A Bold New Idea

As I laid in bed a few minutes ago, unable to sleep before work like usual, I came up with an idea. Usually the reason I cannot sleep during these times, I think, is because way too many things are running through my head. Most of them are just dumb little things like “Oh I need to get my car registered in California” and “Hmm, how should I do this or that particular thing at work?” I think this stems from the fact that I generally cannot concentrate on things very well for an extended period of time. From this madness, I managed to pull one lucid idea. I am going to attempt a bit of an…experiment, if you will. I don’t have much faith that it will work, but it is worth a shot.

What if I could concentrate on doing one (and only one) thing remarkably well each week? For instance, I currently want to buy a mountain bike. If that happens to be my goal for next week, I can attempt to forget about everything else and just do a really good job at buying a mountain bike. I can concentrate on going to several stores, meeting with one or more people off of Craigslist, reading about different mountain bikes online, et cetera. By the end of the week, the job I will have done will be so thorough that I won’t need to even think about it any more. Instead of dedicating just a few hours to buying a mountain bike, which is absolutely possible, I will have dedicated a week. I’ll not only have a mountain bike, but I will have a helmet, some hooks for the wall where I can hang the bike, and I will know the basics of mountain bike maintenance.

But that was just an example. I could tell myself any number of things to do. It doesn’t have to be an errand-type thing. It could be something like learn how to make a new dish or a new style of food. Or it could be to read “Atlas Shrugged” (which I am currently reading at the pace of about 10 pages per week, literally).

Now, as for the problem of my wandering mind, I think I may have already come up with a tool to help me with this. On my web server at home, I have set up some software (the same software used to run Wikipedia) to manage all of these damn ideas in my head. It has definitely helped some so far. I wrote down my to-do list, grocery list, short-term schedule, books I want to read, among many other things. It helps at least a little bit to clear my mind.

As I said, I have little faith that this “plan” will work very well. But if I am able to pull it off I think it might just reduce my stress level, which for some reason has been going up lately. Actually, I think it is the holidays that is doing it to me.