Your passport!
Take half a minute now to avoid catastrophe later
One of my finest friends, Ronald, was going to come and pay me a visit in Spain last weekend. I hadn’t seen him for a long time we were very much looking forward to the trip and had a fully timeboxed itinerary of fun to look forward to. A few days before he was due to come, he realised that his passport would expire shortly, making travel impossible. The disaster was real. Ronald and I were distraught, left grappling with the weight of what might have been and cursing international border bureaucracy.
Passport expiry is one of those very important but not urgent at all until it’s hyper-urgent situations. It’s not the only one. There’s also driver’s licenses, car insurance, car MOT / vehicle inspection, tax returns, visa expiration, work permits, health insurance, rental agreements, birthdays, anniversaries, and more. I wrote about methods to remember future events generally in this post.
But in my experience it’s passports, birthdays and anniversaries that catch people out the most, by far.
If only there were an almost-fool-proof system to catch all of these important-but-not-urgent items, this time, and every time…
Two actions to take, right now
For your passport, take a look at the expiry now. Then add a timebox to your calendar for 4 months (or whenever makes sense given your likely travel plans) before that date. Do it now. It will be 30 seconds well spent. This responsible act will also save you from last-minute panic.
For other items above (and probably some I’ve not included), add a timebox to your calendar for some time in the next week to address all these. It might take 30 minutes to see to all of these. But these 30 minutes will also have been spent very well and be accompanied by a sense of enormous wellbeing.
Act now and protect your future self from panic, tragedy and the likes of Ronald’s ruin.
Marc
Links you may like
7 days of Timeboxing (the free email micro-course)
Timeboxing, the book (US)
Timeboxing, the book (UK)
Timeboxing, el libro (Español)
Connect with me on LinkedIn (I will say yes!)