Marie Phillips

Here are some of the things I am doing to motivate myself this year. This is not a comedy list, by the way. It is for reals.

1. I read a book called 18 minutes. It didn’t take me so very much longer than 18 minutes to read. Also, it is the only self-help book (but business self-help, so that’s OK, I swear) which ends with a chapter telling you to ignore most of what it said, which really saves on guilt, as I was planning to anyway. In any case, the bits that I did pick up on include not only making a to do list every morning, which is obvious-ish, but also deciding what I’m going to ignore that day, which isn’t. I am getting so much stuff efficiently ignored, it’s great.

2. I bought a diary where the day sections aren’t too big and that’s where I write my daily to do lists. That way there isn’t enough room for the list to be too long. So I try to do less and I get everything done.

3. I made my browser homepage a picture of some kids jumping into the sea, to remind me to just get on with whatever it was I opened my browser to do. Previously it was the Guardian homepage = very distracting.

4. I don’t switch on my phone or check my email until after I’m up and dressed. Somehow I’d got into the habit of spending an hour on Twitter in my PJs before doing anything else. Not conducive to productivity, although very conducive to getting cross on an empty stomach.

You guys: it’s, like, TOTALLY changed my life. For three whole days so far. I’ve written a thousand words every day, tidied the house, except not all of the house because I decided to efficiently ignore* the mess in my study, made soup, sent some emails, made some appointments, spilled soup, cleaned up soup, not that those were on the list but these things happen, updated my blog, ate soup, bought avocados, AND MORE.

Let’s check in later in the year to find out if I am still doing ANY of those things.

*Did you know that split infinitives are no longer officially considered to be grammatically incorrect? True. Really. True.