Progress not perfection

Okay, this has been a very hard lesson for me to learn. I am a perfectionist by nature and this idiosyncracy has been exacerbated by my strict Filipino upbringing where there's a huge emphasis placed on excelling in everything.

Flylady.net (http://www.flylady.net) has been a tremendous help to me. I've been a subscriber for about a year now and although I don't follow everything to a tee, I have learnt and un-learnt some lessons. Here's one I've found really valuable.

15 minutes is sometimes all you need: Now this was a tough one. I've been known to clean my stove with a toothbrush for an hour. As a matter of fact, and come to think of it, I've been known to clean a whole lotta stuff with a toothbrush! I was skeptical about this 15 minute rule at first, but the thing is, when you set a time limit to devote to a task, you're forced to be happy with the progress you make in that short amount of time. Here's what I can do and be happy with in 15 minutes:

• Unload a dishwasher
• Load the dishwasher and shine my sink
• Clean the guest bathroom
• Clean countertops
• Vacuum the living room and hallway
• Dust most of the furniture in a particular room

I'm sure I'm missing a lot of other tasks I've completed in 15 mintues, but you get the point. It's helped me let go of some of my perfectionistic tendencies, especially when it starts to get in the way of getting things accomplished - for example - getting an order out. One time, I spent an hour obsessing about a particular label, sticking, peeling, un-peeling and re-sticking to get it just so. I could've definitely spent that hour more productively, but I was on a mission to get this lable stick straight. Not to say that now you'll get products with lopsided labels. Truthfully? I know I'm my harshest critic so stuff that you probably won't notice or mind, I lose sleep over.

So anyway, try this 15 minute thing. Set a timer to 15 minutes and get busy. Once the timer goes off, you have to stop. Finish up what you're doing, step back and admire what you've accomplished , and you'll be surprised about how pleased you are with what you've done in that amount of time.

Okay, gotta run. My timer just went off and as much as I want to write more about the lessons I've learnt from this great website, I'll have to save it for another 15 minute session.