Getting shit done

While I was enduring the worst job I have ever had (clues in previous posts) one of the few bright aspects of my working day was the office banter. It wasn’t always jolly — the ludicrous demands made on the team by our sociopathic boss often made for a pretty grim time — but when spirits were high, the camaraderie was excellent.

One of my colleagues would regularly bring these badinage-fests to a close with a cheery cry of ‘right, time to get shit done!’ — a phrase that always made me smile, and not only because of its puerile scatological appeal. To me, the notion of getting shit done was profoundly seductive. The phrase seemed to reduce all of the complex projects and difficult decisions we had to make to a manageable set of tasks that could just be ticked off, one by one, if we just put in a bit of good honest graft.

Much as I like to see myself as a free-spirited spontaneous type, there’s nothing more satisfying than working methodically through a task list — watching a daunting pile of jobs grow steadily smaller until it’s nothing but a set of ticks and crossings-out. Compare that blissful sense of accomplishment with the agony and self-loathing of procrastination and it’s a wonder any of us ever delays doing anything.

I happen to have stumbled upon a rich seam of getting shit done in recent months. I have no idea what precipitated it and I am not naive enough to think it will last forever. But I’m really enjoying the ride.

The first signs emerged when my wife and I finally decided to do something about our virtually uninhabitable living room. We’ve lived in the same house for 23 years now and to say we’ve adopted a light-touch approach to home improvements would be quite the understatement. We have a long history of only initiating projects when all other options have been thoroughly exhausted.

In the case of our living room I had begun to worry that the front of the house might fall off completely if we didn’t address the damp exterior wall issue, which in turn prompted some thinking about the dampness on the interior — living room — wall. And that started us thinking about how nice it would be to put a fresh coat of paint on the walls once the damp had been addressed. Which in turn drew our attention to the need to get rid of the incredibly unattractive and threadbare beige carpet. You know how these things snowball…

You may now be expecting me to tell you that the urgent need to do these jobs jolted me out of my torpor and turned me into a DIY dynamo. Alas, not so. DIY and I have never been friends. The last time I tried to put up some shelves they collapsed a few days later, scattering heavy books onto my sister’s head. Not my finest hour. I have never had any interest in developing the skills needed to fix, build, decorate, or even paint anything. If you need something doing, get someone in who knows how to do it — that has always been my mantra.

No, the living room work was done by a friend of mine who runs a small building firm. He did a superb job and we’re delighted with the results. But watching him confidently tackle the myriad tasks that would transform our dreary, weary room had a disconcerting effect. I found myself glancing lasciviously at his tools; I stared, slack-jawed, as he casually rejuvenated the woodwork of our porch and then painted it to look as good as new; I shook my head in wonder as he installed our new fireplace and then tiled it with exquisite precision.

Some of these tasks were jobs that had been rumbling away in the back of my mind for years, gradually occupying more and more of that dark territory that you go to on those long, sleepless nights when all your brain seems capable of is fretting. Seeing them resolved with such casual aplomb was liberating — I began to feel carefree.

So what next? A rueful shrug and a momentary reflection on the self-defeating nature of procrastination? Well no, not this time. Riding this most unusual wave of enthusiasm, I dug out the unused DIY-in-a-day course my wife bought me in desperation for Christmas a couple of years ago and persuaded the vendor to honour it, despite being well past its expiry date. On the course I learned how to drill holes, attach things to each other and hang stuff up (baby steps…). Our instructor sent us on our way with a plea to try out our new skills, to make or fix something, to be unafraid of mistakes but to learn from them. In short, to start getting shit done.

So I did. I set up a Screwfix account, bought a drill and associated bits, dusted off some ancient tools my father-in-law gave me decades ago, and set to work. So far I’ve repainted the shed door, I’ve filled in the wall divots created by the collapse of those shelves in my office, I’ve fixed the wonky hinges of the under-stairs cupboard door and I’ve plugged an unsightly hole that was created by the replacement of our thermostat. Like I said, baby steps.

But it’s spreading. Together, my wife and I have cleared several rooms of clutter over the past few weeks, made numerous trips to the tip, reorganised drawers, cupboards and shelves, and cleared a triffid-like shrub that threatened to take over our garden. We embark on each new weekend with gusto, seeking out jobs, then ruthlessly executing.

The satisfaction we both feel about this flurry of activity is addictive. We reach the end of the day in a state of weary wellbeing, proud that we have used our time productively, done something good, and more often than not learned something new.

It’s probably no coincidence that all of this has happened during an extended new year dry period — part of a health and fitness programme that is another example of getting shit done, come to think of it, but that’s probably best left for another post on another day.

And I’m pretty sure there will be another post. After three years of radio silence here on Medium, I figured it was time to stop moaning about having nothing to say and no time to say it and actually write something — to get some shit done. Box ticked. Now, what’s next?