I cannot remember a time when I didn’t have something that needed to be done.
Mow the lawn.
Do the dishes.
Weed the flower bed.
Sign the boys up for sports.
Workout.
Clean up dog poo.
The list is neverending.
These tasks are nagging annoyances.
As I finished putting away the last dish from the umpteenth time this weekend I felt a small sense of accomplishment.
The dishes were done, yay!
I could not have this same sense of accomplishment without a stack of dirty dishes needing to be washed in the first place.
Big accomplishments are cool of course, but they don’t come around as often as the small day to day wins.
Life is more enjoyable when you enjoy the day to day tasks and view the completion of them as wins.
We all have tasks we don’t enjoy and this is simply the paradigm we are currently working within.
Figure out a way to enjoy them whether it be providing for your family, blasting some music, listening to an audiobook, or simply mastering the craft.
Here is an example from a person in a Facebook group I’m in:
I am fanatical about lawns. I mow twice a week and change my blades after 3 weeks. I always have at least 3 blades, one on the mower and two sharp ones in reserve. When I pull the dull blade off the mower, I drop it off at the hardware store for sharpening. I overseed every few weeks to have more “generations” of grass coming up to keep the lawn thick. I use regular fertilizers but also custom blend liquid feedings.
I only water in the morning so excess moisture evaporates instead of watering at night which causes fungal diseases(warm, wet, and dark). I train the roots to “Go Deep” by watering deeply every other day then every 3 days, then back to every other day during a drought.
I mow the lawn tall in hot weather to maintain the “canopy” that keeps the soil from getting scalded by the sun and dried out, plus the taller you mow the plusher it looks, as long as it is thick.
And unlike lawn services who mow, then weed whack, then blow the sidewalks, I edge the sidewalks and weed whack first, then blow the sidewalks clean, blowing everything on top of the grass, then I mow last with a bagger mower to suck up all the debris at the same time so the lawn is truly spotless.
You can learn to enjoy almost any task and even if you can’t get yourself to enjoy the doing you can at least enjoy the being done.
Brett “Small Wins” Denton