Mind your beans!

I may have mentioned (more than once) that I don’t cook much.  Well… every now and then, I will break out the pots and pans to cook something other than chicken nuggets and French fries!   Growing up, I learned how to cook southern style… mashed potatoes, fried chicken, green beans cooked all day long, etc.  So, today,  I decided to cook beans.  

I like to put them in the big pot to cook for  4+ hours until they are completely falling apart.  They are so good that way.   Yum!   So today, I put them on the stove and checked them periodically.   But, I was having one of those days in the office.  The kind where I start something, then get interrupted, and then the interruptions are interrupted.  You know the kind… So, needless to say, it was quite a while before I could step away from the office to run downstairs to check on the beans. 

Well… all the water had cooked out, and the beans were completely stuck to the bottom of the pot.   I mean, I tried to dump them in the garbage, and over half of them wouldn’t even come out of the pot!   They went from Yum to YUCK in just one contract, one email, and a boat load of questions.  And, you wonder why my kids like it better when Tom cooks!  Tom knew better than to say a word though. !   He was working on a contract, and was the source of most of the interruptions!

There was no cleaning this pot in the sink.  I had to put water and soap in it and put it back on the stove to boil.  It was the only way to get the beans out!  LOL   Before long, the soap suds were starting to boil up over the top in a nice blackish foam that boiled over the top.   Yes… I made a huge mess!  And, the garbage can smelled so badly that we had to take it outside right away.   So… did we have green beans for dinner?  NO!!!!!!!!  

But, burning the beans reminded me of a wonderful lesson.  I am the queen of multi-tasking.  My job requires it.   I’m usually juggling 20-30 clients at once and I try to make sure they all feel like they are my only client.  But, sometimes, you just really need to “be where you are.”    You’ve got to focus on the task at hand.  You don’t have to answer the phone the second it rings, or answer the email the second that it comes in.  You sometimes just have to pay attention to the ONE thing you are doing at the moment.  The best way to get nowhere is to try to go in too many directions at one time.  And the best way to create more work for yourself is to try to do too many things at once.

So remember… If you don’t mind your beans, you might end up with none.