just do it! A diary of anti-procrastination: 3 minutes

I've been laid up for a few days with a painful sprained ankle. The medical advice was to rest and elevate it for 3 days and then slowly begin to do stuff. Today is my first day of doing stuff. Now, I hate being ill off work (but when you can't walk...), particularly because as a teacher I feel responsible for education! So, when the doctors said a week off work I cried inside. But then I listened when I was told that it could take 8 weeks to heal properly and if I don't take a week off I could make it worse.
I've been feeling frustrated by the state of the house as I haven't been able to do anything, but this morning thought... why not just 3 minutes? So I've done little rescues in 3 minute chunks and rested as needed. After that I wondered about baking, remembering Diane's post last week. I thought that I might try shortbread, as that is easy and I had the ingredients.

So I set the timer for 3 minutes

and started measuring out the ingredients. Shortbread is easy as you do a 3:2:1 ratio of flour, butter, sugar (I got this the wrong way round when I first measure but fixed it by doubling the amount of butter and flour!)

That was about the first three minutes. I had a break and then carried on. You have to beat the butter until it is soft.

Then you add the sugar. It was at this poin

t that I realised I'd got butter and sugar the wrong way around! I quickly measured out some more butter and flour, softened the butter and carried on! You stir the sugar in and you get a creamy paste. After this you sieve the flour in and stir and knead. In the middle of this another 3 minutes was up, so I rested and went back to it!

once you get it to the right consistency flatten it into a baking container, I scored mine (not so neat!) into fingers and sprinkled some more sugar on the top. Then it goes in the oven at gas mark 3 for 40 minutes.