Working with your personal style

You know, we all have the same problem - where ever you go, there you are. I know that's an old joke, but it's really true. We all have pretty much the same struggles and basically you can find ways to adapt to your personality, or you can fight against it. Which one do you think will be more successful?

Here's a way that I've done that and been successful and then I'll tell you one that I'm still struggling with. I inherited that "shopping gene" from my mother and I have had a lot of struggles with not being able to control myself in stores. I'm especially bad with discount stores like Wal-Mart, Costco, and even dollar stores. I will go in there for one thing and come out with $50 worth of stuff. So, I have adjusted my lifestyle so I just don't go into the stores. I either buy stuff on-line, or I make lists and I give them to my husband or son - even for groceries. It's a hassle, but it saves me from that sick feeling I get when I've just blown a whole week's grocery money on a bunch of stuff that I wanted, but didn't necessarily need. That's a good example of working with your personality rather than against it.

Here's an example that I'm still struggling with. I like to do things in batches. I don't want to fold one load of laundry, I want to fold 5 loads at once. I don't want to sweep one little patch of floor, I want to sweep ALL my floors. Even at work, I don't want to do one or two invoices at a time when I can wait a day or so and do twenty of them. Even though I know it's much more efficient to do things a little bit at a time, my whole way of operating is that I want to do the big high-visibility clean ups instead of the little everyday cleanups.

So the question is do I work with this trait or against it? I haven't quite figured that one out yet. I never said I had all the answers, did I? I think the answer is going to be some kind of a compromise - define the jobs that really need to be done on a daily basis and then make my peace with doing the larger jobs in big chunks and just schedule them accordingly so they get done on some kind of a sensible time frame.