The easiest way to get things done

Is to start.

Not soon, not later and not tomorrow but now.

So often we find ourselves overwhelmed by our ever-growing to-do lists that we end up thinking more planning, more thinking and more organising is the way forward. But at the crux of it all without taking action, nothing is going to change.

You’ll be surprised at how at ease you feel once you start getting things done and actually commit to it for a chunk of time wholeheartedly instead of half-heatedly. Not long after starting you’ll find yourself getting into the flow of it and the anxious feels will begin to simmer.

Often it is merely the thought of doing the work that is causing you to feel overwhelmed not actually doing it.

Making space for what works

Things that take a small amount of effort in the short term can end up providing great results long term.

And in the moment when we make the choice to give more, it can be easy to question whether or not it’s worth it.

Things like:

Ironing your clothes for the week ahead

Making your lunch the night before

Answering an email the day you receive it

Having a night routine

Meal prepping

When you don’t feel like doing something it’s always useful to think about how good you’ll feel in the future. You’ll feel more relaxed, prepared and organised.

Who wouldn’t want that?

Here’s the process

I feel like knowing I have to contribute something everyday makes me a little more alert, curious and introspective but in the best possible way.

I’m not just ruminating and pondering over things for my own sake but to catch the spark of what is worth sharing.

I have specific times of my day where writing has been ingrained into my physiology where I am able to write hundreds of words with ease.

It doesn’t feel like effort, it could be compared to pouring water from a teapot into a cup, or perhaps water down a hill.

And so I’m learning to make the most of my peak writing times so when I go to actually schedule my posts all I have to do is edit for spelling, grammar and clarity and pick what to post when.

My aim is to batch schedule posts at the weekend which means I still have time to live my life without worrying what to post each day so that I’m open to seeing and allowing my curiosity to be piqued.

Your personal filing system

I’m a big believer in self-help and mind management, mostly based on my own experiences of how I’ve learnt and implemented things into my life that have transformed it.

I was recently talking ‘minds stuff’ with someone and I used my favourite analogy of going through the filing cabinets of your mind.

It’s like we all have our own personal filing systems that have a log of all our experiences and thoughts and sometimes it’s a mess.

It’s not always easy to manage more cabinets of information than you can counts on your fingers and toes.

When you take a wander down the hallways of your mind and flick through the files of information, you’ll often end up coming across things you forgotten even existed

The time when you and your sister played outside your childhood home on the pink barbie scooter or the book on insects you used to read as a kid that terrified you because it had illustrations of cockroaches about 100 times bigger than they are in real life.

7.15am

So this hasn’t hasn’t happened before and I’m not sure how I feel about it.

For the first time since I started daily blogging I missed my 7.15am posting time. I thought I had something scheduled but it turns out I was wrong.

But maybe I’ll use this little slip up as a point of change, or not.

I like posting early and after over 40 days I’ve gotten too familiar with this posting time to switch it up. Granted nobody is eager and waiting at 7.14am for my post to go live and none of you readers will have even noticed but it matters to me.

Consistency is important.

So I’ll share more words tomorrow at 7.15am, promise.

Falling behind

In a matter of weeks I went from scheduling posts a week in advance to throwing something together at 10.30pm the night before.

I was glad that I had the willingness to still try and not just give up and miss a day because I wasn’t as organised as I’d like to be.

The simple truth is I’m falling behind. I’m still writing but I’m not finishing each piece so when it comes to scheduling I still have to edit and that often takes much longer than the writing process.

My saving grace is that I enjoy writing for this blog so even if I only manage a sentence one day, I don’t beat myself up about it.