should stop.  Here are a few of those:  Reading the news, reading ANYTHING, lingering at the dinner table, watching the birds at the bird feeder, reading email, lying in bed in the morning, working on any given task once I get started, watching TV if I allow myself to get started, brushing my teeth, looking at items that are not on my list at the grocery store, picking clothes for the next day and on and on.

Just take some time to observe yourself and how long you continue to work on something when it probably could have been considered finished already, or at least at a point where you could have finished it at another time.

Try this mantra:  STOP! when you are supposed to stop.

See how that works for you for a while.  You might be surprised at some increased efficiency!

As I always say, Snails, keep moving forward!