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“I’ll do it tomorrow”
Posted on Thursday 19th August 2010 by Louise Harris
Once upon a time a wise old man asked me to do him a favour and my response was “I’ll do it tomorrow”, the wise old man responded in a low knowing tone “Louise, tomorrow never comes” …
OK, lets be honest. That old man was my old man! The conversation revolved around me tidying my bedroom and like most 15 year olds, I’d do anything other than tidy my bedroom!
At my wedding some 9 years later, my dad informed me (and the 150 guests in the room) that for years he used to pick all my underwear off my bedroom floor and throw it into a bin bag in the garages. He’d always planned on giving me the bin bag of underwear back, but he was bemused that after years I’d never asked where all my stuff was going! It seemed my diminishing wardrobe was something I just seemed to accept, maybe I just thought the washing machine had eaten them or maybe I just couldn’t be bothered to go looking for them!
So on my wedding day at the ripe old age of 24, my dad sent me on my way to a new life with a very good lesson… Procrastination has consequences. (and pick your shit up or you’ll lose it!!)
Come on then, own up, how many of you have got a pile of ‘stuff’ that needs sorting, a box of photos that are sat under the stairs, a box of old videos that you fully intend to sort out, a drawn full of ‘stuff’ and box’s of ‘things’ the kids made that you don’t really want but just cant throw away?
The art of procrastination is deep within most people, and its not just the mundane boring things like cleaning the cutlery drawer that we put off until tomorrow, It’s the important things too – things that if never done will have some very sad consequences (sorting and backing up photos, organising the old videos and documenting family history, etc).
We often only see the mountain, therefore we don’t even attempt to start chipping away – why not?
How many people do you know that say they’re going to do something important and meaningful such as…
- Calling an old friend
- Going to see Auntie Agatha (the last remaining relative on their Grandmothers side) to find out some family history.
- Sitting their mum down and getting her to write down all the people in the family photo from 1960
- Chasing an old friend for the video they took at their wedding
- Giving an old friend some photos they’ve been asking for for 5 years
- Getting a copy of a photo of their best friend from when they were 10 years old
- Organising their photos into albums
- Putting all their videos together and sending them off to be them edited and transferred into watchable digital footage.
- Writing letters and stories to their children
… but never quite get round to it! Then all of a sudden someone close dies and well, bugger.. now its too late!?
Even super women like myself *chuckle chukle* always have an excuse of why we’ve not done tasks, after all I’ve not updated my blog for nearly 2 weeks *tut tut tut* and my excuse is ” I’ve just had a baby and I’m still running a business” … But isn’t there always an excuse?
Today, please take away a bit of advise:
1) Imagine having done all those things you mean to have done – how would you feel?
2) Start a project - If you popped your clogs tomorrow at least your kids would have an idea of what those 100 photos are of even if they don’t know what the other 2,000 are!
3) Back up back up back up. It takes few seconds everyday to back up your files – if you don’t have an external hard dive buy one – from Amazon
4) Use digital photo sites like picasa
5) Share videos and photos from friends using dropbox
6) Start working on memory books and digital photo albums – if you want hassle free, high end, professionally organised, designed and printed memory books then on then come us Sentiment Ltd – or if you want to do it yourself then try photobox and snapfish
7) Send all your old video and cine film to be transfered - you can use digital copycat or come to us at Sentiment Ltd to edit all the best bits with music and interviews to make something truly special
See that lotsof people are in the same boat – heres some extra tips on sorting out your photos and tools you can use
9) Phone your aunt for that long awaited chat – you may learn somthing and make her very happy in the process.
10) Tell someone you love them.
So whats your plan? what are you going to do with all this ‘stuff’? Has tomorrow finally arrived?
Your Comments
There are 5 responses to ““I’ll do it tomorrow””
Ian Harris says:
That’s an excellent post Lou, we should all take an hour once in a while to make sure all of these things are in place.
Err, perhaps we should do a few of these things this evening?
Sandy says:
So so true – we are all guilty of this at some stage, reminds me of those things that I should be doing but haven’t got around to yet…
Charles Cowling says:
Ah, you don’t offer to digitise my underpants, I see…
Great post, Louise. You have a very nice way of pricking the conscience. You’re absolutely right, too, especially in the matter of family history. Never before in the field of human history have so many snaps been taken by so many of so much. Far, far too much for anyone to sort through or make sense of (“Where’s that? Who’s that bloke?”).
There’s some really good practical guidance here, too. Thank you. I shall check out some of these sites now.
This is a very timely post for me — as, I suspect, it will be for many!
lous mom says:
oh, lou how true,
perhaps we,should put together things with nanny. next time we see you .
glad our wise words struck home.
Mike says:
Never worn knickers (well only at my 40th for Vickers & Tarts) and have always procrastinated all my life.
Very good advice but I bet most people don’t even have a will – so if they ‘pop-off’ suddenly (thousands do!!!!) they leave the mess for others – even in death