Running Around like a Chicken With Its Head Cut Off

Those are a bunch of chicken heads, huh?  This is the sight that greets us most Saturday and Sunday mornings as we walk out to milk the cows.  On weekdays, it is still dark and they are mostly milling around the hen house or still roosting.  On the weekends when we milk about 2 hours later, those birds are impatiently waiting for breakfast.  They are cackling and clucking all piled up by the gate.  We press through the flock, trying not to step on them.

Looking at the photo above and all their heads, it reminds me of many people who talk to me about chickens, telling me when they grew up butchering chickens, they'd chop the birds head off and the bird would run around with no head.  We don't do that.  We slit the artery and let the bird's heart bleed them out.  But the saying "Running around like a chicken with its head cut off" is an interesting visual that people use to describe themselves or others.  It represents chaos.  Lack of planning or organization.

Do you ever feel like that describes your life?  It's funny.  I try to be efficient and organized in my work life.  I try to plan and keep things orderly.  In a Jekyll and Hyde situation, my work around our little farm is often quite chaotic, not organized, not well thought out and woefully inefficient.  In our current viewing of the Canadian series "Heartland" on Netflix, the character Jack Bartlett made the following quote:

"If you act like you have 15 minutes to do a job, it will take you all day, but if you act like you have all day to do a job, it will take you 15 minutes."  - Jack Bartlett from "Heartland"

You know, Jack is 100% correct!  Oftentimes, I have a bunch of projects that I feel like all need to be done.  With limited time, I'll just dive in and start working hard without planning.  I'll rush to do the heavy-lifting and hard work without stopping to think and get organized.  Inevitably, that results in numerous trips from the barn or pasture back to my workbench in the garage to get supplies I need.  While great for burning calories, it burns up the day and I end up not being productive.  As Jack mentions, it takes all day to do a job that could have taken 15 minutes had I spent time on the front end planning.

I give Jack Bartlett credit for that quote, but King Solomon said it first, I think:

The plans of the diligent lead surely to plenty,

But those of everyone who is hasty, surely to poverty. 

Proverbs 21:5 New King James Version (NKJV)

Wise words indeed...