I knew this would happen.
I’ve run out of things to say. It’s not that there isn’t plenty to talk about, or loads of ideas I’ve jotted down for the blog. But I’m struck dumb. Words won’t come. Well, okay — these words are coming, but not the ones I wanted to say.
I wanted to help you figure out how to get things done in your own life and work, but I haven’t figured it out myself. I’ve been reading books and blogs and listening to audios, and they’re all full of good advice, but I haven’t implemented any of it.
The fact is that I’ve been using this blog, and even doing the research for it, as an avoidance technique to get out of actually doing the work of decluttering, getting organized, and getting things done. If you’re coming up with productive ways to avoid what you’re supposed to be doing in the first place, you can fool yourself into thinking you’re productive, but that’s not enough. You have to actually do the work.
This is a tough one for me because it’s a set of entrenched habits I’ve had for too many [coughfiftycough] years. If you think it’s hard to change when you’re young, just wait awhile.
But they’re just habits. Habits can be broken. New ones can take their place. I’ve heard that new habits can be formed in just three weeks. Twenty-one days. One day at a time.
So, rather than commit to doing a complete life makeover, I think I’ll keep it small and do-able. Something measurable that I will be accountable for here at The Complete Flake. Hmm… maybe a sidebar widget? Could be fun, in a geeky, WordPress way.
I will say that I have been doing better on the dishes lately, which makes me feel good. It’s one of my least favorite tasks, but if I don’t keep up with them, everything falls apart: can’t cook healthy meals, then I get sick because I eat processed, microwaved or fast food which I don’t tolerate at all, which means I don’t get any work done, and so on. It’s amazing how much depends on the dishes. So I’m giving myself credit where it is due. Just sayin’.
Okay, so what habit do you think I should work on first? Tell me in the comments. I promise to make a big deal announcing what area I will work on in my next post — and then, of course, make a big deal out of working on it.
Here’s a list of areas that need definite improvement:
- Decluttering
- General housekeeping
- Eating healthier
- Exercising
- Time management
- Ending procrastination
- Ending my writer’s block!
If you have any suggestion for other areas to consider, speak up!
Photo credit: Incessant Flux
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I have a technique for Writer's block that makes you want to do a number of things. In fact, there's a whole process that you go through, but essentially its BICHOK (Bum in chair hands on keyboard). Here's the thing. Set aside 30 minutes (I like 30 minute chunks of time, but use whatever works for you. It has to be long enough for you to get completely bored out of your skull though). Then that 30 minutes is specifically for writing. You are not allowed to do anything else. No web-surfing, no twitter, no email, no housework, nothing. You're also not allowed to leave the chair. If you're not writing the only other thing you can do is stare around, and this gets old very quickly. The other thing is you don't edit what you write, so it's 30 minutes of solid writing, or in my case 25 minutes of staring at the walls and 5 minutes of writing. But, once you start writing, it's amazingly easy to continue.
For most of the other manky things (my two pet peeves are Quality management systems at work and report writing) just set 15 minutes a day for each thing. (I do them as soon as I get to work otherwise the rest of the day is wasted on avoidance) At the end of 15 minutes, you're done with that item. you don't have to think about quality or decluttering and can instead do the fun things.
For the healthy eating, generally the most difficult part is deciding what you're going to eat/cook. If this is easy for you excellent, if not, this may help. I have a couple of standby recipes that I always have the ingredients for, nothing exciting, but they're quick and easy to make. Other than these (which are really a last minute resort because the shops didn't have what I wanted when I went shopping) my wife and I sit down once a week and decide on the menu for the next week. This also makes the shopping easier, and quicker.
Hope some of that helps with the decision.
Hi Lavonne,
If you start walking every day, you'll come up with a gazillion things to write about. You'll kill two bad habit birds with one stone. I've got the opposite issue — no writer's block.
It sounds like you may have “do it all at once” overload syndrome (DIAAOOS). Itty bitty steps wins the day …
Giulietta, Inspirational Rebel
“do it all at once” overload syndrome (DIAAOOS)
I love that, thank you. It really fits exactly the way I feel right
now. So, I will follow your advice and start walking every day —
which I've been MEANING to do forever. Oh, and could send a little of
your opposite issue over in this direction? I never did understand how
people can have that problem with writing too much!
Thank you, Gareth. I will definitely try the BICHOK method for
writer's block, and I love the idea of setting 15 minutes for a task.
As far as eating healthier goes, a weekly menu plan doesn't sound
appealing to me. I do have a general plan when I shop, but it's to
have enough to last a week or even two, and then I mix and match
depending on how I feel. My main problem with food right now is with
going gluten-free. I find myself craving wheat products, and the
substitutes I've tried so far don't cut it. But I definitely pay a
price when I cheat!
I think you need to break your list down to even smaller tasks. Decluttering is a huge task, if you take on your whole house, so start with your desk, or a favourite area around a chair, or the kitchen table. Once that area is clear you try not to clutter it up again, and tackle a new area.
Do the same with housekeeping: washing dishes and patting yourself on the back is great, and you've managed to keep up with it. Now add something like wiping down kitchen surfaces daily, or wiping around the cooker, or getting otu the vacuum for five minutes in the kitchen.
One good way of keeping clutter down I learned over at The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin – she has a one minute rule. If something can be done in one minute, like open a letter, or put a book away she does it. I do it when I'm in a room and something needs to go to another room, I pick it up and take it with me. Once in it's own room I don't immediately put it away, because that's another one minute job for later. It's amazing how well it works. :o)
You're doing really well, and I'm sure you'll do even better if you break down your habits into tiny steps that you know you can manage every day.
Thanks, Jane. Excellent ideas. I've actually been doing some of them,
like wiping down the counters after washing dishes, and wiping down
the bathroom mirror and counter whenever I'm in there. Now I have a
couple of new habits I'm working on: brushing my teeth before bed, not
just when I wake up [flossing is next], and doing the <a
href=”http://hundredpushups.com”>100 push-ups program. For some
reason I'm really stuck when it comes to getting rid of stuff I'll
never use and have stashed in every possible storage space. I live in
a very small apartment, so clearing that space would make a big
difference. Baby steps!
I like the menu plan because it means I don't have to make a decision about what to cook, I just look on the plan and – there it is. (The fewer inconsequential decisions I have to make on a daily basis, the happier I end up being) Just to clarify, we don't use the same plan every week.
Gluten Free might be a problem (no pasta/bread, I'd be screwed). The only thing I've found that is a suitable wheat substitute is chick pea wraps (tortillas I think would be the american equivalent). Otherwise, quinoa is a decent starch (and it's a complete protein, perfect for vegebletarians)
There are lots of recipes for gluten-free bread, and I can buy
gluten-free bread if I'm to lazy to make it. Tastes okay, but it's
expensive. Buckwheat pancakes sometimes fill that craving. I can't
have sugar either, so I sweeten the batter with stevia. I LOVE
chick-peas and quinoa — not together [though you never know, might be
good].
Hi LaVonne, I found you through Catherine's Be Awesome Online blog and I like what you're doing here!
I have problems with pretty much all of those things you listed. With housekeeping though, I found it much easier to have the cleaning stuff in plain sight. I keep a bottle of Jif and a sponge on a shelf in the bathroom, for instance, and if I see a particularly dirty bit of porcelain I squirt and swipe on the spot. Same with washing dishes – one of those little sponges with the handle that holds the liquid, kept right on the sink. So much easier than having to get cleaning products out, clean, then put them away again! The fewer steps between “problem” and “solved”, the more likely I am to do it (and less chance to get distracted). If I could figure out a way to disguise my vacuum cleaner as a coffee table, instead of keeping it away in a cupboard, my floor would be much cleaner…
Also with dishes, I reframed my thinking about meals to include cleaning up as part of the meal, before the relaxing/satisfied part. Previously I'd cook, have dinner, then settle down to relax in the afterglow for a while, leaving the dishes on the sink, on the table, in my room… I decided that meals included washing up, so now until the dishes are done, the meal doesn't feel finished and I don't relax.
For decluttering, a common piece of advice is to hit a room at a time, or never handle a piece of clutter more than once. Didn't work for me. Boxes helped: if something didn't have a place to go straight away, I put it in a box for later sorting, or in the bin if I was sure I didn't want it. There were little caches of semi-sorted stuff all over the place. When the mood struck, or I'd finally decided where to put something, I'd grab a little pile and sort it. The only real rule was to avoid adding more new mess than what I was taking away. (Turns out mess is like debt.)
It wasn't hard at all; any new stuff went either straight to a shelf, in one of the cache boxes, or in the bin. The whole process was actually quite fun. I reacquainted myself with a lot of my old stuff and found new uses for it, and got frequent small hits of completion happiness.
I still have a few boxes to sort, and I stay on top of chaos by keeping a couple of little caches around to dump stuff in. Sorting a week's crap in one 5-minute job is way easier for me than spending a minute a day.
Keep up the good work, and keep writing!
Great tips, Troy, thanks! I especially like the idea that the meal isn't finished until the dishes are done. That's what my mother-in-law and all the “perfect housekeeper” ladies I remember from younger days did. I never could understand it, frankly, but redefining the meal that way makes perfect sense. I've been trying [TRYING, mind you, not SUCCEEDING] to wash dishes as I dirty them, which is similar to your technique. A few dishes still sit in the sink, but it has improved the situation drastically in the past few days.
As for decluttering, I'm one of those out of sight, out of mind people. When I put things in boxes [and in my case, grocery bags — oh, the paper!], I forget they're there. They wind up in a closet or other storage space for YEARS, and I never get to use that space for things I actually use. I know I need to set my mind to doing a few minutes of decluttering a day, but it just ain't happening. I guess I need to set the alarm clock for a certain time every day, and then do five minutes.
Notice the “I guess” there? That means I don't really intend to do it. Lazy Me is digging in her heels! ::sigh::
Hi LaVonne, I found you through Catherine's Be Awesome Online blog and I like what you're doing here!
I have problems with pretty much all of those things you listed. With housekeeping though, I found it much easier to have the cleaning stuff in plain sight. I keep a bottle of Jif and a sponge on a shelf in the bathroom, for instance, and if I see a particularly dirty bit of porcelain I squirt and swipe on the spot. Same with washing dishes – one of those little sponges with the handle that holds the liquid, kept right on the sink. So much easier than having to get cleaning products out, clean, then put them away again! The fewer steps between “problem” and “solved”, the more likely I am to do it (and less chance to get distracted). If I could figure out a way to disguise my vacuum cleaner as a coffee table, instead of keeping it away in a cupboard, my floor would be much cleaner…
Also with dishes, I reframed my thinking about meals to include cleaning up as part of the meal, before the relaxing/satisfied part. Previously I'd cook, have dinner, then settle down to relax in the afterglow for a while, leaving the dishes on the sink, on the table, in my room… I decided that meals included washing up, so now until the dishes are done, the meal doesn't feel finished and I don't relax.
For decluttering, a common piece of advice is to hit a room at a time, or never handle a piece of clutter more than once. Didn't work for me. Boxes helped: if something didn't have a place to go straight away, I put it in a box for later sorting, or in the bin if I was sure I didn't want it. There were little caches of semi-sorted stuff all over the place. When the mood struck, or I'd finally decided where to put something, I'd grab a little pile and sort it. The only real rule was to avoid adding more new mess than what I was taking away. (Turns out mess is like debt.)
It wasn't hard at all; any new stuff went either straight to a shelf, in one of the cache boxes, or in the bin. The whole process was actually quite fun. I reacquainted myself with a lot of my old stuff and found new uses for it, and got frequent small hits of completion happiness.
I still have a few boxes to sort, and I stay on top of chaos by keeping a couple of little caches around to dump stuff in. Sorting a week's crap in one 5-minute job is way easier for me than spending a minute a day.
Keep up the good work, and keep writing!
Great tips, Troy, thanks! I especially like the idea that the meal isn't finished until the dishes are done. That's what my mother-in-law and all the “perfect housekeeper” ladies I remember from younger days did. I never could understand it, frankly, but redefining the meal that way makes perfect sense. I've been trying [TRYING, mind you, not SUCCEEDING] to wash dishes as I dirty them, which is similar to your technique. A few dishes still sit in the sink, but it has improved the situation drastically in the past few days.
As for decluttering, I'm one of those out of sight, out of mind people. When I put things in boxes [and in my case, grocery bags — oh, the paper!], I forget they're there. They wind up in a closet or other storage space for YEARS, and I never get to use that space for things I actually use. I know I need to set my mind to doing a few minutes of decluttering a day, but it just ain't happening. I guess I need to set the alarm clock for a certain time every day, and then do five minutes.
Notice the “I guess” there? That means I don't really intend to do it. Lazy Me is digging in her heels! ::sigh::