193: Little Jolt of Joy – Controlling Time

The Thirty-Minute Show and the Loose Earring

I finally knocked out two tiny tasks this week that had been lingering forever, and it got me thinking about why they’d sat undone for so long, and what actually made them finally happen.

It brought back a memory from childhood, back when there was a Thursday night lineup on NBC that felt appointment-critical in a way nothing really is anymore. The show started at exactly eight. Bedtime was eight thirty. If you weren’t ready for bed by then, the threat was real: the TV got turned off and you missed the ending. So we’d watch, and the second a commercial break hit, it was a mad dash to get into pajamas, sprint back before the show resumed, dash off again to brush teeth and wash up, sprint back again, cramming an entire bedtime routine into three thirty-second bursts scattered across one half hour show. That absolute, unmovable sense of time, the fact that we had zero power to pause or push it back, was an accountability system kids simply don’t have anymore. Time is fluid now, and honestly, I think it took some power away from parents too.

That memory is exactly why our Work With Me Wednesdays in my membership group work the way they do. We hop on Zoom, everyone declares what they’re planning to tackle, and then I set a twenty-minute timer. Microphones go on mute, everyone works, I give a five-minute warning, and then we check back in: how’d it go, are you continuing, are you shifting to something new? Then another twenty-minute timer, same pattern, until the last stretch of the hour, which people either spend chatting or use as their own quiet wind-down time. It mimics that old finite structure of time we don’t otherwise have, and it comes with a body-doubling effect too, just seeing other people working in the background gives you a boost, even if nobody’s saying a word. You don’t need my membership to try this. Any friend and a shared Zoom call working alongside each other will do the same thing.

During one of those twenty-minute blocks this week, I finally fixed a pair of earrings I love wearing regularly, one clasp had gone loose. The actual fix took three seconds: walk to the garage, grab needle-nose pliers, press the prongs back into place, done. It had been the bane of my existence for six months. In another block, I cleared a pile that had been sitting on my kitchen island since Christmas, a running list I keep by hand of who sent and received cards each year. I hadn’t gone to grab my address book to log it all and clear the pile. That task took maybe ninety seconds once I actually did it.

Neither of these tasks needed more than a few minutes. What they needed was the same kind of accountability that old thirty-minute show gave me as a kid, a fixed, unmovable chunk of time where I was already in motion and simply used a spare minute to knock something out instead of letting it linger. My counter’s been clear for two days now, and that clarity has a way of trickling into everything else.

If any part of this sounds like something you’re missing, the antidote isn’t complicated. Borrow a little bit of that old finite structure back, whether it’s a timed work session with a friend or a body-doubling group, and let it catch the small stuff you’d otherwise keep stepping around for months.

Until next time, continue to choose joy.