The Power of the Timer (aka Just Start)

For the past several weeks, ok, months, every time I've looked at our front garden area, which is every day, I've thought to myself, ugh.  I really need to clean that out.  That being the weeds and dead flowers and spent vegetation. 

But, I think next, it will take for-ev-er. 

For-ev-er is a tad bit longer than I have to spend on a weeding/deadheading/preparing an outdoor space for winter project.  So I don't do anything.  And then the next day, I see the space again, and I think the thoughts again.  And, entropy being entropy, not only does the space not improve, it actually gets worse.

The other day I was watching a video. 

Oh my, y'all, I have fallen down theYouTube rabbit hole.  Did you know that there are things called "haul" videos, in which people who have gone shopping show and talk about everything that they bought?  I'm serious.  It's a thing.  Also a thing is cleaning videos.  How to clean, clean with me (wherein someone videos herself cleaning...and people watch!  Power hours are viewer favorites), favorite cleaning hacks, favorite cleaning equipment, (by the way, I need a Dyson V8 Animal Cordless Vacuum now, because that's what Love Meg uses on her hardwood floors), hoarder to minimalist.  And don't even get me started on the DIYs.

Anyway, I was watching a YouTube video, and the YouTuber told me that I should set a timer and clean for 15 minutes a day.  That something is better than nothing, and when the 15 minute timer rings, I can walk away.

I know this, of course, and even use it from time to time when I'm feeling overwhelmed by a cleaning task (Bubby's bedroom comes to mind.  I tell ya, I can completely understand why he gets anxious just thinking about cleaning his room, because it makes me, the equivocal adult, anxious).  But until that moment, I had never thought of weeding as a cleaning task.

Weeding is totally a cleaning task, y'all!

So yesterday, even though I just knew I wasn't going to be able to get very far in 15 minutes, I set a timer.  Trusting that something is better than nothing and nothing was ever going to happen if I didn't get started.  Know what happened?  I got through more than half of the flower bed.  What?! 

It didn't take half of for-ev-er to clean half of the flower bed.  It took 15 minutes.  And it looks so much better.  If I keep working on that flower bed for 15 minutes a day, it will take me one more day.  One.

So here's the take-away, and you can apply this to just about anything friends: just start. 

Just. Start.