31Ways2GetItStarted™!: January 7, 2013

Day 7: Do One Thing Today to Make Tomorrow Easier

AKA start cultivating healthy habits. I write this as a someone who has really made an art form of procrasturbation. Interestingly enough, a habit I started in law school. (#surprisesurprise) Ahh law school: wherein, if you have a paper due at 9am Monday morning...why would you get started before midnight or even 1am? Where's your love of adventure? First of all, you have to catch up on DListed.com; what your friends are posting on Facebook; the apartment needs to be vacuumed... oh there's a ton of sh*t to do whenever a legal writing assignment is due! Eventually, it's 8:52am and you're calculating how long you need to print and drive furiously to the law school, depositing the paper on your prof's desk at 09:01. Smirking. Ahh, good times. #notreally

Of course, in college, when I studied subjects I was actually you know, interested in, I was the kind of nerd who would turn in papers weeks earlier than requested. (I suspect that if I had done that in law school, the professor would have thrown it back at me with a disdainful grunt for actually making him work, when he really wanted to be giving interviews on public radio...or blogging. Not that I'm at all implying that law professors are hideously overpaid for the small amount of work they do. No, not at all.)

Now, as my own boss, I get to do a lot of stuff I love (coaching), and many things I dislike (too many to list), but invariably, when I ignore my own to-do lists, they, also invariably, keep growing till eventually it's 3am and I realize that I'm under the proverbial gun. On the other hand, when I force myself to suck it up and do today the irritating things I wrote in today's to-do list...usually they're not as horrible as I anticipated, and afterwards I feel less guilty and the next day is a lot easier. "Usually."

Thus, on Day #7, my hint to you is to continue working on cultivating health habits and do one thing today which will make tomorrow easier. Whether it's going to the gym, or returning an irritating phone-call, or working on your resume: do it, get it over with and make your life easier. Because the more you do today, the more you'll feel able to do tomorrow. Conversely, the harder you make tomorrow, the harder you'll feel it to be and then forget it. That thinking leads nowhere fast. Eventually you'll be holed up in an underground bunker waiting for the end of the world...but hey, you still won't be a law professor, trying to pretend that learning civil procedure is valuable, so things aren't all bad!

Want some help figuring out which one thing to do today? (I've actively deleted any and all knowledge of civ pro from my brain, so please, don't even bother.) Email me @carlotazee@gmail.com! And feel free to leave any rants, comments, praise in the comments section!

One thing many clients ask me for are time management tips. What, you thought they'd be asking me for help with their physics homework? This is a blog about getting your sh*t together...well that... and you know, what happens when your vagina has terrible taste in men...and the joy of cats. But I digest: here's 3 basic but very helpful time management tips:

1.Get up early, and plan your day.

I don't know about you, but when I'm up @ 5, and envision my day, I become a machine. I become a wonderful if terrifying thing to behold. I get sh*t done. I nag encourage my clients, I do all my own work & writing and that evening, I can even go out and have a drink or 12, since I spent all day working, not just procrasturbating about the work I have to do.  (Crucial difference.)

On the other hand...if I hit snooze, and don't get up till say 7:30...already I'm freaking out about all the work I have to do and telling myself that dammit, the day is shot. (You think it's easy to be this neurotic? You have to work into this level of neuroses...it takes years.)

So, do the hard thing--since it's easier in the long run--and get up early, pre-think your day, reward yourself at the gym, or the track and increase your confidence by seeing your chores/goals get accomplished.

2. Keep the to-do list SHORT

While I think lists can be very helpful in keeping you organized...I also know they can increase the pressure. You can end up with a three page to-do list...and then spend the day watching cartoons and whining at the cats, since it's all too damn intimidating. So instead, wake up early in the day to get organized  DON'T check Facebook, DON'T get bogged down in emails, DON'T do anything but get organized) and identify 3 (max) goals you can and will accomplish that day, based on what is most pressing. 

Keep those 3 goals realistic, so that when, at the end of the day, you have accomplished those goals, you'll feel more powerful and those three chores will have served to give you new ideas, opportunities. etc.. Then go home and sing Kumbayah on your own time, hippie.

3. Avoid getting bogged down in emails.

I would seriously considering "grading" ALL email contacts, by order of their importance, so that, for example, whether you get 100 or 1000 emails a day, you can immediately see which is time-sensitive, which is a friend saying 'sup, and which is something you can look at later. To that end, I would suggest encouraging, or even forwarding, all friends/family to a personal email account, which you don't even open during the weekday. Then go through all your work contacts and be honest regarding who is important, who just thinks they're important and who is a time-suck. This might take you say 3 hours on a weekend...but if organized correctly, you can create a system that in future when you get a work email, it is automatically delineated as important, or not, and so you don't look up and realize, "Shit, I've spent 2 hours on emails, trying to get the break-room booked for a meeting...and now I'm f**ked. Hulk smash!"

Need more tips on time management, or rocket science or where to get a great strapless bra in NYC? Then email me @carlotazee@gmail.com!

 I’m a very Type A personality, as you’ve probably suspected, and one side-effect of that is my attachment to To-Do Lists. Lists make me happy. They keep me organized and focused…or, do they? I found myself wondering that the other day, as I unearthed a couple of notepads filled with lists from last year. (I also found some inappropriate photos, so don’t feel too bad for me…I still manage to get into plenty of trouble…) Do the lists keep me focused and on-message… or do they instead give me so much (unrealistic) expectations of all the work I have to do, and related stress, that I start freaking out and want to spend the entire day watching Adult Swim? (I am nothing if not brutally honest. And, of course, covered in cat hair.) So right now, I’m trying to write less lists and just spend more time getting all the crap I need to done…and not write a list about that...