This Swiss timer means business.
Want a super idea to help you with your home business when faced with a big ugly job?
Maybe the task seems so onerous you’ve put it off for days, weeks or months and you suffer ever-worsening consequences. Well, here’s a method that will save you any more angst. In fact you’ll feel pride instead of anguish. It’s the method that cleaned out my cellar. Did I hire gnomes? Nothing so exotic.
I used a timer.
No, I’m not a race horse at the track, but like some race horses, I sometimes need blinders to keep my eyes focused on the track. How about you?
Pick a starting point.
When you’re faced with a big ugly job you hate, the chore can seem overwhelming. If it must be done and you can’t get someone else to do it, decide what baby step comes next on that bad boy.
Maybe it’s such a mess, it seems that nine things need done at the same time. If so, maybe your first job is to create a plan. If you can’t make headway with a plan, just pick one small task at random.
Now set your timer for fifteen minutes and work gangbusters on it.
You don’t have all day. You have fifteen minutes. If each minute feels like a year, remember it’s just fifteen minutes. Hyper-focus until that timer dings, rings or vibrates.
Now stop. Step back and see what you accomplished.
Is the job done? Are you astonished? Do a little jig in celebration.
Whether the job is or isn’t finished, it’s more finished than it was fifteen minutes ago. Pat yourself on the back. You took action, therefore you’re a hero or heroine.
You may be shocked that the job wasn’t as ugly as you feared.
Great. In fact, maybe it’s so near done that you feel like finishing the no-longer-so-big ugly job. Set your timer for another go-round, then work with the vigor of a three-year-old angling for a cookie.
When time’s up, quit.
I mean it. Don’t set that timer for another round of work.
Go do something else for the next fifteen minutes–something fun. You’ll come back refreshed with a better idea of what comes next. That’s like having a bigger baseball bat to slug the stitches off the next ugly job and sail it out of sight over the fence.
Maybe the job looks even worse now that you tore into it.
Often a work in progress appears that way. If you can’t face working on it for fifteen minutes again, set your timer for ten minutes, or even five. I don’t care if it’s five minutes three times a day or five minutes a week.
Do something.
If at the end of the day you feel remorse or guilt that you’ve done nothing at all on your big ugly job, set your timer for one minute and take a stab at it. Feel better? I knew you would.
Now I must admit, I took my cellar in 45-minute chunks. And I did one chunk each Sunday morning for weeks on end, dressed in grub clothes, focused on filling ten trash bags in that time. Told you it was a big ugly job. I figure I offloaded 3,000 pounds of junk that accumulated over 30 years. Appalling, eh?
Now the place echoes. I still puff up with pride every time I think of it. I figure if I could do THAT, I can do anything–like start up and run my new successful home business using my timer for each task.
Now go you forth and do likewise.
Chip away at some big ugly job with your trusty timer sidekick. Set your timer, make a plan if you can, then focus step-by-timed-step. When you finish it once and for all, I bet you smile so big they can see it from the space station.
Can you smile for fifteen minutes?
Oh man, I can see it from here. I wish you focus and great success in your home business.
Best,
P.S.
Want a good mood-lifter? Go stand in front of a mirror and smile at yourself for one solid minute. Stand eyeball to eyeball with that person in the mirror, wearing a nice big grin. For sixty seconds by the clock. I dare you.
P.P.S.
While all the links in my post are meant to help you, some are affiliate links, which means if you click and buy, I could earn money.
