By Dr Debi Warner
Recognizing your scattered efforts will help you to make more of your opportunities for building within a busy schedule. Most folks do not realize that the Mental Game is just as important as swinging a hammer to get a project done. Let's look at what you will need in your mind to succeed.
It can be hard to live in a house while you renovate, but often that is the story for careful spending. So, some things will need to be faced - the clean up at the end of work time so that life can go on. Routine maintenance tasks will creep in. Materials need to be handy but not hamper daily life. And your time will be split in two. This affects the whole Home Team and so should be subject of some pow-wow time to determine together what the important priorities are.
Talking with your Home Team on a quiet evening can help you all face your expectations about routines, cosmetic accommodations, and even gain a little more help in handling these tasks. Surely something may need to give, if you are to get your project done within the building season. Perhaps your teen children or grandchildren might mow. Maybe a neighbor could help. Or you might let the grass go, knowing that recovery will be an extra effort when you do address it again. You will need your Team's input on how your decide to handle these, as their pride may be offended if suddenly they feel your house is a neighborhood eyesore. They may be determined to pitch in more to prevent that.
The Mental Game is also important in your own planning. Building is not just swinging hammers and cutting boards. There is much planning that happens before the first cut. Your mind builds the house many times through before you grab the tools and get into a sweat. That mental time is serious building time that is worth counting toward your project. It is also good to do your thinking on evenings when you might need to sit and relax after exertion of the workday.
The Mental Game is not day dreaming, but careful walk-throughs on your project in your mind that let you lay plans, list materials, and sequence your steps for successful work days ahead. The Mental Game also has rules; it really is not day dreaming in this sense, because you carefully follow a set of reviews in order for your plans to make sense.
1. Visualize the completed structure in your mind. Walk around in it and see how it fits with the rest of the house, the yard, the view. Imagine living in it and how the flow of family traffic will go. Consider storage and future uses, when the kids leave home.
2. Now, as if watching a movie in your head, visualize the construction, starting with the digging, leveling and pouring, and all the steps along the way, even up to the roofing. You can make notes; many folks blaze this in their minds. Many To-Do lists fall out of this step and are very valuable in the overall project.
3. Sit with your Home Team and review your vision and the steps that will build the project. Their input is so important to the success of the project, that skipping it has been the demise of many promising additions. Count their input as positive points in your Mental Game.
4. Go back to your To-Do lists. You will see that some can be done out of sequence, but just need to be done during a certain phase of building. If you have an organizer on your team, roll them in now, as they will be a super help. Mark your lists for their sequence position. Now go back and see which of them can be done in any weather, and which need special conditions or long preparation time. From this, you will have a set of tasks for rainy days, and preparations you can make ahead in any weather, for special steps in your project.
5. During the week, plan certain evenings for the Mental Game and perhaps a few times for some active hands-on. Both parts of the project are important and will advance you ahead. Be sure to give yourself credit for the Mental Game activities because if you don't, you will discount it as not getting anything done, whereby demoralizing your motivation, and then shun it, when it is exactly how to move forward successfully.
6. To stay on track, ask the organizer on your team to get involved in the up coming plans for the next week. Ask for reminders, lists, weather reports, and even signage to help everyone focus on the chosen tasks that fit into your sequence.
Finally, be sure to plan rewards that will acknowledge everyone's contributions of effort, patience, organization and labor in to the project; their contributions are indeed true home improvement.
Happy Home Team from Dr. Debi
Dr Debi Warner is a Clinical Psychologist with a lifetime of home renovating in her toolbelt. Dr Warner invented Renovation Psychology® to help people gain skills and improve domestic harmony while involved in building projects. With three decades of family practice, Dr Debi saw many situations gone awry, so she focused her expertise on developing the skills and teamwork that will help people fully enjoy their home projects, for true home improvement. See how to gain harmony on your home team while doing home projects at http://www.RenovationPsychology.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dr_Debi_Warner
For more information and/or help with your do-it-yourself home improvements contact us at: http://knkhomeimprovements.com
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