I don’t know when I’ll get to it, if ever.
Here at ‘Monday’ we espouse the belief that you can do it later. In that spirit I have decided to write this article later. In fact I haven’t even chose a topic, title, or anything. So we’ll just leave it until then.
To-Do: Write this last article.
Until ‘Monday’
Today I’m going to teach you how to be dirty. Okay not personal hygiene but your home. Why? Because cleaning takes too darn long. Wouldn’t you rather focus your time on something worth while, like doing nothing? I know I would. So here are some tips on being efficient in not cleaning.
In a previous article I mentioned tying up a garbage bag and leaving it. So that’s one of the things you can do. You can leave it until it starts stinking, in which case that would be the later time to do it. If it doesn’t stink you don’t need to worry about it, as you can do it later.
I would say you probably don’t need to do any vacuuming at all. Chiefly because you can’t really see it. Make sure you have a dark carpet so that the only things that show up are light things (such as brightly colored candy or popcorn). Every once in a while should you choose you can pick it up and throw it away.
Dust adds a certain air of prestige, if-you-will, like a museum. Even if it only takes a few days to accumulate the dust it will make everything look as though it was ancient. Like Charlie Brown once said: “Don’t think of it as dust. Think of it as maybe the soil of some great past civilization. Maybe the soil of ancient Babylon. It staggers the imagination. He may be carrying soil that was trod upon by Solomon, or even Nebuchadnezzar.” So be proud if you have dust that collects on everything.
There’s only one thing I have to say about cleaning the toilet. Light a match. ‘Nuff said.
Here’s one tip that might actually help you to clean up even though it’s not meant to. When you have any loose pieces of paper, crumple them up and attempt to “Shoot a basket” into the garbage. While this does actually help clean up, if you’re really bad you’ll just have a bunch of crumpled up pieces of paper around the garbage. This is mostly meant to be fun but if you manage to throw away some paper, so be it. You can always take it out later. Way, way, later.
I have a suggestion about that clothes basket. After you wash and dry the clothes (and assuming you actually do that at all), instead of folding them and putting them away, why not leave them in the clothes basket. Get clean clothes from the basket, and toss the dirty ones on the floor. This saves you some time because when you fold clothes and put them away, you’re only taking them out to wear them again, so save yourself the trouble.
Sometimes you might want to have company over and would think it’s the perfect time to do some actual cleaning. I say it’s the perfect time to pretend you’re doing some cleaning. Why not stack stuff in corners and pile junk into closets and under beds. You don’t have to do a lot to make it look like you are at least paying a little attention to the mess. Plus if you’re a guy you can make the excuse that you’re a guy and cleaning house isn’t in your genes.
You know used pizza boxes can be made into targets with a little bit of marker magic and a dart gun. Then you can play target shooting from your couch. No need to throw them away as you can play this game over and over. (And you will play it over and over since you have nothing better to do other than watch TV which you’ve probably watched so much of that about now you’re making waste-paper basket shots.)
The dishes are easy to take care of. Give a set of dishes to every member of the family so that they don’t actually have to wash the dishes, you can just use them over and over again. At least until they get so gunked up with food that you can only use them for skeet shooting.
Well I hope I’ve given you some advice for putting off cleaning. Maybe later I’ll show you even more great tips on how not to clean.
Until ‘Monday’
Never achieve your goals, the art of not living up to what you set out to do.
Goals are things we want to accomplish. They’re the results of things we want to happen in the future, in our professional and our personal lives. Sometimes it’s something like making more money, or losing weight. Goals usually have to be in some definite terms though and need to be written down. For instance making 50k dollars at the end of the year.
Here at ‘Monday’ goal setting can be either good or bad. It can be a good source of busy work. If you’re so busy setting and reading your goals every day you’re not spending time getting them accomplished. However once you’ve written them down you have a better idea of what you want to accomplish, which could be dangerous. So today I’m going to attempt to extol the virtues of not accomplishing those goals.
Okay so essentially you want to do and accomplish nothing, but you’ve written down these goals now but you want to avoid doing them. The easy solution is to basically not do them, however, you can actually work on your goals without working on your goals. For instance, one of the things you might do to accomplish them is by reading them every day, sort of like affirmations. However if your goal document is large enough you could waste a lot of time reading them every day. Especially if you’re not a speed reader.
Maybe you should de-motivate yourself. In fact I have an article on just such a thing. Motivation is the get-up-and-go of your goals. You don’t want to be motivated; you would rather the goals just sit there. So you could sleep in. Don’t do a lot of moving, watch TV and the myriad of other things to keep you unmotivated.
Don’t have any strong commitments to the goals. If you’re committed it means you’re going to get them done no matter what. Well the object here is of course not getting them done. Hopefully your goals are vague enough that commitment is not required. Don’t say no a lot either. Saying yes to other things means you won’t be able to accomplish your own goals because you won’t have a lot of time to commit to it. So even if you’re caught in the trap of having strong commitments to your goals you can at least have other things occupy your time so you don’t actually accomplish anything.
Don’t get anyone involved which might help you accomplish your goals. If you announce you’re doing said goals, people might hold you to it. So you want to make sure you’re not telling anyone, especially friends and family. Just don’t show anyone. Just pretend you’re as lazy as you ever were. Because you are and you want it to stay that way.
Never break down your goals like with de-motivation and procrastination, the bigger they are the less you’ll be tempted to complete them. Make sure the goals are huge and complex and contain many moving parts. Well you know what I mean. Like a complex machine, if your goals are too complex you might be tempted to not do them, which is what we want.
Someone once said being afraid is just another way of blocking you from achieving your goals. I couldn’t agree more. You should probably read my article on being afraid. You want to be afraid of both success and failure at the same time. So then you don’t even try. You know that pretty girl you always wanted to ask out. She’ll never even speak to you, so why try? You know you’re smart and you see the honor roll. You know you’ll be on it if you do your best work, so why not do lousy work, because they always ask honor roll students to give speeches and you don’t want that kind of stress.
Don’t start. Because often starting is the hardest part. You don’t want to start on any of your goals because once you do, like the 20 dollar bill you broke and is now dwindling away to nothing, your goals will start being accomplished dwindling them away to nothing. And by that I mean you’ll start accomplishing your goals. Remember 80% of success is just showing up, so take heed and not show up.
There are a few more things here I want to address before wrapping it up. A friend wrote an article on three ways to achieve your goals more easily. The nice thing is, we here at ‘Monday’ can do the opposite and so can you! His first way is focus on a few goals and not a billion. So here at ‘Monday’ we say, have billions of goals. Too many goals will keep you from accomplishing a few possibly important goals. His second way is making the goals vivid. His assertion is that you need to make the wording more exciting using words like vibrant and sexy. So my advice is to make sure the goals are as boring and unspecific as possible. I want to lose weight or make more money is all we need here at ‘Monday’. His third way is keep your attentions on those goals. His thoughts are that you need to think about your goals constantly. Rather than writing them down a lot, maybe you only write them down once but every morning re-read them. However here at ‘Monday’ we say write them once and then never look at them again. We don’t want you accomplishing your goals.
So to summarize: Make sure there’s a lot of goals or a lot of documentation on those goals. De-motivate yourself through various means such as TV and sleeping. Don’t commit and don’t get anyone else involved. Don’t break down your goals and basically don’t start. If you follow this advice you’ll be on your way to not accomplishing anything in no time!
Until ‘Monday’