>Resolution Number One: 5 days down, 25 to go!
Today is the beginning of what I hope will be my sixth day of getting all of my daily habits done, but I ran into a problem three days ago that I probably should have foreseen.
It started with a few bad nights in a row. Having to get up in the middle of the night twice to go to the bathroom is enough of a pain, but it also wakes up the cat who wants to be fed, bangs some doors, knocks over some things, wakes up the toddler, and wakes me up enough that I have trouble falling back to sleep. For HOURS. By the time I do try to get back in bed, it’s usually about 10 minutes before my alarm goes off.
Needless to say, it’s incredibly difficult to drag myself out of bed an hour before SP gets up in order to work out or do the other habits I’m supposed to do first thing in the morning. Which finally brings us to our problem, which I shall call:
The All or Nothing Conundrum.
Since I am counting days only in which I have completed all of my tasks, as soon as I’ve missed more than one, the moment I know that there is not enough non-toddler-time left in the day to do all of them, my motivation goes straight out the window (after doing a lap around the soon-to-be-messy house and laughing at me). That day I missed four tasks that really should have been done.
I reasoned with myself that this was better than having a day like I’d had a few days before in which I’d done all but one task, which was incredibly depressing. Because really, I’d given up time to nap, rest, read, or do any of those sorts of re-energizing things in order to get everything done, only to be thwarted by the fact that my husband came home late and I couldn’t do the dratted vacuuming before SP went to sleep. ARGH.
So there are the two sides of the same problem. If it’s an all or nothing reward, it’s hard to gear up for those tired days, and even harder on almost-perfect days to look at my sad chart with its one smiley face missing and have to skip counting that one after all my efforts.
I can’t think of any solution for this because once I start making exceptions, well… slippery slopes and all that. So I think this is one problem I’m just going to have to be sad about.
(Yes, I ended my subject with a preposition. I know some of you out there are gasping that a grammar nerd would do such a thing, but that is a ridiculous rule based on Latin and not English, so I choose to ignore it.)
>Were these resolutions/goals/habits made with pregnancy in mind? There may need to be a loophole. 🙂 You are being productive you know…you are GROWING A HUMAN. That takes mad skills! I am all about goals and sticking to things. And I hear ya on being disappointed when I don't. I went to be last night feeling down because I didn't "do" the ten other things on my list. So I "get" it. I just think the pregnancy has to fit into this a bit as well. Both now when you are (presumably) exhausted and later when you are bigger. Just a thought. But I do like your title of 'all or nothing condundrum'.
>The all or nothing mindset is exactly why I can't get ahead on my improved dieting strategy (a.k.a. IDs with a nod to my inner child who just likes to eat!). Maybe I'll break the day into three sections with goals for each. That way I can count at least part of each day (while I'm sleeping, I disconnect the chocolate I.V.). Of course, then I'm left to ponder the lesser of two struggles: health or fractions 🙂
>I took some advice from a former boss during a time in my life when my career was peaking, and taking a LOT of my time/energy. In addition to maintaining a schedule where I assigned time for work, family, quiet/private and personal/busy tasks—-I kept one hour out of every day where absolutely NOTHING was scheduled. Sometimes, that hour was enough to pick up the slack for unexpected time-drainers that arose–so, less stress and more time for me to play with. (it's so freeing to know that I can end a sentence with a proposition-whew!)