Here are some of mine:
- Do it now.
No, it won’t go away if you ignore it. In most cases, dealing with it will get harder. In all cases you will waste much time and emotional energy dreading and stewing over ‘it’ – and then when you finally steel yourself to actually do it…it turns out to be not nearly as bad as you feared. So just do it already.
2) Never put anything down in the wrong place, even if it’s ‘just for a minute.’
Take the extra ten steps and 20 seconds and put the whatever back where it lives. This will A) prevent the whatever from becoming clutter, B) enable you to find the whatever again the next time you need it, and C) might even protect the whatever from being destroyed. As in, brand-new $350 glasses set down on the deck ‘just for a moment’ when…crunch!
3) Never drink your calories.
Eating a medium orange (64 calories) takes much more time and is much more satisfying than drinking a cup of orange juice (110 calories.) And teach your taste buds to accept artificial sweeteners in soft drinks/coffee/tea and you can take off ten or more pounds of fat over a year, without any dieting or added exercise.
4) There is never any reason to buy pens.
You can always steal, er, borrow one from someone.