Saturday 23rd January 2021

After yesterday’s wobble,  I’m taking it easy today.  I’ve toyed with the idea of keeping my weekend’s free of tasks and I’ve tried the last few weeks to schedule everything for during the week.  However, inevitably, things that should have got done, haven’t been, and as a result, tasks from the week end up bleeding into the weekend.

I do feel I need a bit more structure to my week.  Currently, I do have themes for each day which allow for easier scheduling of tasks.  So admin is on Monday, Tuesday is HEMA related items.  Wednesday is Warcraft and gaming, Thursday is social media and Friday is writing related business.  The idea of this is that I can batch task.

Where I seem to be falling down is the structure within those days.   With the pandemic and everyone working from home, time has got a bit softer.  Unless I have appointments or meetings, start and end times get a bit blurry, evenings get later, afternoons get shorter.  I need to get to the start of each day and prioritise tasks.  I need to block out time.

I have a pretty good internal alarm clock.  I’ve started leaving my phone downstairs to improve my sleep.  But I’m thinking that I need to start setting an alarm and introduce a bit more of a regime.

The biggest challenge for this is motivation.  It’s so hard to force yourself to do things at set times, rather than bumble along.  Indeed, this weekend, any idea of schedule has gone out the window because I need to prioritise me.  I just don’t feel motivated at the moment, and feel happy when I am able to bumble myself forward.

I read something today from VE Schwab that said that we have to remember that people are not machines.  It made me feel a little better over my sporadic productivity.  But I genuinely tend to feel better after having done something, rather than living with the guilt of hot having done so.

I need to take a look at my goals and tasks, see which ones are getting stuck and find micro steps for moving them forward.  The trick isn’t about making bold, big progress, it’s about constantly taking little steps.  At the moment I seem to alternate between no steps and giant leaps.

So the first step is to get myself motivated.  There are things I’m waiting on that could trigger that, but I can’t count on those and must instead try and find inspiration elsewhere.  Maybe start with some simple mini-tasks I do each day and start to build habits upon which I can build.

I genuinely think I’ll feel a bit better being more regimented with my day but I have to balance that with the fact that everyone is feeling drained by this pandemic and are going to have bad days / weeks.

The trick is little steps rather than giant leaps.

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Past Years: 2020 – The Year of Being Fearsome | 2019 – The Year of Soldiering Through | 2018 – The Year of Priorities | 2017 – The Year Of The Offensive