week 36

I do it to myself every time, even when I promise myself this time it’s different.

I try to do too much.

As soon as I make a list of three goals that I want to accomplish, I’m screwed. No matter how much I try to make them realistic, I push too hard toward them, and usually my body rebels against it by getting sick or giving up.

I then decide that I shouldn’t be trying to work toward goals, I should be working on building habits. I have read so many books and articles about the importance of habits. Well, I turn my habits into a goal and get obsessive about it, until I get sick or something comes up and I fail, and then I beat myself up about it, thinking that if I were more disciplined than I would be able to stick to a habit.

I am going to do one thing differently this time: I am not going to beat myself up about it. And my real goal is that I am going to try to do less.

It has been a week or two with my new chore chart. Having been paralyzed by a mountain of chores every weekend after slogging through a hard week of work, I am trying something different. Instead of trying to face all the chores on Saturday and/ or Sunday, I am going to split them up. I am lucky that my husband does the vast majority of the meal prep, grocery shopping, cooking and dishes, so I am going to pace myself with the other chores.

Here’s my chore list:

Sunday: laundry/ water plants

Monday: Garbage/ recycling

Tuesday: Dusting/ wiping glass

Wednesday: Vacuuming

Thursday: Cleaning bathrooms

Friday: Mail/ bills/ paper sort

Saturday: Washing bedding/ towels, dogs bath/ nail trims, joint help with yardwork.

During the week, I am setting a maximum of 20 minutes that I can spend on any of those chores. So far, it has worked well. I am hoping that it will free up some energy for doing more creative projects as well. But I wonder if I set an approach of just playing with creativity rather than trying to white-knuckle my way through projects, if I’ll have more productive results. It’s worth a try.