Where's the Time?

So, you made a fabulous jump into readiness to tackle your project. Excellent! You immediately look at your calendar to block off time for the week. Then, the week stops you in your tracks. You cannot undo any of the commitments in this week’s calendar. You scan the month for the next long weekend. Alas, nothing is coming up. You really want to capitalize on your motivation to start before other projects grab your attention. What to do?

Looking for significant time gaps to devote to decluttering, organizing, and paperwork is logical. The challenge is that those lengthy gaps can be difficult to find, especially during a busy week. If you find a big gap, you may be too tired by the time it rolls around or want to relax after a long week.

Why not try the opposite? Set an alarm for between five and fifteen minutes. Work on that project for no more than fifteen minutes. Your alarm goes off, and you stop.

I typically hear the pushback: “What can I possibly get done in fifteen minutes? This massive project will take me forever if I only devote fifteen minutes at a time.”

The resistance is natural; we absolutely cannot finish most organizing projects in fifteen minutes. So, why bother with such short segments of time that we presuppose will be unsatisfying? Why not look for larger blocks of time?

I am often told that when that large block of time rolls around, it is so intimidating that the project stops before it starts. It is simply too big and scary.

Why would I encourage so many of my clients to employ this strategy if I get so much initial pushback? Simply put, it works. Clients who use this tactic are genuinely shocked at how well it works.

We have already established that waiting for a large time gap does not typically work. You are much more likely to find fifteen or even five minutes of free time in a day. You might surprise yourself with what you can do in those short minutes. Plus, those short minutes add up.

Imagine you find and devote five minutes today, five minutes tomorrow, and ten minutes the rest of the week. By the end of the week, you have worked on your project for sixty minutes! Now, you are sixty minutes closer to your decluttering goal than you would be waiting for a two-hour gap and finding none.

Fifteen minutes a day is one hundred five minutes by the end of the week. That is four hundred twenty minutes by the end of the month. Suddenly, manageable fifteen-minute increments turned into seven hours of accomplishments in one month’s time! Seven hours! Meanwhile, had you waited for that two-hour gap, you would only have managed two hours by the end of the month.

Why else does this strategy work? Fifteen minutes is far less intimidating than hours at a time. This approachability is essential. If a large gap of time feels scary, we will move away from it. You can start with five minutes and work up to fifteen minutes. The more you practice, the easier it becomes. Ripping off the band-aid and exposing yourself to the initial discomfort of decluttering and letting go becomes much easier when you only do it a few minutes at a time.

The most important reason this tactic works is habit. You expose yourself to doing the work by repeating the fifteen-minute practice daily. The more you repeat it, the more natural it will feel. You are practicing decluttering and getting rid of extraneous items daily. With time, it becomes the norm. Eventually, you become anesthetized from the initial discomfort of letting go. You may even start viewing it as a way to care for yourself, like brushing your teeth.

So why not give it a shot this week? Grab some garbage bags and a timer and see how much easier decluttering can feel fifteen minutes at a time!