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Oh, the dreaded to-do list. You have to call the florist, get bids from DJs, apply for the marriage license (and let's be honest, who really wants to make a trip down to City Hall and stand in a long line?) ... and falling behind on any number of tasks could spell trouble for your wedding day. But there's a better way to deal with the list than to fall into the vicious cycle of stare at it, stress, repeat.
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Happiness expert Gretchen Rubin has an effective trick that really works—whether you're tackling wedding planning tasks or just getting day-to-day stuff done once you're married. In fact, she puts it into practice once a week for the little, non-urgent tasks that always nagged at her. "They weighed on my mind and sapped my energy," she writes of her to-do list. "As I walked through my apartment, or sat at my desk, the accumulation of these little chores made me feel overwhelmed." (Sound familiar?)
Her solution: "Once a week, for one hour, I'd steadily work on these chores," she writes. "An hour didn't sound like much time, but it was manageable."
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Rubin calls this one-hour of her week "Power Hour" (apparently, there's a theory in psychology that if you call something an easy-to-remember name, you're more likely to remember and stick to it).
Now, clearly, wedding planning tasks are going to suck more of your time than one single hour, but by using this expert strategy, you might try allotting an hour to the most annoying, dreaded wedding planning tasks (think: noon on Mondays) and just knock them off, one at a time.
The net result? A less stressed-out you.