Emmeline's guide to getting (some) stuff done
It is January! Time to pretend it is possible to become completely different people, and achieve all the things we haven't in the X amount of years since we started trying. Exercise more. Write more. Scroll less. Do more to the fight against capitalism/patriarchy/climate change/fascism.
When we set these high standards for ourselves we know we will fail. It's just a matter of time. So here are my three approaches to working towards our goals while still managing to cultivate a sense of self-compassion.
1) Make the goal so easy you might as well do it
This is the number one way I make myself do things. I make the goal ridiculously easy, so easy it's about the same effort as not doing it at all.
- Blockie. When my husband and I were first married, we lived in a remote town and we hated living there. But every evening we would go for a walk, same route every single time, up and back the bike path. It was probably about 1 kilometre. We did it even when we didn't feel like it, even when it was hot and humid (which it always was because we were in the tropics). It was such a small commitment that we could always do it.
Wherever we have lived since we have always had the equivalent, usually a loop rather than an up and back. In the house we first lived in in Canberra, we had a regular blockie, a longer blockie for when we were feeling energetic, and a super super short blocky for emergency days, such as two days after our child was born. (We could have just not gone for a walk at all that day but I really felt like getting out and about.) - 500 words a month. I am part of a writing group. We meet up once a month and I send them as much as I have written since last time, which I aim to be about 500 words.
I have been trying to increase my pace. The racehorse in me wants to just smash out the first draft in less than 12 months. So I wrote myself a writing goal and made a spreadsheet. Then I stopped writing altogether. We met yesterday and one of the other writers reminded me that the important thing is not when I get it done; the important thing is that I don't stop.
At this pace it will take me more than 13 years to finish my novel. I am trying to deal with my discomfort over this. Maybe at some point the pace will naturally pick up and I will write ten thousand words in a week. Or maybe that will never happen and I will just keep plodding along. - Working out. Back in winter 2024, I started working with my osteopath on building up a routine for strength training. She is hyper aware of the need to not load people up with exercises they can't fit into a full life with many competing priorities. So to start with I needed a workout routine I could do in less than five minutes, and build up from there. Well, I haven't built up from there, but at least I am still sometimes working out, over 18 months later
By the way! Many people in my life have found this tactic very challenging. I told a friend I was going to aim to do strengths training three times a week, for five minutes each time. And they said, that's fifteen minutes a week, hardly seems worth it. Someone else was disparaging about my husband and my super-short blockies. But it's worth doing a little bit rather than nothing at all. This is solid-gold anti-black-and-white thinking, right here.
2) Do it when you feel like it
Traditional rise-and-grind advice which emphasises doing things at the same time every day without fail. And I am not saying you should only do the thing when you feel like it.
What I am saying is do the thing when it occurs to you to do it. At other times, yes, but also when desire spontaneously arises.
I was inspired for this one from Oliver Burkeman's Four Thousand Weeks, a brilliant book which I recommend you check out if you want anti-productivity productivity advice. He advises that if you get the urge to do something worthy, for example donate to a good cause, just do it right now, don't delay or try to optimise it. Just get it done.
This piece of advice always reminds me of that old joke: Sometimes I get the urge to exercise, and when that happens I lie on the couch until it passes.
What I am saying is don't do that. If I am in my bedroom folding clothes and putting them away and I get the urge to do some squats, I just do them. I was out for dinner recently and I started writing a poem in my head and I just pulled my notebook out and wrote it down. I was riding home tonight and I conceived this entire blog post and when I got home I sat down and now I'm writing it, straight into the website.
3) Community
I have been reading and enjoying author Nadine Hura's series on journalling, and one thing she keeps banging on about (with good reason) is community. You want to write? Get a group of writers around you. It's the most helpful and most accessible writing hack - available to everyone.
For this section I was going to write about having someone who you can share your wins with, like how I have a friend I periodically text to tell them I remembered to take my nutrients 3/3 times that day. Like accountability but only for wins, and sporadic.
But what I noticed is that community is already in this piece, hidden in plain sight. It's in the blockie that my husband and I did even when we felt like shit, and it probably saved our mental health at the time as well as giving us a chance to connect every day. It's in the writing group waiting for my 500 words, without whom I probably wouldn't bother writing even that small amount. It's in the osteopath who tailors her treatment to my needs.
Speaking of community! Mutual aid is a beautiful expression of community. I am doing a Fun Run 4 Mutual Aid on Sunday 1 February to raise mutual aid funds for First Nations people, Gazans and Sudanese people.
Please donate; my goal is $1000. I think we can get there, that's:
- 10 people giving $100
- 20 people giving $50
- 100 people giving $10
- or 200 people giving $5.
So please be one of the groups of people. If you can only give $0, please send a link to the page to someone who might want to donate.
If you want to learn more about mutual aid and this Fun Run 4 Mutual Aid specifically, check out this radio interview with one of the organisers of the event.
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