The Rule of One

You know those highly efficient people who seem to have life figured out? They have a full time job, work out everyday, have an immaculate house... and still have time to have hobbies and go out with friends and do things.

Yeah... that's not me. I’m the opposite of that.

Neurodivergence doesn't just run in my family. It's won a few marathons.

We all struggle with procrastination and ADHD. On any given day, I probably have twenty things on my to-do list. Work on writing, weed the lawn, sweep and vacuum and dust and dishes…

I have a dog and two cats. The pet hair never really goes away. My dog is part husky and sheds. All. The. Ttime. I am all too familiar with dog hair tumbleweeds collecting in the corners. And don’t even get me started on the lawn. During rainy season it grows faster than… well, weeds. And, if I don’t do the dishes once, suddenly I have a full sink.

I get overwhelmed pretty quickly.

The more I think about what I need to do, the more I don’t want to do it. I could spend all weekend, morning to night, and still not cross everything off my list. And when I get overwhelmed, my default is to curl up in a blanket with my dog at my side and binge watch something instead of doing anything.

And feel guilty about it. The whole time. It’s exhausting.

How is a sane person to exist with that kind of pressure?

And that is not even talking about all the actual work I need to get done. Some days I have meetings back-to-back-to-back and I feel like I got no actual work done. And other days I work well into the evening hours, just to catch up. And then I have less time for everything else.

So I adopted the rule of one.

Today I am going to get one chore done. I am going to spend one hour on yard work. I am going to clean one room. I am going to work on one chapter of my novel. I am going to do one outside activity. I am going to take one thing at a time upstairs with me and put it away. I am going to finish one work thing today.

If I focus on completing at least one thing a day, suddenly, I’m a lot less overwhelmed. One thing is easier than doing the whole list. One thing is manageable.

Am I going to have days where I don’t get out of my pajamas? Probably. Am I going to still have days where I binge watch an entire season of something. Hell yeah I am. I’ll stop when the streaming services stop putting out great shows.

Some days I only write one sentence. Do I wish it was more? Yes. Am I glad I still wrote? Yes.

Any progress is still progress. I may never be a Stephen King who writes a book a year, but I still sat down and wrote something

We need to all stop being so hard on ourselves if we had one day that wasn’t productive. We need to give ourselves grace, and not try to do everything.

Life is still going to happen. And if I’m so worried about my to-do list, I’m gonna miss it.

Yesterday I mowed the front lawn and took care of weeds. Today I cleaned the downstairs.

Did I get everything I needed to done? Nope. I didn’t even finish mowing (I swear my back yard has some sort of mutant grass that never stops growing). But I did do one thing. Maybe I’ll do one thing more. And tomorrow I will do one thing too.

And that’s enough.