Increment by increment

 I don't know about you, but I tell myself quite a lot of lies.

It's a habit so deeply ingrained in me that I have no idea when it started, but for as long as I can recall I have told myself three absolute whoppers on a more or less daily basis. 

1)There's plenty of time for that.

2) It'll probably work out okay because it's me.

3) Yes, yes, I'll definitely get that done today.

Probably, unless you're a spectacularly together individual, you tell yourself something similar (or maybe none of you do, and my idea of "spectacularly together" is humanity's benchmark for "normal" but, given the conduct of various people in public life, I deduce that's probably not the case), in many cases it's sensible. If you didn't lie to yourself in this manner then you'd be in a permanent state of panic at not getting things done, and a bottomless well of despair at your own failure to act in a manner befitting a functioning human. I, decidedly, do not, I'm also remarkably good, when getting to the end of the day, at noting my failure, shrugging, and telling myself that I'll do better tomorrow.

Reader, I rarely do better tomorrow. 

While telling myself these things may be excellent for my sense of relative equanimity and overall mental health, it's a pretty useless strategy when it comes to actually getting anything done, which is why, over the years, I've evolved a system whereby I set myself far too much to do, reasoning that even if I fall short, I'll be a lot further along than I was. I've written here in the past about setting myself targets for such things as miles run, books read, etc, but that's only part of it. I do it with pretty much everything.

For example, as I type, there's a notebook detailing jobs I need to do today (this blog, you'll be unsurprised to hear, is one of them: never let the opportunity to put a tick in the done column, that's what I say) next to me on my desk. There are three columns, jobs that need doing in the house, jobs that need doing in the pub, things I just want to get done for myself. There are lots of jobs crossed out, and lots that aren't. Some of those jobs have been on there for a few weeks, others only a few minutes. The point being that as long as I keep crossing the odd one out here or there I feel I'm getting somewhere.

This, of course, is the fourth big lie I tell myself. Every once in a while I'll re-write the list, promising myself that some of the longer-term entries are next. And, quite often, they are, but this incremental approach is, I increasingly recognise, probably not going to get much done any time soon.

This is a minor problem as, to my mild consternation, I find myself to be fairly busy as a general rule. you'd imagine, what with Lockdown 2: Lockdown with a Vengeance, still being a thing for us hospitality types in Tier 3 I would be revelling in all this extra free time to clear my list of jobs. An assertion to which I laugh hollowly, while staring into the middle distance. With this much free time, all excuses vanish and yet, somehow, the work expands to fill the space. I'm still up at the pub every day, but being home much more just means I see more that needs doing, and seeing as I'm the only bugger in the place it looks like it falls to me to do it.

This brings me back to lie number 1, the idea that there's plenty of time. Wiser heads than I have noted the peculiar malleability of time over this most curious of years, when months take days and minutes take weeks. I would note that once the boys are dropped off at school and I, instead of going to work, return home to eye up my list it seems that there are uncountable hours ahead of me until, all of a sudden, there's five minutes and somehow I'm going to be late for the school run. It's a rum old do. So, slowly, but surely, I'm starting to unlearn the habits of a lifetime and actually do stuff when there's no immediate pressing need. Like a lab rat responding to new stimuli, I'm having to readjust my expectations. Counterintuitively, it's easier when I'm working. In my work days I've got two blocks of time: first thing in the morning and a brief window in the afternoon in which to get things done. So I do. But as the formless days stretch ahead of me, it's far easier to procrastinate. Lie number 1 is a beguiling one.

Lie 2 is, of course, the worst sort of monstrous exceptionalism. Humans are solipsistic buggers (or at least, I am), everyone starring in their own movie, and it's easy to imagine happy endings for yourself. Unfortunately, it has the advantage of a weight of evidence. Most things do seem to work out okay. As you can't prove a negative and you have no way of knowing what would have happened if you'd done other things you don't know if things could have worked out better. And you'll never find out.

As to the third Lie, well, that's largely what this blog's about. Inching your way along, sadly, doesn't cut the mustard. Sometimes, you've just got to look at the list and have it all crossed off by the close of the day. When, in another life, I taught creative writing, one of the pearls of advice that we drummed into our students heads (even more important than "stop trying to make everything rhyme") was that there's no substitute for just doing it. We'd call it being "writing fit". Basically, if you just crack on, sooner or later you get better at it, conversely, if you moon about waiting for it to happen to you, then you'll get precisely nowhere. As Picasso probably said, Inspiration exists, but it better find you working.