Holiday Tip: Things Take Longer Than They Do

After all these years, I’ve finally stopped overbooking the day. I remember the wise saying, “Things take longer than they do.” It’s such a clever little saying! What do you think it means? I thought about it all day as I devoted the afternoon to just one task instead of three and realized how peaceful it all felt.

In other words, I’ve learned to stop cramming tasks into small amounts of time and now allow a more reasonable and much more peaceful way of thinking about schedules and tasks. Why did it take me so long to realize how much it stresses everyone out to rush? 

Rush, rush, rush. It means to move with urgent haste. It’s a driving, stressful sort of verb.

(If I could go back to the days of toddlers, I would advise myself that the majority of tantrums come from rushing children.)

I remember my friend’s words about living at 60% of your energy capacity, your finances, and now, even your time allotment for certain tasks. It works to ease stress, exhaustion, bad moods, and snapping at everyone. This task that I think I can do in this amount of time? I add on so much more time now. Things take longer than than do.

No more rushing: Things take longer than they do. Finally, I’m not cramming everything in. I wish I learned this sooner, especially when it relates to pushing family into whatever schedule I present for the day.

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