I’m gonna start, once I get through this week
“Bro, that was three weeks ago.”
“Oh…”
When you just get through this week
Set insanely small goals. The inability to start often has to do with imagining the daunting tasks that lay ahead of you. The trick is to set almost pathetically small goals.
Your room is filled with messy laundry? Grab 1 shirt and toss it into a pile. That’s it. You don’t need to do the laundry, you don’t need to gather any other clothes. Just 1 shirt, tossed into a pile that it wasn’t in before. I bet there’s one within arm reach of you right now.
Used dishes in your room? Aren’t you thirsty? Sure you are! You probably haven’t drank anything in a while. Go to the kitchen and get some water. While you’re on your way, why don’t you grab 1 dish and take it with you?
Momentum is a hell of a thing. Most of the time, all you need is something small to break your executive dysfunction. If you tossed 1 shirt into a pile, you might as well toss any clothing in arms reach. Those pants are just slightly out of reach, ok maybe you get up a little to toss those… And those socks… And maybe that shirt over there too. Suddenly, all your dirty clothes are gathered into a pile and it hardly took any time or energy. All it took was grabbing 1 shirt and tossing it.
And if you finish your insanely small task and you don’t feel like doing any more? That’s fine! You already met your goal! Hell, if you’ve got something you’re struggling with and have taken the time to read this, you’re already half-way there, because now you’re thinking about what the smallest, stupidest, zero-effort goal you can set is.
Are you ready for the most important piece of life advice that no one ever tells you growing up? Anything worth doing is worth doing shitty.
Activation energy is a terrible thing.
If you don’t know where to start, organise something.
The worst part for more is when i eventually forced myself to start i can go for hours thinking: wow this is actually pretty fun. Woohoo, cleaning, every single piece of clothing is wasged and in the closet. I’ll remember that and next time will be a piece of cake. It is in fact not a piece of cake the naxt time.
the fucking laundry why is putting the laundry away so hard ITS CLEAN AND READY TO BE PUT AWAY JUST DO IT
I always just force myself to do it by dumping it on my bed so I can’t sleep until I did it.
Then I remember having a few drinks and staying up late and then looking at my bed so angry with myself … I did fold them all and put them away so I was kinda proud I did it but I was upset the entire time lol.
yeah so I also do that but then I still dont do it and move the pile to the floor, so now I have clean clothes on the floor that im not doing!
Saw a book recommended around here somewhere with some good perspective on this: How to Keep House While Drowning by KC Davis.
One of the big starting points is recognizing that care tasks are functional, not moral. Having those doom piles does not make you “bad” and cleaning them up will not make you “good”. Caring for yourself and your space is about providing functionality. That’s it.
