Better Than It Was: Making Progress When You're Depleted

My five-year-old wanted more iPad time, so I told him if he wanted that, he needed to help move the house forward first. I'd asked him to wipe down his bathroom counters. He wanted to scrub the toilets instead. I wasn't going to say no to that. I got the cleanser in, he got the scrub brush, and I went on to other projects while he worked. When he came to get me, I asked if it was all the way clean. Almost, he said, it's as good as I can get it right now. Is that good enough? Of course it is. It's a five-year-old scrubbing a toilet. I didn't go redo it, so he never felt like he'd wasted his time.Coming back from spring break into some hard news and a couple of short weeks that made it difficult to get organized, I keep landing on the same idea: things don't have to be perfect, they have to be better than they were. This week's Tessera: Stop waiting until you have the energy for the full version of something, and instead match the smallest useful version of it to whatever energy you actually have right now.Read the companion article at https://tesseros.com/tessory-e10-progress-when-depletedTimestamps:00:45 A chaotic return from spring break02:15 Leaning on the robots03:30 Maintaining a menu of projects04:45 Minimum viable improvements07:15 Switching modes instead of pushing through09:20 Quiet business administration and automated reports