20 for 2020: week 41
Week 41: Week of 5 October 2020
My 20 for 2020 list.
One from the #losttrolleysofhobart series on Instagram
What did I want to do better this week?
Start to try out the new ideas for planning my days that I’ve been learning about.
So, how did that go then?
I think the operative words are “start to try out” not ‘implement perfectly”. This week was a bit unsettled anyway because I had two days off work to hang out with Kramstable and do school holiday stuff.
I think there is a rule in the universe that says any time I plan to sit down for a day to finish a project off at work before I have some time off, the shared mailbox that I manage (and that is the thing that I allow to contribute most to my inability to ever focus on work for extended periods) is going to explode with things that need urgent attention. It happened last time and it happened again this week. Somehow, I managed to get everything done on Thursday afternoon, though this did involve working two hours longer than I normally would and skipping my afternoon walk. It was pouring rain so it’s quite possible I wouldn’t have gone out anyway, but still, I don’t like to do that too often.I’m still working on making these ideas work for me and I’ll continue with it over coming weeks.
On to 20 for 2020
Again this week, I was focused on my uni assignment (thing 8). I didn’t work on any of my other things. I was thinking on Saturday afternoon when I was out walking how weird it was that at the same time next week, I’d only have one day of the whole course left.
Much reading matter for my assignment
It seems a bit unreal. And a lot of the time it’s not the actual work that’s weighting heavily on my mind. It’s just knowing that it’s there. Even when I’m not actively doing it or thinking about it, just knowing that I have to do it takes up a huge amount of mental energy. It will be a huge relief to free up that space in my head. At least, I hope it will be!
I spent most of Saturday sorting through the conversations I’d had with people and the questionnaires they submitted and trying to make some sort of sense of it so I could put it into my report. I am constantly amazed (and delighted) that almost every time I get up and do something else like go for a walk after I’ve been focusing for a long time, I get a new insight into what I need to do or how I can do it better.
What did I achieve this week?
My regular check in: I did my weekly work on my photojournal and my street corners project. Just for this next week, I’m going to be easy on myself if I don’t do them. Being one week behind will be okay and I’ll be able to drag that back on track. But I know that if I let myself get any further behind it will be too easy to get even further behind and I’ll end up with the mess I had before I caught up.
I did get the work project to the point (again) where I could hand it back to my manager before I had my day off, so I was happy with that. It seems to be one of those projects that keeps getting worked on, forgotten about, dragged out again when someone remembers we have to do it, worked on again . . . I really want it to be over and done with. It’s another one of those things that takes up an enormous amount of mental energy just to know that it’s there and not finished.
What didn’t go so well?
I still think I’m letting myself get distracted by things instead of focusing on my work, especially my uni project. I set up Habitica so that I lose health if I check social media during the work day. This is working well (as long I as I’m honest about it) but maybe I need to change it to be for any time I’m working on something I want to focus on.
I need to revisit Indistractable (thing 13)!
What do I want to do better next week?
All I want to do next week is finish my project report and hand it in. Nothing else matters, really.
I’ll keep working with the planning system and tweaking it to suit how I work.
Pepsi the chicken
Summary for the week
- Things completed this week: 0
- Things completed to date: 12 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 14, 15, 16, 18, 20)
- Things I progressed: 1 (8)
- Things in progress I didn’t progress: 5 (7, 11, 13, 17, 22)
- Things not started: 4 (9, 12, 19, 21)
- Days I worked on my art (Goal = 2): 3
- Days I read a book (Goal = 7): 7
- Days I did yoga stretches (Goal = 7): 0
- Days I shut my computer down before 10.15 (Goal = 7): 6
- Days I went for a walk in the afternoon (Goal = 5): 5
- Days I had a lunch break away from my desk (Goal = 5): 7
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