More Advice to Myself

How do I avoid doing too much when there is simply too much that needs to be done?

Here's the scene:

I'm trying to make eight dozen cookies to feed the junior varsity football team before their game. (They get a healthy snack before every game and it was my turn). I'm also cutting twenty bagels in half, since cookies are kind of dessert, really.

Solution: Do one or the other, not both. Buy the cookies, if possible.

I'm trying to make the cookies while my husband is painting the kitchen.

Solution: Don't bake when your husband is painting the kitchen!!

My senior is filling out college applications and wants to know what years I was at U of M.
I can't think of even how to bake cookies much less what years I was in college!

Solution: Tell him you will look it up later. Don't try to figure it out. You're apt to add
something toxic to the cookies by mistake.

My daughter is person of the week in her class and wants me to help her find trophies, ribbons, certificates, baby pictures, etc. to take to school.

Solution: Collect them gradually and not while you're baking cookies. Be satisfied with an incomplete collection if that's all you can do

My husband points out that it doesn't look like we're going to have time to make and eat dinner before we have to leave.

Solution: Don't plan to make dinner when any of the above is happening. You know better. Order pizza, for heaven's sakes. (Or rather for your family's sake.)

All of the above were actually happening in the same afternoon. The long and short of my advice to myself is to stop trying to do every good thing that could be done. Recognize my limitations and the number of hours in a day. Have the humility to realize I am nowhere near perfect and pretending otherwise is an occasion of sin.