Cynicism is a form of resistance, a walling off of the possibilities for transformation. Mary Pipher

Challenge Update (Friday): Here's an example of a typical to do list back in the days when I used one of those:

Now here's what Day 7 of this adventure looked like.

The difference I am seeing between the days with a list and the days without a list is that I am tackling bigger things on these list-free days. Previously, I would right down those little details to remember: call someone, email someone. I would get up in the morning, glance at my planner, see a list of five things to do besides my normal daily activities, and think I just don't have time for anything major today. I was planning myself out of being productive.

Details are tricky that way. I've forgotten a few details over the last week because I haven't written them down. I haven't gotten all of my daily tasks done everyday. But I have accomplished some bigger things at the expense of details and daily tasks. The priorities have shifted. The big projects now take precedence over the details. Is it dangerous to forget the details? Sometimes. It is much easier to catch up on details than it is to catch up on big projects. I can sit down and pay bills, answer emails, or return phone calls in about thirty minutes. Nothing bad has happened because I dealt with those things later rather than sooner.

Thoreau said, "Our life is frittered away by detail... Simplify, simplify." (He also said, "We should distrust any enterprise which requires new clothes," and while that doesn't apply to this discussion I think it is sound advice. No charge for that extra.)

Simplify, simplify. Some details are important, necessary, and life will suffer if we neglect them for very long. Brushing your teeth, for instance, or buying groceries, bathing your child (and yourself), talking to your spouse. Important details. Many details are unimportant fillers. We pay attention to them because they seem urgent and they give us a sense of immediate accomplishment. They are busy work, distractions, tools of the procrasinator, impediments to our larger goals. In their right place, they cause no harm. In the wrong place, they are the pebbles we trip over that cause us to fall back down the mountain.

Better Life Tip: Put your details at the end of the day. Devote a half hour to "detail clean-up." Don't let them distract you from accomplishing the bigger projects.

SCHEDULING, SCHMEDULING (YAWN). WHAT'S THE POINT?
Some of us resist schedules because they seem restrictive, anti-creativity, control-freakish. Certainly some schedules are that way. If you're scheduling your time down to ten-minute sections, I think we might need to work on your control freak tendencies. On the other hand, if you schedule nothing and live to follow the natural flow, you not only stifle productivity but you will also end up stifling creativity as well. You live by a schedule whether you admit it or not; a schedule is simply a matter of doing a certain thing at a certain time. When you take initiative to set your own schedule, you can do so according to your own priorities. When you don't set your own schedule, you are not only at the mercy of your own whims (which very often do not line up with your bigger goals and priorities) but you are also at the mercy of others who will not hesitate to impose their schedules on yours... or your lack thereof. So it really comes down to whose schedule you want to follow: yours, thoughtfully laid out, or some haphazard construct of circumstances. Seems like a no-brainer to me, but take the time to think it over if you must.

BASIC SCHEDULING
I like to keep my schedule pretty basic. It includes 1) A Beginning and an End and 2) Time Blocks. There are multiple planning calendars in as many formats as you can dream up. I find them all too complicated for my simple living preferences. This is not true for everyone; my husband loves his Franklin Covey planner and uses it faithfully. I feel restricted by all those boxes with lines and titles. The perfectionist in me just can't leave well enough alone, so I spend more time scheduling in all the pretty boxes than I do actually implementing my schedule. Since the point of a schedule is to simplify and to increase productivity, and I find that the more complex planners accomplish neither goal for me, I stick with my basics and forgo the professional leather-binder look. You might find that a combination of methods works best for you. My advice is this: start simple and be diligent with your simple scheduling techniques. Once you know they work for you, you can tweak and add on and adjust to your heart's delight. Don't start way at the top of the complex calendar hierarchy. The very complexity is too overwhelming to keep up when you're first learning how to schedule, and you'll get discouraged and drop it all.

A BEGINNING AND AN END
This topic makes me think of Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music, when she first attempts to teach the Captain's children how to sing: "Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start..." Of course, she drops her little Happy Beginnings song in favor of the inexplicably popular Do-Re-Mi. We, however, shall carry our Happy Beginnings all the way to Happy Endings.

What needs a beginning and an end is your working day. Your entire day is capped on both ends automatically by your bed. You wake up and get out of bed, your day begins. You get sleepy and get back in bed, your day ends. I see no reason to mess with that kind of perfection, unless you need some help on the waking up and getting out of bed part. We'll get to that in another article. For now, we're dealing with the workday itself, the part of the day that begins after you've been awakened by the sound of bluebirds (or the alarm clock) and, I hope, have eaten a halfway decent breakfast. Oh, also, you should get dressed. Maybe even before breakfast.
Your workday beginning may be set in stone already. You have to be at the office at 9:00 am. There you go. 9:00 am it is. For those of us who work in more flexible fields, in which the office hours dictate next to nothing, setting a Beginning is a matter of choice and convenience. If you're a stay-at-home Mom trying to wake, dress, and feed three kids, then give yourself enough time to do that before you try to get down to the rest of your work. If you're a work-from-home small business owner who likes to start the day with a two-hour gym session, then set your workday beginning accordingly.

The End of the workday is just as important as the beginning. Again, this may be dictated by office hours, or it may be a matter of choice and fitting in with what happens in the rest of your day. Perhaps it's 3:00 pm when the kids get home from school. Perhaps it's 6:00 pm when your spouse gets home from work. Perhaps it's 9:00 pm when you realize you haven't eaten anything since noon. (I don't recommend that last time option, by the way.) Choose an End. Put a cap on your working hours. Sure, you can always choose to do "extra" work or finish up projects in the evening if you want to, but that should be something you do because you really want to, not because you have to, and it should never interfere with your family time or social obligations.

My workday beginning is 8:00 am and my workday end is 5:00 pm. Of course there is more that happens before and after those times, but it is within those times that I block out time for work and have specific goals to accomplish.

BLOCKING OUT YOUR TIME
I learned this one from my husband, who implements the concept with his Franklin Covey planner in a way I can only admire. The idea itself is Read the rest of this entry »

We all have stuff we keep putting off. Sometimes it is a major project that just scares us. Sometimes it is a simple task that we simply don't like or don't know how to tackle. Procrastination leaves all that stuff hanging over our heads. You can never feel like you've actually done your work for the day when you know you've put off that something yet again. Whether what you procrastinate on is a huge, intimidating project or a small, momentary item, getting started is usually the most difficult part. Here are a few ideas to help you get to that point so you can get it finished and move on with your life!

1. Take on a monthly (or weekly) challenge for that hard-to-start project. (See previous article.) For writers who procrastinate putting for that great novel, NaNoWriMo is an organized challenge of this sort. For others, any project can be turned into a challenge for a specific amount of time. It doesn't have to be a month. Dedicate a week to the project, and put forth all the time and energy you can into it, knowing that at the end of the week you can stop, no matter how much is left to do. What usually happens is that you get yourself motivated just by doing. The momentum carries you forward. You can accomplish a lot more than you think in a week. You may completely finish that project that seemed like a year-long commitment. If you don't finish, you will still have a good chunk of it done and can continue toward the goal at a much faster pace.

2. Incorporate it into your routine. This method works well for those small but just unenjoyable tasks that come up, like cleaning out the refrigerator or dejunking the junk drawer or writing thank you notes. Make the one that you despise and put off a part of your daily routine. Say you hate cleaning out the refrigerator, so you just keep saying you'll do it tomorrow. Meanwhile new life forms have taken over the vegetable drawer and are threatening invasion into the condiments. Before you lose your ketchup to that rabid broccoli, make it your routine to spend 5 minutes working on the refrigerator while your coffee is brewing, or water is boiling for the night's pasta, or you're talking on the phone to that friend who always repeats her stories... Don't make it into a huge project that requires hours of your day. Make it part of your day and it will get done.

3. Eliminate the reason for procrastination. First, of course, you have to know the reason. Why do you procrastinate? Is it just laziness? Or are you afraid of failing? Are you unsure where to start? Do you have no idea how to complete the project you're putting off? Are you afraid of someone's response, so you don't make the phone call? Maybe you don't know what to say, so you never have that difficult conversation you really need to have. Or you don't buy new clothes that you need because you really hate the way that extra 10 pounds makes you look. Instead of trying to force yourself to do something that you are not yet equipped to do, tackle the reason behind the procrastination. If you're lazy, start reading about the power of diligence and hard work ; start making yourself do something a little extra, a little more difficult than you like every day. Soon those efforts of getting rid of laziness will become habits. If you're afraid or dealing with other emotional issues that keep you procrastinating, try writing about it or talking with someone you trust. Getting the feelings and uncertainty in the open helps you know whether they are serious or not. Sometimes just stating your fear lets you see that it is silly to let it keep you back in the corner. If you don't know where to start on your project or relationship problem or work issue, read on to the next suggestion.

4. Get help. The world of people you interact with is rich with resources. Your family, your friends, your co-workers, your peers, your social group, your church friends, employees at the stores you frequent: they all have ideas, skills, and experiences that can help you. You simply have to ask. If the thing you are putting off is beyond the help of people you know, try searching the internet. You can find lots of information from people who have dealt with it. The phone book is another source of help. There are counselors, therapists, weight-loss consultants, professional organizers, life coaches, writing instructors, tutors, interior designers, personal shoppers, and a plethora of other professional people offering many services.

5. Break it down. This applies especially to those big projects you put off. You want to redecorate your bathroom. It's hideous. It has peach tile and yellow linoleum and water stains on the ceiling and a shower curtain with faded images of rubber ducks. It is the opposite of a spa-like, serene setting. But the idea of tackling all of the problems just overwhelms you. You don't have the money, the time, the knowledge, or the energy to take it all on. So you keep taking your hot baths with your eyes closed do you don't have to look at it. Instead of seeing the project as a whole, break it down into its many, much smaller parts. One week (maybe this week?) you will go to the hardware store, buy a gallon of paint and some brushes, and then come home, remove the towel hooks, put an old sheet on the floor, and paint the walls. It will take you a couple of hours to get one coat on, probably. Next week, you can apply the next coat, go out and buy new towel hooks and a small, framed print you love, and come home and hang them up. The week after that you could put new hardware on your medicine cabinet. Treat it as many smaller projects that you can take on, and soon the entire project will be finished.

6. Set deadlines and rewards. Set a date by which a particular task must be done and put it on your calendar in big, bold letters. Next to it put down the reward. Make it something you really like but don't get very often. The key is this: you only get the reward if you complete the task by the deadline. No cheating.

7. Do it now. That's right. Get up from your chair and go do it! It's not that big of a deal and you will be finished with it. Then you can come back, sit down, and read the rest of the article in peace with a little smirk of satisfaction on your face. I'm not kidding. Get up! Go do it! Now!

8. Don't do it. If you've been putting something off for a long time, and the world hasn't crumbled around you, maybe you can just decide not to do it and then quit feeling bad because you haven't. Do you really have to complete those half-finished craft projects? No. You don't. You don't like them, you don't have to do them. Give the supplies away to someone who will use and enjoy them. Now you have less material and mental clutter to deal with.

9. Make a public commitment. Use your blog or webpage, send an email to all your friends ( or to me), call a few of your closest buddies, make an announcement at your next social gathering... find a way to make a public commitment to do/complete whatever it is you've been procrastinating on. Make it even more motivational by promising something to the group if you don't complete it as promised. (You buy dinner for the friends if you don't do it by a certain date.) They'll remember the commitment if there's something in it for them, and you'll remember to do it if it will cost you to forget!

10. Delegate it. There are many students with little money who are capable of lots of household projects you may not want to do yourself. Hire one to plant your perennials or paint your front porch or organize your files or set up your new computer or load your iPod. Highschool and college students are great resources. Pay fairly and explain clearly what you want done and you're likely to end up with an anti-procrastination partner who can help you in many different projects.

11. Partner it. There are two different ways to partner something you've procrastinated on. First, you can find another person who will agree to be your partner in getting the item completed, and then you in turn help your partner do something that he or she has procrastinated on. If you find someone who is procrastinating on the same thing, like going to the gym regularly or reading more books, you can tackle it together. Join an aerobics class together, or join a book club together and have monthly meetings to talk about the book you've just read. Alternately, you can partner something by "attaching" it to another activity you enjoy. You like shopping but you hate returning phone calls. Go to the mall, sit in the parking lot in your car and return 2 or 3 phone calls. Then go shopping.

12. Plan a day for it. Sometimes the best method is the head-on, no-holds-barred, life-or-death duel approach. So clear a day in your calendar. Get your supplies ahead of time. Turn the phone off and the good music on and get to work. Do as much as you can, as well as you can, as quickly as you can. At the end of the day, stop, clean up, and go do something you enjoy.

Challenge Update: This morning the alarm went off, I got up, and though I'm a little sleepy, I feel more human than zombie-like. This is a first for the last couple of weeks.

I haven't been getting enough sleep and this is why: my habit is to go to bed when I get sleepy, say, when I can't concentrate on the page I'm reading or the movie I'm watching. Lately, I've been busy moving around, talking to people, working physically on projects. We are remodeling our basement; every night Joe comes home and works for a couple of hours and I try to help. We've also had several C.O.P.S. meetings, formal and spontaneous. When I'm active with work (physical) or with people (conversation), I don't get those "hey-I'm-sleepy-and-should-go-to-bed" cues.

I've been feeling depressed in the evenings, too. I hate being depressed, so when I start feeling it I immediately try to figure out what the cause is. Do I need some time with Joe? Am I worried about something that I haven't shared with him? Did I get my feelings hurt and not talk about it? Am I upset with someone and stuffing it instead of dealing with it? Am I overwhelmed? Have I committed to too much? This time I haven't been able to pinpoint it, though, and that bothered me. Lots.

Last night we finished dinner and Joe and I flopped down on our big cushy couch-chair to talk and play with Mara for a few minutes before starting on the basement. As I'm leaning back, watching Joe and Mara (in a rousing game of "Get the Pen Out of Daddy's Pocket, Drop It Behind Your Head, and Pretend You Don't Know Where It Is," one of our favorites), I feel my eyes get heavy... and heavier... and I realize something...

1. I am very tired. Sleepy. Ready for bed. Past ready for bed. Desperate for sleep.
2. Depression (for me, low energy + self-pity + "hopeless" feeling + no motivation) is because I am physically weary.
3. It is barely 8pm.
4. For the first time, it occurred to me that maybe I'm trying to do too much. I got up at 5, read my Bible, wrote 2 articles, exercised, cooked, cleaned, did laundry, took care of babies, ran errands, ordered a birthday gift, picked out songs for church, did website work, read books to Mara, nursed Robbie (4 times), talked to my sister on the phone (3 times), and finished reading a book I started the day before. And I was disappointed because I didn't get to planting my seeds for seedlings.

When I'm going nonstop from 5am and only feel bad because I didn't do more, perhaps my perspective is off. I'm getting so low on energy by evening that it is translating to depression. I'm falling asleep if I sit down for five minutes. My standard response has been not to sit down for five minutes. Ignore the signals, keep pushing on. Last night I decided that was stupid. So I put the kids to bed, cleaned up the kitchen, and put myself to bed. Joe told me to get some sleep, and he worked on the basement (by himself, sweet man).

Eight beautiful hours later, I actually feel good. Awake. Hopeful. Energized. And a little humbled.

I like to believe that I am Superwoman. Some days I can pull it off, and those days make me think I should be able to pull it off all the time. I get so caught up in the energy and accomplishment of doing things that I neglect the basics. Sleep. Relaxation. Talking. Resting.

I put "Decide on Next Monthly Challenge" on my calendar this week. I know what it is now: a month with no to-do list. I need the freedom. I need the discipline of not focusing on accomplishments and check marks and productivity for productivity's sake. March should be an interesting month.

Improve Your Life: Simplify your schedule. Write down your appointments, activities, and just two or three to-do items. Give yourself some breathing room. You might actually be more productive.

Be Open-Minded:
You must learn to say no when something is not right for you. Leontyne Price

...the eyes of man are never satisfied. Proverbs 27:20
God does not judge us by the multitude of works we perform, but how well we do the work that is ours to do. The happiness of too many days is often destroyed by trying to accomplish too much in one day. We would do well to follow a common rule for our daily lives--DO LESS, AND DO IT BETTER. Dale Turner
He who trusts in his own heart is a fool, but he who walks wisely will be delivered. Proverbs 28:26