fthgurdy:

kimbureh:

you know I once googled how very organized housewives kept their homes super clean. And one thing they suggested was, if a task can be done in less than 2 minutes, do it right away.

And I have to think about this very often when depression tells me to delay doing things, if it tells me something is too much work right now etc.

If I can do it in less than 2 minutes I can do it no matter how exhausting it seems.

That’s what I tell myself. And it works!

I get more done and after 2 minutes I usually realize the pain doing this thing is not so horrible as my brain suggested. And then I keep going and expand the task and get real work done, holy shit

That’s…. actually brilliant. Two minutes is so short, it’s relatively an easy amount of time to FORCE yourself to work on something, even when you’re just completely deflated.

What works really really well for me is to compound annoying tasks that don’t require much thought with something actually pleasant. It took a long time to find the actual pleasant thing, but with audiobooks I can actually end up looking for chores to do because I want to continue listening to the book, and it doesn’t combine well with anything except the most mindless work.

That’s how I cleaned my bathroom top to bottom two weeks ago, after barely being able to pick up empty loo rolls from the floor for…well, months.