Give Yourself a Little Grace

I have a confession. I don't feel like doing much of anything. I know that I'm always encouraging you about living your best life and reading like it's your job, but I haven't felt much like it lately myself. Just me? I suspect it is a lot of you too. 

I love reading. I really do. It is one of the great pleasures in life - that ability to be transported to any period in the past or future and have grand adventures or learn new things. I had a big reading challenge setup for this year (#booknerd) to read a book a week (I'm also a wee bit competitive). And yet, I find myself listlessly flipping pages. I just can't seem to focus or muster up much energy for the characters right now. My book goal is toast.

I also love working. I love my business that I crafted from scratch and I love my clients. And yet, once the afternoon rolls around I find it very difficult to focus or stay in my office. Please don't get me started on Zoom. Can we all just give the video conferencing a rest for a bit?

In this bizarre time when we *should* have more time than ever before it almost seems like we have less. I was just reading this article from Fast Company on "5 reasons you're probably procrastinating more right now" and it struck home.  The article goes into detail on anxiety, isolation and burnout and I think they're really onto something. 

So, let's start with having grace with each other and extending it to ourselves as well. Take your old "To Do" list and tear it up. Feel better yet? Starting tomorrow when you've woken up and are drinking a cup of coffee (or in my case a Diet Coke), I want you to think "what's the 1 thing that I need to accomplish today" and capture that. That's it. No more "top 10" list, or heck even "top 5". Seriously. Pick the 1 thing that you need to do and then put your highest energy time toward that thing. That one thing might be laundry, or responding to an email, or making a call, or whatever. For me that means doing it sometime between 9-11AM. If anything else gets done then it's gravy.