Читать книгу Comfortable Chaos - Carolyn Harvey & Beth Herrild - Страница 37

You may need to swap your ball for something smaller and lighter. For example, let’s say you have seven or eight voicemail messages. Two of the callers have requested specific information and the rest have asked that you call them back. You get the information needed for the two callers and start returning the calls. Three of the callers you were able to reach and the rest you got their voicemails and left messages. Are you done? For some people the answer is no — they don’t feel like their task is complete until they have actually talked with the person. This isn’t necessarily wrong, but it’s much more freeing to consider the task done for this point in time. Look for other situations where you can redefine “done.” Break the task into smaller pieces and revel in “done” for each step of the task.

Redefining done can also mean lowering your standards for certain tasks. For example, instead of only having one definition of a clean bathroom — the one that includes a thorough scrubbing of everything — adopt a “mini clean” definition and every other week do the mini clean. This should be a lower standard of clean that you can finish much faster and still declare “done.” It’s all in how you define it. And whenever you are getting too obsessive about bathrooms and closets, remember what Ann Richards, the former governor of Texas, said, “I don’t want them to put on my tombstone: She kept a very clean house.”