I grew up in Southern Cross , population 1,500 partway between Perth and Kalgoorlie. Hardly a day went by without some traveler dropping in, unannounced, for lunch, to break the nine-hour car trip. My mother’s record was twenty-one unannounced visitors in one day, and my thighs grew strong bicycling up-and down to buy another sandwich loaf, more sausages, another Swiss roll.
My other job, once total strangers had wolfed down MY lunch and departed, burping along the straight-and-narrow highway out of town, was to wash the dishes. The scene was not unlike the one shown above: too many dishes in too small a space, and yes, we had no dishwasher. This was 1956, remember.
My loving mother would suggest that perhaps I should wash and dry (and put-away) just the glasses and cups, and if space permitted, a few of the side-plates. The “clean” stuff.
This sounded a lot easier than doing everything down to the frying-pan with its congealed beef-dripping used to fry eggs.
So that’s what I did.
But being a proud eleven-year-old, I made an effort to show what a man I was by doing ALL the side plates and ALL the dinner plates. I also did the cutlery because that could be stood on end in a tub alongside the dish-drainer.
Of course by the time that was done, I was on a roll, and determined to do a second-load, right down to the frying-pan with its congealed beef-dripping used to fry eggs.
My mother was not only good-looking, she was smart! (And yes, she loved me)
You can see above the result of breaking a goal (“wash the dishes”) into two objectives (“steps” if you like).
Objective 1: Wash and rinse then put-away the easy stuff.
Objective 2: Wash and rinse then put-away the hard stuff.
I have almost completed Objective 1, and can now embark on the very small task known as Objective 2 and be done well before lunch time.
AND I still can slot in planting a few maple keys, checking on my neighbor’s cat, and so on.
Life is easy when we break goals down into objectives, and better yet, The Job Gets Done!
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