Tackling a Nagging Task
Happy Wednesday!
I hope you are having a great week so far. Mine is awesome because last night I got to go to dinner with a good friend from Canada who is visiting Australia with her family! It was so nice to see a familiar face. I wish we had more time together but hopefully, we will meet up again on the weekend.
Today's post is about Tackling a Nagging Task.
I recently wrote about the book club my girlfriends and I do occasionally. One of the first books we ever chose was The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. Here is the description from Chapters.ca:
What if you could change your life without really changing your life? On the outside, Gretchen Rubin had it all -- a good marriage, healthy children and a successful career -- but she knew something was missing. Determined to end that nagging feeling, she set out on a year-long quest to learn how to better enjoy the life she already had. Each month, Gretchen pursued a different set of resolutions -- go to sleep earlier, tackle a nagging task, bring people together, take time to be silly -- along with dozens of other goals. She read everything from classical philosophy to cutting-edge scientific studies, from Winston Churchill to Oprah, developing her own definition of happiness and a plan for how to achieve it. She kept track of which resolutions worked and which didn’t, sharing her stories and collecting those of others through her blog (created to fulfill one of March’s resolutions). Bit by bit, she began to appreciate and amplify the happiness in her life.
I don't remember much of the book, but there was one section that I always think about and had a definite impact on my life.
Tackle a Nagging Task.
The author Gretchen talks about the unfinished tasks that made her feel drained or guilty. This is something I struggle with sometimes. Things you have to do but you don't really want to so you keep putting it off longer and longer and then you feel worse about it. It's something I don't let happen in my work life, but in my personal life, it's easy to put off 'adulting' and tasks that I don't want to do.
Here are some examples of what I would consider nagging tasks:
Make a dentist appointment
Do my Australian taxes
Organise the stuff in storage to go back to Canada
Phone Rogers (don't even get me started on Rogers!)
Update my birthday card list
Organise my photos
Backup my photos
Not big things, but in the evenings, I'd rather work MeganAway or read a book than sort out a phone bill.
In the book, she writes about sitting down and coming up with a 5 page list of her nagging tasks!
This really works for me. I love lists! At work, I do a list every day before I go home of the things I want/need to get done the next day. I write down small stuff too, just because it feels good to cross things off. This has helped keep me organised, but it's something I need to improve at home.
I usually have a list every day of things I want to do that night (I told you I like lists haha). Most nights I don't even look at it when I get home lol but I just feel so much better when I write stuff down. Like I don't have to worry about what I need to remember to do. I need to start keeping a separate list for my nagging tasks too, and then find some time every week to get some of them done.
The book also describes how tackling a nagging task can sometimes create boomerang errands - such as when the author went to the dentist but then had to go back for a filling. And she describes that sometimes the most difficult part of doing a task is just deciding to do it.
That's the challenge - just deciding to do it. And then even if it boomerangs into other tasks, at least it's started. And you are one step closer to crossing it off your list. When you complete something that’s been nagging you for a while, you feel lighter. It feels great. And then you’ll want to get more things done.
When re-reading this chapter for this blog post, I came across some other tidbits that I love:
One-Minute Rule - don't postpone any task that can be done in less than a minute (this is one that Tj needs to learn because he will regularly drop stuff on the floor and just leave it there and it drives me nuts haha).
Evening Tidy-Up - taking 10 minutes before bed to so simple tidying. Tj and I started doing this regularly in Toronto when I read this book the first time and it made such a difference! Our place isn't very big, so when things are out of place it can feel messy. But often, it takes less than 10 minutes to do a tidy and our place sparkles!
Hopefully, today's post has motivated you at least a little bit to do something you've been putting off and tackle a nagging task!