#27 - But Could The Bar BE Any Lower?

I think it’s time for me to admit to being a morning person.

It’s not that I’m in denial about just how much I get done in the morning, or that I know I feel better when I stick to my little morning routine, it’s more that I hesitate because I think being a Night Owl gets a bad rep as if it’s not just natural circadian rhythms that determine who among us does their best work at what time and I never want to add to the pile of “it’s only valuable if you do it before 9 AM” vibes because I fundamentally disagree with that sentiment.

What has helped me get stuff done is less about the time in which I do it, and much more about getting things done by simply lowering the bar of entry until it’s so low I won’t trip over it.

I am someone who gets very intense about things, goes all-or-nothing, and determines that I am now going to be a different “type” of person whenever I take on a new initiative. But as it turns out, that isn’t very helpful in the practical sense! It may have actually kept me from making the small changes that accumulate over time to be big changes.

I’ve never been great at keeping the spaces I live in neat and tidy to the standards that I set for myself. (Took a bit of work to uncouple my standards from the ones I had been taught, and then recently I had to uncouple my actual standards from what I had previously considered ‘good enough’ when there was another person’s perspective that I had to balance in the conversation.) But! But. At the end of the night, I now set a 15-minute timer and just get things to a better position than they were when the timer started. I don’t have to do all the dishes, but I do have to get them closer to the sink. I don’t have to lay out my clothes for the next day, but I do make sure that what is unwearable is now in the laundry hamper. And it’s really helped! I no longer feel totally out of control, or like I’m setting this ever-growing task of cleaning the house top-to-bottom aside for future me to deal with. It’s not perfect, but it’s better. (And full disclosure, when I started doing this timer thing, I set it to five minutes because that was way less intimidating.)

Turns out, it was the idea of perfection that stopped me in my tracks.

Like it’s dumb to do one wall push-up, right? I should just suck it up and do 10 on the ground since that’s actually effective and my one measly wall-based one isn’t gonna actually do anything. Well, actually, that’s not true Ellen! Right now I’m doing 0 push-ups, so lichrally any form of building arm strength is impactful! So yeah, that ONE wall push-up is in fact an improvement. (And, the secret is, if I set the bar to one I know I’ll do more because I’ll have already set myself up and leaned against the wall, so I’ll do five or ten when I’m there, but I only have to do one.)

It kind of feels like I’m tricking myself, but uh, life seems to be a never-ending series of repeated tasks so if I have to Pavlov myself by eating a gummy worm each time I finish vacuuming the house…fine! That’s fine. I will do that because I know I’m happier when I don’t have crumbs on the carpet.

I have also found that being intentionally focused and remembering how I feel when a task is done is really helpful when it comes to starting tasks that I have to psych myself up for. I don’t like doing laundry, it’s heavy to carry, there’s social navigation due to how my laundromat is laid out, it’s two hours where my time will no longer be solely my own, and it can feel gargantuan, so I put it off. But I love the feeling of having my laundry done. I love having all my clothes available to me, I love having fresh bedding, and there is no greater joy in life than getting out of the shower and having a warm fluffy towel available!! So I try to frame it in a results-based way and overall find it to be much less of a pain in the ass to even consider doing it!

Make the bar so low it’s easy to clear. Write one page. Vacuum just this section of the carpet. Spend five minutes doing Yoga with no mat in the clothes you currently have on. Forgive yourself for not doing it yesterday, it’s okay, you’re doing it now! And that’s maybe the second-best time and not the perfect time, but hey it’s still getting done! We don’t always have the energy to do the most, and we’re you know, in a global endemic with very little guidance on what to do with all of our grief, so being kind to ourselves is more important than ever.

I now make my boss, who is also my sister, do Yoga before we start the workday. Partially because I think integrating movement practices into stationary desk jobs is very important, but also because it’s a great reminder to the both of us of just how long five minutes can feel when we slow down and dedicate ourselves to just one task. Five minutes is not a lot, but it’s five more than zero. It’s five minutes of daily neck hygiene, of connection to our bodies, of reassuring ourselves that we always have five minutes to step back and breathe before we continue speed-running through our task list.

Habits are not easy to develop. And when we have lofty expectations and crave immediately obvious results, it’s easy to get discouraged. I didn’t publish a Substack on Friday, and I spent the entire weekend beating myself up about it because I was so worried I would never publish one again because I know when I say every Friday if I miss one Friday, I feel like I failed. But it’s Monday, and I’m sending it now, and there was nothing gained from those feelings of defeat all weekend hahaha jokes on meeee.

So.

Forgive yourself! You’re doing a great job with what you have available to you as far as energy, focus, concentration, physical limitations! It’s okay if you have a bad day, week, month, or even five years! It’s okay to forgive what you haven’t gotten done so that you can better plan what you’re doing to do! Success does not have a static definition, we get to define it every day!!

Set the bar low, so so so low, and you’ll be amazed at how wonderful it feels to clear that bar every time, and how clearing it will grant you the confidence to naturally raise the bar as your abilities & confidence increase.

We can do hard things! (As long as we make them easy first.)