Sitting with a list

Writing things down seems to work

Being poor makes you spend a lot of time thinking about how you will cover your bills and put food in your belly.

Every day I make myself a list of things I need to get done during the day. The list features my daily work for Alfa.lt English and then there is always something to do for university one way or another.

Other activities that also make the list include the raft of other activities that I do to easy the financial strain in my life at the moment. I'm slowly finding work in Sweden that pays better than the work I'd been doing in Lithuania.

Going by the look of the list these days it seems like I'm living a triple life: full time university, a work life in Sweden and a work life in Lithuania. Sooner, rather than later I'd like to be able to end my work life in Lithuania because the returns I get for my work are rather poor when you take them and spend them in a country like Sweden.

One way that I manage to get through all the important tasks every day (and even complete a lot of the less important ones) is to make the list in the first place and write everything down and then categorize them in order of importance. Often when taking a break from doing an top-priority job there is time to do a less urgent, but also important tasks in between. Thanks to the technology that surrounds me in Sweden (washing machines, bicycles - things that I didn't have in Lithuania), I can do a lot of things simultaneously.

Parkinson's Law also somehow comes into play when I write tasks down. I even find time for doing things (like writing blogs or eating) in between.

Parkinson's Law: "Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion."

In the same way, if I write everything down and prioritize the tasks, they all seem to get done.