How Was Your Day?

"Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion."  So says Parkinson's Law, an adage articulated by Cyril Northcote Parkinson in a humorous essay first published in 1955.  (All that info comes from Wikipedia, in the interest of full disclosure!)

So, according to this "law", whatever you have to do, whether a lot or a little, will fill the time you have available.

Yesterday I didn't have a great deal on my to-do list.  That was in large part due to an appointment I had on my schedule that would take a several-hour chunk of time in the afternoon.  But.....

As I stood on the porch to assess the condition of our road, I realized it was still covered in a great deal of ice and snow, in spite of the bright sunshine and warmer temperatures of the previous day.  And that left me wondering what the condition of the road was on the parts I couldn't see, which are the parts that the sun doesn't actually shine on.  Because that all seemed pretty iffy to me and was making me uncomfortable about driving down the road, I made the decision to reschedule the appointment. Better safe than sorry, in my view.

That decision left me with a large block of time.  And although there were many other things I could have done to fill that time, things that I hadn't actually written on my to-do list for the day but that need to be done, it took me all day to accomplish the few things I had written down for the day.  Because "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion."  Or maybe just because I was lazy.  Or because I accepted this block of time as a free gift with which I could do as much or as little as I liked.  Or because I would just rather be reading a book than cleaning out a closet! 

In any event, I was not terribly productive yesterday.  I could have cleaned out a closet or a drawer.  I could have done some writing.  There were any number of things I could have done.  But I didn't.  I just frittered the day away.

My goal today is to be more focused and productive.

How was your day?

"So teach us to number our days, that we may present to You a heart of wisdom."
(Psalm 90:12 NASB)