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As I may or may not have mentioned before, I have three children, one who is only 7 months old. This means my house is in a constant state of disarray. This tends to leave my wife and I extremely frustrated. No matter how much we try to clean up, it’s ruined quickly. It’s one step forward and two steps back.
Last weekend, I was complaining to a buddy about the house, and he gave me a strange but amazing piece of advice. He said, “pick one thing and make it YOUR thing.” Basically, pick one place in the house, whether it’s the bedroom, family room, toy room, kitchen, etc. and always ensure it is neat and clean. No matter how the rest of the house looks or what else is going on, I must ensure my “area” of the house is clean. No complaining just do it.
“Okay, Joe, what’s the big deal?” I think it’s an easy way to give us some semblance of order back in our lives. I know when I feel like my life is completely out of control it’s because I’m worried about too many things all at once. My wife, my kids, my job, my house, my friends, my future, and my world all at the same time. I feel like I’m on a treadmill. I’m going a mile a minute but I not getting anywhere.
Instead of trying to do everything, we need to pick one thing and make it OUR thing. The important thing is to make it small and manageable. Picking too large of a “thing” can be a one-way ticket to Overwhelmsville.
Going back to my conversation about my house, I decided to ensure the dishes are clean and put away every single night. This gives me a base of operations while allowing me to feel like I made a difference by accomplishing something. Then if there is time or if feeling especially frisky I can expand to the rest of the house.
This prevents cherry picking and the “what do I feel like today” mentality. Whenever it’s time to clean the house, I know where I’m starting. Basically, I’ve eliminated the choice of where to start reducing my need to use willpower. Now I’m able to be more effective in the house.
Why is keeping my house clean so difficult? Is it because I’m a slob, I have 3 kids, or own more things than necessary? Probably all of them. The other problem is, by the time I get home, at the end of the day I’m exhausted. Sure, I spend most of my day sitting in a chair staring at a computer screen but mentally, I have very little left in me. I’m all out of willpower.
We’ve all had those days where we know what we should be doing but we don’t have the energy or drive to make it happen. Instead of cleaning or working on a project, we procrastinate because we don’t have the willpower. We feel weak and lazy.
The thing is our willpower is like a glass of water. Every time we make a decision or “force” ourselves to do something, the cup gets drained a little. The more energy we expend making decisions, both conscious and unconscious, the fast cup empties and until we feel overwhelmed. This leads to what researchers call decision fatigue.
There are several ways to help combat decision fatigue. James Clear gives us 5 ways to combat decision fatigue and SJ Scott gives us a few more, with 9 ways. Two of the points they agree upon are making important decisions ahead of time and simplifying the process. The idea of “pick one thing and make it YOUR thing” is an amalgamation of these two ideas. We’ve decided what we are going to do (in this case it’s focusing on keeping the dishes clean) and we’ve kept it small and manageable (concentrating only on the dishes and the sink area). Now whenever it’s time to get to work we don’t need to guess, we know where to start.
The trick is to understand our priorities. What do we care about the most? What can we concentrate on which will reduce our stress exponentially? What are the things we dread doing the most? These are the things we need to work on first. Then when we’ve created the list of our top priorities, we figure out which is number one and start there. This becomes our thing.
Now we aren’t reliant on willpower to push us into action. We know what we need to do, and we can do it. It’s our top priority after all.
I know I’ve talked a lot about my house and my kitchen but the nice thing about this idea is it can work for most things. Dinners, the kids, job functions, and even friends and family. By developing priorities for the major stressors in our lives, we can pick out thing to become our thing. Once we finish our thing, we can move on to the next thing.
This implementation will take time and practice. I’ve been at this for almost a week and I’ve failed more often than not. The important thing is to keep trying and work to continuously ensure it’s the priority. We already know what we have to do, we just need to execute. So, let’s find out thing, make it our thing, and go kick ass together.
