It's starting to blow my mind, a little, how quickly these weeks are flying by. Didn't we just do a Friday Loves yesterday? Well, this Friday Loves also features an unattainable/inspirational blog situation. Have you guys heard of A Life of Productivity? Someone posted it to my listserv a couple weeks ago, and I read through his top 100 tips for being super productive. Putting aside the real question of whether peak productivity should really be one's goal, I mined his 100 tips for gold and found a couple that stood out. One was: If it takes 2 minutes or less, don't put it on your to do list, just do it.

That's pretty good advice, except when it's terrible advice, because I can fill up my entire day with those two minute tasks! On the other hand, there were things that needed to get done around here - little, needling things - that I was making mental notes to get to, but not actually getting to. Every time I'd see one, I'd think to myself, a la John and Sherry: Dude. Get on that. And then, you know, I didn't/couldn't/wouldn't. But that little two minute limit really put things in a different perspective for me, and I thought I'd finally get on it - at least, all the two-or-so-minute tasks.

Let's start off with my mirror. I have a mirror in my room...for obvious reasons, right? To make sure my yoga pants are reasonably spit-up free before heading to pick up Louisa. It was hanging behind the door, but it was too loud and yada yada, and here it landed. Every day, I'd prop it on my hamper, like so:

Seriously, I'm so sorry for that terrible pic quality. More of that to come. But I'd prop it up there, examine my yoga pants, make adjustments as needed, and it was a huge pain in the butt. I couldn't see my feet, the mirror was awkwardly slanted, making it a lying liar (you know that about a slanted mirror, right? It is LYING to you), and I would then have to move it to get into the hamper, which is a small deal but also a deal breaker, so dirty laundry would pile on the lid of my hamper. You may have gleaned about me that I am just slightly type A, so that drove me nuts. And so, one day, I fixed it.

I set my timer. I wanted to know how long it was going to take me to fix something that had driven me nuts for months. Five minutes, 40 seconds. So no, not two minutes, but the five includes rummaging around for the nails and cleaning up afterward (i.e., putting away the hammer. This thing is super light, so I just used nails, not even screws). And yep, that was awesome. It felt so good, I kept going.

Witness, at last, my drying line for plastic bags and washcloths. I had one in our last place, and I just never really got around to doing one that worked well here. Plastic bags drying all over the place = grumpy Sam. I am still using disposable plastic bags and washing them out, by the way, but I'm slowly being persuaded that they *may* degrade a little faster than I think - though definitely not as fast as manufacturers would have you believe. So we have switched largely to the reusable bags pictured here, by Blue Avocado - more on that in a future post. They too need a place to air out after washing. For now, this little drying line, above my "appliances nook," is a like a cool drink on a hot summer's day. Aaaaah.

And finally, a little repair work.

Yeah, sorry for the crappy pic again. Anyway, here's the DIY charging station I rigged up a while back. Still going pretty strong, though it's just cardboard, so I will have to replace it eventually. But we'd removed the cords for travel, and one stopped working entirely, and Bret sort of hates being tethered to one place to charge so sometimes he takes them out and anyway, it was a mess, as pictured. So, again setting the timer, I took the time to hunt down a new cord to replace the broken one and rethread through all the others.

Those devices? All plugged in. Neatly. Sweet. Three minutes, 37 seconds.

I'm still wrestling with this idea of "productivity." Another person recently posted to the listserv (we have a super, almost legendary, active parents' listserv in my 'hood - I'll mention it a lot, because it's basically my life) that her partner didn't understand what she was doing all day as a stay at home mom, and she was wondering if she should sort of list out her tasks to show how productive she is during the day. A): I suggest letting the partner primary parent for a hot minute, which should answer any questions about what's filling up the hours, but B): What's with the drive toward productivity? In the context of my newly digest list of 100 (!) ways to beef up my outputs, I really question the premise of the question.

Still. Having devoted a few minutes to things that were on my list and just doing them already has really, really impacted my days for the better. Er, made them more, productive, even. So that's time well-spent, for sure. And this little ramble leads me to pose two weekend questions to you, dear reader: What's your favorite productivity hack, and what little task are you so happy you made the time and just got on that already!?

Thanks for reading. See you Monday!