Beyond the Clock: My Evolution from 4-Hour Dependency

When I first started this blog, I knew that I wanted it to focus on small steps - for healthy living, for the environment, for anything really. And several years into this, I am reminded daily that no great thing gets done without these small steps. Everything is made up of small steps.

The thing is... we don't see some of those small steps. We see a singer blaze into stardom and forget that this singer spent hours, days, months, years, practicing their craft, one small step at a time. We see new buildings pop up in our neighbourhood. We don't see the myriad small steps that go into constructing the building. We hear of a friend of a friend retiring at age 40 with millions in the bank. We are jealous and wonder what they did to hit the jackpot? Win the lottery? Sell a start-up? We don't believe it can be done one frugal penny-pinching step at a time.

And we know this... deep down, we know this... but still... we think that we there might be a shortcut to fame or fortune.

How Much Time is "Enough" Time?

A friend of my is producing two books a year (more or less). These are not fiction books, but heavily researched non-fiction espionage books. I don't know how he does it! He must have oodles and oodles of time! Like, open vistas of whole days that are just devoted to writing. Right? Maybe. Maybe not. Perhaps he just has a different view of time.

I still think that I need several blissfully empty hours in front of me before I can work on the next book, or start a new project. I don't believe that I can write a book one small step at a time. I think 30 minutes is too short. I think the smallest step I need is 2 hours. Maybe more. Like 4 hours!

Perhaps that is the key. I have an image in my mind of the size/length/duration of the "smallest step". For writing... realistically... I think I need 2 hours... and ideally 4 hours. I mean, I "need" that time to get back into it... to pick up where I left off... to gather my research notes and recall where I was in the project. And maybe I do need an hour to do that... but if I were to work on the project every day... I wouldn't need so much time to "get back in the groove".

When it comes to yard maintenance... it's the same... I think I need a good hour to get anything useful done. I mean, there is soooo much to do out there... I believe that I need at least an hour to make a meaningful dent in things. Or do I? My partner and I went out there this past spring, on a sunny afternoon, and decided to spend 15 minutes decluttering the shed. We made a sizable dent in the chaos in the shed. Just 15 minutes.

Same with house cleaning... my default seems to be an hour. Even though I know, from experience, that I can get a tonne of cleaning done in 15 minutes. My brain seems to have a default setting of one hour.

So if there is less than an hour of time in my day... I fill it with smaller, less important tasks that I know I can complete, rather than working on a larger project which I know will not be complete... even though it is moved further along to completion.

I know that completing a task gives a dopamine hit... so maybe I'm just a dopamine addict... wanting the hit after completing a task. If I know that a task can't be completed in 15 minutes or an hour... there is no dopamine carrot dangling ahead of me. And so I default to easier, simpler, shorter tasks.

The question then becomes... can I alter that 1 hour default? I did use the Pomodoro technique successfully a few times for projects that were seriously stuck. Work for just 25 minutes and then take a 5 minute break. It seems awfully rigid though. Or could I create an artificial dopamine carrot for working on something for 15-30 minutes?  And what would that look like?

Peak Alertness

Or... perhaps my sense that an hour is required in order for me to do productive project work isn't actually that far off. Studies have shown that our ultradian rhythm (cycles repeated multiple times in a 24 hour period) might have a role to play. Based on studies of our natural energy and alertness cycle... we can maintain peak alertness for 90 to 120 minutes before we need a break. On top of that... studies have also shown that it takes about 23 minutes to get into a deep work zone.

Sooo... if I really want to do some deep work... then the Pomodoro technique isn't going to work. I legitimately need about 30 minutes to get into a work zone. And I can maintain that for up to 2 hours. So the sweet spot for working on a complex project (like writing a blog or working on another book) is going to be somewhere in the 60-120 minute zone.

This actually makes me feel a bit better. I'm not mucked up! My sense that I can't get anything useful done on a blog or a book in less than an hour is probably not that far off. I need to be able to work on it for at least 30 minutes to get into a flow zone... but can only maintain that for another hour or so.

30 Minutes is Enough?

But here's where I can marry these two bits of information. All I really need is a 30 minute chunk of time. That's a small enough segment that it doesn't feel impossible or overwhelming. I also know that once I've been working on something for 30 minutes... odds are I will continue for a bit longer. And yes, ideally I would have a one hour chunk to devote to my writing.

On the other hand... for other things... like decluttering the garden shed, or updating our finances... I can drop that down to 15 minutes. I can get a lot of decluttering done in 15 minutes.

Now... the trick is... to actually follow through on this. An hour seems like a fairly large step to me... although 30 minutes is a bit more doable... cuts that hour in half. But even those 30 minutes are broken up into countless small steps... the first one being... to just start! Getting started seems to be 80% of the battle. If I can just get started, I know that everything else falls into place.

Next Small Step

So much of my to-do list is made up of things like "write blog about ____". That isn't, actually, a small step. That's like saying "land a man on the moon". Well... let's just give up right now because that is a huge mountain of a task! It's no wonder I get stuck and just skip over that item in my to-do list... it's much more doable to "screw fire extinguisher to the wall"... a very concrete, small step task. And it gives me a quick dopamine hit. Whereas "write blog" is so amorphous and nebulous that my dopamine addict looks at it and goes... "nope... too hard... I need a quick fix". And so I spend my time completing small tasks rather than focusing my precious time on larger, complex tasks.

Sigh... I'm back to looking at my productivity system! Surely there is something out there... something better than what I am doing. Something that will actually help me focus and get things done?

Productivity Systems

What about the Getting Things Done (GTD) system... where you identify the next actionable step? "Write blog" is not an actionable step. Even "research blog" is not an actionable step. Maybe "open blogger web app"... "open current blog post"... "review material written to-date"... "identify next steps"... Those are small steps. But do I really want to spend time adding them to my to-do list? Not really. I think I should be able to identify these when I see "write blog post"... but clearly that is NOT working!

There's also time-blocking... where you look at the week ahead and map things out ahead of time. What appointments do I have? What are the self-care things that need to go in there - walk, eating, etc. What work time do I need to factor into the schedule. Then... look at the remaining time and figure out... what can I do in that block of time... write a blog? answer emails and make phone calls? research Airbnb tips and tricks? The idea with time-blocking is that you group things together. So I am not answering emails and making phone calls throughout the day, when I should really be working on a blog or something else. I have tried it in the past and found it far too rigid... but perhaps I wasn't using it correctly because it is supposed to flex and flow with the unexpected.

I've also come across another idea... about working on one thing... without distraction. So the question to ask is... "Did I do what I said I'm going to do for as long as I said I would, without distraction?". Even if I didn't finish it... I can still get a dopamine hit because I did what I said I would do... without getting distracted. That's a win!

I'm going to have to let all of these percolate for a while... and see what I can come up with that might actually work for me

Image by Steve Buissinne from Pixabay

There are only 24 Hours in a Day

So much to do... so little time
(Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay)

I know, I know... this is so obvious, why am I even blogging about this?? Wait and see...

So, there are 24 hours in a day and 168 hours in a week. That seems like an awful lot of time. The other obvious thing is that we all have the same amount of hours. No one has invented a time machine yet that can allow us to extend the day and create more hours. We always have the option of getting more space, more money, more stuff. But... more time? Nope, that's impossible.

Oh sure, you can hire someone to do the house-cleaning and yard-work and car maintenance. You can trade in some of your money to claw back a bit of time. But you still run up against that 168 hours a week. There isn't an infinite supply of hours.

Even that 168 is obviously not all that there is to it... Here's where I spend some of my hours in a week. I'm going to split weekdays from weekends because they look very different.

Weekdays - 5 days x 24 hrs = 120 hours available

Let's start with the non-negotiable basics... sleep, eat, a walk...

• 45 hours - 8 hrs of sleep/day and 30 min either side of that for wind-down and getting up
• 5 hours - breakfast - that includes cooking my oatmeal, eating it and washing up
• 5 hours - daily walk with my partner
• 7.5 hours - prep and eat the main meal - sometimes that might go quicker
• 2.5 hours - evening meal - usually more like a snack

Soooo... let me see... that's 65 hours which leaves me with 120-65 = 55 hours. 

Then we have other relatively essential things of daily living...

• 2.5 hours - journaling for about 30 min/day
• 10 hours - contract work
• 2.5 hours - grocery shopping and errands
• 2.5 hours - appointments of various types

And that leaves me with... 37.5 hours or, 7.5 hours/day of "available" hours on a weekday. And of those, 2.5 of those hours are from 6 pm to 8:30 pm which I consider to be generally "not computer time", otherwise I get too much blue light and can't sleep! So, really... I am left with 5 hours during the course of the day, give or take. So, that's 25 hours over the weekday...

Now, let's look at the weekends

Weekends - 2 days x 24 hours = 48 hours available

Again, let's start with the non-negotiable basics... sleep, eat, a walk...

• 18 hours - 8 hrs of sleep/day and 30 min either side of that for wind-down and getting up
• 2 hours - breakfast - that includes cooking my oatmeal, eating it and washing up
• 2 hours - daily walk with my partner
• 3 hours - prep and eat the main meal - sometimes that might go quicker
• 1 hour - evening meal - usually more like a snack

Soooo... let me see... that's 26 hours which leaves me with 48-26 = 22 hours. 

Then we have other relatively essential things of daily living...

• 1 hour - journaling for about 30 min/day
• 6 hours - yard maintenance
• 3 hours - a hike
• 2 hours - house maintenance
• 2 hours - manage household finances
• 1 hour - genealogical research

That leaves me with... 7 hours over 2 days or 3.5 hours a day. Although... right now, for example, there is a LOT of canning taking place, so that sucks up any excess time. Soooo... let's get back to the weekdays, because that's where the struggle is happening right now.

Everything I Want to Do

Right then... so 25 hours seems like a fair bit of time. But it's amazing how it just slips through my fingers without any warning at all. Here are some of the things I want to do in those 25 flex hours in any given week...

• 7.5 hours - write my various blogs - I currently have 3 of them on the go
• 10 hours - write and research my 4th blog (historical research)
• 12.5 hours - work on a book about one of the MI5 guys
• 10 hours - set up direct booking systems for our Airbnb (rental contract, email journey series, auto-payment processor, etc)
• 2.5 hours - manage our Airbnb and the one I co-host - includes tweaking daily and writing weekly IG & FB posts
• 2.5 hours - handle calls and emails

Let's see... I can already see a problem. But let's do the math - that adds up to... 45 hours. Stuffed into 25 hours. Hmmm... me thinks I have a problem with a 20 hour short-fall. I obviously can't do this. There just aren't enough hours in the week.

***taps fingers on table while frowning seriously***

I am eyeing those 2.5 hours every evening - between 6 pm and 8:30 pm... that's 7.5 hours right there. But all of my weekday activities require a computer. Yes, I could probably steal some hours there, but I would pay a big sleep price sooo... alas... that is not going to work. And besides... those are my puzzling hours when I listen to podcasts! Can't cut into the puzzle time... nooooo...

Now, the Airbnb direct booking system won't go on forever. My goal is to have it done within a couple of weeks, so that would free up 10 hours a week... but that still leaves me with a 10 hour shortfall.

The Blogs

Yes, I do have a lot of blogs... I have this one, my DNA blog and my playful bear blog. That's a lot of blogs. Plus... I set myself some fairly hard and fast schedules.

• Small Steps - I had it 3 times a week and have cut it to 2 times a week - I do have a one to two month buffer of pre-posted blogs but... if the buffer runs out, I am up against a wall and it is impossible to keep that pace up week after week, especially since I started the... DNA blog.
• DNA blog - right now, that's once a week... but who says it needs to be that often? Maybe I could go down to once every two weeks?
• Bear blog - I was trying to do that 3 times a week too, and it slipped to twice a week and now it's maybe once a week... if I can squeeze in the time. It's the one that slips off the conveyor belt most often now.
• Historical blog - I had slipped off of this one for over a year and recently started posting weekly again - but perhaps that could be pushed out to every two weeks...

These publishing schedules are all my creation. If I went to once a week with Small Steps... I'd be pre-posted into January, which would create a LOT of breathing room. Maybe I could do the DNA blog every two weeks?

Ultimately, it comes down to this. I need to choose where to spend my time. I can't do it all. It's impossible. And I hate impossible boundaries but... in this case... I really do have to get real and make a choice. I really do want to do this other book and I need to carve out time for that.

Revised - Everything I Want to Do

Alright... 25 hours is the goal... go!

• 1.5 hours - write blogs (DNA blog right now written once a week but pre-posted every 2 weeks to build up a buffer) (reduced from 7.5 hours)
• 2.5 hours - write and research my 4th blog (historical research) - published every 2nd, 3rd or (gasp) 4th week (reduced from 10 hours)
• 5 hours - work on the book about one of the MI5 guys (reduced from 10 hours)
• 10 hours - set up direct booking systems for our Airbnb (rental contract, email journey series, auto-payment processor, etc)
• 2.5 hours - manage our Airbnb and the one I co-host - includes tweaking daily and writing weekly IG & FB posts
• 2.5 hours - handle calls and emails

Ah, this is killing me!! This is 24 hours so I have a flex hour to allocate somewhere. But it is hard to make these choices! I know that once the Airbnb direct booking system is set-up, that will free up some hours but... still...

Could I steal hours from the weekends? Those 7 hours? Maybe... maybe not. I really try to keep things separate and there is already a lot of stuff that gets shoved into the weekends. Plus, I do want to spend some time doing "fun" things... maybe go to a movie with my partner, visit friends, read a book, etc.

Sometimes, there are random bits of time that show up. Maybe meeting didn't go as long as planned, or there weren't any emails or calls to make... and the trick now would be to seize those little 30 minute chunks and turn them into something useful. Through this process, I at least now know where I want to spend them!

Choices are Hard

I am also reminded that small steps are what make the difference. Five hours a week on the new book doesn't seem like a lot but it does add up over the course of a year. Especially if I focus and don't get distracted by other things. I've done a tonne of research for this book, so now it's just pulling things together. I can do this.

For now... this Small Steps blog is going to go to a once a week posting schedule. I am pre-posted well into January, more or less. And hope to keep that schedule going into the future.

So... "for now" this is what I will focus on. I have to keep reminding myself that this isn't forever. This is a temporary deferment and all can be reviewed in 3 months to see where I get to!

The Benefits of Breakfast like a Princess, Lunch like a Queen, Dine like a Maid

Cover - Change your Schedule,
Change Your Life by
Suhas Kshirsagar

Back in September, we turned our eating schedule upside down. We were reading a book called: Change Your Schedule, Change Your Life, a blend of Ayurvedic wisdom and cutting edge science.

One of the suggestions in the book was to eat the largest meal of the day at lunch time and a much smaller meal at dinner/supper time. The benefits were weight loss, better sleep, more energy, etc.

This was rather a radical concept to us. I mean, we knew that it was a common practice in Europe where lunch was often a hot meal and dinner was a bit of soup or an open-faced sandwich.

We'd never even heard of the idea of Breakfast like a King/Queen, Lunch like a Prince/Princess, Dine like a Pauper/Maid.

After much discussion, we decided to give it a try. We would eat a large, hot meal at lunch time and a much smaller meal at dinner time. Not just that, we would finish eating the evening meal four hours before bedtime. Apparently our bodies do not handle evening meals all that well and the later we eat, or the closer to bedtime we eat, the more likely that all those calories will get packed on as excess poundage. Given that we normally are in bed before 10 pm... this meant that our evening meal needed to happen before 6 pm!

We both work from home, so we had some flexibility in our schedules but, still, this switch required that we handle some big logistical hurdles. The first few weeks were a bit bumpy, but we've worked out most of the kinks. Some of the key steps were preparation and planning.

We started meal planning for the coming week so that we knew what we needed to buy at the grocery store. There's nothing worse than looking at recipe at 10:30 am, ready to get cooking, and realizing that we were missing some key ingredient.

We also knew exactly what we would be cooking the next day and what might need to come out of the freezer the day before. I can't tell you how many times we would miss that step in the old days and realize at 5 pm that we had nothing to eat and would then default to eat-out or take-out... not good for the health of our bodies or our budget! It's a bit harder to use that default when you're cooking in the mornings and most pizza places don't open that early!

The trickiest bit was getting used to the idea of cooking in the mornings. It felt really weird and threw a lot of monkey wrenches into well-entrenched habits and routines. We learned that cooking every single morning of the week was no fun... far better to make a big pot of something on the weekend and be able to eat that for several days before then having to cook something else mid-week.

We also learned that having frozen leftovers was non-negotiable. There are some days when we'd wake up and not feel like cooking but... we had something in the freezer that we could pull out and defrost quickly.

The importance of meal timing for our circadian rhythms

Now, has it made a difference for us? Absolutely. We are definitely eating less which means we have both lost weight. We also have more energy in the afternoons and sleep better at night. And, honestly, there are some evenings where I don't feel like eating anything and so I don't. It's actually a good thing to go to bed a bit hungry. This also means that when I wake up, I am quite hungry and so breakfast has gotten a bit bigger. It used to be that I would only eat a couple of peanut butter & jam sandwiches in the mornings. But now... it's a bowl of oatmeal with berries and walnuts, a bowl of meat-free baked beans and a peanut butter & mushed berries pumpernickel sandwich. I have tried various combinations of those three but, if I didn't have all three, I would often find myself hungry again at 9:30 am. This is the problem when you get up early and eat breakfast at 6 am! But... a solid breakfast now tides me over until lunch time.

But here's the thing... I would say the lunch meal is still the biggest meal of the day... not breakfast. So, for me, it's really Breakfast like a Princess, Lunch like a Queen and dine like a Maid. And for my partner, it's different. Breakfast fell off the radar a few months ago and she now starts her day with a big lunch, and then has some soup and a berry bowl in the evenings. The common theme is... biggest meal at lunch.

It's all tied in with our circadian rhythms... there are many, many studies that have shown the benefits of eating most of our calories earlier in the day. And, on the flip side... the harm that comes from eating a lot of calories in the evenings...

Flipping our meal timing so that our largest meal is at lunchtime was a small step in our road to physical wellness. It wasn't an easy step by any means but... having done it for over six months now... it was a very worthwhile step and one that we have now integrated into our lifestyle.

Breaking up with my To-Do List

"I'm breaking up with you!"

That's my biannual scream at my To-Do List. It happens like clockwork. I start sinking under the weight of incomplete tasks and upcoming To-Do's and inevitably think that there's something wrong with my current To-Do List.

If only I had the "right" To-Do List app or method or system or something.

I stomp off in a huff, troll through different to-do list apps and methodologies before I discover a sparkly new one that looks like the answer to my prayers. Harps play, angels hum, lights dazzle and I fall head over heels for my new To-Do List love. I then storm into my current To-Do List and move everything over to the new app/tool/method and slam an invisible door. "I am so DONE with you!" Hmph.

All goes well for a week or two. My new To-Do List and I are in the honeymoon phase after all. I am the energizer bunny of productivity! Things are going swimmingly and then... inevitably... the shiny newness wears off and... I realize that the new app is not cutting it. In fact, it's worse than my old method!

And so I go crawling back to Remember the Milk (my long-term app) and repopulate my To-Do List and swear that I'll always be true. We're good for a few weeks/months and then... it begins again.

This cycle of disillusionment/cheating/switching/reconciliation takes a lot of time and energy and it would be soooo much easier to not have to go through this every few months.

It's not You, It's Me

The thing is... the problem is not with my To-Do List... it's with me. Much as I would love to get rid of my To-Do List... there are way too many moving parts in my life for me to abandon it completely. I need to be able to keep track of upcoming tasks otherwise bills don't get paid, calls don't get made and things don't get done. My To-Do List is my catch-all for everything that I need to remember... in the short-term and long-term.

While I keep coming back to RTM, I've also tried innumerable productivity systems and apps: Kanban, Trello, Todoist, Toodledo, RTM, OneNote, Asana, Bullet Journal (paper-based), Pomodoro, Getting Things Done, Eat the Frog, 1-3-5, the One Thing, Google Keep, Google Tasks, Evernote, Notion, Wunderlist and many, many more. I am a To-Do List junkie.

On top of that, I seem to need to keep a foot in both the analog and digital worlds. A purely digital system doesn't work so well for me. I need something on paper to jot things down, to take notes, whatever. On top of that, my email inbox sometimes functions as a To-Do List. While I aspire to Inbox Zero, sometimes it's easier to leave an email in my Inbox to remind me... "right... need to handle that"... or... "right, waiting for a response on that".

A Shift in Attitude
A few weeks ago, I could feel the frustration/overwhelm/disillusionment building within me. There was soooo much to get done! Every day, I would review my modified BuJo To-Do List at the end of the day and push forward a bunch of incomplete tasks. I'd review my Remember the Milk app and see so many snowplowed To-Dos... And yes, I have tried the Eisenhower Matrix of urgency/importance... doesn't work for me. At this point, everything is Urgent AND Important! Or at least... it feels that way.

I get to the point where I want someone else to just say: "OK, here's your next to-do... and when you're done with that... I'll give you the next one." I don't want to have to make the decisions... to scan a list with dozens of items and try and figure out what is next. Argh!!

A few weeks ago, I could feel a To-Do List break-up coming and thought... "this is ridiculous - there must be a better way". Right now, I'm staying with Remember the Milk for my overall catch-all of information that I can review on a weekly basis. For my day-to-day and week-ahead planning, however, I'm considering several tweaks.

1. Make each task an actual "task", not a project! I have this annoying tendency to write "redo garden beds" on my To-Do List. It is not an actionable task and so my goal is to break each project down into small, actionable items. One of my big issues is that I overestimate how long something will take. But breaking down a task/project into sub-tasks, the entropy hurdle is less. Or so thinks my rational brain.
   
   This would require a shift in attitude and execution on my part. To recognize that I am a bit of an over-achiever and approach my To-Do list with some compassion for myself. I don't have to climb the mountain... I just have to take the next step.
2. Write the reason for a to-do list item - not just what it is. For a slightly ridiculous example: Normally I would write "windshield wipers" on my to-do list, knowing that the current ones are leaving horrible streaks. But that might sit on my to-do list for weeks for any number or reasons. My new strategy, beyond breaking the task down into sub-tasks (buy windshield wipers, install windshield wipers) is to write it thusly: "install new windshield wipers so we can drive to Victoria safely tomorrow".
   
   I came across the idea of writing the To-Do List as if I were writing it for someone else. It made sense and it adds a certain clarity around priority and urgency. Again, this requires a shift in both attitude and execution. At first glance, I'm thinking this might help me prioritize things better... rather than seeing everything as Urgent AND Important.
3. Write a DONE list in my notebook. I used to have a running To-Do List in Remember the Milk and out of that would write a daily To-Do List into my notebook. The same To-Do List that was only half-done at the end of the day. Shifting away from that... and instead writing a Done List in my notebook, because there are a lot of things that I get done that never even make it on to the To-Do List.
   
   I've always been a person who looks ahead. I don't rest on my laurels, but am always jumping ahead, looking at what is still to come. The DONE list is a way for me to appreciate what I have done in a day and focus on the complete rather than the incomplete.
4. Schedule tasks into my day. Apparently, many millionaires (and probably billionaires) do NOT have a To-Do List... they just have a calendar. Huh. I have tried blocking time before but... actually scheduling things... in a realistic way? Not so much.
   
   I think part of my reluctance to look at a calendar-based system is a left-over twitch effect from when I was care-giving for my Dad. All of my careful time-block schedules went out the window during a very unpredictable time. My life is slightly more predictable now... perhaps it is time to try calendars again.

A Balancing Act
Part of my fixation with time and to-do lists right now is this... I have noticed that I will go for a walk with my partner when she is home. But when she is not home, I won't go for a walk. I know that a walk is good for me. I know this... and yet... when I am home alone, there is always something "more important" to do. This is perplexing to me...

I've tried adding "walk" to my to-do list. I can't tell you how often it gets postponed or ignored. Apparently I have no trouble prioritizing others... just myself.

Right now, I am trying to rejig by life by scheduling tasks into my calendar. And the first things to go on the calendar are self-care activities - like walks, reading and eating healthy meals (which always takes longer so my temptation is to take short-cuts and skip the healthy bits). Once my self-care items are blocked into my day, I have a better sense of how much time I actually have for other tasks. And it then becomes easier to prioritize what absolutely needs to get done today and in the coming days.

I've known about the rocks and the mason jar for a while now and have tried various ways of implementing it. Important things first... then smaller things. When I look at the picture here though... I can see how the left mason jar would result in my current sense of overwhelm... "OMG!!! I don't have enough time for these things!!" Tis very true... So this time, I'm putting my intentionality behind creating the right mason jar...

I'm planning a week ahead and I really have to watch myself or this little over-achiever will try and schedule too much into a day. I am trying to build in some white/flex/blank/down/transition time. If I find that I have some flex time in the day because things went quicker than anticipated, I can regroup, see where I'm at and maybe tackle a few of the smaller tasks that always need to be done - cleaning the toilet, doing dishes, flipping a load of laundry into the dryer, etc. It always amazes me what I can get done in 15 minutes, if I just put my head down and do it.

The idea is that my self-care activities are inviolable. If my schedule said "Walk with friend", I would make that appointment. I would never blow off my friend and not show up for the walk, barring a legitimate emergency. But if my schedule says "Walk [for me]", I somehow see that as optional and an appointment that I can keep... or not.

Sooo... my Small Step this week is to keep my appointments with myself. Treat myself with the same courtesty that I treat others. Wish me luck.