Food for Thought

Mike bought me a Roomba for Christmas. I was afraid to turn it on for a little while, because we have lots of cords running everywhere, and I felt like there was too much crap on the floor to use the Roomba. This is ridicules, since it IS a vacuum cleaner. So finally, I got enough oomph together to pick up enough of the stuff on the floor to turn it on. The little Roomba had a rough maiden voyage. It got caught under our bed a couple of times and I had to fish it out. It will pick up electric cords and pull them, which means it needs supervision, so I am not ready to use the auto-scheduler feature. It also doesn't like coins or bottle caps. Those get caught behind its brushes before they make it to the dustbin. Overall, it did a good job. I ran it again when I thought the floors were still pretty clean, but it filled its little dustbin right up, so I was pleased.

At work yesterday, we did this "FOCUS" Franklin Covey training. It was nominally a time management and productivity session, but in the middle there, they were asking you to think pretty deeply about your core values and life goals. I am still working on this. They also talk about making room for your "big rocks". They illustrate this with a little video they show where the dude in charge fills a big bowl full of fish gravel, and then points to a big pile of big rocks and asks a woman to fit them in. She starts wiggling them around in the gravel, and gets a few of them in, but she is running out of room. Then, the dude gives her an empty bowl and asks if she would like to try a different way. Of course, she puts the big rocks in first and then dumps the gravel on top. The rocks, big and small, are like your goals and tasks. The moral of the story is to consciously decide what tasks and goals are most important to you and schedule those things first, before letting all the other crap fill in. This all sounds good, I think. They gave us a free planner, but boy is it a monster.

We are going up to Castleton tomorrow to talk about the details of the reception and the menu.