Jump Start: Self Care September: Day 10

Day 10 of the Jump Start, and Day 3 of Get Organised & Motivated Week. Today’s activity is to greatly vary your working speeds, so it’s fast and slow day. It’s the antidote to feeling constantly pressured, and it’s also a pretty good way of breaking up certain work or home tasks.

Jump Start Get Organised Week Day 3

If you’re a perfectionist, it can help you to free yourself temporarily from checking every single extraneous detail – something which can almost slow you to a halt in extreme cases. If that causes you anxiety just reading it, remember that it will allow you to concentrate more on the most important things.

Alternatively, if you often find that you have trouble concentrating for very long periods of time, this will let you off the hook for half the day and you might find it easier to focus more efficiently during the rest of your time.

In all jobs, and in home life, there are tasks where you need excellent attention to detail, but there are others that you could just burn through. For example, you don’t need to take that much care when you’re:

  • Deleting junk emails
  • Packing boxes
  • Answering routine messages
  • Tidying up home or office

I’m not saying you should do a bad job, just don’t get hung up on these sorts of tasks and don’t worry if they aren’t ‘perfect’. They need doing, so just get them out of the way. Fast.

Conversely, you DO need to take plenty of care when you’re:

  • Doing your accounts
  • Proofreading
  • Writing code
  • Dealing with contracts / clients / legal documents

So today, try alternating 30 minutes of quick working on the simpler tasks with an hour of slower, more concentrated work on things that need more attention to detail.

Allow yourself to speed through the first lot of work, have a quick break, and then allow yourself time to do the more complicated, important tasks properly. If necessary, switch off the phone and email alerts etc so that you can work uninterrupted – being ‘always-on’ isn’t good for your focus, and focus is usually where the worthwhile things tend to happen.

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