Simply Begin

It's a powerful concept, especially for people like me who have a tendency to get overwhelmed. Sometimes a job seems so huge that the smartest advice seems to be "Run!" There are all the pat answers like "Rome wasn't built in a day" but good grief, I'd like to see some fruitage in my lifetime.

So the trick is to narrow your focus. How? I use several methods:

1. Fifteen minutes. I can do anything for fifteen minutes. I've been through childbirth! Sometimes in extreme cases with severe lack of motivation, I have been known to reduce the 15 to 5 - just a bit longer than a contraction. Sometimes five minutes worth of work will surprise you. You begin to realize the job will come to an end, perhaps sooner than you expected.

2. Where do I get the most bang for my buck? When you make one area glisten, it tends to have a motivational quality all its own. The sense of accomplishment does a lot to fuel a continuing effort. Concentrating on the area where your efforts with have the most show value can even motivate others to get in on the process. But don't count on that to happen.

3. Plan the next starting point. When I finish the first 15 minutes, I decide how I'll spend the next 15 minutes. Write it down, or post it where you can see it, and it cuts down on having to decide where to start and ultimately giving up because you can't find the end of the ball of yarn.

4. Have a "dump area." Choose a spot in a room, or grab an average size box and move as much into it as the space will hold. That's all you have to deal with for now. When the spot/box is empty, the job is done. Also, if you want to apply tip #3 here--fill it up for the next pass.

5. Go clockwise. Pick the 12 o'clock spot and move around the room in 15 minute increments. Deal with anything and everything, ceiling to floor between 12 and 1 and then move to 1 and 2. No deciding where to start and you have a definite focus.

6. Hire someone. One of two things will happen. The hired help will get the job done, or you'll be too embarrassed to let anyone see the state of things and you'll get the worst of it finished before the help arrives to dig you out of the last of the mess.

Things I don't recommend:

1. Reading new plans on getting rid of clutter. Just do it.
2. Garage sales. Holding one or going to them unless you're on the hunt for something specific that will have a definite place and specific function in your home. (For example, I'm looking for a book shelf or end table that will hold my printer and my TTY machine that will fit between the doorway and my plant in my writing room. I stop at yard sales to look for that and only that. No luck so far, but nothing else dragged home either.) Otherwise you're simply holding on to junk.
3. Burning yourself out with all-day cleaning marathons that get one job done but leave fires burning in other areas of life.
4. Waiting for the perfect time to tackle the job. Start now, whether or not it is the ideal time to do it. Monday or the first of the month or the first of the year is just another exercises in procrastination, and if you're like me, that muscle is quite developed already.
4. Giving up.

I'm in the midst of dealing with my laundry room which happens to be an extra pantry and general catch-all at the moment since the school room is now my room (but is currently in a state of disuse because we're not cooling that end of the house in an effort to keep the bills down). I finally had a charity call that is coming to pick up donations. Most of the charities around here seem to have stopped doing that. I'm sure the price of gas has a lot to do with it.
Anyway--there's that.

How might this apply to other things, like writing? Editing comes to mind in particular. Yeah right--I think I'll start at 12 o'clock and work my way through. *sigh* How about, "I only have to do a word search and destroy mission for the word "very". That might eliminate about a tenth of my manuscript.

I'm having trouble getting to my MSN mail and my word-a-day e-mail, which was what I intended to do tonight. Sorry you're stuck with this instead.

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Simply begin: the sacred cow of procrastinators who want to kick the habit.

I got AWAD opened :) Now to see how close I am to 1000.