Description: This week, Dr. Boogren inspires the Self-Care Squad to feel more energetic, creative, and cheerful. Warning: this episode might inspire some uncluttering of your physical and mental space.
Resources:
1. Need a simple and effective way to get your life under control? Try the "one minute rule" by Gretchen Rubin
2. 10 Tips to Beat Clutter ... in Less Than 5 Minutes by Gretchen Rubin
Listen Now:
The Self-Care for Educators team cares about the content-accessibility for all educators. If you have trouble accessing the audio for the podcast, the transcription has been provided below.
Transcription: Hi, and welcome to episode 14 of Self-Care for Educators. I am your host, Tina Boogren, and in this episode, we're going to explore one teeny, tiny, little invitation that could actually change our lives. Here it is. Are you ready? It's the one-minute rule. In other words, what this invitation is, is the notion that if something can be done in under a minute ... you gotta do it. Full stop. This is going to help contribute to our sense of orderliness to help us find, kind of, a sense of calm.
This idea actually comes from Gretchen Rubin, who I've talked about numerous times. She's an author and a podcaster. She says that for most people an orderly environment helps them feel more energetic, more creative, and more cheerful. Think about how true that is. Her book, Outer Order Inner Calm came out around the same time that Marie Kondo's book, The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, came up and boom! I mean, both of those just were instant bestsellers with so many people resonating with how powerful a sense of orderliness is in their lives.
I know for myself that when my desk or my office is a mess, I have a really hard time concentrating. You can tell that things are getting out of control from my house ... when our house starts to fill with clutter, when I notice the mess, and I reflect on the various areas of it ... my life ... I can always make a connection between the mess in one area and the mess and another area.
So that's the idea behind getting a handle on this. This one-minute rule is so simple and yet so powerful. This means that again, if you can get the task done in a minute or less, you got to do it. So, this means you're going to hang up that coat. You're going to put your shoes back in the closet. You're going to sort through the mail. You're going to file that paper. You're going to replace the toilet paper roll. You're going to put the dish in the dishwasher. You're going to put the book back on the shelf at work. This means you're going to clear off your desk. You're going to water the plants. You're going to clean out the coffee mug before you leave for the day. All those teeny, tiny, little things that don't take a lot of time will help so much in creating that sense of calm in our mind, which is so important. You know, when we take time to put things in their places, we reduce the possibility of creating or increasing visual and mental clutter, and Lord knows we don't need any more of that in our lives right now. So that's it. That's all I want you to do now. The hard part of this is going to be remembering to do it. So maybe you write it down on a stool and put that sticky note on your computer or on your desk or at various places. You know ... one on your desk, one in your car, right? One in your kitchen, a note in your bathroom ... Somehow reminding yourself to get this, this idea in your head, that if you're pausing like, Oh, am I going to just make a pile or am I going to ...
And, I want you to think, If I can get this done in less than a minute, I'm just going to do it. And, I want you to try it out, and see if it makes a difference this week. I want you to think about maybe employing this teeny, tiny, little, simple rule.
Did you find your sense of calm, increasing? Did it help you to stay on top of your clutter? Both at home and at school. And, could you just ... could you expand this at all? ... To think about, Huh, okay. If I can do it in under one minute, what if I did tasks ... what if I committed to tasks that would take less than two minutes, and see if that helps to just kind of jumpstart to, to take back control of your life a little bit. Okay, that's it. That's it. Go play with the one-minute rule. I cannot wait to hear how it goes.
As always, a huge thank you to Brooke for making this happen. A huge thank you to Solution Tree and Marzano Resources for allowing me to do this job that I am so grateful for. And, as always ... oh my goodness ... a huge shout out to you, my Self-Care Squad. You are the reason that I get out of bed in the morning. My God, I am so grateful for you.
Thank you.