I own my home, and along with that all the repairs and maintenance. It’s a never-ending battle against the forces of Chaos, just to keep everything running on a regular basis. Motivating myself to fight the good fight of home repair is sometimes a difficult thing.

I have found one method that seems to motivate me sufficiently to at least keep the battle to a stalemate. The One-Chore-A-Day program!

The One Chore a Day program consists of making a list (I use Remember the Milk) and list out ALL the things, big and small, that need to be done either immediately or on a regular basis. If it’s a big task, I then break that task into smaller pieces.

The idea is to have a list of ’small’ tasks that should take no more than an hour each. Fix a door, paint a ceiling, repair a screen, whatever. The task should be something you believe can be done in an hour or less.

Then, each day, I take the top task off the list and do it.

Simple, only an hour a day. If I feel really ambitious, I’ll try the next one too.

The list should never be completely empty, as you continually add small tasks, but it shouldn’t be so full that it’s unmanageable either. If it gets too long, start working at doing a couple a day until it gets back to a more reasonable amount. Remember, it’s an on-going task. Pace yourself.

Technorati : finance, home repair, motivation