My jobs are all deadline dependent. If I miss deadlines, I miss production windows, I mess up someone else’s schedule down the line, and I disappoint clients who then might not hire me for future jobs. I’m lucky I don’t have any bosses breathing down my neck on a daily basis, but those deadlines, man…they’re not joking around.

With non-work stuff, though? Everything slips. I’m the one sending party invitations the week of the party, mailing thank you cards MONTHS late, not calling people back, forgetting the daycare check AGAIN, and generally letting things slide and/or just plain forgetting about them until someone sends me a kind email along the lines of “Hey, remember that thing you said you’d do for me a year ago?” Ugh.

I was always super organized at school too—work complete and turned in on time, desk/locker/backpack organized within an inch of its life—but at home my room was a perpetual tornado of clothes and books and notes from friends folded in the popular note-folding style of the week. Minus the notes, that’s pretty much what my house looks like now. Laundry to the left of me, dishes to the right, here I am, stuck in the middle with only myself to blame.

Do I slack at home because that’s where I feel I can relax without suffering any real consequences or outside criticism? Do I slack at home because I’m not being paid to perform there the way I am at work and was (in grades) at school? Whatever the reason, it’s annoying and I wish there were some secret trick of motivation that would make me as on-task about everything else in life as I am when it comes to work. I’ve often wondered if I just need to hire a housekeeper and/or buy some kind of fancy planner, but now I’m thinking I just need to hire a boss who will tsk-tsk at me in such a way that I will be desperate to impress him/her and therefore take care of things that need taking care of and ON TIME.

Your turn: Do you treat your non-work life as another job, one with expectations and deadlines you strive to meet, so you can be the best mom/wife/friend you can be? Or are you just naturally organized and practically perfect in every way? Or is home your place to breathe easy, even if it means you’re consistently behind on absolutely everything?

(You know who I wish would respect his deadline? My baby, that’s who. His due date is July 11, but knowing that he could be here anytime within the next month—maybe three weeks from now! maybe TOMORROW!—is really cramping my style.)

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