Diana looked at her TO DO list and sighed. It seemed to get longer every week. Well, maybe not seemed to get longer; it got longer. While the smaller things, like laundry, meal planning, watering the plants, and such got done, those bigger jobs just never did.
Her closet was a mess. The baseboards all needed cleaning. There was so much clutter under the kitchen sink that she dreaded opening the doors to that area.
She could just not seem to get to any of her big jobs. She felt like she needed lots of time on each job and could never find a big block. Or she wasn’t feeling energetic enough. There was always something else she felt she needed to do.
She was avoiding all the big jobs. And she recognized it.
Of course, as many of us know, recognizing something and doing something about it are often very different.
And as many of us also know, the longer you avoid something, the more frustrating having that TO DO on our TO DO list gets. Here are some tips:
- Set a day to start. Look at your calendar and pick a day where you have a little chunk of time, maybe half an hour or so. Diana picked Thursday afternoon after lunch.
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Recognize that you will not likely get everything done during this period of time, and that is OK. When the time is up, schedule another day and time to work again. Or, if you have time and really feel like you are on a roll with the task, allow yourself to keep going.
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Don’t overthink. Diana pulled everything out from the left side of the cabinet. She found herself surrounded by cleaning solutions, empty containers, new and old sponges, and all sorts of odds and ends. She knew what supplies she used most, so she kept them. Quickly she got rid of the others. Most of the
time, we really know which things need to go...and just have to start getting rid of them.
Diana still finds herself avoiding big jobs sometimes. Most of us do. But the majority of jobs are not nearly as bad as we imagine. If we avoid avoiding them, they will go away.
