Today was such a shitty day at ye olde day job, that I wanted to spend the evening doing nothing but knitting and maybe reading. I didn’t want to log in and check the discussions today. My stressed out bad attitude self tried to tell me that I’d be a better teacher tomorrow, so I should wait until then. But luckily, I wasn’t so tired that I didn’t recognize that logically, I wouldn’t be any better if I was stressed out from being behind. Okay, I compromised, log in for ten minutes and spend it responding. So… 45 mins later, and even more stoked about the new introductions posted today, here I am to tell about it.

This is something I learned in triathlon training and I know it is true for paper grading, house cleaning, running, and even essay writing, which, like teaching, are things I love having done, but don’t always like to do more than I like, say focusing on one stitch after the other–So, you set a real or imagined timer for just ten minutes and give yourself permission to stop when time is up. The odds are high that you won’t want to once you’ve started. You will begin to feel the positive feelings that the activity gives you and they will outweigh the neutral of inaction. Or you won’t, and you’ll stop–but ten minutes will still be more progress than zero, so it’s really a guaranteed win.