Turtle Steps
There’s nothing that will stop your progress faster than feeling overwhelmed and like you’re just never going to get there!
That’s why it is *so* important that you break down de-cluttering and organizing into bite-sized chunks. These tiny chunks are called turtle steps, and I learned about them from my mentor, Martha Beck.
Turtle steps are the tiniest steps you can break a task down into. The criteria for a turtle step is that it feels RIDICULOUSLY EASY.
Here’s an example that illustrates how easy turtle steps should be.
Jenni wanted to take better care of herself by doing yoga so her back injury could be healed and she would be able to play outside with her kids (her WHY!!).
But the thought of yoga was so daunting and made her so anxious that she just never, ever did anything about it.
Finally she went through the exercise of breaking it down into turtle steps.
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Her first ridiculously easy step was… wait for it…
for 1 minute every day, Jenni would think about maybe, possibly doing yoga. She would just think about it. I am not kidding!
Jenni did this every day until it didn’t cause her angst anymore and actually seemed like a possibility, then she went to the next turtle step.
She knew she needed clothes for yoga, so she thought her next step should be buying yoga clothes.
But everyone seemed to have special clothes, and the thought of showing up in those tight clothes made her cringe. She realized going to buy clothes was too big a step.
So she made her next turtle step even easier – she would go online for 2 minutes every day and look at yoga clothes. Just look at them. Until they didn’t make her cringe anymore.
Next step was driving to the store to look at the clothes in person.
Then she actually bought the clothes and brought them home but left them in her closet for a week and peeked at them every day.
Then she put the clothes out on the bed and picked them up and looked at them every day.
She went on like this, with ridiculously easy steps, until she was finally doing yoga and loving it.
You may think this is silly, but this is how any difficult task can be overcome.
Try it! As you complete each turtle step, reward yourself! You are MAKING PROGRESS!