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Woah. Sounds too good to be true, right?
Wrong.
Warning: These action steps are not for the faint of heart. They are not promised to be easy. The steps themselves are easy to do, sure, but getting yourself to do them is the “hard” part.
In my last post, I talked about “everyday courage.”
Table of Contents
Being able to drag yourself out of bed every morning and work on what needs to be done, no matter how you are feeling emotionally or how much you just don’t want to.
Being able to believe it when you tell yourself that you CAN and you WILL.
It took me quite some time to get enough everyday courage to even be able to keep up on the dishes each day, which I’m sure you can tell isn’t really asking a lot from a person. Admittedly, I’ve never been good at the concept of having a “night routine” and a “morning routine” for the house, which really makes a BIG difference in how the days go (but I’m working on it). I’m also guilty of giving in to depression and the demotivation it causes a bit too easily.
I really fell down hard once Eric was diagnosed with leukemia a year ago – here we were literally just welcoming our new baby into the world and that very same day we get the news that he had cancer, and he had to stay in the hospital for a month for intensive treatment to try to stop it and save his life. Talk about dropping a bomb on someone.
Suffice it to say that I didn’t handle the news well (to say that I cried “a lot” is an understatement).
As we adjusted to our “new normal,” our emotions got somewhat back towards normal but my productivity didn’t. And do you know why?
Because of really amazing and well-meaning people in our lives offering as much verbal and actual support that they could.
The number one thing people will tell you when you feel overwhelmed is to “give yourself a break.” And usually, they’re right.
But at what point do you realize enough is enough?
At what point do you say “it’s time to get back to it and push myself?”
After a while of “giving yourself a break,” you’ll feel pretty normal emotionally, but you may notice that things are starting to pile up – dishes aren’t always washed and put away each day, laundry starts to pile up, maybe some new dust bunnies start moving in (and we all know those darn dust bunnies love to bring friends). Maybe you don’t notice any of those physical things, but you notice (or someone tells you) that despite generally being in a good or okay mood, you’re feeling defeated, or maybe you feel like you’ll just never get caught up with things.
One day you realize just how many days in a row you’ve said “well, the laundry will still be there tomorrow,” or “that’s good enough for today, I’ll do the rest tomorrow.” But all this time you haven’t been factoring in that tomorrow has its own entire list too, so really you’ve just pushed everything back to stack up indefinitely.
That’s your turning point. That’s your wake-up call.
But once you get here, well, now what?
Now you’re ready for these two easy steps.
I think it’s safe to assume that you’ve been keeping the same general to-do list written down most days all this time – things like getting groceries, vacuuming the house, cleaning the bathroom, changing the bed sheets.
But you haven’t managed to finish your list each day in a long time, right?
Like I said earlier, this is NOT for everyone – where it will be what some people need, it’ll be a big de-motivator for others. You know you much better than I do, so think about how this will affect you before you decide to implement. But I think a lot of us could do with, as my grandmother would say, “a good kick in the pants” once in a while.
Well here it comes.
The first thing you need to do if you want to increase your productivity is to add at least a few more things to your to-do list.
Wait, what?
Yes, you read that right. Let it sink in for a minute, and let me explain.
Maybe I’m totally alone on this, but I pretty much never finish my to-do list because it often contains more things than are even physically possible within a day (so I’m a dreamer, so what)! Since I write my to-do list each day in a daily appointment planner, I can look back on what was accomplished and what wasn’t. I’d say I’m probably in the 30-50% completion range, on average, depending on whether I decided to take a day off and play with my kids more, or make a Target run just to get out of the house.
So if I never get everything finished, how would making my to-do list longer help?
If your mind works like mine does, you see the big list the same way you saw the smaller list – a block of things you’d rather not do but you really HAVE to do because no one else will.
And this magical little thing happens when your list gets longer but your overall completion mindset and productivity stays the same – you still manage to get to that 30-50% completion range. And 30-50 completed tasks (out of 100) sure sounds a heck of a lot more accomplished than 3-5 completed tasks (out of 10), doesn’t it?
So there’s your step one, and there’s two ways to act on it. The first way, my preference, is to break down your tasks into as many sub-tasks as possible. Instead of just writing down “clean the kitchen,” try turning into a mini-list, like this:
- Pick up/clear the counters
- Pick up/clear the kitchen table (if you have one)
- Wash/wipe down the counters and table
- Wash all the dishes (or load the dishwasher and wash the rest)
- Dry/put away all the clean dishes (or empty the dishwasher)
- Empty the garbage
Do you see what a difference that can make to your mood when you’re struggling to get things accomplished each day? Now if all you managed to finish in a day was “cleaning the kitchen,” suddenly it goes from looking like you’ve “only accomplished one thing today” to “I finished 6 tasks today!”
The second way to act on step one is to literally add more tasks to your list.
I like to think I’ve graduated to this version. What do I mean by that? Just what it sounds like: find new tasks to add to your list.
Let’s say “clean the kitchen” is what’s written. Try adding “wash the kitchen garbage can” once every week or two (because seriously, they get gross and I bet a lot of us don’t often think about cleaning the place where we put garbage). Do you wash your sheets every week? Why not wash your pillows every few months (or more), too? Adding some more little, easily completed but easily forgotten tasks like wiping down baseboards, cleaning your washing machine and vacuuming your dryer vent, and shampooing your carpets (assuming you do it yourself and don’t hire it out) will help you not only FEEL more accomplished, but you’ll get a cleaner house in the long run!
This works with non-housekeeping tasks too.
- Add a weekly task of balancing your checkbook, or tracking credit card/other debt balances. Your finances will thank you!
- Add something just for yourself, like reading for pleasure (or better, for learning!) for a set amount of time every day.
- Write down something like “workout 30 minutes” on every day that you aim to do it. (I know I need the reminder because our couch calls very loudly!)
- Always dreamed of starting a side business (like a blog, maybe)? Write down a daily task to research how to start it up, or to accomplish one task in the direction of getting it started (like “come up with blog name/domain name,” “research hosting providers” (I highly recommend Bluehost!), “brainstorm niche,” etc.).
Not only have you given yourself more to do, but you’re also giving yourself stepping stones to get to where and who you want to be!
If you’ve made it this far and are still with me, you’re probably going to laugh at step two. It’s almost too stupid to even say it.
Here’s step two: use a timer.
I know, I know. It sounds like mom laying down the law and demanding your room be cleaned within a certain timeframe or else you’re grounded.
But guess what? IT WORKED.
If you follow me on Instagram, you probably saw the before and after pics of what 40 timed minutes in my kitchen accomplished late one night, when I had minimal energy and zero ambition. I set a timer for 15 minutes with the task of getting all the crap picked up off our island countertop, and when that timer went off I reset it for 25 minutes and challenged myself to wash as many dishes as I could within that timeframe (the Rockies were getting some competition over here that week).
You know what happened?
I was PROUD of what I accomplished in that timeframe. It wasn’t perfect and I obviously wasn’t done cleaning my kitchen in that time, but by the end of it at around 10pm I was just done for the day and resolved to get to bed and get up early to keep going.
But even more important than that was I went to bed feeling HAPPY about what I had gotten done and feeling OPTIMISTIC, wondering how much I could crush off my list tomorrow.
Let me tell you, those feelings had been hard to come by for some time. But finally using my secret weapons, these two easy steps, I increased my overall productivity, improved my mood, and after just a few months of curating the right list balance for me, I can see exactly the way forward to accomplish my goals of a clean and organized house, a successful business or two, and the opportunity to fit more of what I want to do in my day instead of only what I have to do.
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