I Didn't Plan to Do This!

I have realized something about my life. In order to accomplish what I set out to do I MUST have a plan. If I don't, then I tend to wander aimlessly through my days , ocassionally completing an important task, but usually just taking care of immediate needs. You know, the kind that jump in front of you and say something like, "If you don't deal with this RIGHT NOW
then . . .!!!"

Life will always have emergencies. And dealing with those can't be put off, but the majority of the things that I waste my time on are really just interruptions or unplanned-for-routine-tasks that should have either been done already or at least scheduled into my plans to be done at a specific time.

Here's an example: one of our computers got infected with some nasty spyware over the weekend. I think this stuff wanted to start with our computer and then use it as a base to take over the world! Now I'm no techie, but I have dealt with spyware issues before so I knew what to do. Unfortunately, NONE of those things worked! I spent FIVE hours trying to regain control of our computer and it still wasn't fixed. I finally disconnected it from the Internet and my son thought to turn it off. After it sat for two days I went back to it last night and tried again and had the problem solved in less than an hour. I guess the program decided our house was too small to be its base of operations.

Now this major problem could have been avoided altogether, but I didn't have a plan. See, this particular computer belongs to my son. It is used mostly for games, music, videos and a little surfing, but not for business. So that makes it "not so important," right? WRONG! It still cost a lot of money and serves a useful purpose in our home. But I didn't have a plan to take care of its basic maintenance. I could have even just taught my son how to regularly run antivirus and spyware protection software and it would have taken me less than 6 hours.

What kinds of things do I need a plan for in my life? I'm going to mull that over for a couple of days and if nothing else tries to take over the world using my house I'll get back to you then. If you have any suggestions of where I need to set up a plan or a system for doing things I'd appreciate a comment. Thanks for your help!

Glad to be back in control (for now),
Paula

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