Monday Chores

(Mondays are Lynn Miles Peisker days at The Daily Blur. Lynn serves as the Executive Sister and Chief Plate Spinner at the Imagination Advisory Group. Check out her growing archive of posts here.)

CONTEST UPDATE: We are busy reviewing the more than 400 entries in the Name Tim’s Thing Contest. The Contest ended at noon on Saturday, our Mom’s birthday. We’ll contact the winners of the iPad mini, the bacon, and the books on Thursday, our Dad’s birthday. We’ll announce it on The Daily Blur on Friday. If you subscribe, you’ll get it in your Friday morning email. Subscribers are awesome.

It’s Monday so I am spending this morning doing laundry. I hate laundry.

I hate touching dirty clothes. I hate remembering to switch the stuff from the washer to the dryer. I really hate the dryer buzzer. It pierces my reality with complete surprise every time it hollers.

But I love the result of doing laundry. To me, there is nothing better than a closet full of freshly washed clothes and an empty hamper. How about that fluffy, clean towel when you hop out of the shower? And I love crisp, clean sheets like I love a summer day.  So I do laundry every Monday.

In an owner-operated business like ours, there are some chores that just have to be done on a routine basis.

The result is worth it. An empty in-box is worth it. A checked off to-do list is worth it.

Here’s what I do:

E-mail. I tackle this three times a day. Morning, noon and end of business. One of three things happens to each email.

1. Read and delete (will never need in the future) or archive (may need in the future.) I used to file old email but with iMail’s powerful search function, I now just throw it all into the archive.
2. Act now. If the task required in the email takes less than two minutes, I do it right then and there.
3. Transfer any items in email that take longer than 2 minutes to my to-do list.

The To-do list. I work this each day, every day. Each item has a due date. There are a few things that might happen.

1. I do the thing.
2. I chunk the thing into workable components and give each part a due date on the overall project timeline.
3. Postpone the thing. I allow myself to advance the due date if it doesn’t adversely affect the bottom line of our business or any of my partners or clients.

By the way, my partners and I use Basecamp for this and it has been revolutionary. It divides our tasks by project or client, and then allows us to store files, start discussions, and keep a running to-do list going. We love it. And they don’t pay us anything to say so. In fact, we pay them. Hey…

By taking care of email and to-dos in a routine, non-emotional way, it frees me up. To dream up new ideas. To travel with Tim when he speaks. To meet delightful people across the continent. To do the laundry. Hey…

Next week, I’m going to further this conversation by taking your “to-do” list to a “ta-da” list, including knowing what your “to-don’t” list should look like.