planning

Sticking with a plan?

I often have trouble sticking with plans I made for getting my work done.

Either I underestimate the work involved, I forget about travel time, or I make some similar error and get on my own nerves.

Oh, and sometimes I plan for a regular day just when I have a bunch of unusual days coming up in a row.

Yesterday, I made a place for an ordinary day today but I had to pick up my car, go to the supermarket, and head to an appointment by 9:30.

That’s not an ordinary day so I couldn’t use my plan for an ordinary start.

Luckily, I have gotten past the point where I think that means I have failed. And I have stopped abandoning the whole plan when one thing goes wrong.

I still have a little trouble deciding how to change the original plan to match my reality though.

I guess these things just take time. 😉

Pacing myself

So, after thinking my way through how to have fun in the meantime while I’m working on longer projects, I ended up getting way more done yesterday than I would have predicted.

Several of the yard work projects I thought would take a long time actually could be completed fairly quickly even though I was working on them in bits and pieces and taking plenty of breaks.

I did lots of reading and thinking and relaxing yesterday in between short work sessions tidying up the yard and the house and I felt really good about it.

BUT

Once again, I forgot that today comes after yesterday.

After an intense day of doing AllOfTheThings yesterday, I needed to take a closer look at today’s schedule and take things a bit easier.

I didn’t do that.

And despite waking up a bit tired and achy, I really thought I would be able to just dive into my work this morning.

My brain utterly refused to dive in.

So, instead, I have been drinking tea, reading my book, puttering around organizing things, and just generally taking it as easy as I can without giving it too much thought.

And that’s working out just fine. 🙂

I really have to learn to remember that yesterday comes right before today and that today comes right before tomorrow.

That would be very useful to have top-of-mind.

All Thinky…Again!

I have had some really terrific conversations this week about all kinds of great things – storytelling, business, volunteer work, finances. I feel really excited and hopeful about the possibilities on all fronts.

But this is where the tricky part comes in…

My brain wants to do all of it at once.

In fact, if I try to approach it any other way my brain gets really cranky about it and sometimes refuses to do anything at all.

So, I’m all thinky again over here.

What does my brain need in order to feel safe doing just one thing at a time?

What pattern of activity can I create in order to convince my brain that progress is being made?

How can I *see* that progress AND not try doing all of the things at the same time?

So, yeah, like I said: I’m all thinky…again.

Planning for June

I had some fun plans in place for May but obviously my focus was elsewhere this month.

Now, as I try to work out what I want to do in June I am feeling rusty and kind of weird.

I know that I shouldn’t take on ‘too much’ but what’s too much?

And I definitely shouldn’t leave myself without enough to do because that leads to melancholy in the best of times. Also, what’s enough to do?

I have no idea what my capacity is now and I definitely can’t guess what it will be in a month.

I often struggle with this kind of planning anyway, my present circumstances aren’t making it any easier.

Glerg.

On 30 days of blogging

Well, I’m going to call this experiment a success.

I’ve written something in here 30 days in a row.

That’s a clear victory, habit-wise.

Sure, every entry hasn’t been a gem.

And I didn’t always have a lot to say.

But I showed up and I did the thing.

Overall, it got easier to find things to talk about.

In fact, the real challenge was when I had ideas for a post that were too big for my time or my energy level.

And that’s something I want to work on a bit – figuring out how to handle the bigger ideas without wearing myself out.

In fact, that’s something I need to consider in most areas of my work – breaking down bigger tasks and ideas into smaller ones and working on them over time.

I’m going to keep writing daily but I’m going to think of a type of post for each day of the week. – to give myself a container to fill rather than trying to develop container and contents all at once.