There are two schools of thought for how tasks should be done. One is that you should block out a reasonable amount of time and see the task through to the end. The other is that you should do a bit, even if you have limited time and you know you won’t be able to finish in that session.
I belong to both schools. I love the thought of seeing the task through to completion. The lawn mowed, whippersnipped, gear put away and hoses and pot plants put back in their places. But sometimes you simply don’t have the time and that’s when the ‘just start’ rule comes into play. Get something done, even if it’s not everything. If you can stop in a place where your half-finished task still looks reasonable, in my book that’s okay. It’s a mini-task, if you will. The bigger job is broken into doable bites and if you need to do the chore over two days, then so be it. Otherwise, the job would linger on the to do list. Indeed, it might languish there!
Of course, some chores seem to stay undone for far too long and when we do them we realise that we put off the simplest little task and it was only 10 minutes’ work. I do that with items like trouser hems that have come undone in the wash. But I have a plan that fits in with my tolerance level for out-of-place items. Rather than adding the item of clothing to a big mending basket that has been put in a cupboard and may never get done, I leave the offending item out in plain sight … somewhere that I don’t usually have anything sitting. The theory is that the placement of the item will encourage me to do this one thing. It may take some time to work, but it does eventually. I look at the item as I go past until one day I think, oh for goodness’ sake just fix that thing. (This only works with an otherwise tidy space, by the way.) And that’s when I learn, all over again, how little time some of these tasks take when you settle in and do them.
Sometimes a simple little job is seemingly made more difficult because the tools are not handy. That one is easy. Commit to breaking the job up into the three segments: Preparation, doing the chore and putting away. The minute I put a sewing kit next to the mending I am a leap closer to doing the job. And I always put away as soon as I have done the chore because the energy created from having completed a task makes the putting-away part easy.
The funny thing is that over the years, repetitive chores like washing up and other household duties have become almost automatic and I have a fairly consistent work ethic that just gets these things done. For example, I wash up as I cook, in those spare seconds I have between chopping and stirring. I might only wash two items at a time but I leave the next in the hot sudsy water and it takes almost no time to do when I get back to it. And by the rinse-and-repeat methodology I usually find that the after-dinner washing up will only be the final pots and the crockery and cutlery from the meal. I immediately finish the washing up as soon as I get up from the table so it’s all done almost without thinking about it. If I ever deviate from this pattern, the washing up is a chore that I hate. And don’t tell me to get a dishwasher, because we all know that there are still rinsing and packing duties involved and some people have trouble with that too.
Over time I have made these habits work for me. It’s the little extra jobs where I have to find techniques and tricks to make things happen, and the single decision of always taking each task to the next possible action (shades of one of the guiding principles in Getting Things Done) means that procrastination is overcome to a large degree.
And my powerful mantra is a simple, underwhelming little phrase … I’ll just make a start.