Give up doing the following things for two weeks: answering the phone every time it rings instead of screening your calls, returning every message, answering every letter, buying gifts and going to most birthdays/weddings/bar mitzvahs/confirmations, doing favors you wish you could get out of, having houseguests, picking up cleaning, groceries, hardware parts, videos, or anything else that can be delivered or sent for, shopping for clothes, watching the news, reading the paper and everything else that comes in the mail, checking out the Internet every night in case you miss something, watching TV, fixing the screen door, organizing your photos.
That would give you a lot more time, wouldn’t it?
You don’t even need to make an announcement. Just stop doing anything you don’t want to do. Become absentminded and unpredictable. Forget to pick up things you promised to get for people. Forget to bring gifts to birthday parties. Be a bad problem solver. Give lousy advice, and become inept at consoling people who are chronically unhappy.
People will grumble, then they’ll worry (tell them you’re pretty sure you’re having a midlife crisis), and then they’ll do the important stuff themselves — or find another sucker. You’ll have a few weeks or a month to learn what will get you into trouble, and in the meantime you’ll see which chores get picked up by someone else and which are totally irrelevant.
Remember, you can always do what you really have to do. That’s never the problem. But you must sort it out from what you don’t really have to do, and it’s going to take a little while for you to understand the difference. But it could be one of the most important things you ever learn.
It won’t work to simply imagine doing this, because you really have no idea how the people in your life will respond until you actually do it, and keep doing it for at least two weeks. I’ll ask you to give us a progress report this week and your final assessment next week, okay? Just remember you won’t be doing it alone. For these two weeks right after the New Year, we’re all on strike: everyone in this group, and everyone in all the other English and German book club groups. Even with all of us on strike, there will be people who can pick up the slack, and we’re going to let them.
In your daybook, notebook or a Word document, keep notes on how you’re feeling about this and what you’re learning. Sometime this week, post your progress report in a new comment and cheer on everyone else curious enough to give this a try by replying to their progress reports. And keep going on your strike until the end of next week.
Please be sure to subscribe to future comments on this exercise or to check back here on Wednesday evening or Thursday morning for new ones.
Use the Next link (up above the title) to continue on to Exercise 22: Your “Don’t-Do” List after you are done adding your comments.
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