I am not going to the gym today.
After an hour of personal swim training on Thursday followed by four days of new classes in a row, it’s time for a day off.
The kids are out of clean pajamas.
The fridge is out of food.
I need to flyer for my rescheduled free Cowspiracy Screening event at 7:30 on Tuesday, April 11th at Legacy Place in Dedham. Please come if you’re in the Boston area!!!
I need to reach out to two potential speakers for the mother’s forum for next year.
I ordered 25 pounds of palm-oil free vegan jelly beans for the STEM expo but haven’t finalized the “go green” math worksheets or display and ohhh we still have no volunteers besides Greg for our elementary school’s table.
Time for a power hour.
Coined by Gretchen Rubin, the best-selling author of “Better than Before” a book about habit formation, the Power Hour strategy means sitting down for a solid, undistracted hour to tackle little tasks that are building up because they don’t have an immediate deadline but need to be addressed because they’re hanging over our heads.
All the one-time event tasks listed above fall into this category.
And then a maintenance hour.
- Meal Plan & Create Grocery List
- Check calendar for events & schedule babysitters
- Round up library books to return
And then an errand hour.
- Grocery shop
- Library
- Distribute Cowspiracy Flyers
This is sort of a weird blog post because I’m essentially sharing my to-do list for today, but I think it’s helpful and less overwhelming when we categorize our tasks and focus on them. Dedicate an hour to the one-time things that have been hanging over our heads. Dedicate an hour to the regular household chores and calendar maintenance. Run errands for an hour.
Subdividing these tasks into categories helps me brainstorm additional tasks. What other errands do I need to run? What other routine household tasks should make this list? What else is on the upcoming calendar that requires action?
I use a four part to-do list system adapted from Cory Halaby’s presentation inspired by David Allen’s GTD Process (ok that’s a mouthful but I like giving credit where credit is due). One of the sections is an “Every Responsibility” list that I browse through that helps me remember to do maintenance tasks.
When I don’t sit down for a few minutes and plan out my action items for the day, I tend to just run from one thing to the next feeling overwhelmed and never remember to check that calendar or schedule that sitter.
Make it just an hour
I could work on “Power Hour” tasks all day. Sometimes I do. Then we order take-out and the kids don’t have pajamas. Keeping it to an hour until the other (more urgent if perhaps less important) categories have been tackled helps.
The more efficiently we tackle our life tasks, the more time we have to do the things we love or spend time with the people we love. (Or both, like when Greg comes with me to class at the gym and then we go out to eat as a family and I am insanely happy for the entire day.)