If you read my blog, you may know that when the school year ended I decided to start getting up at 5 a.m. Monday through Friday mornings. My goal was to carve out some uninterrupted quiet time for working and writing. After the first ten days, I realized there were some shortcomings to that plan. I was tired by mid-afternoon (some days by mid-morning!) and my productivity and mood suffered as a consequence. Not the result I intended. I was bummed at the thought of going back to my old schedule, because despite being tired midday, I was enjoying the quiet and solitude of the early morning hours.
As you can see, I felt as if I had two choices: wake up at 5 a.m. (my new schedule) or wake up at 7 a.m. (my old schedule). This, my friends, is all or nothing thinking. Do you recognize it? Have you ever thought that way, too?
When I let go of all or nothing thinking, I could see that in fact there are over 120 other choices I could consider as a wake-up time between 5 and 7 a.m. I call this partial progress thinking, and by using this thought process I can select an alternate wake-up time that gives me the best of both extremes—a bit more sleep than my 5 a.m. wake-up schedule, and a bit more solitude than waking up with the rest of my family at 7. Sounds good, right?
If you’re a victim of all or nothing thinking, give partial progress thinking a try. There are usually a host of options between all and nothing, and often one of these middle-of-the-road solutions can work even better than either of the extremes. To practice partial progress thinking, ask yourself: Are there any options between all and nothing? Or, is there a way I can make progress on this project, even if I can’t do it all right now? Then see for yourself how good it feels to find the happy medium offered by partial progress thinking.
