Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Good Morning. This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Speaker 1: Today's tip is to finish the job. Once you have
Speaker 1: already picked something up, it often just takes a few
Speaker 1: extra seconds to completely deal with it. While in general
Speaker 1: it is good to batch the little things, if you
Speaker 1: have already taken the first few steps toward action, you
Speaker 1: might as well get too done. Today's tip is inspired
Speaker 1: by listener j c who rode in with a suggestion
Speaker 1: about that common adage touch it once. She notes that
Speaker 1: early in my career I learned the touch at once
Speaker 1: rule when it came to filing and paperwork. That is,
Speaker 1: you should deal with a document once and be done
Speaker 1: with it. That's all fine for work, but Jace noted
Speaker 1: that I found that it can apply to a variety
Speaker 1: of quick tasks at work and at home. The idea
Speaker 1: is that once you touch a dirty dish or an
Speaker 1: object out of place, deal with it so you don't
Speaker 1: have to come back to it now. As with everything,
Speaker 1: there is a caveat here. In general, I believe in
Speaker 1: batching the little things. That is actually tranquility by Tuesday
Speaker 1: rule number eight for my most recent book, don't pay
Speaker 1: bills as you get them, pay them in one fell
Speaker 1: swoop at a low energy time. Respond to all your
Speaker 1: low priority emails at once, rather than as you get them,
Speaker 1: because if you respond to them as you get them,
Speaker 1: you will basically never do anything else. That said, once
Speaker 1: you've engaged in a process halfway, say you have pulled
Speaker 1: out your check book to start paying a paper bill,
Speaker 1: it would make no sense to stop after writing the
Speaker 1: check before putting it in the envelope. You will just
Speaker 1: have to take another minute later to finish the job.
Speaker 1: So better get it stamped and ready to go out
Speaker 1: the door. Now it seems obvious, but we often make
Speaker 1: more work for ourselves by not following through. The Other day,
Speaker 1: I found some art supplies in the wrong place in
Speaker 1: the house. I carried them all the way up the
Speaker 1: stairs to the closet where we keep such things. Then
Speaker 1: I put them down outside the closet door. As I
Speaker 1: look back on this, now, this doesn't make a whole
Speaker 1: lot of sense. It would have taken maybe ten seconds
Speaker 1: maybe less to open the door and chuck the supplies
Speaker 1: in there. But instead of doing that ten second task,
Speaker 1: I left the supplies out in the hallway, even though
Speaker 1: that risked some little person in my household moving them
Speaker 1: to the wrong place again, or somebody tripping over them,
Speaker 1: or who knows what. Maybe I was hoping that someone
Speaker 1: else would take the ten seconds to put them away
Speaker 1: so I wouldn't have had to devote the ten seconds
Speaker 1: to moving them. But sadly, the most likely outcome is
Speaker 1: that this wasn't going to happen, and so when I
Speaker 1: was next up there, I would eventually have to get
Speaker 1: around to putting them in the closet. Better to finish
Speaker 1: the job the first time, So the next time you
Speaker 1: start a job, think about how you can finish it.
Speaker 1: I recently read a decluttering book where the author pointed
Speaker 1: out that disorganized people create all sorts of piles while decluttering,
Speaker 1: and so the room never winds up looking much better.
Speaker 1: The author recommended actually carrying misplaced objects to where they
Speaker 1: go immediately. Is this efficient? Well? Probably not. There may
Speaker 1: be six toys in the kitchen that have to go
Speaker 1: to a kid's bedroom, and if you do see a handful,
Speaker 1: grab them all before you go. But the problem with
Speaker 1: making a pile to go up is that the pile
Speaker 1: may still be sitting there a week later and it
Speaker 1: feels like you are making no progress. Better to make
Speaker 1: two to three trips to the room and actually have
Speaker 1: the kitchens start to look better. Most of us need
Speaker 1: more steps and activity these days. Anyway, Finish the job
Speaker 1: and you can in fact be finished. That is better
Speaker 1: than constantly living somewhere around halfway done. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's to making
Speaker 1: the moods of our time. Hey everybody, I'd love to
Speaker 1: hear from you. You can send me your tips, your questions,
Speaker 1: or anything else. Just connect with me on Twitter, Facebook
Speaker 1: and Instagram at Before Breakfast hot that's B the number four,
Speaker 1: then Breakfast p o D. You can also shoot me
Speaker 1: an email at Before Breakfast podcast at iHeartMedia dot com.
Speaker 1: That before Breakfast is spelled out with all the letters.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much, I look forward to staying in touch.
Speaker 1: Before Breakfast is a production of I Heart Radio. For
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