Discardia_ More Life, Less Stuff - Dinah Sanders [19]
When you're done, look at the clock again. It doesn't take that long—many less than 20 minutes—to do most chores. You can blow 20 minutes without even thinking about it by watching TV or surfing the web. A lot of things that you have to do don't really take that much out of your day and needn't be put off.
Make it a game
If you can find a way to make it more of a game, many things become more fun and you’ll be more inclined to work on them. That’s the principle behind EpicWin, an iPhone app that you can use to cajole yourself into doing mundane household chores: “I really want to call it quits for the night, but washing the dishes will only take five minutes and I will get experience points for it. I am really close to leveling up!” HealthMonth, the online game, helps build habits that will make you feel better all the time. It’s not just a silly trick. Games designer, researcher, and author Jane McGonigal cites years of scientific studies to back up her assertion that “… when we game we are tapping into our best qualities: our ability to be motivated, to be optimistic, to collaborate with others, to be resilient in the face of failure.”
Stepping into that place of strength in the safe environment of games makes it easier for us to do so outside of them. Bringing elements of games, which amplify those positive aspects of ourselves into the rest of our lives, can help us win in the real world.
McGonigal used game principles to help her recover from a concussion, figuring that when you’re sick you aren’t yourself so why not be someone awesome? She imagined herself as Jane the Concussion Slayer and invited friends to take the functions of Buffy’s allies in the show that inspired her. Together they found and fought the bad guys (the triggers for her symptoms), identified her “power-ups” (those things she could still do that made her feel good), and worked on her superhero to-do list (not merely trying to get back to normal—boring!—but getting to extraordinary). Did it work? Yes! She saw improvements within the first 30 days and was almost fully recovered a year later. Best of all, she stopped suffering because she had something actionable to do about her situation. Now she shares the technique in her game called SuperBetter, which is helping people all around the world remember that even though pain may be inevitable, suffering is optional.
Be creative and playful as you find ways to fight nonawesome crap in your life! You don’t have to get complicated to feel these benefits. Take advantage of even your worst qualities by playing sneaky tricks on yourself. For example, I sat down to a 40-minute podcast that I'd been planning to hear, and set some mending in my lap as it began. Easily distracted, I barely noticed what my hands were doing and was finished with that long-procrastinated chore well before the podcast was over!
Stay pleased
Think about what you choose instead when you don’t want to do what you know you should do. Notice that some of these things may be optional, taking a lot of your time and yet providing minimal reward or enjoyment. At this point, I turn and look pointedly at the TV and the computer. Don't fill your time with unrewards and procrastination. Find the things that please you and do them instead of things that provide you with nothing.
Fans of C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters are here encouraged to go reread Letter Thirteen, which includes this bit of admonition from a senior devil to a junior tempter:
“But you were trying to damn your patient by the World, that is by palming off vanity, bustle, irony, and expensive tedium as pleasures. How can you have failed to see that a real pleasure was the last thing you ought to have let him