Sep 18, 2009

Tiny Tasks

by Sarah Albrecht

Since going back to school in August, homework has crept into almost every crevasse of available time not already slotted for family, and even then it’s always there, hovering just outside the door. In spite of how long I anticipated returning to school, it’s been a big change.

In order to keep some sense of balance, I’ve set myself to doing Tiny Tasks—small morsels of other work or activity—that usually take no more than five minutes and that would otherwise be subsumed by the big HW.

In five minutes, I can:

--clean the powder room
--make two beds
--run the dishwasher or switch a load of laundry
--drop a note in the mail
--make my kindergartener a cup of chocolate milk
--write one hundred words

Blog!

5 comments:

  1. you can do ALL of those things in five minutes??? or one??

    if it's all, you need to come over to my house for half an hour!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hmmmm I think I like this idea of doing tiny tasks.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I love the tiny task idea also. I think I will use it as a reward. I have some tasks that I put off. Maybe I will break them down and attack them as four or five tiny tasks, and then in a day or two, I will get them out of my hair. Thanks for the food for thought.

    ReplyDelete
  4. One of the writing mottos we came up with at our last chapter meeting was "5 minutes is 5 minutes," which reminds us to write even when we don't have a huge block of time.

    And as far as chores go, I've always disliked emptying the dishwasher. One time I ran in during a commercial to do it and found I was done before the commercial was over. Now I still don't like it, but I know it's less than a commercial's time to get it done, so I shouldn't put it off.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I've been trying to teach this concept to my kids. I also try to apply it to the meditation/relaxation part of my day. I feel much better when i remember to take 5 minutes here and there and completely relax my muscles.

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for visiting. Feel free to comment on our blogger's posts.*

*We do not allow commercial links, however. If that's not clear, we mean "don't spam us with a link to your totally unrelated-to-writing site." We delete those comments.