A Few Thoughts About Front Loading
Jan. 1st, 2019 09:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walkitoutYeah, no: I don’t mean washing machines. I mean: to implement a plan in which the effort is unevenly distributed, mostly at the beginning, less towards the end. By nature, most people backload — which is to say, they procrastinate (if you are interested in triggering a shame spiral), or they have a short planning horizon (which is to say, they lack the capacity to plan very far ahead).
Frontloading is natural to me. If I am backloading, I really don’t want to do something, or there is something I am forced to wait to happen in order to proceed (viz. you can’t make a reservation more than so many days in advance, type of thing, or the airline doesn’t sell tickets for that date yet, etc.), or there are a lot of other things going on and I don’t have the time yet to do the lower priority thing. I’ve gotten better at the Avoiding Because I Don’t Want to Do It Problem: I say no more. But it is a struggle.
But when I read this article, I was a little startled:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/on-parenting/how-i-let-december-snowball-into-a-stress-fest--and-how-im-reclaiming-my-holiday-season/2018/12/17/75d68bb0-e395-11e8-b759-3d88a5ce9e19_story.html
Look, it is not like I’ve never bought things ahead of time — I just don’t do it for the holidays because Kids and Timing. I don’t really do holiday cookies (altho R. and A. are backing into a little gingerbread woman cookie tradition, which is pretty awesome, but I don’t really get involved in that, because I’m not actually very good at making cookies. Nor do I want to get good at making cookies, because I can see exactly where that path leads.).
But I saw an unnerving amount of myself in that article. I could see me early in the year nagging at the photographer about when can we schedule a session. I could see me then nagging at the photographer about when we would get the photos from the session so I could use them in the holiday mailer. I could see me making sure throughout the year that I took a variety of photos while traveling of a variety of family members so as to be sure to have some for the holiday card. I could see me writing my end-of-year post weeks in advance when I was stuck home with a sick kid.
I watched myself take the “commemorative lithographs” we received on our recent trip, one a holiday picture, the other not, and frame them together in one frame, with the holiday one behind the not holiday one, while trying to figure out how to be absolutely certain I would remember to swap them after T-day 2019. I have the obligatory crates of holiday decorations and when they are put away, I make sure they are clumped together on shelving in the basement so we don’t lose misplace any. I edit the decorations as I put them away.
The beer store calls me now in October to find out if I want to order their Premium Beer Advent box again.
My to do list includes researching outdoor lighting, because T. wants to start doing that next year.
So I’m not sure what to think. Is this one of those things that people with executive function issues call being “naturally organized”? I don’t think of it that way. I worked hard for years and read dozens (<— not an exaggeration) of books about time management, stuff management, etc. It doesn’t seem like a “natural” thing. But when I look at it from another perspective, I’ve been fascinated by systems of order and how to impose them since I was a tiny child. That presumably _is_ natural. People with executive function issues are not fascinated by imposing systems of order. They want the results. I love the process.
If I have the time, I plan on another post about the lovely Captain Awkward twitter thread about shame spirals and January.
In the meantime, You Do You! If you love the idea of prepping for the holidays in January, go for it! If you think it’s alien and not in a good way, Do Not! I just totally enjoyed the hell out of rethinking what I do, through this alternate perspective.
Frontloading is natural to me. If I am backloading, I really don’t want to do something, or there is something I am forced to wait to happen in order to proceed (viz. you can’t make a reservation more than so many days in advance, type of thing, or the airline doesn’t sell tickets for that date yet, etc.), or there are a lot of other things going on and I don’t have the time yet to do the lower priority thing. I’ve gotten better at the Avoiding Because I Don’t Want to Do It Problem: I say no more. But it is a struggle.
But when I read this article, I was a little startled:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/on-parenting/how-i-let-december-snowball-into-a-stress-fest--and-how-im-reclaiming-my-holiday-season/2018/12/17/75d68bb0-e395-11e8-b759-3d88a5ce9e19_story.html
Look, it is not like I’ve never bought things ahead of time — I just don’t do it for the holidays because Kids and Timing. I don’t really do holiday cookies (altho R. and A. are backing into a little gingerbread woman cookie tradition, which is pretty awesome, but I don’t really get involved in that, because I’m not actually very good at making cookies. Nor do I want to get good at making cookies, because I can see exactly where that path leads.).
But I saw an unnerving amount of myself in that article. I could see me early in the year nagging at the photographer about when can we schedule a session. I could see me then nagging at the photographer about when we would get the photos from the session so I could use them in the holiday mailer. I could see me making sure throughout the year that I took a variety of photos while traveling of a variety of family members so as to be sure to have some for the holiday card. I could see me writing my end-of-year post weeks in advance when I was stuck home with a sick kid.
I watched myself take the “commemorative lithographs” we received on our recent trip, one a holiday picture, the other not, and frame them together in one frame, with the holiday one behind the not holiday one, while trying to figure out how to be absolutely certain I would remember to swap them after T-day 2019. I have the obligatory crates of holiday decorations and when they are put away, I make sure they are clumped together on shelving in the basement so we don’t lose misplace any. I edit the decorations as I put them away.
The beer store calls me now in October to find out if I want to order their Premium Beer Advent box again.
My to do list includes researching outdoor lighting, because T. wants to start doing that next year.
So I’m not sure what to think. Is this one of those things that people with executive function issues call being “naturally organized”? I don’t think of it that way. I worked hard for years and read dozens (<— not an exaggeration) of books about time management, stuff management, etc. It doesn’t seem like a “natural” thing. But when I look at it from another perspective, I’ve been fascinated by systems of order and how to impose them since I was a tiny child. That presumably _is_ natural. People with executive function issues are not fascinated by imposing systems of order. They want the results. I love the process.
If I have the time, I plan on another post about the lovely Captain Awkward twitter thread about shame spirals and January.
In the meantime, You Do You! If you love the idea of prepping for the holidays in January, go for it! If you think it’s alien and not in a good way, Do Not! I just totally enjoyed the hell out of rethinking what I do, through this alternate perspective.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-02 01:15 am (UTC)