Thanks to my happiness guru, Gretchen Rubin, I've found two tricks that really can help, even if I don't consistently employ these tactics myself. All you have to do is decide how much time you have to get something done. Don't worry, it's not that hard of a decision to make, as you might think.
The One-Minute Rule
If you are faced with a task that will take less than a minute to do, then DO IT! I don't know how many times I made my to-do list worse because I didn't tackle something the moment I noticed something needed to be done. Think about it - changing the toilet paper roll, putting away a dirty dish in the dishwasher, recycling some junk mail - these are tasks that truly take no time at all, but we are all guilty of putting it off, for no better reason than being lazy. Then you find yourself in need of TP when it's an EMERGENCY, you've run out of clean plates to use, or you have a pile of mail that needs to be sorted. Even if it turns out to take more than a minute or two, I find that I feel better getting something done and out of the way. It's one less thing to think about. I keep a real pen-and-paper list so I actually have to remember to add something to my list if I don't do it - so the list keeps growing if I don't follow the one-minute rule!
Power Hour
It's funny how the longer you put something off, the more intimidating or time consuming it can seem. If you know you have a task that will take more than a minute but you're not quite sure when you'll have time to tackle it, then I suggest blocking off a power hour to git 'er done. Simply enough, you spend one hour focused on your task. Set your timer, do the work, and stop when the timer goes off. Even if you don't finish, you will have accomplished one more hour's worth of work than you had been accomplishing. You'll probably find that you don't even need the whole hour for some things. Gretchen Rubin suggests doing a power hour once a week, but I find that every now and then, I have an extra hour to spare during the week so I try to take advantage of the extra time when I can. I'm a planner by nature so I like having a scheduled power hour but if I come across a spare hour (or even just 20 minutes) then it can really help go a long way to crossing things off the to-do list.
Now don't fret if you don't think these times really work for you. There are plenty of other pieces of advice floating out there - you can take 10 minutes every day to tidy up, or maybe you want to break up a big project and spend 30 minutes every evening on it until it's done. There's no wrong way to get your to-do list done. For me, as long as I work on something, and it eventually makes my life simpler by not being a nuisance on my mind and time anymore, then that's what counts.
So, have I been perfect at utilizing the one-minute rule or setting up my power hours? Absolutely not. But when I actually take a minute or an hour to do something, it's always been a productive use of time, and I never regret getting something done. Do I wish it had been my bright ideas to spend a minute to tidy up or to take an hour to deal with a looming task? Sure! But since they weren't my ideas, then I'm glad I was at least introduced to Gretchen Rubin so I could stumble onto her ideas!
Now I can cross off writing this blog post from my to-do list this week.
No comments:
Post a Comment