Kim Gaskill describes stopping to move a fallen branch from a storm-damaged backroad in Arkansas. A passing driver helped her clear it, and she uses the moment to argue for tackling the hardest task first, the one that makes everything else easier.
Good morning from Cave Springs, Arkansas. I'm Kim Gaskill and this is the Daily Spark. Cave Springs, Arkansas is a small little town, population of about 2,000, sits smack dab in the middle between Fayetteville and Bentonville. I'm driving back here on these backcountry roads. There's still a lot of debris from the storm yesterday, and it's surprising how much has not been moved off of the roadways. Now, I understand these small towns, they don't have the resources to do a lot of road work, but the people that drive these roads, I see them go off into the ditch instead of stopping and moving something out of their way. They're going to travel that road again, I'm sure of it. They live out here. Why would they not move it to avoid having to go off the road every time? They would move it once and then they would have clear path the rest of the time. I do wonder about that sometimes. A lot of people, including myself, we will avoid doing that one task that we know will make everything easier from that point on, but we'll continue to go around or step over or move in a different direction to avoid that thing instead of just picking it up and getting it out of the road like that, that branch. And so I'm thinking to myself, I'm going to be the person that I'm going to move that branch, you know, I don't live out here. I'm going to move that branch off the road so everybody quits going off the road and has a clear path to travel. And as I got out and did that, there was a guy in a truck that stopped and helped me move it off the road. He said, you know, I've gone past that 3 times already and I never got out of my truck to move it until I saw you do that. And we both laughed, but it's true, we do that all the time. We had a little conversation about that and If you think about it, how many things are you doing that with? Are you avoiding that one task that's going to make everything easier for you, but you keep going around it? So my challenge to you today is eat that frog, do that task, put the work in up front to make everything forward easier. I'll see you again tomorrow for another Daily Spark.
