[jiggawatts]

I have a crippling guilt about not keeping my apartment as spotlessly clean as my parents did theirs, to the point that I end up procrastinating, which just makes it worse.

The trick to overcoming this is not to aim for "clean" but for "cleaner than before".

Just keep chipping away at it, whether it is a messy codebase or a messy kitchen.

[zoogeny]

I use it for cleaning all the time. Whenever I have dishes, I always give myself permission to do as little as I want knowing that one clean dish is better than nothing. Most often I end up doing them all.

The other saying I say is "completion not perfection". That helps me in yard work especially. I'm not going for the cover shot of "Better Homes and Gardens", I just need the lawn to be cut.

[Waterluvian]

I call it “sweeping back the desert.”

The sand blows in endlessly. You don’t aim for a pristine, sandless land. But you can’t ignore it or it takes over.

I’ll just pick up a few things and ferry them towards their “home.” Or go do a small amount of yard work. Etc.

[YZF]

weeding the garden is another analogy.