Thank you
@Fitato @PETERMORRIS966 @graoumia and everyone for continuing to stop by my thread and support my journey.
With my country's federal election now in the rearview mirror (at least for the time being, and hopefully for at least a couple of years!) I am slowly working to get back to--or perhaps more correctly working to forge a new--normal. The trouble is, I'm not entirely sure what I want that normal to look like.
Fantasy normal? Sure! I can paint that in exquisite detail. But realistic, achievable normal?
Stress over the state of the world brought my productivity level pretty much to a standstill back in January. Now I am seeing a clearer path to my part in at least working towards positive change, and some breathing room (within Canada at least) to be able to do so. But I've a backlog of things I'm behind on I really need to get done, my personal care routines have slipped in ways I don't want them to, and the pressure of there just not being enough time in the day to do everything I want or need to do is causing me not to be more productive but to procrastinate and actually be less productive than I could be. So change is needed.
I am a generalist with an interest in many things much more so than a specialist in any one thing. This is not a financially lucrative way to be in today's world. But it keeps me happy. The trouble is, trying to do every thing every day is not very efficient for me. I experience resistance to getting started and am both happiest and most productive when I am able to really sink my teeth into a project for multiple hours at a stretch. I can actually put off for days, weeks,--okay, I'm going to be honest here: months--on end niggling small tasks that I could easily complete in under an hour if only I pushed past my resistance to getting them started. (How many times on here have I announced a new and grand plan to finally work on my push-ups endurance that fizzled in under a month because my resistance to doing push-ups is so high I consistently fail at every structured plan I've ever attempted to improve them?) So I have decided to try, at least for the time being, a simplified list of goals with a weekly (as opposed to daily) goal structure.
FITNESS: 180 minutes per week of vigorous physical activity. I may try to ramp this up to 300 minutes per week in the future. But for now, 180 minutes per week is a more realistic target. Work to meet this target will include: running, vinyasa and other "power" forms of yoga, most dancing, HIIT, the dreaded push-ups, etc. It does not include walking or restorative yoga.
(As for moderate physical activity, I already engage in well over 600 minutes per week due to all of the walking I do. I see no need for improvement here.)
WRITING: Minimum 20 hours per week on current priority project. Instead of trying to break my writing work down into task areas (study/research/world-building/drafting/revising/formatting/submitting/publishing/etc.) I'm going to switch to a project-focused approach. Currently I am working on a short story to submit to a DreamForge contest, the deadline for which is June 1st. Any work I do on this project, in any stage of the writing process, counts towards my 20 hours/week goal. Work on other projects--no matter what it is--does not count.
(I may at some point in the future shift to a focus on 2 or 3 projects at once so that I always have one project in the actual "writing" stage at any given time. But that's not where I'm at right now.)
EATING THE ELEPHANT: Minimum 20 hours per week on current non-writing priority projects. This includes long-term goals such as improving my French language skills, naturalist expertise, and artistic skills, but acknowledges that I cannot work on all of those things every day or even every week. It also acknowledges that sometimes other projects get in the way of the long-term ones and need to take precedence for a while.
This week's "Elephants":
- organizing my apartment (I've lived here almost 9 months now and still haven't finished unpacking! This needs to change.): 10 hours
- correspondence: 5 hours
- photograph curation, editing, and iNaturalist logging: 5 hours
NIGGLES: The petty irritants that definitely do not qualify as Elephants but that I nevertheless put off doing due to some resistance factor. I'm not talking here about routine chores that I just don't love (washing dishes, sweeping the floor, etc.) that I just do as a matter of course but rather the irregular/infrequent tasks that are tougher for me to fit into my schedule (largely due to their irregularity/infrequency).
Goal: Vanquish 1 Niggle/week (unless my Niggles list is empty--which it might well be some weeks if I can stick to this plan.)
NUTRITION: I want to get back to eating primarily homemade food. I allow myself some freebies here, such as commercially-prepared sauces and tortilla breads. But the commercially-prepared freezer dinners and bakery pastries have gotten out of hand in recent months. I'm not sure what's reasonable here, since we'll soon be heading into my first summer in 16 years without air conditioning. Let's try for eating homemade with 1 "Hall Pass" per week. See how that goes.
SLEEP: For now my goal here is simply: "Don't be stupid." If I'm pushing to meet a deadline, or deep in the middle of a project when 11PM rolls around and breaking off work at that moment would be an inefficient use of my time, I'll allow myself to stay up late to get things done. Also, as always, social opportunities trump curfews. But staying up half the night watching videos and/or solo gaming benefits no one.
Let's try these goals for now.
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Nashville, TN, USA
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