Monday, July 8, 2013

three | practicing simplicity

Living a less-distracted life : spend 15 minutes a day completing a chore (particularly one I've been putting off).

I'm revisiting a New Year's resolution/good intention here.  

I'm not the Type A personality who succeeds in practical thinking and organised doing. I'm the person who acknowledges a task needs to be done, mulls over it for a good while, adds it to the list and comes back to it later. Unfortunately it doesn't take long for the list to become a burden and so, before long, those little chores amount to one big, irritating distraction.

What is most enlightening about this "15 minute rule" is the realisation that all the chores I've been putting off actually don't take that long to complete. They are far more daunting on the page and in my head than they are in real-life. And so, every day I set the timer and work on a task; I am focused, determined and hence I work efficiently. 

Most of the chores I've been working on have saved me time in the long run. An organised kitchen cupboard means I don't have to spend five minutes finding the lid for the pyrex dish. A tidy pantry ensures the right ingredient can be found without any shuffling or rearranging. Cleaning the children's wardrobes means there's a place for everything and everything is in its place.

So: set the timer on your phone, work for 15 minutes and get rid of all your distracting chores. 15 minutes a day, one-by-one, tick, tick, tick.  

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