Just. Do. It.

I have had a collection of three wall-mounted guitar hooks for almost as long as we have lived in this house (we moved in August 05 - you do the maths, I'm too lazy). I've put off installing them for quite a while because, as previously mentioned, I'm somewhat lazy. It didn't help that when I was finally motivated to put them up, I discovered that my stud finder[1] worked less effectively when used slowly and carefully (it screws up its sensitively and it falsely reports when it has found the edge of the stud) and therefore I was drilling screws into plain old plaster, which wouldn't even support the weight of the hooks, yet alone the weight of a guitar as well.

When I changed jobs late last year, I finally started to get my act together and began adopting a Getting Things Done attitude, somewhat inspired by the 43 Folders/Lifehacker aesthetic. Part of the GTD method is break your big picture things down into "next actions" - that is, "what do I have to do next?" - the theory being, it's easier to go ahead and do something if the task is small and easily achievable, rather than some monolithic project hanging above your head like some sort of Sword of Damocles.[2]

Part of my @Home list (which doesn't get whittled down very quickly, but I am working on it) involved getting these guitar hooks up. A couple of weekends ago I went out and bought some nylon plaster plugs which allow me to hang up to 10kgs without needing any support behind the plaster. Over the last couple of weekends I have installed two of the hooks with one more to go (which will actually have a djembe and a ukulele hanging off it rather than a guitar or bass, but it still gets junk off the floor of the study/computer/music room).

I may not be much of a handyman, but every now and then I manage to do something vaguely DIY. Enjoy the before and after shots.

The wall before (well, technically, it's the opposite wall because I didn't think to take a photo until it was too late. However, it looked exactly the same. Trust me.)
















And here is the after shot (which is of the actual wall. Trust me.)













[1] a phrase that still makes my wife giggle uncontrollably - for extra fun, I like to tell her I bought my stud finder in Bangkok. You'd never guess that I'm the immature one in this marriage

[2] Of course, GTD is more than that. One of my favourite parts of GTD is the idea that most people are stressed because they carry around everything they need to do in their head, instead of recorded somewhere. Because it's all stored in their head, it's much easier to forget things and you tend to spend a lot of your time stressed because either (a) you just know you've forgotten something important but can't think what it is or (b) you're frantically doing damage control around some disaster, caused by you forgetting soemthing important. One of the strengths of GTD is that if you can develop a system of recording your next actions that you can trust completely, the mere act of recording stuff you need to do reduces your stress almost exponentially becuause you don't need to carry it around in your head anymore. I didn't really believe it until I tried. GTD and my trusty DIY Hipster PDA has meant that I forget nowhere near as many things as I used to, and I no longer find myself lying awake at night, my mind racing (or remembering stuff just before I go to sleep and forgetting it when I wake up and not remember it again until too late). In turn, I feel much more organised and relaxed although my wife has said she hasn't noticed any difference. I feel it though, and that makes a difference to me.