Strangely Productive – The Climb #822

Monday 24^th May 2021

Monday marks the start of my week. If I’ve not found time to do it on Sunday then it’s the day I go through my ToDo list, move all those uncompleted tasks forward, fill out my weekly review and plan the week ahead.

And normally there’s a ton of stuff I feel I’m not doing. No matter how much I complete, it always seems that come Monday there’s a HUGE list of tasks to carry forward. Part of the reason for the Weekly Review is so that I can look back and remind myself of all the things I actually have done.

The net result is that even if I’ve had a productive week then I still have a ton of stuff to do.

That all seemed to change last week. I’ve spent a lot of time over the past few weeks focused on singular items and ignoring my ToDo list. Hence when I came back to it, I expected it to be overwhelmed with items I’d not done. And yes, there was a lot… but not as many as I expected.

I’ve had a fairly productive week. I’ve got a bunch of stuff done but there’s also been days where I don’t feel I really accomplished much. Then there were days that were solid Warcraft. And yet, I get to Monday and… well, I’m not swamped with tasks.

On one hand this is good. It means I can put focus on the novel and not get distracted by a hundred other tiny ToDos. But there’s also part of me that feels unproductive.

Currently I can write for about 30 minutes and do around 700 words. I need to take a break after that. I might be able to come back later in the day, but I need a space to clear my head before going in again.

And that’s where all those other tasks are useful. I go do something else, get bored and then go back to the words.

But I’ve got very little else to do and hence it’s easy to get lazy in that gap between sessions, dive down some internet rabbit hole and turn a one hour break into a three hour one.

I’m trying to work out what happened to all my tasks. It could be that I’ve just worked my way at them over the last few months and I am genuinely up to date with things. It could be that in following my goals for the year that I subconsciously tasked out the first quarter and as those things have got done, I’ve missed moving those goals forwards with new tasks. Or it could be that due to a lot of things moving around in March, that I’ve benched some of my goals and need to refocus on them.

One of those is health. My health has really suffered in the last year, and getting it back under control has been a long and patient journey. I’ve still got a long way to go, and to be honest, I’ve not had much motivation. I’ve only really started to feel better in the last few weeks but it’s up and down week to week. I also have a mountain to climb in terms of fitness and nutrition.

So I started off with doing some yoga today. I want to use that to get me moving and stretching, build a bit of core strength.

I heard it said that health is the foundation for everything and I’m starting to think that true. I want to get back to where I was, and it’s going to take a lot of work. I need to think of it in terms of baby steps.

I have room in my day to do this and it might make the perfect break from writing. We’ll see though. As my health continues to rollercoaster so it’s hard to stay consistent in terms of habits.

I’ve done it once before which is a bad thing for me. I do much better when I believe it to be impossible.

We’ll see though. Part of me feels if I don’t get on top of it now, I never will.

Let’s hope that thought together with the manageable ToDo list sees me forward.