The promise of a snow day

21 January 2011

Like much of the country this winter, St. Louis experienced a big snow storm. Over a 24-hour period, it snowed nine inches, which is a lot for us. St. Louis sort of grinds to a halt when snow is falling, and all my obligations for were canceled.

I was giddy. I was facing a completely open day, full of promise, and I had to decide what to do with it. I wasn’t going to go outside, mind you (except to walk my dog), so my choices were somewhat limited. But I narrowed it down to this:

Take the day off and just relax. I had DVDs I could watch, a bunch of shows on the DVR, and some mindless (or trickier) knitting projects I could work on.

Get caught up around the house. There are always decluttering projects waiting for the weekend and my office was pretty messy (and in fact I was planning to work on that this weekend).

Treat it like any other admin day and plow through my to-do list

Make it a special-project day and address some projects I hadn’t really had a chance to get started on.

I’m telling you, this free day felt like a gift. Any of the above activities would have been perfectly legitimate. But I went for the last option. I made a short list of some projects to at least get started on and I actually worked on cleaning up my office.

The best part was that I finished the list, I gave myself permission to close shop early and just relax. So I got a good chunk of knitting and TV watching in.

Despite the change in routine, I did stick to some of the habits I’m trying to cultivate this year, like getting my inbox down to zero, scooping the yard and putting my clothes away properly.

I usually hate snow. But yesterday it was my friend.

Tagged with: productivity, snow, time management