Good morning.
I have moved twice in the past five years, and I can tell you with complete confidence that one of the absolute worst parts of moving is finding new doctors.
Not packing or unpacking. Not figuring out which kitchen cabinet should hold the glasses. Finding a new primary care doctor for me. New doctors for the girls. A dentist. Specialists. Figuring out who takes our insurance, who is accepting new patients, who has decent reviews, and then actually making all the calls and appointments.
We've been back in Ohio for over a year now. I got the girls established pretty quickly, but my own list? I kept putting it off.
There were appointments I needed to make, dental work I had been avoiding, and even a procedure I'd been putting off for years. None of it disappeared just because I wasn't dealing with it. Instead, it became this running list in the back of my brain. Every once in a while, one of the tasks would float to the surface and I'd think, I really need to do that. And then I'd carry it for another month.
So Monday morning, I blocked two hours on my calendar and decided I wasn't doing anything else until I dealt with it.
It took three.
But in those three hours, I found a new primary care doctor. I scheduled the dental work. I found someone for the procedure I'd been avoiding. I made the appointments and finally closed a collection of open loops that had been following me around for more than a year.
And afterward, I felt ridiculously good.
What struck me wasn't just that I'd gotten everything done. It was the math of it.
Three hours of actual work had been taking up space in my brain for more than a year.
At work, I wouldn't think twice about blocking time for a category of tasks. I batch things. I protect focus time. I put time on my calendar to actually do the work instead of hoping I'll somehow get to it between everything else.
But apparently my personal life has been operating under a different project-management methodology: remember something at an inconvenient time, promise myself I'll do it later, forget, remember again, feel mildly guilty, repeat for 18 months.
Very sophisticated system.
So I'm trying something new. I'm keeping a small block on Monday mornings for life admin. Maybe it only needs to be 30 minutes most weeks. Appointments that need scheduling, forms that need completing, something I've been meaning to research, whatever has been quietly sitting on the list waiting for me to "find time."
Because I'm realizing that unfinished tasks have two costs: there's the time it takes to actually do them, and then there's the capacity it takes to keep carrying them until you do.
Sometimes those numbers aren't even close.
Your fewer, better practice
What's one thing you've been carrying around in your head for way longer than it would actually take to finish?
Instead of putting it back on the to-do list, put the time to do it on your calendar. Maybe you don't need to become better at remembering everything. Maybe you just need a place for the remembering to end.
See you next Friday,
— Brittany
One fewer thing to carry. One better thing to enjoy.
Choose fewer, better. Every day.
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