Life is challenging and it can be quite difficult to do the things you want to do when the things you need to do wear you out. After work and family time all I really want to do is sit down and watch some TV but I know that I wont be able to properly enjoy my TV time until I take care of stuff around the house. The average day for me at this point it has gotten to be pretty easy for me to dive right into my chores after my daughter goes to sleep. Some days though that is not the case, those days when everything seems to go wrong or an event is significantly more exhausting than expected. On those days it can feel like the most overwhelming thing in the world looking at my chores that need to be done.
When feeling like that I like to just ask myself if I can push just a little bit further. Like “can I at least get the living room picked up?” and once I do that then I say “I can at least get the dishwasher unloaded”. And I just keep asking and doing until either I have finished all of what I wanted to get done or I say “no, I really need to just sit for a bit”. I almost always am able to get more done than I was expecting and then I can relax feeling like I did what I could for the night.
This also has the added benefit of helping build resiliency. I have found that over time I have been able to get to the point where I am able to pretty much get all of my basic chores and activities done every night. Now let me be clear I did not start out like that, I use to be able to just knock out one chore for the night and feel like I put out this massive amount of effort. It has taken me years to build out my ability to just take care of stuff. I have come to realize that you need to celebrate your wins, forgive your loses and just keep trying to do better.
“but I know that I won’t be able to properly enjoy my TV time until I take care of stuff around the house” We don’t have kids yet and I feel this way about TV and movies now. Love these treadmill habits I have cultivated lately. I almost feel guilty on the weekend when I watch a movie with Lana and I am not working out at the same time. Since I started stacking fitness (I would argue the most important personal part of my day.) and my favorite lazy thing to do which is movies and TV I have a hard time not multitasking something while enjoying movies and shows. You know how much I love TV and Movies. hahahaha.
To go along with the rest of what you talked about Lana and I started asking ourselves this. “Can I do that chore in 3 to 5 minutes?” If the answer is yes we have to do it then especially when we don’t want to. Really helps us build resiliency. We will know the true definition of building resiliency when we have a few little kids. hahaha.
Fun read.
Yeah man it’s funny how we have both gotten to kind of a similar place on our own. It’s funny even when I have been planning on watching TV I have found myself opting to do something more productive instead (mainly writing blog posts right now). Which is just crazy cause back in the day when a new episode dropped for a show I have been watching I was watching it that day and now I find myself pushing it back if I don’t get as much done as I had wanted too.
It is so helpful to just try and take care of stuff whenever you get the opportunity too. I actually find that I may now lean too far in the other direction and find myself trying to take care of stuff when we need to leave for something. Yeah kids for sure changes the game a bit, you get locked into a schedule that makes it hard to do stuff outside of convenient windows within that schedule. Which was a big shift from get to it at any point throughout the night. But you do get used to it.