When I first became a mom, my friend Karen gave me Bruno Bettelheim’s book The Good Enough Parent. The concept originated, I believe, with D. W. Winnicott. The heart of the theory is that trying too hard as a parent just mucks things up for the child. Better to be “good enough” and let the child take credit for some of her development.

I embraced the concept of the good-enough parent. Where I have difficulty letting go, is with my writing. But is my desire to make a text perfect, really just a a tactic to keep from ever having to let it go?

Sixty-seven drafts of a poem will eventually see me through to completion. The same sort of obsessive revising with the novel…this is not going so well.

One of my on-going goals (articulated for myself in the last few months) is to be the parent my daughters need at 20, 20, and 14 as they move toward independence. To stop babying them. Along the same lines, I need to very clearly set a goal to let go of my novel.

The real trick to getting work done is that my 15 minutes is very seldom only 15 minutes. It’s just the threshold. 

If 15 minutes doesn’t work for you, imagine a lower threshold. Imagine 5 minutes. Imagine a broom handle lying across the floor. Fall over it. 

Conversely, you may need an even number. So try 20 minutes. Many years ago when I was trying to get up early in the morning (before my infant twins were awake) to work on my doctoral dissertation, a friend suggested that I try getting up on the half-hour, when the clock’s hand was rising rather than falling. I don’t know why 4:30 was “better” than 5:00, but it worked. 

Lowering the threshold will work for your other unresolutions, too. When I’m having trouble getting myself to the gym, I coax myself into merely putting on my workout clothes. Just put them on, you don’t have to go. Then once I’m at the gym (I’m dressed for it, so why not?), I tell myself, just get on the treadmill, just walk for a half mile, then you can quit. Once I get started, I almost never do less than my 2 1/4 miles. 

Lower the threshold. Stumble over it.