If a task takes five minutes, don’t spend twenty dreading it.

Dread is almost always more expensive than the task. A five-minute job carried around all morning takes up far more of your day than doing it would have, and it taxes everything else you try to think about in the meantime. The avoidance is the heavy part. Most of what you fear is the starting rather than the doing.

List the small things you have been carrying and set a timer for fifteen minutes. Do as many as fit, worst first, without improving them. Notice how much lighter the afternoon feels for effort you had already spent on worrying.