What’s for dinner?

Life questions that waylay us.

A while ago I read a book about getting on and getting things done. In it the author talks about the questions that we can get hung up on, which stop us achieving our big goals.

He gives a list of examples (which you can see above) Which includes big brain busting, life defining questions such as “why do I get dissatisfied with everything I do?”, “why am I unhappy?” and “will I ever find somebody who will love me?”.

Then, slightly anomalously, halfway down the list is:

“What’s for dinner?”

When I first read this I thought it was weird. It feels like a different category of question. I shared it with other people, and we all agreed it was odd. But since then it’s stuck with me. What are the questions that waylay us? What really stops us getting what we want? And I have to say I’m beginning to think “what’s for dinner?” is up there… Maybe he was on to something.

To give some context to this, I am generally the main cook to my family of 5, and variously different members of the household will not eat: vegetables, meat (other than chicken), cheese, eggs and beans. The intersections of who will eat what are many and varied. Working out what’s for tea has become a daily challenge.

Since reading the book sometime last autumn, I became very conscious of this question and how frequently it was asked. Both by me and by members of my family. And the answer was, all the bloody time! Is this really the most interesting topic of conversation we have? Is this really what we want to spend our lives discussing? Apparently so…

But actually, no. So, after Christmas I started planning meals. I gave up trying to please everyone and started keeping in backup meals for the fussier eaters among us. As a result, our “what’s for dinner?” conversations have dropped massively, and suddenly I have time and head space to think about other things.

But Rachel, what is the point of this story? Good question. I guess where I’m going is this, when something is taking up all of our time and headspace, it’s probably time to deal with it. Sometimes it’s not obvious, until we start thinking about them specifically, what they even are. Like me being surprised at how much time and energy I was expending on what to feed people. If you logged your conversations over a week, what would all of your head space be going on?

It’s easy to assume that the things that waylay us have to be big, important and urgent, but as often as not, the things that actually take our time are small and repetitive. And it’s enticing to think dealing with them means once and done – but so often the things that take our time are repeat offenders. They’re challenging because they keep happening and take head space every time.

So it’s worth taking a bit of time to consider how we might expend a bit of energy now, to save ourselves in the long term. Is is writing out instructions for the question you get asked most frequently. Is is blocking time to do emails all at once rather than interrupting yourself every time a message comes in. Or is it just planning some stuff in advance so you don’t end up going round in circles on the day.

Is what’s for dinner a question that stumps you? What decisions are you getting stuck on recently? Have you managed to find effective solutions to move past them? And if you’re really stuck on what to have for dinner, can I suggest a jacked potato?