The struggle is real people! Most everyone I know has a career, and if not a career, at least a "real job"... me.. my heart is at home, especially when my husband is here. When my husband is not at home, my heart is to make our home a place he is eager to get back to! I want him to walk in and feel good about what he has worked so hard to provide. I am beyond grateful to be at home and wholeheartedly want to make the most of each day as to not take advantage of this blessing, but finding the motivation without the accountability can be a real struggle! A struggle you might sneer at, but imagine going to your job each day and not having coworkers to lean on, not having a boss to keep you in check, not having an assignment, and not getting a paycheck or feedback. That might sound good, but when trying to be your best without any of these things, motivation can get tricky. I have been reading some articles and testing some suggestions out, as well as paying attention to myself on my most productive days to see what makes them different and I thought I would share!
First and foremost for me is a LIST! haha! It is in fact a form of accountability for me. I read an article stating a list is just a list until it becomes a scheduled assignment. Well call it what you like but when I start my day with a to-do list, it gives me side eyes all day until I put a line through each item. As I can easily get distracted, it brings me back into focus of what I expected to get done. I found an app called 30/30 years ago, it worked great and then I started finding it a pain to set up everyday so I decided to use the ides of it on my written list which just means I either set a time frame for accomplishing each task.
Clean Floors (vacuum, sweep, mop) 1 hour
If I'm feeling hardcore, I will put an actual time on it, so if I'm allowing myself an hour to get it done, I look at the clock and say, that all must be done by 9am and then I can't squeeze in getting lost staring mindlessly at an electronic screen before I start it. Does anyone ever set their gps to map them to their destination and when you see the arrival time, you feel like your accepting a challenge to knock a few minutes off that time!?!? haha! Same works for timed lists.. the competitor in me rises up and if I finish the floors is 50 minutes!?!? YES!!! I am a winner!!! And winners have 10 extra minutes to use as they please.
Back to mindlessly staring at an electronics screen, surely I am not the only one who gets sucked into the Facebook or Twitter vortex and wake up an hour later to find myself watching cat videos and reading "news" articles about dead rats found in a bag of firewood purchased at the local grocery store, right? So I have turned off all notifications for social media and giving myself set time windows to be an internet bum. HUGE time saver!
Recognizing the time of day you are most likely to kick some butt and what time of day you are most likely to sit on your butt is important as well. This one is taking some work for me because I realized if I start my morning strong, I have the most productive days, even if I fizzle out early. The problem is once I get Peyton off to school and Nick off to work, I come home and look at the breakfast mess and think, "I'll take a moment to have a cup of coffee before I clean this up". Half a pot of coffee later I am still not ready for the day, the kitchen is still a mess and I'm already thinking about what I will eat for lunch! So I still have to figure out what works for me on this one because I love my coffee time! Maybe I'll make a smaller pot or get a nice mug with a lid that can easily move around the house with me as I get my day started..
Finally is something called the 20 second rule... what I took away from this idea is to get a 20 second jump start on things I typically procrastinate. Need to make a phone call tomorrow that you put off today? I write the number down as well as gather the info I will need when making that call, then tomorrow it can't be THAT hard to push the numbers on my phone and speak..... right???? Meant to work out today and promising myself I will tomorrow? I lay out my clothes, athletic shoes and a water bottle the night before.. seriously, I'll have to come down with pneumonia overnight to ignore I promised myself I would workout!
So that is all for now.... my scheduled computer time is up! ;) Have a productive day!!!
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