This week I asked my youngest boy, Finnian, to unstack the dishwasher.
He walked over, opened it, looked inside, and let out this long, dramatic sigh. It wasn’t quite frustration, but more heavy, pre-emptive exhaustion that says: this is too much and I haven’t even started yet.
In his words, the dishwasher was “too stacked”.
It felt mammoth to him.
So I went over and pulled a bowl from the top rack, handed him one, and just started talking to him about something else entirely. Two minutes later he was done and had moved on with his day.
The task hadn’t changed. But he had stopped focusing on it.
I’ve been thinking about how often we do this as adults, except our sighs are a little more sophisticated and sometimes a little sneaky.
Sometimes it looks like Finni’s sigh. The ugh ‘this is too big so I don’t wanna’.
Sometimes it looks like procrastination; finding something smaller to do first that gives us a quicker win with less effort.
And sometimes, and I learned this term this week from behaviour change scientist Karin Nordin, it looks like procrasta-planning. Planning everything out in meticulous detail in a way that satisfies the need to feel productive, even though no actual action happens.
We make the spreadsheet. We research the program. We buy the new shoes.
But the strength training session never actually happens. The dishwasher stays full.
I had a conversation with a GLOW10 member this week that brought all of this together.
She mentioned she had a weight loss goal and we were talking about the role strength training might play in it. Even though the weight had built quietly over 5-10 years, the moment she decided to do something about it, it became a mammoth task she wanted undone all at once.
And that’s the trap.
We’re remarkably patient about how long things take to accumulate. We’re remarkably impatient about how long they take to change.
She knows what she needs to do. The problem isn’t information. It’s that when she looks at the whole dishwasher, it feels like too much to even start.
So here’s what I told her, and what I’d tell you if the same thing is sitting with you right now.
You don’t start with the whole dishwasher.
You start with one of those bowls on the top rack.
For her, that’s 20 to 30 grams of protein at breakfast. Not a meal plan overhaul. Not a tracked calorie deficit. Not a complete lifestyle change. Just that one thing, done consistently, until it stops feeling like a task at all.
And if that still feels too hard, you make it even simpler. One boiled egg. A scoop of Greek yoghurt. Something so small it almost feels embarrassing to count.
Because the research is pretty clear on this: action creates motivation, not the other way around. You don’t wait until you feel ready to start. You start, and readiness follows.
The hardest part isn’t emptying the dishwasher. It’s opening the door.