Just 1 minute

So I listen to a lot of podcasts. A LOT. Most are dramas (Welcome to Nightvale,  Pleasure Town, Our Fair City) but I also throw in a good dose of history (Stuff You Missed in History Class, Sawbones, The Memory Palace, Lore) as well as women's issues (Stuff Mom Never Told You), Crime (Serial, Undisclosed), Design (99% Invisible) and some odds and ends (The Mystery Show, Invisibila, Jack's Farm Radio). See I said A LOT of podcasts.

I listen when I work, go for walks, drive in the car alone, or sit and knit at night. When I run out I either find more or break out the audiobooks.

But I have a new one. Happier. Now I started following The Happiness Project when it first started as a blog. Then it morphed into a book that I admit I never read, and I fell away from following blogs to following podcasts. Now it's new incarnation is the Happier podcast and I am catching up from the beginning.

But why did this get me here. What was so interesting. The 1 minute rule. If you see something that needs to be done and will take you less than a minute to do, then just stop and do it. Don't put it off until it takes longer, or until it drives you crazy because it's not done. What can this be? For me it has been washing the glasses in (or near because sometimes for some reason they don't make it in) the sink. Takes just a minute and there is now almost always an empty sink. Toilet? Just a quick brush anytime it looks like it needs it. Shelf needs to be dusted. Just do it. Doesn't have to be the whole room or the whole unit, just the one I noticed as I walked downstairs.

It's great for the business too. Quick emails (not detailed ones, those get done once or twice a day in office work sessions), print an order and place in in the to do pile, add something big to my to do list, you name it.

Why does this help me? Because I get overwhelmed. I get anxious. I get almost claustrophobic when I feel like there are a million things to do. So I am heading things off at the pass. Doing them before they make my to do list. Doing them before they are just driving me to the brink of sanity, doing them before a little project grows into a huge one. And most importantly doing them before I get so stressed that I am just a ball of nerves and I try and tackle everything at once in a whirl wind.

So if you hear me say that I "just need 1 minute" I do, I have something important to accomplish in that time :)