Hello again!  Over the past couple of weeks I read not one, but two books that I’ll tell you about today.  Yay!  Life is so, so busy (I hate that expression) and things encroach constantly, but I try to find tiny pockets of time to fit my reading in.  Anytime I’m standing in a line, I’m reading a book.  I also discovered audio books again.  Who knew that you can read with your ears!!  Seriously, I used to listen to audio books when I was a courier for one of our hospitals.  I loved them, and it got my fix in for reading in a BIG way.  When you spend eight hours in a car alone, you can fly through a lot of books.

 

But it does create confusion for people, when you walk into a place of business with your eyes swollen shut from crying after listening to four straight hours of The Chamber by John Grisham.  Have you read it?  It was excellent from what I remember…..Anywho, that’s not what I wanted to talk about today.

 

I discovered that now that I’m older, I most definitely cannot multitask.  This includes listening to audio books.  I have to concentrate and pay attention, else my mind wanders off and when I tune back in I have NO idea what’s going on.  I hate multitasking anyway.  I have found that if I concentrate on one thing at a time, I get it done quicker and I don’t get it wrong after three tries.  Ahem.  But some things I do are what I call brainless activities:  loading the dishwasher, changing the bed sheets, scrubbing the toilets in my house.  Things like that, that need to done, but that don’t necessarily need my brain along to accomplish them.  Those are excellent times to also “read” a book.  ANYWAY.  I “read” Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris over the past two weeks via audio book.

Let me get out all of my adjectives for this one:  This book was hilarious, heartbreaking, shocking, tender, sad, and laugh out loud funny.  I had no idea who David Sedaris was when I picked out this book.  I knew somewhere in the recesses of my brain that Hayden had one of his books that we had picked up on one of our book hauls.  But beyond that, nothing.

 

I highly recommend it on the fact alone that he narrates the audio book himself and he kind of, sort of, not really, but slightly sounds like me when he talks.  Also, I would love to meet his father because I would bet real money that David Sedaris has his Dad’s voice down pat.

 

I also read Eat That Frog! by Brian Tracy.  I wanted to read this because I hear so, SO many people reference it all the time and I’ve never been a fan of the concept.  I understand where they are coming from, but I have found that I don’t deal well with things in this way.  Example:  The point of this book is to take your most dreaded task and get it done first thing.  This is to keep you from procrastinating.  I have discovered about myself many things over the years.  One of them is that if I have a dreaded, monumental task set before me, I’m going to avoid completing it like it’s the plague. Which is the very definition of procrastination.  So I feel like, by doing things in this manner, I am absolutely setting myself up for failure from the very beginning. 

I need to break things down into manageable chunks of time, so that I can get a sense of accomplishment along the way. I feel like if I used the Eat That Frog method of doing things, it would go something like this:  I decide to clear out my closet all in one go; it takes me three days; I have a complete and utter disaster on my hands; and Denton and I would be sleeping on random piles of clothing for the duration.  Not fun for anyone.

 

But, if I do things in small manageable chunks – clear out the dresser today and just the dresser – I can get that done in a reasonable amount of time, and I can feel good about the whole thing without my bedroom looking like the Goodwill exploded, to quote my Mama.

 

I guess it all comes down to what kind of a system works for you.  I enjoyed reading the Marie Kondo books too, but I work better with the FlyLady system on a day to day basis.  Of course I’ve been decluttering my house for about six years now, but that’s another story entirely.

 

It was a good book though, full of other great tips and I’m glad that I read it. 

 

 

 

Cheaper By the Dozen by Frank B. Gilbreth and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey