Growing up and learning to drive in an area of the country that has severe winters, I learned to keep the fuel levels in my car at least a quarter of a tank full. It’s better for the engine in winter. And if you get stuck needing heat, you’re covered for as long as the tank lasts!

Just simply keeping the tank from running empty was a habit that continued until I started working from home. Then it seemed I was always running to town and a deadline was involved. The habit of always having a quarter of a tank began to slip away.

Just the other day I was leaving home to go into town and realized that my gas tank was almost empty. I had to get gas. It could not wait! As I pumped gas I contacted my appointment and communicated that I would be a few minutes late.

The urgency of gas caught up to me. I stopped managing gas on my timeline and my car inserted itself into my schedule. Now that I have noticed, I can return to getting gas before it is needed.

In life there are a lot of little things like getting gas that manage us instead of us managing them, aren’t there? If we put off going to the grocery store, cleaning up, paying the bills… before long we’ve procrastinated our whole to-do list and now we are run by our tasks, leaving no room for the things we WANT to do, like create. Spend a little time managing all these small things well on the front end, so they don’t overrun you eventually.