Just Start

So many things in my life need doing, need my attention and/or effort. Some big things. Some less big things. All nagging at me to DO THEM.

If you’re anything like me, you know what things you need to do. 

• Clean the kitchen
• Go exercise
• Do that last little bit of work before I go to bed
• Pay bills
• Vacuum
• Empty the dishwasher
• Paint the living room
• Replace the curtains

You probably have a list like mine.

I KNOW what needs doing and how to do it. 

The pandemic taught me that it wasn’t that I didn’t have enough time to do those things, which was always a convenient excuse.

Nope, that wasn’t the issue. Turns out I had plenty of time during the height of the pandemic to get a lot accomplished.

But mostly, I didn’t do them.

Because I didn’t want to…

We know what to do, and we have time to do it, and we know how to do it, and we know it needs doing.

It’s the doing it that’s the hard part.

I can talk myself out of doing just about anything that I need to do. 

I’m pretty persuasive. Or lazy. One of those. Probably both.

And it’s not about “finding motivation”. 

I can even list the advantages of doing most of the things that need doing, and the pros generally outweigh the cons.   

So it’s not that doing those things wouldn’t be beneficial. 

Most of the time, we need to be able to make ourselves do the thing whether we feel like it or not.  I mean, it’s easy to do stuff when you feel like it, right?  When you’re motivated, getting up and focusing on a task is no problem.

The key is to figure out how to get moving when you don’t feel like it.  When there is no motivation to be found.

Mel Robbins wrote a best seller called The 5 Second Rule that can help you get moving.  Basically, you count down from 5 to 0, and when you reach zero, you get up and do the thing.  No thinking.  Just move!  Counting UP doesn’t seem to work because when we hit “5”, we can just decide to count 5 more.  And 5 more.  And 5 more, until we finally “feel like it”.  Which doesn’t happen. At that point, we might be motivated by guilt, but that’s not a great motivator, at least not in the long run.

We been conditioned to expect something to happen when we count down and reach zero. There’s energy! Excitement! Expectation!  

Think of a rocket ship blast off.  There is a long, staged count down, and when ZERO is reached, the rocket blasts off!   

When we do a countdown to ourselves, we feel a sense of expectation, and a reflex response to reaching zero. Try it yourself and see how your body and emotions react.

One thing that works for me is to tell myself to stop thinking so much.  Stop thinking about whether I WANT to do the thing, or whether I feel like it right then.

I have to just GET UP and START.  

Stop thinking.  Get up.  Start doing.

Once I am doing the thing, it’s fine.  I usually even enjoy the activity.  And having a sense of accomplishment afterward is nice, too.

The challenge lies in overcoming my lazy tendencies.

If you’ve been wanting to start SOMETHING, but for whatever reason, haven’t yet – just do ONE THING that moves you towards that something.

Stop thinking and start.

It might be a home improvement project, learning a new language, drawing or painting or singing or arranging music, eating healthy, working out, calling an old friend, or reading books about dung beetles.

It might be unloading the dishwasher or putting away the laundry.

Whatever it is, just start.

Stop thinking.

Start.

Count down from 5 to 0 and jump up from the couch as you blastoff, if that helps.

But just start.