I am always looking for ideas that let me get a little more done, a little more easily. One popular productivity approach is, “Eat the frog.” This is click-speak for, “First, do the thing on your list that you dread the most. You’ll sail through the rest of the to-dos with much less friction when you aren’t putting off a dreaded task.”
I am not a huge fan of this tactic, though I can occasionally apply it to good effect. Many of our “dread the most” tasks can’t be moved to the top of the list. You have to confront your spouse when they get home and are in a receptive mood. Other dread-the-most 
tasks are repetitive. Heaven, deliver me from picking the kitty litters over and over and over again. Still others–like a dentist appointment–just sit on the calendar like a troll under a bridge until the appointed time rolls around.
I do find some utility in a “just do something” strategy. Knock something off the list, get going, start taxi-ing down one run way or another, doesn’t matter which one. Take out the trash, fold the laundry, code the general ledger, get ISBN numbers for the next work in progress. Momentum and the joy of completing a task might carry me forward until I’m at the bottom of my list.
I am also a fan of what I call the “stuff it under a cushion” approach. I truly do not enjoy picking four kitty litter boxes every day, sometimes twice a day (if it’s wet and miserable outside). I derive no joy from seeing the litter restored to a pristine expanse, because before I have taken a bag of doots out to the trash, some feline is delighting in spoiling my efforts. I’m the same way about house work, payroll, grocery shopping…
So I try to minimize both the drudgery and my resistance to taking on these tasks by tending to them between and around the good stuff. While my second cup of tea is steeping, I will do the downstairs litter patrol. Only takes fives minutes when I don’t dawdle, and that’s long enough for my jasmine white tea to brew. I won’t make a grocery run that’s just a grocery run if I can help it. Throw in a pet food run, a trip to the bank, a swing by the bakery, a walk in the local park.
I’ll take out trash when I need a get-up-and-move break between writing scenes. I try to prepare mess call for the herd of feral cats (open fifty cans of wet food and dump it into 
a tub), when I’ve just read yesterday’s pages. I open-the-can/dump-the-can while my mind is on, “What does the reader expect to happen in the next scene? How can I stand that on its head or tweak it in a fresh direction?” Pretty soon, mess call is prepped, and I have a few ideas about where the rest of my chapter might go.
The point is to minimize my focus on the task, to minimize its importance, and then the next time I’m facing the same to-do, it’s just another way to fill in five minutes, or thirty-five minutes between the good stuff.
Or so I tell myself. What do you tell yourself to get through the to-dos, must-do’s, and don’t-wanna-do’s?
PS: This year’s holiday novella, A Kiss for Hope, is now available. This is a happily ever after for Joshua Penrose, whom we met early on in the Rogues to Riches series. Wheee!
I get through the tasks of life by giving myself a lecture and reminding me that it needs to be done and I’m retired and there’s no good reason not to do it. I also try to build a routine where I do it at the same time every day. For example, I hate exercising but I really need to do at least some so I do it as soon as I get up in the morning. Then I can forget about it for the rest of the day (while basking in the glow of actually having done it). Tomorrow is laundry day and I will start it as soon as I get up, again to get it out of the way (although I don’t really mind doing laundry since most of the work is done by the machines). I have been trying to do little chores in between more pleasant things, too. I get emails from an organizer who advises that spending even 10 minutes on a task, while it may not be anywhere close to completing it, is at least 10 minutes closer to completion. I don’t do these things constantly but if I do one of them every day, I feel good. Today, for instance, I started thinking about end-of-year tasks and started organizing my mind.
I wish I had your “get up and do it” discipline. Some days I do better than others. I also get some mileage out of, “Well, you don’t have to do the whole task, but get out everything you will need to complete it, put the supplies in plain sight, organize an order of go… do all the prep, you will have begun to start to commence.”
So many little mental games just to keep the house from falling down.
I try to take of the difficult task first…not always but most of the time. I get up, take the dogs out, feed them and have coffee. I have to clean up the dog yard daily…it’s much easier with 2 dogs vs 6. Do I clean before or after my walk? Usually, after.
Vacuuming and other household chores. I vacuum 2 rug’s Saturday and the other 2 on Sunday. Doesn’t seem such a daunting task if divided.
Figuring out which days to work in the office.sounds easy. Have to reserve a desk ( there is an app), figure out when husband is going to grocery shop as he needs help getting the bags inside, and then there’s Gregory. He has not adjusted to me leaving to go to work, he howls when I leave and won’t go out until I return…Tuesday/Thursdsy is his preferred schedule.
I have tried to schedule tasks…didn’t really work. I try to get the most important item done first. And the wanna dos get done bit by bit.
I can’t schedule either. I can organize, but not schedule. Wish Gregory had emotional support dog privileges. Everybody in the office would benefit.
I have always been highly disciplined, so just having something on my ToDo List means it’s going to get done, because I can’t stand to see anything languishing there.
I guess what I have the most is having to make phone calls (hello introvert!) but I don’t have to force myself to make them if they’re on the list. I’m simply going to be a ball of nerves until I check off a phone call as done.
I am surprised at how much people under the age of about 45 do not, cannot, will not talk on the phone. They will text and pebble and emoji all the livelong, but hate talking on the phone. And thus, I have become less comfortable on the phone outside of a business context. Life.
I have a Bullet Journal wannabe notebook, so every day I have a page devoted to that day. It starts with some reminders (a Bible verse, a quote I like, and something else) that help me focus on what’s really important for that day. These are followed by three sets of tasks (bigs, littles, and tinys) that will hopefully get done that day. I generally work from home. Big tasks are often done during my free hour in the evening, littles happen in scheduled breaks during the workday, and tinys happen when work is getting intense and a brief unscheduled pause is needed. All non-negotiables timewise (meetings, etc.) are listed at the bottom of the page. The Bigs, Littles, and Tinys rotate, and if none of them get done in a day–well, the world will not end on that account.
I have not come across the Big/Little/Tiny approach before. For me pretty much everything but the writing is little or tiny, and what a privilege it is to live a life like that.
Joshua turned out lovely in paperback. I refuse to “license” anything when I can own it outright. And real books are such a delight during power outages. *glances at the reading chair with a happy sigh*
I’m one of those souls who can’t settle until I’ve knocked the awful thing off the list. Otherwise I’m a work a little, chore a little to break it up type, too. And if I can knock out all my errands once a work in one glorious mission, I want them GONE so I can have blissful stability.
I want my errands done, but I also don’t want to drive over the mountain three times a week if I can limit myself to one jaunt. I’m ten miles from the nearest grocery store, and twenty miles from the one I like. Some fine day I will have an EV that my solar house powers (my sister got there), but until that day, it’s combine errands, limit trips, drive a hybrid.
I am totally the opposite of all you strong-minded women.
I’m a master procrastinator and put off tasks until the last possible moment. Right now I’m trying to finish opening mail and organizing papers from the last eleven months. I’ve never been this slow in my life and all that I can say is that there *were* extenuating circumstances. And since I’m planning to leave on an extended trip in four days with at least 43 other things on my to-do list, I’m rather stressed. Except, I’ve decided that I will take all the time I need to do it right. Luckily I am driving and can choose my departure date, though I’m concerned that snow will appear before I’m ready. And the good news is that my new filing system will be set up so that I won’t have this particular issue again.
I am not strong-minded. My house is a roofed campsite, unless I am really and truly procrastinating like mad, in which case, the kitchen will be spotless and tidy.
I think it’s James Clear who says that the people whom others consider highly productive are NOT in fact any more disciplined than the rest of us. They simply excel at creating environments and patterns that keep the distractions and detours to a minimum. Their running clothes are all laid out at the foot of the bed, their writing desks are tidy, the leash hangs right by the door, and so forth. My mom was great at setting up systems like that. Me… nah so much.
LOL – my current focus is getting to bed on schedule to deal with my sleep issues. My reward to get in bed early- in time to read before going to sleep. Besotted Baron got 2 thumbs up & A Kiss for Hope got 2 thumbs up plus a big THANK YOU.
So! When I actually get to it, a lot of paper goes through the shredder or straight into the recycle. Taking that out to the bin is a lovely reward. Having a favorite audiobook going is perfect for laundry & loading/unloading the dishwasher.
Currently my daughter & her family are coming for Thanksgiving which is a huge incentive to get stuff out of reach of “3 under 4” I can’t wait!
I figured out when I was in law school that world domination would require me to get enough sleep. In fact, almost everything worth doing requires getting enough sleep.
I am very much a just do something no matter how small type of person. I tell myself that it doesn’t need to be complete or huge etc, it just has to be better.
Take the first, smallest step in the right direction. Then the next step… I’ve climbed a lot of mountains just by putting on my sneakers.
It all started last June. An apparently innocent water leakeage in the kitchen…since then my home has been invaded by all manner of workers, plumbers and son on…By September it was a Perfect Storm of unending problems and parading workers and delays and more problems.
So if you ask me about my tasks planning, I would say (once I stop laughing, that is) that right now it has been reduced to some very simple questions due to the incessant need to solve some problem or other that could not be delayed:
What must be done? This.
When? Now.
What must be fixed? This.
When? Right now!
Also, as you can imagine, my cherished privacy has retired to the most inner corner of the house. I hope to retrieve it soon!
(Must I also add that Introvert is my second name?)
I would have moved into dumpster or lost my tiny mind. Cannot DEAL with strange, loud people in my personal space.
It is truly spectacular what needn’t be done. Pilar mentions some of those which ought to be looked at, but after one has paid a few service calls sometimes one just turns off the water to a certain tap, puts a bucket under the drip and closes off a few rooms. Turn off the irrigation here and you don’t need to mow the lawn.
It is helpful for me to remember that there are things I choose to do, or have chosen to have and therefore I have elected the responsibility that goes with them. Doesn’t mean it always happens in a timely or tidy fashion, but then it’s time to overthink why I’m doing something to start with.
I like this perspective: Turn off the irrigation, retire the mower. Of course you’ll have a brown lawn for months, but the planet will thank you for not trying to grow Kentucky Fescue where it was never supposed to be planted.
I am the queen of procrastination. Even commenting on this blog subject was deferred for a day. I was supremely organized in my professional life; my private life was loose as a goose. So now I’m retired and being organized is not natural to my being. I put off going to the grocery store. I put off picking up a prescription. I put off everything until I really have to do it. Once done, I am almost euphoric in my accomplishment. I could not explain this until I recently read about some of the effects of ADD. Working up to do something is not easy. Once proven to be an easy task, my brain conveniently forgets that and we start all over again.
That’s an interesting observation: Professionally, you were organized. Personally… not happening. I ran my law office very differently from how I run Grace Burrowes Publishing. Some things are the same–payroll, taxes, banking–but the business vibe is much closer to the personal vibe with the publishing, and I am enjoying my “job” MUCH more. Hmm.
Not here for the writing assignment, just to talk about books. 😀 I enjoyed the Besotted Baron! I never knew what was going to happen next. One thing is missing in my copy … there is no book list. Not for the Bad Heir series, and not for Lord Julian despite there being a teaser chapter. I assume it’s a conscious choice since it isn’t in the Lord Julian book I checked either, I just never noticed before. But I missed a recent Lord Julian and had to squirrel around online to find the title. Which got me curious – what is the philosophy?
Trish, you said it. “I just never noticed before.” You didn’t notice the lack of a list. You’ve probably read dozens of my titles, and it took you that long to notice that I don’t use book lists in my back or front matter. Couple reasons. First, Amazon gets picky about how much back matter we’re permitted to put in an ebook. My complete book list would include more than a hundred titles. That’s a lot of scrolling past old news.
Amazon also charges authors a file delivery fee for every ebook (that they don’t “deliver” to the reader of course), and that fee goes up as the electronic “weight” of a file increases. A hundred linked titles would increase the e-weight of the book considerably, and please recall Amazon is already keeping up to 65% percent of the list price on every sale.
The most significant reason to me, though, is that book lists don’t work. If you have a choice between five links–your next two releases, one social channel, your website, your newsletter–and 105 links (same plus a lot of books), you actually get more click-through WITHOUT the book list, at least if you have a lot of titles. Might be different if you have twelve titles spread over two series.
So there’s the philosophy. This is also why on my web site, you can search the book lists a zillion different ways. Maybe what I SHOULD do is provide a link to my Books page? https://graceburrowes.com/bookshelf/