Just a few hours to good

With a little focused effort you might make a lot of progress

I have five children, so Christmas morning featured a lot of stuff. We bagged up the wrapping paper as it came off the gifts, and the kids carted many of their treasures up to their rooms or the play room, but even so, by mid-day the living room seemed to be buried under a pile of boxes, plastic, bows, gift tags, and the presents themselves.

We had company coming on the 27th, and I needed to clear out space for them to sit (and for more presents!). However, I didn’t want to spend all of Christmas and the day after cleaning. So on the 26th, I set a timer for 35 minutes to see what I could get through.

The answer was a lot. The whole house wasn’t pristine by any means, but the living room was largely picked up. Even with a big mess, I was only 35 minutes from good.

Making a focused effort

I find this often happens. Seemingly big problems can be a lot closer to solved with a few hours of focused work. They may not be 100 percent solved, but they might look a lot better than they did.

What happens is that when things are big, and complicated, and feel like they’ll require a lot of focus, we tend to overestimate how much needs to be done. I know I do this. I’m currently staring down revisions on a book proposal, and in my mind I need to go away from my life for a month to finish it.

Alas, I’m unlikely to be able to take a full month away right now. But that’s all right, because my guess is that if I put 8 solid hours of work into it I would be able to see the finish line. It wouldn’t be totally finished but it would be much, much closer. So, rather than put the thing off because I can’t get a month away, I just need to do the 8 hours and see where I am.

Perhaps you have something like this in your life too. Maybe it’s cleaning out the house so it can be photographed for real estate listings. Maybe it’s creating a photo book for all your family photos from 2021 (because that’s how far behind you are on this memory-keeping). Maybe it’s synthesizing the results of a huge project into a 10-minute presentation.

Getting close to good

Some things can take any amount of time you’d give them. Unfortunately, while time is on some level plentiful, it is also not infinite. If we focus on all the time we could devote to a project, we can easily find the whole thing impossible.

So don’t. Instead, choose some amount of time that is possible — 35 minutes on a timer for picking up, 8 work hours on your presentation. Block that in as you can and then go full in. Only take scheduled breaks. Commit to continuing for the finite amount of time you have chosen.

Then see where you are. You won't be done. Things won’t be perfect. But for the vast majority of things you’ll be much much closer to good. And once you’re at good, you can probably see your way to great.