The 10-Minute Solution

The 10-Minute Solution

 

Susan Meier

 

A few years ago, in between fiction projects, I got a bug to write a non-fiction book on time management. I did this mostly because I’d struggled through a lot of years before I came up with a system that worked to keep me on track (and sane) and I realized there are a lot of women out there who work, raise children and manage a home.

 

Lots of us also have a great love. Mine is writing. My sister's is crafts. Our passions are usually the things we neglect when time becomes tight and I didn't think anybody should have to give up on her dreams or passions!

 

I wanted to share the wealth so to speak and I wrote the book.

 

Unfortunately, when I submitted the idea to a publisher, the editor told me that my book was too short (horrors!) and that it was dedicated to an audience (working women) who weren't known for buying nonfiction books. (I would argue that.) Though she loved the idea, she didn't think she could sell it to her superiors.

 

I thought about it for only a minute before I realized that I hadn't written this to make money. I had written it to help people, so putting the book on my web site was a no-brainer.

 

The only problem is that I don't have time to change the format. It is a book. Not a workshop. It was originally intended to be read one chapter a night for eight nights.

 

But we can't put up a new chapter every day. So, you have the choice of reading this one chapter a week and taking lots of time to do the assignments or not doing the assignments until all eight chapters are up on the web site, when you can do them in the eight days as originally intended.

 

I'm pleased to offer you my time management insights and hope you not only enjoy them, you use them to enhance your life!

 

The only thing I ask is that you respect my copyright of The Ten-Minute Solution and its contents and give me credit for it if you quote it.

 

Happy reading!

Susan

by Susan Meier, Copyright 2003

 

Chapter 1 — Introduction

 

For fifteen years I worked full-time and wrote popular fiction novels. After the first six (years and novels), I was published. Unfortunately, I quickly discovered this didn't mean I could afford to quit my day job. But I also wasn't willing to give up my dream – not when I had finally opened the door to publication! So I kept writing.

 

Working and writing.

 

Working and writing.

 

Notice, there is no life in there. Only work of one kind or another. It seemed like a never-ending cycle.

 

Does that sound familiar? Probably. You may not have two careers running simultaneously, but if you're reading this you probably have children, a spouse, commitments to your community and maybe your aging parents.

 

Even after I quit my day job and became a full-time writer, I was still overwhelmed with work, including public relations and advertising tasks for my books, and family demands. And let's not even talk about housework. It simply wasn't getting done.

 

I tried scheduling. I tried prioritizing. I made lists. Nothing worked. How can you advance-schedule a doctor's appointment for a sinus infection, a cold or the flu? How can you even know how long you will be sitting in the waiting room when you or your kids need those appointments?

 

I found myself running around like a fool during the day and collapsing on the sofa at night, feeling that I hadn't done enough, but without the strength or energy to do anymore.

 

Then, one night, when I realized I was wasting a valuable block of time flat on my back staring at a television show that really didn't interest me, I asked myself if I couldn't just do one thing. One thing. One little thing. Maybe one thing that wouldn't take more than ten minutes.

 

I did. I cleaned the sink in my bathroom. The next morning, when I brushed my teeth before going downstairs, the clean sink cheered me. So, while waiting for the coffee to brew I washed the eight or ten glasses, dessert plates and utensils from snacks the night before, then wiped off the stove

and countertops. That, too, cheered me. Not because I had accomplished something, but because that little thing made my kitchen appear cleaner. I didn't have to fear that I would get company who would see I wasn't doing my housework and to whom I would have to render excuse after excuse.

I was tired of excuses.

The moderately clean kitchen bolstered my spirits enough that my morning's writing went more smoothly. It seemed hard to believe that a few clean glasses could do that much for me, but they had. My house wasn't "spotless" but I could accept company or at least open the door to the UPS man without worrying that he would call the Board of Health.

Analyzing how my house had gotten to such a state of disorder that a couple clean glasses made me feel like I princess, I realized that to "save time" I was always waiting to do things until they were "worth the effort." But in my quest to task batch (saving similar tasks to do together in order to work more efficiently) work simply piled up. And the accumulating dishes, dust and laundry kept my house in a perpetual state of messiness.

Worse, when I saved the dishes until there were "enough" to warrant using dish soap, saved the laundry until there was enough to fill a load and saved all the work required to clean one room until I could clean the entire room, I set myself up for procrastination. In my quest for efficiency, I put myself into the position of needing more time to do every chore, and I don't have time. I don't have two or three hours every day to clean. Some weeks I don't have two or three hours to clean.

But I have plenty of blocks of ten minutes.

After that successful day, that happy day that showed me the value of ten minutes, I made a list of ten-minute jobs for housework, and within a week my house — though not immaculate — was presentable. I didn't have to worry about the kids bringing in a friend. The commodes were clean, the sinks had been wiped down, and there were no dirty glasses by the microwave. Vacuuming was completed in sufficient rotation that nothing had gone more than two days without a sweeping.

The ten-minute solution worked so well for housework I decided to try it on writing. It takes a long time to write a chapter. It takes a long time to proofread a book. It takes a long time to create a synopsis for a new book. But you can proofread a page in ten minutes. You can spiff up a description in ten minutes. You can tighten a paragraph in ten minutes.

With my housework getting done and my writing under control, I decided to try the ten-minute solution in my social life. And it worked. I would call friends and say, "I only have ten minutes, but I was thinking about you. So, quick, what's up?" It became like something of a joke, but because I held to the ten-minute time limit, people respected it, I kept closer contact with my friends, and I actually felt like I was in touch again.

I would buy multi-purpose greeting cards, or boxed assortments of cards and when the need arose I would write out a card for a friend who had had a baby, had a birthday or achieved a significant accomplishment. People don't give a rat's behind what the cards say. They just like to get a greeting in the mail that acknowledges them. So the boxed cards worked just fine. I would write a line to personalize the card, and voila I had made someone happy…in ten minutes.

If you think the ten-minute solution sounds good, wait until you hear another unexpected benefit.

It ups your tolerance level for unpleasant jobs because you can do anything for ten minutes. Hate to houseclean? Hate to read? Hate to balance your checkbook, keep records for your taxes, or even write out your monthly bills? Give them ten minutes a day. Write a check for a bill or two, file a statement or two, make an entry or two, then walk away!

Before you break into the dance of joy, I should warn you there are some considerations — more like refinements — you need to know about this system. I learned one or two of them the hard way, but that's why I wrote this book. So you won't have to make the same mistakes I did.

And, trust me, you're going to love this.

Even the book is written in segments that can be read in ten minutes (or less), so that this isn't one of those books you're going to start and put down – and then never pick up again. Because I promise you won't be reading for more than ten minutes, you can pick up this book any time tomorrow and read that day's portion with ease.

In fact Chapter two is short enough that you can read it right now and still spend only slightly more than ten minute reading today. So turn the page. Read Chapter two and you will be well on your way to changing your life.
 

Chapter 2 — Procrastination: The peace of mind thief Or why you really want to do this...

So, really — just between you and me — what good are ten measly minutes?

Well, with ten minutes of Tae-Bo everyday I've managed to keep my butt off the back of my knees. Ten minutes of Facercise™ has kept me from looking like a bulldog. Ten minutes of reading every day results in my finishing a book (or two) every month. Ten minutes of cleaning keeps my dressers, commodes, lamps and countertops presentable. Ten minutes of advance work, every day, gives me a jump-start into my future writing projects.

I have an incredibly happy, well managed life. And aren't you jealous?

You know you are. I know I would have been, too, when my life was chaotic and confusing. So read on.

Somehow amid our multiplicity of titles and responsibilities, we manage to get done the things that we "have to" get done. When our phone rings at work, we answer it. We feed and bathe our children and even find time to read them bedtime stories. We put on make-up, mow our lawns, rotate our tires, and fulfill the duties of our job descriptions.

It's the other things that fall through the cracks like the flower garden, the pick-up wiffle ball game, the well-ironed shirt (which we cover with a jacket and hope will straighten out from body heat), and the special project at work. Unfortunately, those are frequently the very things that determine our promotions and/or our quality of life.

With quality of life and peace of mind in short supply these days, it's worth it for me to do ten minutes of housework in selected rooms of my house every day because it not only keeps my house surprisingly clean, it also boosts my spirits and my confidence. Ten minutes of working ahead on special projects at work got me promoted (back in the years when I had a day job). Now those ten minutes of working ahead in writing projects saves me from scrambling to come up with new ideas or new book proposals when my editor calls. (Or saves me from asking for extra time, which automatically makes a worker look ill prepared rather than exceptional. If it's a choice between looking ill prepared or exceptional, I'll take exceptional any day of the week.)

Brian Tracy in his motivational tape series, The Luck Factor, propounds the theory that reading an hour a day in your chosen field will net you a book a week or fifty-two books a year. This, he says, will put you so far ahead of the competition you will succeed virtually without trying. But most of us don't have an hour every day. We might be able to squeeze in ten minutes, but not an hour. So consider this: at ten minutes a day, which translates roughly to ten pages a day, you will probably read a book a month. Who do you know who reads a book a month in his or her chosen field? Probably no one. (Unless you know Brian Tracy.) So even at one book a month, you would still put yourself ahead of the competition.

Why? Because the inherent, almost unseen, process in the ten-minute solution is stacking.

Ten minutes of housecleaning or working ahead on business projects every day might not seem like much, but in the same way ten minutes of reading each day translates into a book a month, ten minutes of work every day will eventually complete any large project.

I experienced stacking firsthand one night when I was watching a Discovery Channel program. It was interesting enough to hold my attention, but not so interesting that I wasn't fidgety. To force myself to stay in the room and watch the entire show, I dusted the television wall unit. I took out all the knickknacks, dusted the shelves, and even dusted the television itself. Since that only took about ten minutes and the program was an hour long, I began removing the old newspapers from the end tables, then replacing videos, and straightening magazines. From there I moved on to dusting the tables and all the lamps in the room. Then I ran a cloth over the pictures. Then I

dusted the windowsills. Soon, the program was over and I was happily educated.

But a strange thing happened on Saturday. I pulled the vacuum into the family room, ready to start my Saturday cleaning, but the tables were cleared and dusted. The lamps were clean. So was the wall unit...even the TV had been shined.

With each of the tasks required to clean that room broken down and completed while watching the Discovery Channel, I had only two things to do to finish the cleaning in that room — vacuuming and spritzing the window with Windex — and finishing was a breeze. A happy breeze.

A sigh of relief. Which is another great thing about the ten-minute solution. The sigh of relief.

Because I'm self-employed, I keep detailed tax records. But I hate it. I hate the spreadsheets. I hate having to sort through everything. I hate having to keep receipts in clearly marked files. But I also don't want the IRS to send me to jail, so I do it.

Interestingly enough, I discovered that when I applied the ten-minute solution, inputting five minutes worth of information onto my yearly income/expense spreadsheet and spending five minutes properly filing the receipts, the work was done quickly, almost easily. Because the spreadsheet was set up to do the math, at the end of the year, when the last number was entered, the spreadsheet did the adding, and I was done.

Sigh of relief.

We procrastinate on big jobs because they are big jobs. Sometimes in their very size and importance, they are daunting. We can never find the back-to-back four, six or eight hours of uninterrupted time needed to complete the task. And it's also true that if you procrastinate long enough on a big task, it may never have to be done…or someone else may be assigned. Especially

at work.

No big task can sit around too long without attention. So if you don't do it, someone else will have to. This kind of procrastination has a payoff of sorts in that you get out of doing work. It's even used by some people as a way to manipulate their bosses. But, think about it, if someone else is assigned to a task that had originally been yours, haven't you blown your big chance to prove your competence?

Probably. In my years in the workforce, I met a lot of people who thought that if they couldn't fit "extra projects" into their schedules, that proved they had enough work to do. In some cases, they even used their own ineptitude to make themselves look overworked.

I also never saw one of them get promoted.

Part of how you get promoted is by doing more work, faster than your competitor peers. Management doesn't promote people who can't even handle the work they have. They're looking for people to go the extra mile. And they are always setting things up to test you — against the woman or man in the desk beside you and even against yourself. Whether you like it or not, you're in competition with everyone. You're always being compared to the guy or gal next to you in terms of skills, ability and attitude. You're also being matched against your past performance to see if you are improving, stagnating, stopped or going backward.

Management may not ever tell you this, but look around. Notice who gets promoted? Is it the person who steadfastly refused to learn Excel because he thought spreadsheets were only for accountants? Or is it the person who hunted and pecked for a few minutes everyday, learned the software and eventually used it to tighten up a segment of his or her workload?

If you can figure out a way to divide a big task into several ten-minute tasks, you can do the special projects managers typically dole out to determine whom their best employees are, whom they can promote, and who really knows how to prioritize and organize a workload. With ten

minutes a day, you can take yourself from the torture rack to the fast track and even make it look easy. (Which is another quick way to get promoted. I had a boss tell me once that he promoted his secretary because she made all her jobs look easy — which made her look competent. Never pass up an opportunity to make yourself look competent!)

So today after you close this book, if only for your own personal enrichment, resolve to spend ten minutes reading in your chosen field ... or even reading a novel so you have something intelligent to talk about at the next party you attend or the next luncheon with friends. Be ahead of the social game for a change by being the one in your crowd to have read Patterson or Connelly's latest.

Then to prove this system works, pick out three housecleaning projects or work projects (depending upon where this solution best applies for analysis sake) that you can do in ten minutes, and do them. Diligently apply yourself for those ten minutes and see how much work really can be done in ten minutes.

If you're feeling ambitious and want to use another ten minutes, make a list of big projects you have been putting off — again at work or at home, whichever applies.

If you're feeling really ambitious, divide each of those projects into things that can be done in ten minutes or less and do one of them.

Remember Brian Tracy, the motivational speaker? He has a saying: "Eat a live frog first thing every morning."

Ick, right?

Not really. Eat a live frog is simply a metaphor for doing something you normally wouldn't do or wouldn't want to do and doing it first thing in the morning, and then it's done. You don't have to worry about it anymore...

Sigh of relief.

Chapter 3 — Those nasty caveats

If you've been reading this little book closely, you have probably noticed that, in a lot of ways, the introduction of the computer made implementing The 10-Minute Solution possible. I never could have typed my tax records piecemeal. Not if I had to take the sheet out of my electric typewriter and reinsert it the next day. The end result would have been a mess.

In the same way, there are a few other things you need to consider to fully implement the system.

For instance, just as a computer is a necessity to do ten minutes of your tax accounting every day, a good carryall for household cleaners is also a necessity to get your ten-minute housecleaning tasks done.

It won't do you any good to implement The 10-Minute Solution if you spend twenty minutes gathering your household cleaners, sponges, rags and brushes every time you attempt to do a project. You will spend twenty minutes gathering and ten minutes cleaning, and then it will be the

half-hour solution and you will write to me as an unhappy camper.

So, get a carryall. Put in your glass cleaner, cleanser, furniture wax, floor cleaner (or all-purpose cleaner), several cloths (of the dust, wax and washing variety), paper towels and anything else you use to clean. The carryall must be big enough to hold the things you need and not so big that you can't pick it up and move it with ease.

The system works even better if you can make two or three carryalls. You can store one upstairs and one downstairs (and possibly one in your basement), so cleaning tools are always handy. Plus, if you consistently return each carryall to a designated storage area, like beneath the bathroom

sink, you won't waste precious minutes trying to remember where you last left it.

But, to fully implement this system, you need more than cleanser and dust clothes. You will also need rubber gloves and aprons to protect your hands and clothes. Why? Because one of the reasons we don't take advantage of our spare minutes is that we don't want to mess up our clothes, soil our hands, or ruin our manicure. If you have rubber gloves and aprons readily

available, those things are no longer a worry.

But even with an apron, you have to use common sense when you schedule and/or choose your tasks. An apron and rubber gloves don't give you permission to scrub your oven wearing your best white wool suit. You also wouldn't want to do your ten minutes of aerobics while waiting for your husband to finish dressing for church.

In order to read books, you must buy them. In order to play a ten-minute row of Yahtzee with your kids, you must have a copy of the game. To spray your oven, you must have the oven cleaner available.

So get prepared. Buy books, both business books and novels. Have games and puzzles on hand. Buy oven cleaner, home dry-cleaning sheets, glass cleaner, computer paper, printer ink, index cards, post-it notes, little notebooks, big notebooks, binder clips...and all that "stuff" that you seem to fumble for. Buy extra scissors. Keep one pair upstairs, one pair down. Have two brooms, two mops, two dust pans.

Right now, you're saying, "Sheesh, does this woman think I'm made of money?" No. But think this through. Nine chances out of ten you have more available, disposable money than you have available, disposable time. It's a trade off. If you want more time, you have to be more organized.

To be more organized you must have some of this "stuff." So open that squeaky wallet, tell George Washington to hush when he squints and whines at the sunlight and just buy the darned things you need.

That admonition is also your assignment. Buy your carryall (or two), supply it with cleaning products and tools, and find a strategic location for each unit. Buy your gloves. Get your apron.

And go buy some books. You decide which ones. Do you want to be a social butterfly? (Read: Are you so brain dead from reading children's books that you need to read something else so you don't accidentally talk about bears and goblins at the next party you attend?) Or are you bucking

for a promotion, looking for a few good ideas?

Whatever the case, get your stuff ready. Put your book by your bed. Set up your household cleaner carryalls. Get yourself ready and stay ready.

Chapter 4 — So, where do you find these ten-minute blocks of time?

If you've read this far, you're hooked into the idea that this can work. However, if you're as backlogged as I used to be, you're probably also wondering where a person finds these ten-minute blocks of time.

The obvious places. Waiting for the coffee to brew in the morning. In the ten minutes before your favorite television show starts in the evening. (Actually, if you're honest, you could live without more than fifty percent of the television you watch. Even if you skipped only one sit-com, you would have 30 minutes, or three ten-minute blocks every night.)

Any time you're waiting, you can be doing something. While waiting for your husband to shower, you can straighten your vanity. In fact, your bedroom is a place you'll find a lot of ten-minute jobs. Pulling seasonal clothes from the closet, making Goodwill bags, dusting vanities, straightening colognes, folding the clothes in a cluttered drawer. They're all simple, neat jobs.

Tidy things you can do — unlike cleaning the oven — while wearing that white wool suit, even if your husband is thirty minutes behind you.

If you have a laptop or table, you can take it with you and work while waiting for doctors and dentists — and accountants, brokers, hairdressers and decorators. (Why everybody thinks we should wait for him or her, I couldn't say, but I spend a lot of my time waiting.)

If you don't own a laptop or table, you can take a book to your appointments. (You can read about interest rates as you sit naked in your gynecologist's office.) Reading will keep you entertained and educate you while you wait, which reaps the secondary benefit of making you more pleasant with your doctor because you won't be impatient with her for having wasted your time.

Take advantage of time driving to work to listen to books on tape, time management seminars on tape, and/or tapes by experts in your industry or profession. My sister listened to cassette tapes about vitamins on her way to work and now is healthy as a horse. You can even listen to spirituality tapes or a tape of soothing music, because sometimes calming down or relaxing is

every bit as important as accomplishing something.

You can use your lunch hour or your break at work to run nearby errands, meditate, make lists or read. (Please read. I'm an author. I need for many, many people to read.)

Once you actually start looking for ten-minute blocks of time, you will find them everywhere. The real trick to The 10-Minute Solution isn't so much finding the time, as using it to your best advantage and the way to do that is with goals.

But don't think of goals the way you've been taught to. For the purposes of The 10-Minute Solution, think of them more as broad and general, project-specific things you wish to accomplish, such as keep the garden weed-free, keep the house presentable, spend time with kids.

With broad and general, but still project-specific goals like this you will make more appropriate, more efficient use of your blocks of time.

Why? The answer is simple. It all comes down to being able to make quick choices. If your goal for the week is to keep your house presentable, every time a block of ten minutes becomes free, you will immediately think of your goal and look around for a task you can accomplish to work toward that goal. But if you don't have the goal, you could spend your ten minutes trying to decide what you should do.

Goals take you by the hand, lead you to the jobs that make the best use of your time and they're also good for motivation. I'm a scheduling nut. It motivates me to know what I'm doing and when I'm doing it. I get a buzz knowing that to accomplish my broad and general goal of having a

presentable house, on Tuesday I'm going to take ten minutes to wipe out the fridge, clean my bathroom sink and dust the family room end tables. I like knowing my daily chores, because I know that if I do all of the tasks on my schedule, my burden will be lighter on the weekend.

However, I also know that theory works in the opposite. Which means any time I'm so tired or bummed-out that accomplishment of my ten-minute chores doesn't motivate me, I can flip that theory around and motivate myself with the truth that if I don't do my daily ten-minute chores, the

burden on Saturday will be greater.

Not everyone is a scheduler, though. In that case, The 10-Minute Solution might work better for you if you take advantage of your moods. Set the broad and general goal of getting the housework done before Saturday, have a clear list of what tasks need to be accomplished in order to meet that goal, then perform the tasks you feel like doing and check off each one as it is

completed.

I know that might not sound very scientific, but if you work better by mood and whim, picking and choosing your tasks by mood and whim will accomplish your purposes better than trying to brow-beat yourself into a schedule.

Also, if you're a person who works better by whim and mood, you might try doing two "mood" things and one "mandatory" thing every day. Remember how I told you that ten minutes of anything is tolerable? Even if you're not in the mood to vacuum, but you know all your rugs won't get swept if you don't do ten minutes every night, then vacuum. Do it first (eat your life frog), get it over with and move on to accommodate your mood. You can even use your "mood" chore as a motivation of sorts. You can say to yourself, "As soon as I'm done formatting this spreadsheet, I get to call Accounting and flirt with the fun guy in Accounts Payable." (Just don't say that aloud, especially not if you're married.)

Goals can also be benchmarks. If you're taking classes at Community College, like I was, every class you take brings you one step closer to your ultimate goal of your degree. Also, every class you don't take is a goal yet to be achieved toward your degree. You can see exactly where you are and how far you have to go by looking at the list of classes.

Similarly, if you've broken down a big work project or a big housecleaning project into ten-minute tasks — goals, if you will — then every time one of those jobs is complete, you are one step closer to the ultimate goal of completing the project itself. And, once again, being on your way to

accomplishing something should motivate you to keep going.

Your assignment for the day is to look at your day. Realistically and honestly write down everything you do from the second you slide you feet out of bed onto the cold floor, to the second you close your eyes for sleep. If you stop to read the paper, lean against the counter waiting for someone to grab a book bag or get a forgotten lunch, strum your fingers against the steering wheel waiting for soccer practice to end, talk on the phone, talk to the neighbor, go to the grocery store, get stuck in traffic, watch the end of one program waiting for the start of another or watch a really stupid program after the good program that enticed you to sit down in the first

place...write it down.

Do this for a day or two and soon your patterns will emerge and so will lots of ten-minute blocks of time in which you can do your ten-minute tasks.

If You're Feeling Ambitious: Set your goals. Set broad and general goals like clean the bedroom, read a certain book or complete a big work project.

If You're Feeling Really Ambitious: Break those goals down into ten-minute tasks.

If you're a scheduler, take a look at that refined list and make a schedule, doing three ten-minute housecleaning tasks every night. If you're not a scheduler, do three tasks on your list of ten-minute jobs and check them off as done.

At Work: Do an undeadlined ten-minute task. Specifically, work ahead on at least one big project.

Personal Enrichment: Don't forget to read something...(Sorry, the opportunity is too tempting to resist.) And take ten minutes to do something nice for yourself. If you combine reading your book with a bubble bath, you can actually soak (and read) for twenty minutes.

Have at it. And check back tomorrow.

Chapter 5 — Using Ten Minutes to Coax Yourself Into an Hour, a Morning, or Even the Entire Day of Doing Something You Really Don't Want To Do

Have you ever known that your time was running out and you had no choice but to work on a certain project, yet you still couldn't motivate yourself to do it?

Of course you have. We all have bad days.

Conversely, have you ever decided to read for ten minutes, gotten engrossed in your book and spent several hours reading without even realizing the passage of time?

Of course, you've done that, too. We all have.

Believe it or not, both of those scenarios are about the same thing: motivation. In the first instance, there wasn't any. Facing an enormous project with a deadline, and maybe even feeling that you didn't have enough time to get it done, you couldn't motivate yourself to work. In the second instance, motivation sneaked up on you. You accidentally did something big (read for hours) because you were enjoying it.

You tricked yourself.

Getting your work done and fulfilling your home and family responsibilities are all about motivation/trickery. And that's another benefit of The Ten-Minute Solution. Inherent in the system are three ways to get yourself knee-deep into projects and sometimes even the whole way through a project, almost before you recognize you're working!

The first one is the easy one. You start off with the intention of fulfilling only your ten minutes of responsibility, but you become interested, or happily occupied, and before you know it you've read for an hour, housecleaned an entire room or written a large segment of a chapter or report.

That's the easy way. You simply get sucked in. It feels wonderful. It is liberating. It puts you on top of the world.

The second way to implement The Ten-Minute Solution to accomplish an entire day's work or a big project isn't so uplifting or, dare I say, glamorous.

It's the "get yourself working on the project for ten minutes, then push yourself into another ten and another ten and another ten" method. Sometimes with nothing but discipline and determination. Other times with bribery.

I use bribery a lot for my writing. When I'm unwilling or unable to work or just plain hormonal, I don't even try to pretend it will be a productive day. I say, "Come on, Susan, we'll only revise that one description in chapter ten, then you can watch tapes of West Wing."

Once the description is mended, I may discover that beginning the project has motivated me and I can keep going. But if I haven't motivated myself to work simply by starting to work, then I bribe myself into another task.

"There's a fudgesickle in the freezer with your name on it if you proofread two pages of chapter one." Note: At this point I would have to give myself the fudgesickle before I could coax myself into something else. West Wing I can put off until the afternoon or the end of my patience with being coaxed, but no one reneges on food.

As soon as that fudgesickle was eaten, I would think of another reward to coax myself to do another small "housekeeping" task in a manuscript. Not something that could result in my destroying any part of the project — because in a foul mood I'm not very creative — but something elementary, something ordinary, that needed done but didn't require the whole of my

creativity. (Since by this point it would be obvious I didn't have any creativity that day.) And I continue to coax and bribe until either the project or the day was done.

The third way you can trick yourself into working when you don't want to is focus. You fix your attention on something fun at the same time that you work on your ten-minute project.

If you remember the story of stacking, when I was watching/listening to a Discovery Channel program, while I cleaned my family room, you probably remember that I got a big project done by stacking ten-minute tasks on top of each other. And that's great. But what you might not have seen was that I also implemented the "focus" procedure that day. I moved from one elementary housecleaning project to the next, hardly noticing that I was cleaning because I was also watching a television show. My "focus" wasn't on the work. By taking my attention off the housework and putting it on the Discovery Channel, the housework passed with ease.

If you listen to a radio at work, you know exactly what I mean. But from the housecleaning-while-watching-TV example above it's also easy to see that you can take this focus principle one step further and actually do two things at once, maximizing the use of your time.

For instance, while performing tasks like housecleaning that don't require as much brain power as brawn, you can listen to a book on tape. You can crochet while you watch television. Listen to motivational tapes while on the treadmill. Read while soaking in the tub. Straighten the kitchen

while timing dinner. Read in the dentist's waiting room.

Not only do you get more done by focusing on one job while also doing another, but also you can make an unbearable job bearable or even pleasant.

So motivation boils down to three things. Sometimes you motivate yourself by focus — using something pleasant to camouflage an unpleasant task.

Sometimes you do it by trickery — starting a project, tricking yourself into thinking you will only do ten minutes' worth (and you can tolerate anything for ten minutes) and accidentally becoming interested. Sometimes you give yourself rewards along the way.

But no matter how you do it, you can motivate yourself to work and keep working until you are done. And isn't that the point? Accomplishing the difficult or unpleasant tasks that usually go undone simply because they are difficult or unpleasant.

Assignment: Now that you know more about the specifics of The Ten-Minute Solution, redo the list of ten-minute tasks started at the beginning of the week and mark the ones that are problems for you. Try to figure out if you need to use focus, trickery or rewards to get them done.

If You're Feeling Ambitious: Trick, bribe or focus your way through one of those difficult projects.

If You're Feeling Really Ambitious: Get serious with your workload at your place of employment, break things down into ten-minute increments or if your workload is more accurately categorized as a group of large tasks, list the tasks then break those down into ten-minute increments. i.e., If you have a weekly report, is there a way you can do ten-minutes of the work every day in order that it can be completed with ease on Friday?

Personal Enrichment: Get serious about your social life list. Do you have the box of all occasion cards? Is your email list current? Could you fix it in ten minutes? Do you have a birthday list? Could you make a list of friends to call on a weekly or monthly basis? Can you get your mother or a friend to watch for birth announcements, obituaries and/or achievements in the local paper and then touch base with her for ten minutes every week so that you don't miss anything important?

You don't have to organize everything today, but pick one thing to organize this week, then organize one next week and one the week after. Remember: Life is a process. Organization time is the most important, most effective time you will spend. If you don't believe me, ask Steven Covey, author of Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Read the chapter about sharpening the saw. The trick to being motivated is knowing you will accomplish something and not waste your time. You want to rid yourself of the feeling that the time you spend is a drop of water falling into the ocean and getting lost. And the trick to knowing your time isn't about to be wasted is organization.

So go to it.

And, if you must, feel free to trick yourself.

Chapter 6 — Do We Really Want To Drag The Kids Into This?

Yes. When my kids were in elementary school, a study came out reporting that the average parent spent less than fifteen minutes per week with his or her child. Less than fifteen minutes. Per week. I was shocked because I was still doing homework with my kids (about an hour a night), helping chose the next day’s outfit, and shuttling everybody to ball practice. I couldn’t understand how anybody spent less than twenty-four-hours a day parenting.

That is, I couldn’t understand until my kids became teenagers.

Equipped with TVs, CD players, and video games, your teens’ bedrooms become a sort of sanctuary because, guess what, they don’t want to spend time with you.

So, of course, when my kids tried to ditch me, I implemented the ten-minute solution. From the time they started to subtly slide away from me, I made a concerted effort to spend ten minutes of quality time each day with each one.

Now, picture this: my kids were doing their level best to avoid me and I was deliberately, purposefully spending ten minutes every darned day with them. Sheesh. They wanted to shoot me.

For a while there it was more than a struggle. It was like strategizing for a war. They would hide, I would find them, take a seat with them where they were hiding (albeit under the pool table in the basement) and chat for ten minutes. They hated it, until they realized it was an inevitability and

something they had to abide. From there it wasn’t as much of an inevitability as something they prepared for. From there it became something they looked forward to.

Now it’s me hiding under the pool table in the basement.

I know ten minutes doesn’t sound like a lot, particularly not with grade school kids. But it’s an incredible tool with teens. Do you know what it means if you deliberately, purposefully spend ten minutes with your kids? First, it means they won’t be able to lie to you (or fudge the truth) as easily because you’ll be more aware of them and able to figure out when they aren’t quite expressing the truth. And what happens then? They become accountable for their actions. They hear your opinions. You hear about their days. Soon you start to hear their versions of difficulties with friends and teachers. Eventually, you’re giving advice. Yikes! It sounds like you’re back to being a parent! It sounds like you might have some influence again!

But you can use The 10-Minute Solution with children in many other ways. First, you can teach them that ten minutes a day keeps a bedroom tidy. Ten minutes a day gives a jump start on a paper or report. Ten minutes a day gets ‘book report’ books read with ease.

More than that, though, ten minutes a day is about all it takes to summarize their class notes onto index cards, which make fabulous ten-minute study cards that they can take anywhere and use for studying in their own ten-minute free spaces.

And let’s face it. Though long study sessions are more productive, short study sessions are more apt to occur. With index cards and good notes, your kids can study while waiting for the bus, waiting for the dentist, waiting for you!

You can also teach them that ten-minutes at night will get all their clothes ironed for school the next morning, giving them ten minutes longer in bed. Ten minutes at night to choose the next day’s outfit, gather books, and make sure they have pencils can also net ten minutes in bed or ten minutes of extra time with their friends at the bus stop.

Have you noticed that there is a little motivator tacked onto all those ten-minute tasks? When it comes to kids I have discovered it’s very important to put a reward with a request for something you want done or something you would like to see become a rule. In fact, I used a system called Rules, Anchors, Rewards that I found in the 30 Days to Personal Power tapes by Anthony Robbins. (Fabulous speaker, by the way. If you get the chance, get his tapes.)"

Mr. Robbins propounds the theory that linking a reward to a task is a good way to motivate your children, spouse, employees, or friends to do whatever you need them to do.

Right now you’re probably saying, “I tried rewards and they don’t work!” Well, unfortunately, I believe you. Because I know why the system didn’t work for you. Your expectations and your instructions might not have been as clear to your child as you assumed. Rewards don’t work when expectations are fuzzy. You might have said exactly what you meant, but the stickler was how your child (husband, employee, friend) interpreted it and then how you responded to that interpretation. Simply put, if your child thought she fulfilled your wishes, but you said she didn’t and withheld the reward, the system broke down and from that day forward rewards lost the

power to motivate.

So, I used Anthony Robbins’s theories and techniques to the letter. I realized that each instruction I gave to my children had to be clear, it had to contain an anchor (a sure way for them to know they had fulfilled it, including but not limited to a time frame) and it had to have a reward.

i.e. Take the statement: If you brush your teeth every night you will not get cavities.

The request/rule is brush your teeth.

The anchor is every night.

The reward is you will not get cavities.

Simple, right?

Right. But that one’s obvious. So let’s try again...

If you eat all of your broccoli at dinner tonight, I will buy you ice cream after I’m finished cleaning the kitchen.

The request/rule is eat all your broccoli.

The anchor is at dinner tonight.

The reward is I will buy you ice cream after I’m finished cleaning the kitchen.

Or how about: If you leave mom alone for two hours every night while she writes this book, you will get twenty dollars to spend when she gets the advance check.

Then there’s: If you get all A’s on the next report card, I will take you to the mall the following Saturday and let you pick out an outfit that costs under a hundred dollars.

There is no question about what is expected, the time frame in which you expect it to be completed and the resultant reward.

Also, it sometimes it helps to write these things down. My kids didn’t mind contracts signed by both of us. In fact, that’s a neat little life lesson. When you make a written contract with your child you are telling him that his name on a piece of paper means something. He must fulfill these responsibilities. (This lesson will help your child when he signs for his first car payment.)

Interestingly, though, the rules, anchors and rewards system actually teaches many life lessons.

Like: the reward of pay for work. Or: the hardship of no reward for no work. The system also teaches responsibility, reliability and time management.

There are hundreds of ways you can implement this system to teach your kids. You could use it to show them how to work, the necessity for doing things (like the dishes) on a regular basis, or the rewards inherent in simply keeping up with life sometimes.

Take the idea and run with it. Make it your own. Teach the way you wish you would have been taught. Trust me, some day your kids will thank you!

So, your assignment for tonight is to spend ten minutes of quality time with your kids, and really take note of how long ten minutes is…especially if you have teenagers. If you can, play Yahtzee or rummy or some other game to distract them from the fact that they are actually spending time with you. Talk about school while you’re playing. Talk about ten-minute study procedures.

If You’re Feeling Ambitious: Buy index cards for them to use as study cards, and resolve to infiltrate one of the “ten-minute solution for kids” into their lives every week. Every day won’t work. It will overwhelm them.

If You’re Feeling Really Ambitious: Do a ten-minute housecleaning project.

At Work: Do ten minutes on your special project.

Personal Enrichment: Give yourself ten minutes for spirituality (even if it’s only to sit down and clear your head. No TV in the background, please!) Or give yourself ten minutes for beauty. Take a bubble bath, give yourself a facial, or clean out your make-up drawer and take inventory of what items need to be replaced.

And, don’t forget, … Read. Do this just because by now reading should be becoming a pleasurable habit. Pretty soon you’re going to be the smartest, hippest person in your world.

Chapter 7 — The Ten-Minute Solution For Everybody Else

So far in this book, I've spent a good bit of time showing you how you can get yourself organized and motivated to make the most of ten minute blocks of time to complete your daily chores. You may have even been able to accomplish a few special projects everyday.

What we haven't yet discussed is using the alternate source of power at your disposal…other people.

For instance...

My husband's brother and sister-in-law were scheduled to spend a weekend with us a few years ago. Unfortunately, at the beginning of the week I caught the flu, which bottomed out as a really nasty cold. I couldn't do the things I typically would have done to prepare for overnight guests, and I was so sick I didn't care. (Sad, but true.)

Anyway, because our visitors were my husband's family and I'm sure he not only wanted to make a good impression, he also wanted them to be comfortable, he set about to clean the house. And he did a fabulous job for about an hour, but after the obvious was done, he was lost. I also noted he had a short attention span. ESPN frequently called to him. He seemed to have a golf club leaning in a corner of every room, and every bare floor longer than six feet somehow turned into a putting green.

From my sick bed, I thought about the things that needed to be done. Wipe out the refrigerator.

Straighten cupboards into which guests would have reason to go (such as the dish cupboard and medicine cabinet). Clean bathrooms. Vacuum carpeting. Scrub tile floors. Wash throw rugs. Wash windows.

I listed the tasks on a sheet of paper, but another thought struck me. Well, actually, two thoughts.

First, if I read, "scrub tile floors," I would know that meant all tile floors. I would also know that there are tile floors in two of the bathrooms, the kitchen and the laundry room. I wouldn't miss any of them…but I knew my husband would forget at least one, most likely two.

Second, if you give my husband "big picture" assignments, you will get "big picture" results. If you say, "Clean the bathroom," he will not think this means straighten out the medicine cabinet.

He will only "clean" those things that look like they need to be cleaned. If he can't see actual chunks of dirt or soap scum you may not even get the room swept or the tub scrubbed. But if you hand him a list that says:

Clean the bathroom:

1. scrub the tub

2. clean the sink

3. scrub the commode

4. straighten the medicine chest

5. sweep and mop the floor

Everything will not only get done, it will get done right and well. (He's a very good worker when he knows what to do.)

Right now, you're probably rolling your eyes, thinking, "If I have to tell him all that, I might as well do it myself." Not really. Not if you create the list on an index card, title it Clean the Bathroom (or living room, family room, den, kitchen), draw a column for him to put a check mark beside each completed task and reuse the card. Put 4 columns on the card and you're ready for four weeks of work sharking with only the effort of the first week's organization. If you create the list in your computer, you never have to do it again, only reprint it every time the check-off columns are filled.

Breaking down "project-type" jobs into check off lists is also a good way to find tasks for kids.

Every child should have chores. But the common jobs of dishes, vacuuming and dusting aren't merely so dull they bore your kids into poor performance, they also don't teach your kids anything. Think of the valuable lesson a child learns if he or she cleans your medicine cabinet and checks off the task on your index card. Not only will he see how increments and little bits get a bigger job done, but also he will see that a cabinet isn't something that you abuse just because you can close the door on the mess you make. Eventually, the mess comes back to haunt you.

More than that, though, as a parent you will accomplish the big picture task of teaching your child that housecleaning is more than just doing dishes and running the sweeper.

Too often, mothers take upon themselves the entirety of the responsibility for keeping a clean house and it isn't until the kids get out into the world that they see they know little to nothing about how to clean or how to care for clothes, carpeting and furniture. With ten-minute tasks, your children can learn all facets of keeping their living space habitable and protecting things that are too expensive to replace every other week.

They will also see that a little organization goes a long way, at the same time that they become familiar with at least one method of organization — "the list." There is also an inherent time management lesson built into this system.

So the check-off index card list is as good for your kids as it is handy to have for your dear husband when he steadfastly proclaims that he would help you if he just knew what to do. (Not only will you shock him into being more careful with his words, but also you will begin the indoctrination process of teaching him the simple, not necessarily time-consuming tasks that he can do whenever he really does want to help — because I'm sure he wants to help.

And, the final plus, if you ever get so lucky as to hire a housekeeper or cleaning service, guess what? You are ready with concise lists that show your new helper exactly what you want done.

So, your assignment for the day is to create a few cards. Hand write them at first so you can make notes on them, fix and repair them, modify them and even allow for the fact that your husband and kids may try to destroy them. When you are satisfied with them, (when everything is listed and you've created a workable order and format), then you can input them into your computer.

Your second task is to give your kids (and your husband) an unusual ten-minute chore every day for a week. That's right. Every day for a week. Have someone cleaning a medicine cabinet, linen closet, shoe rack or dog bed. Have someone wiping down a door, dusting all the windowsills, driving bags of old clothes to Good Will, cleaning a section of the basement, attic or den.

Remember to keep the tasks small and easy enough to accomplish in ten minutes, but unusual enough to introduce them to a new facet of tidy living!

At Work: Sort out your in-basket and give half your work away. Kidding. But, not really.

Having been in nearly every position on the office totem pole, it no longer surprises me that underlings will give their work to supervisors under the guise of "looking for instructions" or that peers can find all kinds of clever and devious ways to pawn their tasks off on unsuspecting coworkers. You need to remember that if you're a supervisor, part of your job is teaching and sometimes you teach by forcing a subordinate to figure things out for him or herself. Also, you don't do your coworker peers any favors if you help them so much they grow to depend upon you.

Sort out the projects in your in-basket that are actually supposed to be done by other people and return them to their rightful owners. If there is an office flunky who is supposed to do all the copying, give any copying jobs you find in your in-basket to him. If it makes you squeamish to give away menial tasks, compare your salary to the flunky's salary and recognize how much of your company's money you waste if you do that other person's job. Remember, too, (especially if the flunky gets annoyed when you won't do his or her work) that if everybody did his own copying, that person would be unemployed. You might want to mention that to your copy person if he scowls when you dump your copying in his in-basket.

If You're Feeling Ambitious At Work: Write your typical work tasks on individual index cards as titles, then list the 10-minute jobs needed to accomplish each task down the left side as a column, then make little check-off columns to the right. Then, if anyone ever approaches you for work

because they have none, you will be ready.

Personal Enrichment: Sit in a bubble bath and meditate on the fact that you are not supposed to do everything. In some instances, you are to be monitoring the work being done by the people you supervise. In some instances, you are to be using the chores at hand to teach the people

below you (such as your subordinates and your kids). In some instances, you are to be sharing the workload equally. Just because you see more dust than your husband sees, that doesn't mean you are the only one who can wield a dust cloth. If it did, most of us would have ourselves declared
legally blind.

Share the wealth. Monitor. Teach. Don't try to do it all. You're screwing up the teacher/mentor/boss system if you do.

Chapter 8 — In Closing

If you do one-fifth of what I talk about in this book, and only do it one-fifth of the time you have available, you will be further ahead this time next week than you are right now. And, as far as I'm concerned, you and this book will be successful.

But before you go too far with this process, I have one final word of caution. Don't mess with systems in your life that already work. Use The 10-Minute Solution on those things that you can't seem to get done.

For instance, if you study with your children for an hour every night and that system works, don't screw with it. If you clean your kitchen for a half-hour every night and you can still find ten minutes here and there to do additional 10-minute solution projects, don't mess with that. If Saturday morning is your time to clean your bedroom (and also your quiet time because no one disturbs you while you are doing it), stick with that.

Use The 10-Minute Solution the way I have used it. I spent ten minutes a day with my kids when the temptation was strong to spend much less, because it was a struggle to get them to want to spend time with me — in spite of the fact that they needed both my supervision and my love.

I implement The 10-Minute Solution when I'm having a difficult day and can't get myself motivated.

I use The 10-Minute Solution for big projects that don't fit into my pre-existing schedule.

I use it for work projects that are so far down the road they aren't even on my one year schedule.

I use it for housecleaning chores — like my bathroom — that aren't my favorite or those chores are too big for me to accomplish in one setting.

When I can't be creative, doing eight-hours worth of ten minute tasks — proofreading, fixing descriptions, and re-writing small sections — is a way to accomplish something without worry that I'll destroy an important passage or chapter that I shouldn't have touched!

The beginning of anything is another candidate for The 10-Minute Solution. Beginnings are the hardest. But if you take ten minutes every day for five days and do a chunk of that project, by the time day six comes along, you'll find yourself far enough along that you're not at the beginning anymore.

You've psyched yourself into stage two without ever feeling like you were at stage one.

I've already gotten my foot in the door for long, long projects like spreadsheets for my taxes and letters submitting proposals by doing only the document formatting to take away the feeling "overwhelm."

So it's clear the system works, but don't mess with your own systems that also work. Or, more succinctly, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Your assignment? Yes, you're getting one...Go back and do the undone assignments from this week. In fact, reading the book again next week and picking up those assignments that you didn't complete is an excellent way to stay on track with the system. You might be able to do more of the "If You're Feeling Ambitious" or the "If You're Feeling Really Ambitious" assignments. Or maybe you haven't taken this idea to your workplace yet. You can read through this book as many times as you want, because reading the entire book should only take ten or twenty minutes out of your day for a week.

It's pretty simple. And it's also pretty simple to repeat. Especially if you don't overwork yourself by trying to do too much. The real goal of The 10-Minute Solution is to get and keep you participating in your own life so that it's fuller, richer and, dare I say, cleaner.

Because life isn't lived in quantum leaps. It's lived in weeks, days, hours and minutes. If you're not using your minutes, you're wasting them. Wasted minutes turn into hours and hours turn into days — which turn into weeks. And those weeks ultimately become your entire life. Don't waste your life by minutes. Do what needs to be done including pampering yourself.

I leave you with a quote by noted speaker Zig Ziglar on his Goals tape series.

When you do the things you gotta do when you gotta do them, you can do the things you wanna do when you wanna do them.

Peace.

susan meier
HER SUMMER WITH THE MARINE, Entangled Bliss