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How My Holiday Reading Kondoed My To-Do List

21st August, 2019

How My Holiday Reading Kondoed My To-Do List

It was a first for me this summer. I actually read every single book I took on holiday. Woo hoo!

 

I’d pitched it just right – nothing too heavy but nothing so cheesily written it turned me off.

 

(And yes, the above image were my actual books snapped on a Madeiran balcony. Feel free to judge me. ?)

 

Just interesting, easy-to-read books that I gobbled up. They were well worth the extra luggage allowance (I ditch gadgets for hard copies for a chilled holiday, but it does get expensive…).

 

Why was it a first?

 

Well, I used to get all highfalutin and ambitious with my holiday reading.

 

I’d include a tonne of self-improving business books that somehow never seemed so appealing in the sunshine with my 11am Margarita.

 

I wanted escapism and room to think, not more work.

 

And, for 5 consecutive holidays, I took this bad boy with me:

Do you know it? It’s a 500-page epic – well written, thoroughly researched, interesting, but (for me at least) bl**dy hard work.

 

It contains more information than the average person would ever, ever (and I mean, ever) need to know about where we come from.

 

But holiday after holiday I dutifully packed it, thinking that this time I’d get beyond chapter 6.

 

That I should read it, that it would be good for me.

 

But holiday after holiday it came home in my suitcase with barely the spine creased.

 

This summer, I had words with myself. ‘Kim,’ I reasoned, ‘You’re never going to read that book now, are you? Come on, admit it to yourself.’

 

I was right. And I left it at home! What a relief – so cathartic.

 

(In fact, I’m going a step further and Marie Kondoing dear old Sapiens – i.e. thanking it for its service and giving it to a new home.)

 

And it felt so good, in fact, that when I got home from holiday I applied the same filter to my to-do list.

 

I looked at the things that’d been hanging around for weeks like the bags of rotting kale in my salad drawer.

 

Why hadn’t I completed them?

 

Were they tasks I thought I should do, but didn’t want to?

 

And if so, why?

 

Or were they items that perhaps weren’t so critical after all…

 

So I got brutal.

 

I got rid of all the to-dos I knew, realistically, I wasn’t ever going to get around to.

 

CHOP.

 

It then put into sharp focus all the stuff that IS really important to me.

 

So, why am I telling you?

 

Well, I thought you might like to have a post-holiday purge like me (trust me, you’ll love it).

 

And, I was wondering if you needed a very interesting book about the history of mankind that also doubles as a doorstop. I’ve got one going spare…

accenture
UBS
Ricoh
Euromoney
University of Cambridge

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