Getting over Zero Days

25 June 2009

We’ve all had those days where you wake up in the morning and you just don’t feel like you have the energy or effort to even get out of bed. When you’ve finally hauled your limping body to the shower and had that fresh burst of water on your skin, you begin to get on with the day, yet you just can’t seem to concentrate on anything.

I like to call those Zero Days. You know what I mean….. those days where you take twice as many coffee breaks, which leads to twice as many toilet breaks as well. Those of you who work from home will know what it feels like as you meander to the kitchen and take a quick peek into the refrigerator, just to check if there’s anything missing, or perhaps a bar of chocolate has magically appeared from the last time you checked, which was 15 minutes ago.

Aren’t these days annoying! They can often times spring up from the middle of nowhere, even when you start the day with great intentions. It’s got nothing to do with the weather, and you can’t go around blaming public transport, it’s all in your own mind.

I like to see these days’ challenges. If you can create a way of building up the momentum from the tiniest bit of motivation you muster up, then you can take that tiny piece of energy, and create a snowball effect which will by the end of the day manifest itself in you having done a lot of the things you wanted to get done, and thought you might not get done!

It’s all about creating lots of little mini-success stories and creating that momentum by achieving. Now I’m not talking about the massive tasks you have in your lists, or indeed that thing you’ve been putting off for the last month. I mean do the little things, the tiny tasks, and eventually the bigger things will feel much easier to do.

Start by finding a few easy to complete things that you’ve not manage to do lately. Find those low priority items and small jobs and get them done. It may be washing last nights dishes, putting some clothes into the washing machine, writing that letter or email you’ve been meaning to write to an old friend, tidying your desk, posting a letter, walking to the shops to buy that coffee refill, or emptying your rubbish bins!

Whatever it is, just get on and do it. Soon after completing a few of these little tasks in your life, you not only begin to feel good, you are also on the path to success. This feeling of lots of little successes, soon pours over into the bigger things you want to get done and without delay, you’ll find it easy to get going on those bigger things.

So, next time you have one of these Zero Days, just take a look around and see what little things you can get done and create mini-successes, each time congratulating yourself in your own mind for having done that task, and you’ll soon find yourself full of momentum to get those important things started or even completed.