Worry Between 8 PM and 8:15 PM
I’ve had so much luck with my bullet journal, continuing to use it daily since 2014, that I often seek out other time-saving/productivity hacks to see if I’ll have equal success in getting a new idea going. Spoiler alert—so far, the answer is no. But I’m not discouraged.
The latest idea I’m explored is GYLIO or Get Your Life In Order. In a nutshell: “GYLIO is about bundling tasks into a single morning, day or week in order to clear your mind; learning to prioritise and find focus so that you can enjoy guilt-free downtime.” So instead of checking email throughout the day as it comes in, you close your inbox so you’re not distracted, and only check it during a set hour in the morning. Or Monday is laundry day, even if the hamper is overflowing on Friday. Or you set aside your worrying until 8 PM at night.
I like the concept, but I’ve never been successful at setting worrying aside for a set time, even when I’ve tried things such as jotting down what I want to worry about in the future and then returning to the task at hand.
But the point is to help you keep your focus. It’s also to create a space for everything that needs to get done. If your schedule is already full, you don’t add more to it. And if you do add something, it goes into a single slot so you’re not spending part of your time dealing with X and part of your time focused on Y, and not really taking care of X or Y well.
The BBC link above talks about setting up an admin hour in your day that you bundle small, unrelated tasks that need to get done. That becomes the time that you open your to-do list and take care of all the tiny tasks that only take a few minutes to complete but drag at your attention throughout the day. If you don’t need to use all of your “admin” hour, you get that time back. But if you have a full to-do list, you know that you have an hour set aside to power through it and can work, guilt-free, the rest of the time knowing all those items will get done.
I’m thinking of adding this twice a week to my life and seeing if I end up making dreaded phone calls where I’ve been dragging my feet or finally unclog the sink. We’ll see.
3 comments
Interesting idea. I don’t know that this would work for anyone who truly has anxiety (my husband and one of my sons both have generalized anxiety), but it might work for someone who doesn’t. I’ll look forward to hearing whether this works for you.
I do like this idea of setting times to do things, to give me a bit more discipline and structure. But it reminds me a bit too much of my parents and my in-laws. My in-laws became so entrenched in their “Friday morning is supermarket shopping” that they couldn’t conceive of doing anything new, and spontaneity was completely impossible for them.
I definitely don’t think I could do the “worrying time slot” thing, though I have surprised myself in being able to learn not to worry as much, so you never know.
Hmmmmm, this sounds interesting, but I’m not sure I could limit worrying to 15 minutes. I do like the idea of setting times so everything does get done, butt I don’t think I can compartmentalize my worrying that way. I do like the compartmentalizing of other tasks though, and the setting of a focus.