I recently installed a new hose bib outside my garage. There’s another one about twenty feet away, across the yard, at the side of the house. Not a long distance, but enough to make the lazy guy in my head have one more excuse to leave my truck dirty. If my energy level and mood is low, that twenty feet might as well be a mile.
Before we get going, I should explain my relationship with car cleanliness. I don’t care about having an immaculate truck. It’s an older-ish Tacoma. It carries lumber, kids, dogs, tools, and camping gear. But there is a threshold somewhere between “used” and “neglected,” and I know when I’ve crossed it. And when I do, it feels, well… kind of icky.
Also pertinent: I’m finding as I get older, my energy seems to ebb and flow more than it used to. I call the low part of the cycle a ‘lull’ and the high a ‘swell’. Naming things like this really helps me be aware of where I’m at and what I might do. Over time, I found myself making a list of suitable tasks for lulls:
- Long walks with the dog
- Reading and writing
- Errands or procurement of project supplies
- Research
- Cooking
- Mindless detail work
- Simple organizing and cleaning
- Tasks that can be easily dropped mid job
I don’t always stick to this list. Smaller gusts of energy and simple necessity lead me to stray from it, though I find it harder to be present and well oriented in those other types of tasks when I do. I find cleaning to be an especially easy task to neglect, especially with respect to my truck, and so goes the spiral. The truck gets dirtier and dirtier, and each time I hop in the cab it reminds me I’m in a lull, and I feel bummed and stuck in the muck, and the lull continues on along with the dirty truck. So, I think “I should wash my truck, it will make me feel a little better”. But the hose just seems farther and farther away.
So, last week, I installed a hose bib right next to the garage. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t do this quickly. It was on my project list for months as I had been thinking of it as a simple convenience, not a necessity. I drilled a 7/8” hole in the stucco, 14” above grade, and secured a 1/2” copper stubout with a 1/2NPT threaded fitting. Inside the wall it transitions to PEX so I could easily run it into the crawlspace and tee it into the cold water supply. I left only the hex flats protruding from the stucco, secured the pipe with a hold-down inside the garage, caulked and painted it to match the exterior, then threaded in a shiny new brass hose bib. I now have a hose right there, ready for action.
(picture coming soon)
The task of installing it was a subtle act of procrastination, if I’m being honest. I told myself it would be okay to wait to wash my truck until it was there and that was a week or so past when I really needed to wash the darn thing. But, I did finally wash my truck. And I felt kind of satisfied when all I had to do was walk 2’ to the left, reach down, and turn the knob. A clean truck makes me feel a little better. Sometimes that’s enough energy to start something else. Thanks past self!
I suppose the productivity hacker might call this “reducing friction”. But, I think friction reduction is only the outermost layer and I certainly don’t think this is about ‘hacking’ or productivity or anything like that. I’m not saying “hey future self - you need to be more disciplined and get more done”. In the end, I think convenience is just what compassion looks like when it’s directed toward your future self. There’s a future version of myself that’s going to be in a lull. I already know him. I can’t eliminate the lulls, but I can change the environment a little bit for him, and maybe there will be a little less friction in the way of doing something that moves the needle.
I’m beginning to think that’s what many of the small projects around my house really are. They aren’t conveniences for the energetic version of me. They’re gifts left behind for the tired one.