Finding flow

A couple of times in the last few weeks I have had to put off cleaning the barn after feeding the horses rather than do it right away and being done with it. Something that feels very easy first thing in the morning then becomes this rather overwhelming task at other times of day. Then yesterday, which had a bit of driving people around in it, I realized what was going on. 

I dislike transitions and don't do them well. I made that self-discovery years ago. I still don't like to transition from one task to another, but knowing that I can take steps to make it more bearable. One thing is to not plan too many transitions into my day. This is not always feasible, depending on what life is looking like at any given moment. In trat case I try to only do tasks that are short and have a definite beginning and ending when I have just small amounts of time at home. Doing some laundry, watering plants, cleaning off a counter... those types of things. You'll also note that they are fairly mindless. What I really dislike is getting started on a bigger project or something that I enjoy doing and having to watch a clock (or listen for an alarm, that doesn't help.) If you are familiar with the idea of flow, it is a state I enter into very easily if I know I have a decent chunk of time. I absolutely cannot if I know I will need to stop in a short amount of time. (I used to not do art projects in grade school if I knew I could bring them home because of this same thing. I just didn't have the terms to describe the feeling of not wanting to start just for the twenty minutes we had to work on it.)

Which brings me back to having to do the barn later in the day. My time between lunch and teatime is usually when I have a few hours to do bigger projects. It's a nice amount of time and I can be pretty productive. But not if I have to add in another task, such as mucking. Knowing I have less time than usual means I find it difficult to start on anything. Last Friday, when I had a bunch of less than an hour bits of time throughout the day I couldn't settle down to anything and wondering about it helped me to figure out what was going on. 

In practical terms, my plan of action should be to get to the mucking as soon as I can in order to give myself a bigger chunk of time later. It will be worth trying the experiment. But why am I sharing all this with you? Because I think it's good to remember that we are all different and have different ways in which we optimally function. Really thinking about what works for you and what doesn't (as opposed to assuming there is something's wrong with you) can be helpful and can help you order your day in ways that work best for you.