Monday, December 06, 2010

Ignore at Your Own Peril

I reached a major milestone last Thursday, at least major for me -- I've now completed everything I need to do to be really on top of things, so I can move forward to new projects. I have renewed my CA real estate broker's license, cleaned out my files, reorganized them and shredded what had to be shredded, caught up on the bookkeeping, cleaned out the garage, overseen a few large real estate maintenance projects, dealt with the death of a beloved cat, and the exit from our home of my stepson. All of this, of course, on top of my usual reading/coaching sessions, and responsibilities to my business and our home. It feels great! :)

So when I finished my client work that day, I wanted to celebrate by -- okay, I know this doesn't sound like a celebration, but for me, on a weekday, it is -- going grocery shopping. Grocery shopping sounded like heaven! I could stop in at Trader Joe's and have a snack before I bought the 3 items I needed. I could wander around Costco and window shop before I bought my groceries. I could take my time, because there was nothing I really had to do.

But my sense of duty to my business said, "No, you have to send out your ezine. The main article is written, it will just take a few minutes to do the format changes to send it out, get it out."

So of course, iContact lost the work I'd already done, and refused to accept changes when I tried to start over. I spent an hour and half on the phone with a techie at iContact, who couldn't help me, and in the end just filed a bug ticket. (I'm doing someone else's QA again!) So there went 2 hours -- with less to show for it than before I began.

I should have just gone shopping!!

Many years ago, someone (wish I could remember whom) said, "Sometimes God speaks to us through our desires." Or maybe it's our guides or angels. Whatever. I should have listened to them last Thursday.

What did I learn? Ignore your guides' advice at your own peril.

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