Most of us have a long to do list of different jobs we intend to get around to but haven’t yet. These are usually jobs around the house involving cleaning, repairing or replacing. In the back of your mind, you know doing them sooner rather than later will likely save you time and money and improve the quality of you and your family’s life in the short-term.
The challenge is these tasks are generally not the kinds of jobs we awake up with excitement to get them done. Normally these jobs include chores like removing leaves from gutters, getting rid of junk in the garage or getting outdated and/or outgrown clothes out of your wardrobe. It’s all-too easy for you to put these kinds of jobs off when you decide you’d rather have a “quiet weekend” or something else more “important” has come up.
In the end, we end up not getting around to these jobs at all. The jobs that need doing, start to get more difficult and the cost of the job increases. As a result, we spend the whole time prior to that feeling stressed and upset there’s so much work to do…
So how then do you get yourself to finish these tasks quickly and efficiently? Read on and we’ll look at how you can motivate yourself to finish those “odd jobs.”
Batching
The first thing to do is to try using a technique that’s often employed by productivity gurus called “batching.” What this essentially means, is you line up lots of similar but time consuming jobs to be completed on the same day. The day you clear out your wardrobe then might also be the same day you clean the gutters and wash the windows.
That way you’ll feel like that one day will be very productive, and you’ll get it all out of the way in one go. That also means that you can book off this one day and treat it as immovable in your planner, rather than thinking about it as something you can move when another offer comes up.
Making it Fun or At Least Positive
This might sound a little ‘Mary Poppins’, but there are ways to make even the dullest jobs around the home more fun. For instance, why not invite friends over and do the jobs together rather than do them on your own? Or why not try watching a movie or game while you work to save yourself time.
If making it fun sounds like a bit of a stretch, then the closest you can come to is at least making the work more positive. In other words, that means thinking about how beneficial that new roofing will be, or focusing on what you will do once it’s done. Invite friends over after the job is finished as an incentive to get your home looking its very best before they arrive!
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License: Creative Commons image source - License: Creative Commons image source
Today’s contributor, Mike Fernendes, is an employee at Baybrook Remodelers , leading specialists in bathroom remodeling in CT. For updates on best deals, follow them on Twitter & Facebook .
