What if I dropped by your house one day and asked if you could spare me 3 minutes and 12 seconds of your time? How would you respond (after you got past the oddity of my question)? Would you be too busy? Or would you welcome me in? I’m hoping you’d invite me in. If you’re busier than that, I’m not sure I can help you. You might need to find someone on a more professional level.
Yet, have you ever put off a particular chore or task because you just felt that you didn’t have the time to do it? For me, those are the things that become visual noise and yell incessantly as I walk past them. Sometimes I can just feel my stress level increase with their constant chatter. But how much time would it really take? Do we even know?
If you have those tasks that you keep thinking you’ll “get around to,” I challenge you to pull out a timer and track the hard facts about how long that thing actually takes. Oftentimes our perception is inconsistent with reality. Somehow, identifying the truth about the time it takes to accomplish a task decreases its intensity. I may not have an hour to clean my house, but surely I can grab a quick 2 minutes and 34 seconds to do one task.
Incredibly, upon accomplishing one task, there’s a tiny little amount of motivation that says, “Hey, I’ll bet I could do just one more.” And so you do. Before you know it, you can have numerous trouble spots cleaned up by utilizing tiny little pockets of time throughout your days. In addition to a much tidier house, your level of stress will have decreased significantly, allowing you to focus on the bigger priorities of life.
Even this article may only have taken you between 1 minute, 5 seconds and 2 minutes, 13 seconds to read. Amazing what you can accomplish with little snippets of time!
Dianne is in the third year of homeschooling with her two middle school boys, ages 14 and 13. She's been joyfully married for 21+ years. She continually seeks to balance the many aspects of life in a way that glorifies the Lord. In her column "Blueprint for Balance," Dianne shares organizational strategies for the homeschooling journey.
Friday, August 8, 2008
Snippets of Time
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
So true Dianne. I think you really pin pointed my own attitude here. I'm such a procrastinator.. but I KNOW that when I need to do something.. and I do it right then and there, it takes less time, and I feel so good about it that it motivates me to do more!
Awesome post!
I agree, too! I find that when I walk by my daughter's room (if it's not tidy) it stresses me out. When I set a timer for her for 5 minutes, she can accomplish quite a bit, and it didn't take all day to clean. The same is true for me; I will take advantage of those "snipets" and get more done than I thought I could just thinking about it.
Thanks for the post!
Post a Comment