Our washing machine is old. It’s been through a lot. I’ve done my own repairs on it and I’m not exactly ‘handy’ with tools or machinery. It’s not pretty, but it still ticks along.

We aren’t great at keeping on top of washing our dirty clothes. We could blame it on the baby, but we’ve never been good. Clothes pile up and up until we are desperate and just have to wash.

Then, it becomes a popularity contest between clothes as to what gets prioritized and chosen to be part of the first (and often only) wash.

Generally the chosen ‘few’ account for way, way more than we can fit and the machine can handle, but it’s a timely process and we just want to get it over with.

And here’s what happens. Around 15 minutes to go in the cycle, the machine inevitably stops, or worse, goes backwards and adds an extra 10-15 minutes onto the time until finished, to teach us a lesson.

The lesson? We overstuffed it. We asked too much of our battler of a machine and now it’s revolting.

What we had hoped would be a quick, painless, job, becomes anything but, and turns into an infuriating inefficient process.

It’s the same in my personal life and at work when I’m trying to complete jobs and focus on doing one ‘load/task’ well, as opposed to doing three at once, poorly. Like our washing machine, jobs need to be fixed and re-done every time, slowing me down and taking longer overall than if I’d just done two smaller loads, one after another. Or simply was more consistent and disciplined in taking care of tasks like dirty laundry more often, so that they didn’t pile up and cause overwhelm.

Just a quick lesson of the day. It’s time to FOCUS.